Coming down the home stretch?

I don't want to use any absolutes yet, just in case something goes wrong or we change our minds entirely, but the place we saw yesterday? SO nice. So very, very nice. We are thisclose to pulling the trigger (especially since there are only 3 dates left next summer--yikes!--one of which will likely be in the height of Seattle's summer), but we're seeing one more place tomorrow and I'm waiting for another place to return my call to schedule another visit.

So, yesterday's venue: Beautiful. Just...beautiful. I call this one "The View," and even though it was too foggy during our visit to actually see the view, the grounds were beautiful. It cost...well, about as much as any other similar place around here, but the estimated cost includes food, drinks, all of the tables and chairs we'd need plus setup and tear-down, AND--this is the kicker--a wedding coordinator. She gave us a tour yesterday, and as soon as she started describing how she meets with the couple throughout the year to do a floor plan, settle on the menu, make sure all of the details are covered, etc. I was pretty much sold. And there were lots of great-sounding details, too, like she strongly recommends holding the rehearsal dinner at least two nights before the wedding so everyone has a day in between to relax, and there's a whole choreographed procession from the dressing room to the entryway where the mom sees the bride for the first time, out to the lawn where her dad (or, in my case, probably the fiance) sees her for the first time, and the whole thing sounds very emotional and of course is all captured on film. I'm sure she uses this detail to get the bride all misty and imagining her own wedding day in that very location, and it totally worked.

Anyway, The Boy and I are big fans of the all-in-one package, especially since there's a person whose entire job it is to keep track of our planning and help us make decisions. We can handle all of this stuff on our own--I have wedding magazines and offers of help coming out my ears, and I'm so grateful for that--but man does a coordinator sound awesome. And now that I'm getting more comfortable with the magnitude of wedding costs, I'm even willing to go along with his philosophy that it's okay to pay a bit more for peace of mind. Regardless of whether this place works out, though, I think yesterday's visit gave us a really good idea of what we want in a wedding venue. If we don't get this place, we'll at least have something to aim for in subsequent visits. Fingers crossed for a decision soon!

the spirit lives on...

Ah, Oregon.

I remember little of my first visit to the Beaver State (no, really) aside from a particularly cheesy state-history museum and multiple trips to The Best Bookstore Ever, so when my biz-school classmate issued an open invitation to crash with him in Portland, I jumped at the chance to make a return visit. And it was great! The drive was uneventful -- about 3 hours in either direction, with (of course) rain causing the occasional slowdown -- and I was only there for about 24 hours, but the city is beautiful. I thought Seattle had cornered the market on outdoorsiness and randomly-occurring forest, but Portland? Kicks Seattle's North Face-clad behind, hands down.

My friend works for Nike, whose campus in the Portland suburbs pretty much makes it impossible to be the least bit unhealthy. Parking is limited to a couple of inconveniently-placed lots, so walking seems to be the only way to get around. Not that I have any sympathy for Nike employees, who get to look at this all day:




Other highlights included the Japanese Garden and the Rose Gardens, which are conveniently located a short walk from each other. The weather didn't cooperate, of course, but I managed to get a few decent shots from under my umbrella:



...so yeah, it was a good weekend! The northwest is finally starting to grow on me -- not that I ever hated it, but between adjusting to this whole no-roommate thing and having to make new friends for the first time in, like, eight years, things were starting to look pretty dire. But as silly as it sounds, having someone to sightsee with made a HUGE difference. If anything, I'm even more jealous of my co-workers who moved here with significant others, but until I line up one of my own (yeah, yeah, I'm working on it, if by "working on it" you mean "wishing really hard") I'll have to make do with the growing circle of friends. Things could be worse :-)