cake tasting

A lot of our own wedding planning went by in a blur. Where other couples might have deliberated for weeks over which caterer to use or where to hold the event, we ended up making quick, clear-cut decisions. When you get right down to it, can you really imagine us not knowing what kind of food to have for the reception?

Still, we probably could have played the planning card a bit more, if only to leverage it for samples and handouts. I mean, we didn't even once go cake tasting - we just picked what we wanted and ordered it. No nonsense, but possibly nonsensical.

So imagine our luck when our good, soon-to-be married friends invited us along (or maybe we invited ourselves) to sample the offerings at two Portland bakeries. Could we really say no when they so clearly needed our help?


What I found out was that wedding planning can be pretty fun when it isn't your wedding. Without the pressure of having to consider what flavor cake my aunt would like, I was free to ask questions of the bakers like, "Now if the bride and groom decide on 'ruins of Italy' theme, can you make a leaning cake that looks like the tower of Pisa?" "If they want a dark chocolate cake, could you still make it entirely pink?" "Can you photo-transfer their pictures onto the ganache?"

It was funny for a while, until I realized that people do, in fact, request cakes that are exactly this stupid. So I pulled it together and focused on the flavors. Aside from how delicious they are, I want to high five Baker & Spice for their "build-your-own-cake" presentation. If it were my choice, the decision for which bakery to use would have been cinched by the scoops of frosting alone. I could have happily mixed-and-matched spoonfuls of buttercream with forkfuls of cake all morning. If our friends want to make me happy at their wedding (and isn't that the point?), then they'd be wise to set up a cake construction bar. I want to see sprinkles, frostings, ganaches, edible flowers and miniature sugar bride-and-grooms. And I want to be able to put them together myself.


So, here's my advice (and you can't say it's unsolicited, since you invited A and me along!):

Don't pick a flavor you're allergic to.
If you go with frosting calligraphy, make sure your decorator can spell.
And if you really want to impress us, you should bake it yourself.

(Oh, and I vote for the chocolate with mascarpone cream-cheese frosting.)

photos!

This is just a brief interruption in our travel stories, but we wanted to let you know that our amazing photographer, Josh Kaffer, has posted pictures from our wedding online! So take a look at how great you all looked that night - he should be posting more soon from other parts of the weekend. So here is your chance to finally get a nice, big portrait of us printed out on canvas (with soft focus) to hang over your fireplace. Go see the photos!

we're just here for the food

You all thought we were kidding, didn't you? You'd ask, "Montreal for your honeymoon? Have you been before? What's the draw?" And we'd blithely respond, "For the food." You probably laughed and thought to yourself that you would have chosen Hawaii this time of year.

Did you attend the same wedding we did? Between the banquet spread (thank you, Simpatica) and the toasts that focused on Amanda's appetite, it was kind of hard to mistake the true purpose of our big day: the food, we mean, our undying love for one another. So if it wasn't already clear, we love food and we love each other. And we celebrated both on our honeymoon (follow along and see if you can figure out which love outweighed the other)...

TA DA! DAY ONE (with parts of the first night)!

After a poorly thought-out and incredibly long trip on which we left at midnight Sunday, went through two Northeast cities, and hopped a bus to Montreal, we got into the city late Monday evening. As we often do in unfamiliar places, we arrived at a time of day when everything appears large and scary, and every person we pass seems to be speaking in a foreign language. Oh wait, that was French. We happily found our b & b, made a run to a drugstore for cold medicine and tissues and decided to begin our Quebecois dining experience properly. With poutine.

La Banquise 24h was luckily only a few blocks from our place, so we headed over to this all-hours hipster casse-croute (fast food joint). It had the vibe of a late-night college hang-out, like a college-town burrito joint, only this place had a menu of 22 poutines (and a couple dozen ways of cooking hot dogs that we can't remember). A went for the classic, literally, the poutine classique - fries, brown gravy, snowy white cheese curds. P felt like a little fusion and went for the poutine kamikaze, which delivered a wallop of merguez sausage, pickled hot peppers and tabasco sauce on top of the basic poutine. That is the beauty of poutine - no matter how many toppings you add, you don't subtract the basics.

In the light of the morning (which was beautifully clear to all of you "go to the tropics" naysayers), we awoke to a spread of coffee, juice, fruit, scrambled eggs, yogurt, and our first taste of Montreal bagels. Unlike in New York, where bagels are boiled, the bagels here are dipped in honey water then baked in a wood oven. The result is a crisp sweet exterior with a pleasantly chewy interior. We knew we'd have to get more on this trip. Our b & b, Le Plumard, had comfortably modern furnishings, cute style and a Portugese host with a broken arm and a penchant for making bad jokes about her cast. Louise was a warm and gracious host and her breakfasts each morning were such a great respite from traveling and eating out every meal.

We set out after breakfast to get a sense of the neighborhood our b & b was in. The Plateau is a vibrant mix of brownstone apartments and neighborhood restos (not an obnoxious abbreviation, just what they say in Quebec) that runs along Ave. Mont Royal and Boul. Sant Laurent (the Main). The Main used to be the dividing line between French and English Quebec (and by used to, we mean "early 90s"), but has recently been repopulated by families and hipsters moving back into the city. We kept saying that parts of it looked like New York while other parts looked like London. Some guidebook we saw described it as "Williamsburg in a beret," but like all of Montreal, it was actually unique to itself.

After getting the lay of the land, we dropped into Montreal's most famous Jewish deli for lunch. What distinguishes Schwartz's is their smoked meat. No, its not pastrami. No, its not corned beef. We probably would have called it both, but they were very particular about their product. Schwartz's is just that kind of democratic lunch counter you find in New York, where locals and tourists alike put up with gruff treatment for the outstanding food. A got the "stuffed chicken" sandwich - the biggest stack of cold bologna between two mustard slathered pieces of white bread she had ever seen. P went for the house special, which you don't order by size, but by fat. P got the full fat. We both ordered half-sours and black cherry sodas to go with our sandwiches and because we hadn't had poutine in almost a day, we rounded it out with fries.

What to do after a meal like that? We waddled back to our b & b for a nice little nap. Now, mind you, A had gotten horribly sick the day after our wedding (who among you was sick? fess up, because you aren't coming next time...) and P was only a day away from following suit. This was but the start of a full week of dozing off around 9:30 or 10 and not rousing from bed until 9 the next day (including daily 4 o'clock naps).

Because A was still a bit drowsy, even after her hour-long nap, P dragged her up to Mile End to an Italian cafe Louise had recommended. Club Social was in the heart of a predominantly English neighborhood, served an Italian clientele and was filled with markings of the dominant French presence. If we thought we were having trouble with French, now we had a room full of people speaking three languages we had experience with. Now Montreal is many good things, but a town of excellent coffee and tea it is not. We were yearning for those Portland-style small batch roasts we so loved, but at least an Italian place like Club Social made a decent espresso.

Well, after brunch, lunch, and coffee, it seemed high time for dinner (trust us, you'll begin to notice a trend here). Exhausted after a long day of struggling through French, we went the take-out route from Chuch, the casual cafe side of Chu Chai, a vegetarian Thai restaurant in our neighborhood. Neither of us had ever seen such a panoply of fake meats as Chuch offered and the verisimilitude of those little TVP duck breasts was uncanny (right down to the fake layer of fat). They didn't taste like duck, but that was probably fine, since this was one of the rare meals we managed to avoid meat on this trip. Seitan a l'orange, ginger green beans, curried eggplant, udon and tofu - you'll just have to imagine how good it all was because we forgot to take pictures of this one meal. Since there is nothing classier than Thai takeout when you're jet-lagged, we popped a bottle of champagne and enjoyed some truffles that A's parents had arranged to have waiting for us. And, seeing as it was around 9:30 (6:30 Pacific?!), we promptly fell asleep.

(PS. Hopefully you've noticed the changes around the site, but if you haven't yet seen, there is a link on the left to our flickr page. Follow the link to view the full set of images from our trip. We'll keep posting on the rest of our honeymoon and as soon as we get our pictures from the wedding back from our photographer, we'll post those as well. Thanks again for sharing our wedding with us and making it such a memorable event. -P&A)

bring an umbrella.

So while Amanda and I have just surfaced for air after seeing 18 performances in one week, she has gone off on a three day work retreat in the wildness. That leaves me to fret about things far beyond my control. Like the weather.

Months ago, October 6th seemed like an arbitrary choice. We both enjoy the fall and wanted to have an autumn wedding. It couldn't conflict with TBA or run up too close to shows at my gallery. Other than that, we both are fond of October and felt that early in the month offered the best chance for nice weather. And that was the last it crossed our minds.

An evening wedding in the fall? Sure, that makes a lot of sense. Revisiting the rooftop terrace for the first time the other evening, we both said the same thing. "Damn, it's windy up here." Suddenly, our summer-weight attire that we bough back in April seems woefully light for the bracing chill of an autumn night. At least we'll be in front of the fireplace. It is all of you poor saps that will be huddled together for warmth. Maybe this way it will seem like the crowded seating arrangement was intentional.

But the other factor that we had failed to consider was light. Thanks to a little phenomenon called axial tilt, the sun doesn't always set at the same time year round. Most people know this, but for some reason, we chose to schedule our ceremony for 6:30. Thankfully, when I looked into it for the first time last night, I found out that sunset on the 6th shouldn't occur until around 6:41. And get this, we'll have "civilian twilight" for another 18 minutes or so! We don't even need candles because the sun will do the mood-lighting for us.

According to the National Weather Service, we have a 35.6% historic chance of rain and, thankfully, a 0% chance of snow. The average precipitation for October 6 is .10", while the most we ever got was 1.24" in 1981. The hottest it's been was a balmy 89 in 1952, but it was once only 37 degrees in 1974. Luckily, the temperature averages 47-68 degrees. I'd say that's pretty comfortable. But should it matter that back in 1962, the weekend of our wedding brought in one of the worst tsunamis to ever strike the Pacific Northwest?

I've become a weather fanatic - checking and cross-referencing multiple sources to find the report that I want to believe. However, all of the meteorologists will tell you that beyond a few days in advance, forecasting is little more than guesswork. This just means that I'll have to start putting more stock in predictions the closer it gets. In the meantime, I was considering getting a subscription to a Farmer's Almanac to access their "80% accurate" long-range forecasts, but when I went to one of their websites, they predicted the 4th-7th as being "very unsettled" and their front page advertised a "Worst Wedding Weather Contest." Maybe I should just invest in a pig spleen. And you should invest in some blankets and ponchos.

At least I haven't begun worrying about the weather for our honeymoon. Why did I insist on Montreal over Hawaii?

Counterpoint.

In the true spirit of one who is about to pledge her love and support to a certain P-erson, I would now like to contradict everything that certain someone has been saying for the past few months.

Well, not everything.

We're getting married, it is true. We (Patrick) did make all of those invitations that you now have in your hands/on your fridge/framed in your living room. We (Patrick) did want to have a summer wedding after seeing those admittedly dapper suits the Decemberists wore. And we (Patrick...okay, me too) did get the hell out of the country when the two-month-mark rolled into town.

However, I would just like to say that we have done it all with, I think, a lot less stress and heartache than one stereotypically associates with planning the "happiest day of your life." I read Harry Potter the entire time Pat printed those invitations. Wedding planning has not barred our participation in an assortment of fine activities (Exhibit A: the Decemberists concert). As for going to Vancouver...the nightmarket was a much stronger pull than panic about the wedding was a push. Things have been busy, yes. But, things are always busy during this time of year, it being summer and all - that glorious time of year when the excessive sunshine makes everyone shockingly social.

The fact that at times this summer I have wanted to draw back blissfully into wintry hibernation has stemmed only in part from the wedding planning. When it comes down to it, I have actually been enjoying the process, enjoying the planning - and I like being with Patrick now more than ever. I may be going out on a limb here, but I would say Patrick has been having a pretty good time as well.

The reason I feel the need to write this is that people have been asking me lately (more and more as the wedding gets closer) how things are going, whether I am nervous or even panicked, how I am dealing with the insurmountable stress that planning this wedding must certainly bring. I find myself falling into the role everyone seems to expect - making faces and talking about how much work it has all been, how crazy it is making me and how I will be so glad when it is all over. I actually have to stop myself from saying these things, because the truth is, I don't feel this way at all.

If I have learned anything during the wedding planning, it is that the wedding industry has created the self-perpetuating monster that is the modern-day-wedding. When did we decide that a couple has one day to show the world how exciting, romantic and glorious their relationship is (and that they must show this by throwing the most lavish party possible and making themselves miserable along the way)? Seriously, treating the wedding as the ultimate measure of how happy a couple is and how successful a marriage will be is akin to expecting winning the title of Prom Queen to decide your future happiness and popularity. I never did win, so I guess you can say I'm a pretty hopeless case at this point.

For the record, I would just like to say that this wedding will not be the end all be all snapshot of P and my relationship, and I couldn’t be happier about that. It will, however, be a pretty great party. Now bring on that sangria; it is August, after all, and I think I'll have another glass.

perhaps a little too much wedding.

Maybe it is a bad sign that when we go to a concert now, all we can think to say to each other is, "We should have had a summer wedding - those suits look so damn dapper!"

we'll have plenty of time to take care of that later...

an improvement over our earlier to do lists

A and I went to a friend's wedding recently (as in, "over a month ago") feeling pretty good about where we were at with planning. At the very least, I was feeling good and blissfully ignorant and Amanda's list-making had been worn down by my regular rejoinder of "we'll take care of that in August." August, I imagined, would be a month when our only concern would be passing the pitcher of sangria while we leisurely took care of all those remaining details surrounding the wedding. Between our quickly filling-calendar for July and the inevitable stress of September's one-month mark, August became the receptacle for my procrastination.

Now, this wedding was the first that we had attended since we had announced our engagement; our first in-action look at what we were up against. Until this point, much of our planning had been based on the gauzy, soft-focus romance of how we remembered our friend's weddings (drawn exclusively from our blurry snapshots and champagne-addled memories). Here is what I remember from most of our friends' weddings:

There was food. It was held somewhere. I'm pretty sure they ended up married.

When you boil it all down, wedding's are just overblown, formal, expensive parties, right? If that was the case, then we had nothing to worry about. Our two main priorities had been securing the event space and the caterer and did we accomplish them? Handily. Promptly. Now top my glass off and make sure some of those boozy orange slices make it in.

Then we arrived at our friends' wedding. What started off as a night of Amanda making awkward introductions between me and people she had forgotten she had gone to grade school with, quickly devolved into an evening of conspiratorial whispering between she and I, dissecting their ceremony and reception:
"They have programs, is that on our list?"
"How far are we on compiling music for the reception?"
"Do we need a separate bouquet to toss?"
"Shit, they have, like, a dozen cakes! Maybe we need more cakes?"
"Look at the bride and groom - we won't get to sit the entire night of our wedding!"
"We won't get to eat!"

Great, the two things we had actually taken care of in advance would go unused by us. Meanwhile, everything that all of our guests would be expecting was still waiting to be taken care of in August. Damn, I just spilled my sangria all over myself.

We chose to get married when we did partially because it seemed like the right length for an engagement. We had seen so many of our friends have l o n g engagements with drawn-out waiting periods in the middle. We thought seven and a half months was short enough to be efficient, but long enough to take care of everything. If I could reschedule everything, I would have a one, maybe two month engagement. Like ripping off a band-aid, it would hurt and then it would be done with. And isn't that just the kind of lovely metaphor more wedding's should aspire to?

As I've said before, the wedding industry is huge and maybe a little bit evil. It's really quite easy to get overwhelmed by all of the details that, somewhere in our history, have been incorporated into our cultural idea of the perfect day. While originally we'd been overwhelmed to the point of catatonia, we have found that you can just as easily be overwhelmed into taking on too many projects. Most nights we spend making favors and invites, calling for various appointments and drawing out elaborate play-by-plays of the ceremony. Which reminds me to say that you should never look at wedding books - they overwhelm couples directly into that Martha Stewart automaton mentality. I really think that if we had maybe glanced at even one more wedding book "for ideas," we would be sitting on our living room floor this very minute, trying to figure out how to make individual birch-bark wrapped boxes to hold hand-picked and home-perfumed rose petals for our guests to throw. At least our place would have smelled nice. But I don't think I would have been able to find our to-do list under all of the birch clippings and glue-guns.

two colors = two printings

And these are the photos from round two. After this, I just have to put A to work cutting out and assembling the parts. For hours.



























It actually is a lovely color on the cards. Really.

we're still getting married. seriously.

I know that we haven't been posting at all very much lately (and as I hear it, you haven't been looking very often, either), so just to let you all know, we are still getting married. We're just hitting that mid-point in the planning process when the wedding feels like a dull buzzing in the background of our migraine. Or maybe thats just the heat. Because it is 102 damn degrees in Portland today! As soon as it cools off, we'll post about the planning process and the very special torture that it is to plan the happiest day of your life. For now, since our apartment has started to look like a Jo-Ann Fabrics with all of our wedding craft projects, here are a few photos of why exactly we are so damn busy:
















That's right, I made the brilliant decision to test run my temperamental new old 1950s hand-operated letterpress on our own wedding invitations.



































































I only have to do this 200 more times.

Game On.

So, I received a little something in our wedding email the other day. A picture of me (and Pat)! Yes, my dear friends and family, the game is officially on. The game of sending us pictures of the P-and-A robots you constructed, that is. Ms. Kate Lyman and Mr. Kalin Schmoldt of Portland, Oregon, receive the honorable title of "First People to Send Us Pictures of Our Squat and Robot-Like Selves." If you all send us some more, I just may come up with honorable titles for each and every one of you. And then I'll use them as place cards at our wedding. Actually, I'm not promising that last one, but you don't want to be left out of the loop, do you?

That's what I thought.

** UPDATE ** (By update, I mean, we got another one.)










"Best Use of Overgrown Bamboo/Thanks for Humoring Us" goes to Peter and Karen

Update - Update: Evidence of how much our parents love us...



"Best representation of our true habitat - Munchkinland" goes to Marty and Chuck.

So, as I will only make nametags for those who sent us pictures, it appears that this is going to be a very small wedding. That, or no one else gets to eat.

Think about it.

***Updaaaaate!***

I really am as excited as that sounds.

Erin Yvonne Dickey now holds the honor of "Best contrast to my current expression!" Exclamation point!

Ms. Dickey assures me that her sad expression relates to the fact that she did not have an adhesive strong enough to keep the P&A robot together; I should not, she says, take this as a sign. I assure you that I have very strong, body-builder-esque arms (though they don't look it) and I will not let Patrick go.

does your wedding have a moose?

When I started compiling links for this post, I felt like sharing some of our more indie/DIY/alternative wedding ideas might be fun or helpful for people to look at.

Then my mail arrived.

In the last two months, I have seen articles on sustainable and socially-responsible weddings in everything from ID to the New York Times, the Sierra Club, Brides magazine, and online wedding-overload-emporium, The Knot. This year has even seen the debut of an online wedding magazine devoted exclusively to green nuptials, portovert (which seems to be targeted more towards those interested in spa treatments and the color green).

With all of this recent press it seems like every publisher is just trying to make sure they aren't left behind in the coverage of green weddings. At a certain point, it all starts to just feel (unfortunately) like a fad. Still, if you are a magazine looking at jumping on to a wedding-theme bandwagon, sustainable weddings are a much better choice than jumping on (or maybe, for that matter, creating) other bandwagons.

None of this will stop me from adding my voice to the cacophony of eco-chatter.

What is interesting to me about this green-minded wedding trend is that the tone of most of these features, excluding the NYtimes and Sierra Club pieces, doesn't differ much from the regular Martha's Vinyard-linen-and-lace-caviar-canape fare normally seen in wedding mags. The main difference is more wildflowers in the decorations. I know there are good tips, and probably an earnest intern out there gathering the details for these articles, but does it seriously relieve anyone's concern over the state of our planet that, thank God, bachelorette getaways can now save the environment?

Now, I know that the demographics for these various activities probably skew towards each other, but having yoga retreats and serving vegetarian food does not necessarily make your wedding environmentally friendly. By offering a $100,000 budget option (vintage couture gowns?), portovert just makes the green wedding option conform to typical bridal rag standards of over-the-top-princess-for-a-day luxury. I just feel as though it makes it a fashion statement, rather than an exercise in considering the weight of your choices.

For all of the eco-hype this wedding season, change to the wedding industry does not seem to have taken real root. A lot of the options that I have seen bring to mind a Crate & Barrel catalog we got in the mail the other day that advertised things with "organic appeal" or "natural textures"—green-sounding language with no substance behind it. The "appeal" of being green appears to have garnered our cultural attention without too many efforts to change the status quo. Decisions that would have been simpler by being green-conscious are still simpler and those that would have been more difficult by demanding sustainable options still require that extra dedication and searching.

By choosing to feature seasonal, local flora and harvest crops, our decorations can be kept simpler and put off until closer to the event. Using a small-scale caterer has made that entire portion of the planning process a pleasure—their menu will be seasonal, locally-based and good and rustic. Meanwhile, tracking down recycled or Forest Stewardship Council-certified papers and soy-based inks for invitations has been an ongoing task of calling local printers and driving around to paper suppliers, only to find a limited range of options.

As for the moose, that was something that was made considerably easier (and more awesome) by seeking out a local, progressive events space. That moose is a resident of our event site (and a family heirloom of the president of the building's main tenant - no new moose were harmed in the planning of our wedding). The Jean Vollum Natural Capital Center is home to Ecotrust, which has to be one of the coolest environmental organizations I know of (and, completely coincidentally, Amanda's workplace). They focus on preserving regional ecosystems through strengthening local cultural systems and economies - the way more conservation efforts should be undertaken. More importantly for our wedding, they renovated a great old warehouse in the first LEED gold-certified building restoration in the country, providing us with a beautiful venue for our wedding on their rooftop terrace, overlooking their very own green roof!
The building is stylish, urban, and accessible by public transportation (all things that many people don't think of when they imagine environmentalism as a bunch of hemp-clad hippies eating kamut-grain trail mix in the woods). In a way, I suppose that this reflects one of the good things about the recent green wedding articles—they all show weddings that manage to be green while still having modern, cool looks. The attitude has definitely changed about the appearances of the green movement. We just need to watch that being fashionable and green doesn't get confused with being fashionably green.
***
Maybe you'll call this all a case of "the pot calling the kettle black" and say that we are probably doing many of the same things, but I suppose that this whole craze over green weddings irritates me on the same level that "Organic Living" or "Real Simple" magazines do for their underlying absurdity.
We are just hoping that our choices don't get viewed solely in the light of the latest trend, but that they create a wedding that is meaningful to us and suitably reflects us and our quirky little city. So while everyone's wedding this season may be green, they don't all have a stuffed moose overseeing their celebration.

PS.
One of the best ideas we've seen was the result of a partnership by portovert and a carbon-credits company. They've taken the concept of purchasing carbon offsets and tailored their carbon offset calculator specifically toward the guest travel surrounding a wedding. Now that's a pretty cool result of the buzz around the green weddings.

What did I just get in the mail!?

If you made it this far, you probably figured something out. Still, questions may remain, so here are a few answers, in no particular order:
They are us.
They are robots (sort of).
They are also our save-the-date cards.
It is on October 6th.
Formal invitations are to follow.
You really should put them together.
We got the idea here.
We really aren't that squat.
This is our website.
It has our our registry, hotel information, a map of things we like to do in Portland, and regular updates on wedding details.
It may soon have a video tutorial on how to make your robots.
Yes, if you send us a picture of your constructed robot, we will post it (paper narcissism?).

See? There really are no silly questions.

Presents!

And now for a little story (apparently I can't help but tell stories):

When I was about four, I was on an outing with my mom and older brother, Brandon, and, as is often the situation for young children on outings, something did not go my way. Perhaps we had gone to a toy store and my mom had ignored my pleas for the brand new doll that I simply had to have, or perhaps (more likely) I had wanted something delicious to eat. Whatever made me upset, I proceeded to throw a monstrous tantrum to the point where my mom, totally exasperated, finally said, "Amanda, I am finding your presence in this car very annoying at the moment."

My crying/whining/tantruming stopped almost immediately. With a slight whimper, I said, "Where are you finding my presents?"

Oh so punny. Thankfully, I have grown out the of the tantrum behavior that probably plagued my parents during my younger years. And yet... And yet... I still find myself asking you, "Where are you finding my presents?"

All joking aside, the greatest gift you can give us is to grace us with your presence on October 6th. However, if you follow the link on the sidebar, you will find further links to our wedding registries, which just so happen to have some very fine presents. We tried our best to pick local and small-scale businesses, so we hope you enjoy taking a look at their websites and at what these companies offer.

Sooooo sleepy.....

If you're coming into town for our wedding, the non-stop onslaught of fun is bound to wear you out, so you're going to need somewhere to stay. Luckily for you, we have taken it upon ourselves to find you the best of accommodations in town and we've even blocked aside a few rooms at special rates. Just know that our wedding is on the same weekend as the Portland Marathon, so space will be tight in hotels around town. We have a limited number of spots at the hotels we blocked, so if you are having trouble getting a place to stay, let us know. Here is our run-down of discounted hotels (and a few we just really like).

Mark Spencer Hotel
Just a stone's throw from one of the coolest bookstores in the country, Powell's, and the restaurants and galleries of the Pearl District, this hotel is a great option for those people who would like to walk to entertainment when you're not blessed with our presence. (And if you get peckish, breakfast and afternoon cookies are included). We have single queen bedrooms for $109 and queen bedroom suites for $129 - just call 800-548-3934, 503-224-3293, or email hospitality@markspencer.com and ask for the "Peden-Leonard" wedding rate.

Park Lane Suites
On a quiet residential street blocks away from the baseball (and soccer) stadium and the bustling NW neighborhood (home to us), this is a good place for families or groups traveling together and anybody who would like to have a small kitchen (Portland does have a pretty sweet farmer's market). While we don't have specific rooms blocked, they have given us a special rate of $120-150 for multiple room suites. Breakfast (and free parking) are included. Ask for the "Peden-Leonard" rate when you call 800-532-9543.


Though we didn't block sets of rooms at these next two hotels, they are our favorite hotels in town. You may want to check them out if you are looking for something hip and uniquely Portland.

ACE Hotel
Set in the recently renovated old Clyde hotel, the ACE is a design-conscious, Euro-style option for the hipster set to stay downtown. A block away from the Mark Spencer, it is on the edge of a recently redeveloped part of town with a sushi restaurant, a chocolate "bar," and an entirely digital independent movie theater that serves beer and wine. The hotel has a mix of rooms with shared and private bathrooms, a vintage photo-booth in its lobby and a bottom floor that houses a Stumptown Coffee (great local roater) as well as a soon-to-open restaurant and Jewish deli.

Jupiter Hotel
If you are willing to cross the river (come on, its only 8 blocks away), the Jupiter is a revamped 60s motor lodge that hosts an annual art fair in the hotel rooms (hopefully not on the same weekend as our wedding). The rooms overlook a great courtyard that it shares with the Doug Fir, a pomo log cabin serving truck-stop food and booking great indie bands. If you want to keep the party going after our wedding, its probably the place to be.

Sleep well!

This is not my wedding dress.

Before I went dress shopping, I made a mental list of the things I was looking for in a wedding dress:

1. Simple, elegant and not too flashy. No beads, please.
2. Something local, whether it be locally made or purchased in a locally-owned business.
3. Something that could either be worn again, or was simple (and affordable) enough that I wouldn't feel badly for not ever wearing it again.
4. No trains. Seriously. The aisle is going to be somewhat narrow and (possibly) flammable as we are considering luminaria/pyrotechnics. Email us if you have a license from the fire department and/or are interested in bringing the fireworks.
5. Something that I could eat and breathe in. The food is going to be awesome (check out the caterers, Simpatica). As for breathing, well, that's pretty self-explanatory.
6. Something off-white or un-white. As most of you know, I'm pretty pale, so I was thinking that looking pasty and washed out on the wedding day might not be the best idea. Down with tradition!
7. Something pretty.

The first outing was a fairly informal affair - just my mom and I running through a few dress shops on 23rd Avenue in between her flight into Portland and her train ride out of town (probably a total of two hours).

A few weekends later, Patrick, his parents, and I went suit shopping and, of course, went to the fancy-schmancy suit store first. Turns out that the fancy-schmancy designers are the only ones that make suits that fit Patrick's slight frame - or so he oh-so-conveniently claims - so he has a damn fine suit for the wedding. While we were at the suit store, I decided to venture upstairs to the women's department - just for fun, right? - and happened upon an absolutely stunning dress. One (I) might call it the perfect dress. My mom was coming up the following weekend to do a second run of dress shopping, so I put the dress on hold, Pat bought his suit, and we went home for the day.

I hate to admit it - and I swear I'm not normally so concerned with a piece of clothing - but I thought about the dress most of the week. I was still eating and sleeping, so I wouldn't say it was an obsession, though I may or may not have pestered Patrick with musings about it and may of may not have dreamt about wearing the dress.

The next Saturday, I took my mom, Patrick's mother, Karen, and my friends Kate and Eva, on a second dress shopping trip. We started off at Tres Fabu, a bridal shop that carries somewhat more modern bridal gowns. Walking into the store (a place that was filled with dresses that did not fit most, if not any, of my aforementioned criteria), I had what can only be described as a bridal stoke.

(A not-so-quick interjection here. During my summer job, I came across a monthly newsletter called the Porcelain Press featuring health-related information that one could peruse while using the office toilets. What a find. One month, the main headline read, "KNOW THE SYMPTOMS OF A STOKE!" Rather than being a description of the symptoms one might display when truly excited (i.e. stoked), the article instead outlined what to look for in a stroke victim. However, I found this glaring typo exceedingly amusing and proceeded to invoke the expression at every possible occasion. When Patrick and I went to Disneyland with our friends Macy and Ann, you can only imagine the number of stokes we witnessed and experienced. Truly amazing.)

But I digress. Though I had not expected to be remotely interested in the dresses and accessories that are found in a traditional bridal shop, I was suddenly pulling out dozens of dresses to be tucked and bustled into. I even looked, for a very brief moment, at the Just Married wedding flip-flops. So many to choose from. So very few occasions to wear them. I probably tried on a dozen dresses in that shop and many of them were surprisingly attractive. In fact, I very nearly purchased one. This dress went against almost everything that I had been looking for. It was white. It was not at all local (from Spain). While it was simple compared to other dresses I had tried on, it was still, very much, a bridal GOWN. It was definitely not something that could be worn again and I wouldn't call it "cheap." Finally, it had a simply enormous train. Cascading. Flowing. Fire-hazard.

We returned to the fancy-schmancy shop and I again tried on "the dress." I liked it as much as I had the first time, but after trying on the more traditional gowns, I suddenly felt very confused. The bridal gown, while not representing what I had been looking for, still drew me. People don't wear dresses like that anymore and part of me (the part that loves Jane Austen) is still attracted to the romance of being swaddled in yards of exquisite fabric on my wedding day. Still, most of me could not understand how such a dress would fit into the wedding I had been imagining since Patrick and I decided to get married. When it comes down to it, the bridal gown was beautiful, as all bridal gowns are beautiful, but the less traditional dress was as beautiful and probably (definitely) more "me."

That was that. I bought the dress and it is now sitting in our hall closet. Now that I have it, I may or may not spend long hours gazing at the dress. I may or may not have christened it, "my precious." I may or may not still have dreams about it. And soon, you will too.

it's official...

We're getting married! I finally proposed to Amanda, ending what was (for Amanda) a torturous period of secrecy between when we decided to get married and when I (finally) let her tell our friends and families.
The good parts of a secret engagment: getting comfortable with the idea of marriage before you have to tell everyone, and getting a chance to begin planning before the craziness ensues.
The bad parts of a secret engagment: the craziness actually ensued immediately, and I was on the receiving end of a constant stream of questions from Amanda and our parents (whom we told) about when they could start to tell everyone.
For those of you who weren't there when it happened (i.e. everyone except Amanda), I'll fill you in:
On Valentine's Day (just about the sappiest thing ever), Amanda came home to a group of boxes on the kitchen table. In each was a note detailing a different "gift" I was giving her now that we were officially engaged: "The gift of Telling Others," "The gift of Unhindered Planning," "The gift of Cake Tasting." Everything she'd had to hold back for the past four weeks was now fair game. When she turned around, I was there with the ring. Precious. Simply precious.
Now that I opened those flood gates, I feel like we have been on a non-stop press junket for our wedding! Still, I really think this experience has helped us to master the non sequitur:

"Thanks for coming over for dinner, guys."
"We're getting married."

"Did you see the hail this morning?"
"I got engaged."

"That'll be $4.75."
"Would you like to come to our wedding?"

We are constantly calling relatives and inviting friends out to drinks and I when I look at our list of people-yet-to-be-told, I still feel like eloping.
Which brings me to the (3rd) point of this inaugural posting. We wanted to be able to fill in our families and friends on how the planning is going, what are lives are like here in PDX, and give you some ideas of what to do if you come to town for the wedding. We'll post pictures of the planning process, updates on hotel information for out-of-towners, a map of things to do and places to eat and, eventually, links to our registry sites. Check back regularly for new stuff or just to admire our handiwork. We're pretty excited to be sharing this with you!