Dishes

Today I ventured up to the King of Prussia mall and met my mom. I have only heard stories about how incredible this mall is, so I needed to verify this myself. The stories are not a lie. It could be the most incredible mall I have ever been in aside from shopping in Las Vegas. This is a pretty bold statement because where I spent my high school years has about 5 malls within a 30 minute radius and they are new, trendy and awesome.

I met my mother there because one of her wedding presents to us was to buy us new dishes. She was going to buy our fine china for us, but then I got to thinking it may be more practical to have something between our current Wal-Mart dishes and platinum-rimmed bone china. The main reason this occured to me is that we will have two households coming up shortly and we’d need two sets of dishes…it would be pretty silly to buy another set of crappy dishes for the second household and even sillier to use bone china for everyday meals.

I am quite thrilled with the new dishes, and I am very picky…somehow it’s really hard to find really simple things. I hate lines, designs, grooves, bumps, dots on just about anything…texture is OK as long as it’s over the entire object. I’m pretty boring I guess…but I prefer the term minimal or asian inspired. The coolest part is that I said f.u. to the traditional mugs (of which we have like 10000) and opted for cups that have no handles.

Now I really want to have a dinner party…

Plates

Cups

Bowls

The table setting for dinner tonight:

Happiness

I don’t know if most people have this feeling or not, but I thought that our wedding was perfect. It wasn’t perfect as in we did everything right, or nothing went wrong or even finished everything we wanted to…

we didn’t get the ceremony programs finished

i didn’t finish the slideshow that i had been working on. i wanted to have my laptop and speakers set up on the gift table for people to watch it if they so desired…

the roses were too big and didn’t work so well in the bridesmaid’s bouquet

my bridesmaid and bestest friend in the whole world couldn’t come to my wedding because she was super preggo

we didn’t invite a lot of people’s parents that we should have due to budget constraints, but in retrospect, it would have been to our advantage because of the generous monetary gifts that we given by other people’s parents. they would have more than paid for the additional cost of hosting them. we should have just invited them, but I guess we didn’t really consider the gifts that people would be giving as a factor for inviting them, which I hope that they would see as an admirable quality…

our cake was falling.

It was perfect because when I walked down the aisle, all I thought about was getting married and not about how the girls’ flowers didn’t look as planned. I actually had no idea what the ceremony looked like until I saw pictures.

When I sat down at the reception, I felt nothing but pure joy. I mean this both in the deep and superficial sense. Obviously, I was happy because I married the right man, but writing about this is not really what I do. I was happy because everything looked exactly as I had imagined…I’m very into aesthetics. It was clean cut, modern and open. I didn’t get the stuffy feeling that I get at some weddings, where I almost wish that I was a smoker so I had an excuse to go outside every 15 minutes. I was happy to see people up and mingling and dancing. The centerpieces were exactly as I envisioned, aside from people tipping them over…

a few photos to sum up our wedding…

happiness

simplicity

booze

Probably the best part was that we pulled it off under budget and are debt free.

Wedding Goodness

Crate and Barrel. I love this store. They have modern minimalism, quality and price all wrapped up into one nice little black and white box. When I see one of the signature crate and barrel boxes on our doorstep, I get all tingly on the inside. Our most recent purchase from here includes two bookshelves–to be delivered Feb 5. We need them very badly–after all, we’re graduate students and admitted nerds. We could have our own math, electrical engineering and physics departments with the text books that we have. We probably could even open a liberal arts school too with the literature and language stock pile. The bookshelves will clean up so much clutter. The best part is that Derek is excited about them too. He is not nearly as in love with Crate and Barrel as I am.

I shouldn’t just limit his lack of affection to Crate and Barrel. Pretty much as I can tell, Derek doesn’t care to have new things or nice things. We could go on through the rest of our lives with our hand me down couches, TV, coffee table, dining room table, walmart dishes, mismatched glasses, 250 thread count sheets and he wouldn’t even think once about it.  Don’t get me wrong, this is generally an admirable quality of his…I hate Spenders-Spendingtons.  Not that I’m some stuck up snob and grumble at our shitty furniture everyday, but a personal savings goal of mine (now ours) is to someday buy new furniture (from Crate and Barrel of course). This is after I (now we) pay off my student loans…I have no intentions on going into debt over furniture.

Maybe it’s just a man thing, but there is just so much he doesn’t understand. Like why we need to have 8 red wine and 8 white wine glasses and 8 champagne flutes. Or why there are different knives for cutting onions vs. asparagus. Or why we would even have gin and scotch in the house if neither of us drink it. Or why we would ever have any use formal china or table cloths.

Though he claims none of the wedding gifts are “for him”, I think some of them are starting to grow on him. Like the double burner griddle, the wusthof knives, the new silverware and high threadcount sheets. Hey, it’s a start. It’s only a matter of time before he’s stomping around because he can’t find the snifter for his cognac.

Crazy week

Saturday:  Drinksgiving.  Alcohol, good food and Guitar Hero.  Enough said.  Met expectations.  Our totally awesome friends bought us a whole bunch of junk food for our trip!  Sweet.  Didn’t study for real analysis.

Sunday:  Christmas at our house with mom, her friend who let us borrow her car for our trip and her children.  We got pizza, which I was stoked about…no cooking.  We got some sweet gifts and once again played Guitar Hero.  The gifts that I bought for the children didn’t even seem to phase them, but otherwise, we had a good time.  Didn’t study for real analysis, but finished a project for another class.

Monday: Study for real analysis dad.  Well this really turned into packing day and deal with last minute wedding crap day.  I didn’t study enough.

Tuesday:  Woke up at 7 am and studied.  Took exam, didn’t cry.  Left for dad’s house.  Christmas at dads.  Good time.  We got a TomTom navigation system for Christmas.  I’m pretty sure this was almost as much of a present for my dad as it was for us, he’s a worrier and has a terrible sense of direction.  We opened our wedding present too.  Sweet.

Wednesday:  Dad forced 4 course breakfast upon us.  Always appreciated but not always that hungry.  Left around 10 EST.  Animals were well behaved, I drove for 5 hours out of 13 hours, Derek saw a lynx or a bobcat.  We  made it to Kansas City, Kansas and stayed at the Renaissance Inn.  Sounds nicer than it actually is.  What do you expect for $60?

Thursday:  Departed Renaissance Inn around 9:30 CST, just in time for McDonalds breakfast.  Upon getting breakfast, Maggie crawled under the folded down seats in the Suburban and we had to rescue her.  This meant taking out about 5 suitcases, 6 boxes of wedding stuff and 7 cases of wine.   She was banished to her crate for the next 200 miles.  After letting her out, she sat on my lap well behaved for the remainder of the trip.  We arrived in Denver around 6 MST, went to dinner and passed out.

Friday:  Venue walk through at 10 am, DJ meeting at 2 pm.  Everything is under control, feels good to get this stuff done.  On the board for tonight: Guitar Hero…it’s been 3 days, starting to shake.

T minus 14 days…it’s so close!!!!

Handshake

I had my last meeting with my advisor today as an unmarried woman.  At the end of the meeting, he shook my hand.  It was cute.

T-minus 26 days

We leave for Denver in 8 days!  8 freakin’ days.  In this time frame we have to get parents and officiant gifts, finalize ceremony music, finalize reception timing and music, get my dress pressed, get my hair cut and colored, finish up final head count, help dad finish wedding wine, pack for a month’s worth of various climates, occasions and species.

 Not to mention that I also have a final and a project due and 3 “mandatory” social events.

Winter Wedding Trouble

I cannot find anything that I would like to wear with my dress to keep warm when outside!!!  ahhhhhhh.  I hate the bridal cape/cloak and the cheesy fur wraps at david’s bridal.  Can I just wear a wool coat?

Wedding Cake Topper II

Since we couldn’t find a normal wedding cake topper that we wanted or could afford, we ended up with the most ridiculous wedding cake topper ever.  I will not spoil the surprise, you have to wait until the wedding.  It’s humorous, I’ll leave it at that.

Wedding Cake Topper

Why is this so hard?  Why can’t I find a fucking wedding cake topper that we like and that doesn’t cost $200?  We had one, but when I went to buy it today, it is not available.  Grrrrrr, this is supposed to be an easy thing!

T minus 45 days

Another week has just flown by. I’ve gotten some things under control. The walk through is scheduled for Friday December 21, which is good. That means that I don’t have to take my real analysis final early…need all of the time I can get for that.

Why does everything revolve around real analysis?

Tonight, Derek and I are going to finalize the wedding ceremony music (maybe he will read this blog before he even knows he is going to do this) so we can send in the cellist’s lineup sheet and get that done. We are having a solo cellist…fabulous minimal beauty. I am a violinist, a picky one, and this complicates things tremendously. Since I studied baroque music in college (thank you PSU for having such an awesome Baroque ensemble, one of the few in the country), I am very particular about how the music is played. We met with the cellist and while she refused to hold the cello in baroque style

does not have a baroque bow, nor gut strings

and certainly does not have a Baroque era instrument, (not many do)

well I do, but the a-holes that owned it before stripped everything baroque off of it, and is the case with most old instruments that fall into the hands of unknowing descendants of wonderful musicians…

she is willing to change the strings on her cello to fake gut strings and she sounded really good when we listened. So I am happy.

We just need to figure out what songs and where and if the timing will work OK.

EDIT:  it’s is 10:59 pm and I still have not decided on music.