Dresses, obelisks and cake

I bought my dress!! I took a couple of mirror pictures with a sleeve option semi-attached (I need to decide by the March fitting whether I’m having them add sleeves or making my own shrug), but I will resist temptation to post them here. It’s a great dress, though, and now I just need cute but comfortable (and ideally blue) shoes to go with it. (I should also get these arms in shape. Yikes.)

I went to DC! The Boy and I spent Thanksgiving with his family in northern Virginia (also joined by my mom, so the families have finally officially met), and since my mom had never been to DC before we did some sightseeing. No captions on these photos yet, but here’s an idea of what we saw:

Thanksgiving 2010 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I made a cake! This has nothing to do with anything except that I baked and iced a cake for Thanksgiving dessert and thoroughly enjoyed it. The Boy and I tend to get our birthday cakes from the local Chinese bakery, and they’re beautiful and light and delicious but I’m thinking of trying to recreate them at home for the next occasion. Just what I need seven months before a wedding—a new reason to bake

Where does the time go?

Not much new progress to report on the wedding planning, but we have a meeting with the wedding coordinator this afternoon so I expect her to get us thinking more seriously about the little details that I've been avoiding. And, well, I guess by "not much new progress" I mean we haven't chosen (or seriously considered) any new vendors since picking our photographer a couple of weeks ago, but I suppose we've talked some about colors. I like cobalt blue and a nice heather/charcoal gray, and The Boy recommends adding a brighter third color so maybe yellow? We need to go to a hardware store and hash this out in the paint chip aisle, but at least we've started talking about it.

I'm also trying to nail down times to try on dresses--I keep forgetting to call J. Crew for an appointment in late October (the first time the local bridesmaids and I will be in the same city and not otherwise occupied), and I'll probably try to squeeze in a David's Bridal appointment for the same day. I may visit another DB the prior weekend when I'll be in southern California (it'd be nice to try on at least one dress in front of my mom), and I'm taking advantage of a small designer's try-on program to test out a couple of dresses next week. (Short version: the designer doesn't have showrooms in Seattle, but I love one of his [inexpensive!] dresses and for $15 they'll send you the dress to try on at home.) This is probably both my most and least favorite part of planning so far--the dresses are pretty and they're built to make me look good so I'm not anticipating body-image issues, but I already hate making decisions and this seems to be the biggest, most impactful decision I'll make for a while. I've got my mom telling me that the simple, clean dresses I'm drawn to aren't "special" or "stunning" enough for my wedding day (it seems the guests spend money coming to the wedding for a show, and if I don't look extra-special then it'll be a letdown), and all of the websites and catalogs and magazines are pushing sparkly dresses that don't speak to me at all but seem to be the standard for weddings. I realize that this is our party and I'm paying for this dress so the final decision is mine, but I don't want to choose something disappointing, and I'm terrified that the dress I love now will look boring in our photos. But anyway, all of this is to say that I think I have a good idea of what I want, but if there's a chance that I'll fall in love with something sparkly then I will go try on some damn sequins.

That was an unexpected rant. Quickly finding something good to report: work is...work, I got to hold a baby (still not interested in having any just yet, but boy do I like holding them), lots of traveling and fun times have been had these past couple of weeks, and this morning I made a lot of arrangements for the next couple of trips. And then I'll have a birthday and then Thanksgiving (more travel) and Christmas/New Year's (*two* desinations for that one! I apparently *heart* the airline industry) and then it'll be 2011 and the wedding will be just around the corner! Yikes!

Oh, those summer nights

Who am I kidding? Seattle's summer nights are pretty much like nights during the rest of the year--considerably colder than the daytime, and either foggy or downright rainy. Today's high was low 60s and it rained this morning. August here is very confusing.

But I *did* do a lot of fun things this summer, and lacking the motivation to write a more involved post, I'm just going to drop in some photos of highlights from the past couple of months.

This actually happened a few months ago, but dude! It's Mario Batali! Signing a book from which we have since cooked!

We joined some friends to go clamming in early July. It was cold and muddy and my quads hurt for days from all the squatting, but the clam chowder we made that night was AMAZING.

Lots and lots (and lots) of lavender at the Sequim Lavender Festival. Fun girls' weekend with two future bridesmaids.

Traditional group shot from this year's awesomely awesome amusement park trip. (This is the Alamo, not some incredibly authentic-looking olden days roller coaster.) Lots of future wedding participants in this photo. And finally...

This is where we're getting married next summer. Behind us is the main clubhouse that I'll walk out of and down the stairs, and the little stage area is where the ceremony takes place. (The plywood in the background is early construction on one of the stages for the yearly golf tournament, but the coordinator assures us that our wedding date will most likely fall before any visible construction.)

And I suppose a quick life update: thanks to a small crew of surprisingly strong movers, the vast majority of my remaining stuff (after an embarrassing number of trips to Goodwill) is now cohabitating with the fiance! I'm writing this from my new office with one kitty asleep in the chair next to me and The Boy computing in his own office about twenty feet away. The new place is many miles removed from my old apartment (and work, and downtown Seattle, and most of the places I normally go), but it's huge (distant suburbs = more for the money) and I'll get used to the distance and we're happy to be together full-time, even if our respective cats have yet to fully embrace each other. I'm a lucky, lucky girl.