I’ve spent the past few hours unpacking wedding presents, including putting together and filling a new spice rack. It has the usual culprits: cinnamon, garlic salt, oregano, parsley, mustard seed… I have used mustard seed exactly zero times in my life, but, for some reason, it always shows up. I blame the Bible.
So, in honor of the new spice rack, I started thinking (inspired further, of course, by GraphJam):
If my life depended on identifying spices I own by taste, I’d die. I can identify some by smell (maybe). I couldn’t describe them to you or actually tell you what they do or rather, are supposed to do to food, “Salt good. Too much pepper bad. Garlic good. Too much salt bad.”
Some spices I started using because I stumbled on them in a recipe who knows when for who knows what. Other spices, I use out of habit, such as always putting oregano, parsley, basil, and garlic in spaghetti sauce. I learned it that way and it works. I’ve never questioned it.
Some spices in my cupboard are a mystery. Turmeric. What’s it do? It turns things yellow. What’s it taste like? It turns things yellow. It goes in curries. Curries are often yellow.
Yes, I’m acknowledging my ignorance. The sad thing is I really do like to cook and I like to imagine that I know what I’m doing sometimes. I think I’ll spend some time with my cookbooks and hold off on the trips to Penzey’s for six different kinds of pepper until I get my bearings.
Over the few days, staff at the Red Lion (our wedding venue) have been a bit overwhelmed. Given the sudden absence of the primary (and only legal) entrance to their property, it isn’t terribly surprising. However, plenty of individuals have taken the opportunity to help out and provide unexpected generosity and kindness.
As I’ve posted elsewhere, the brides for this weekend have had to relocate and the Red Lion stands to lost $30,000 in business from lost weddings alone. Of course, bridezilla comes to mind when sudden last minute changes in wedding plans occur, not to mention changes as sweeping as having to suddenly relocate your wedding. 9News.com and Colorado Daily have covered some of the gracious (and profoundly unlucky) couples impacted by the washed away bridge. What the Colorado Daily article doesn’t mention is the graciousness and generosity that both the Red Lion and the couples are experiencing. Wedding planners, venues, and customers pulling together to relocate weddings, help pay for the bridge, and get the bridge rebuilt.
When I spoke to Tina the day after the bridge went kablooey, she was stressed and overwhelmed, but she had a plan to make the weekend weddings happen. While ultimately she was not permitted to use the back road to shuttle people in for the weddings, she was committing to making sure those couples still had the weddings of their dreams (despite Mother Nature’s contribution). Like other brides, I called to check in and ask to be kept in the loop on developments. I also offered up the idea of a temporary bridge and told her I would happily pay my part. From Tina’s comments in the article, I have a feeling that other brides also offered up support and optimism.
A washed out bridge is an act of God. Finding ways to express kindness, support, graciousness, and generosity in the aftermath is the essence of humanity. It’s life-affirming to see how people have truly risen to the occasion, just like the swollen waters of Boulder Creek that caused it all to happen in the first place.
Now that I’m not laughing hysterically and have had a night of sleep, let’s talk about the current wedding venue situation. Red Lion Restaurant sits right beside Boulder Creek. As I mentioned in my previous post, the bridge connecting the property to the highway was washed out. The unseasonably warm temperatures and subsequent rapid snow melt caused the creek to swell. When the bridge collapsed, the rubble blocked the creek to the point that a Flash Flood warning went out. The bridge remnants are now cleared from the creek, but the giant hole in the bridge remains.
There is evidently a rather treacherous back road to the property, but Boulder Open Space & Mountain Parks has limited the unpaved (and steep) back road to residents, contractors, and emergency vehicles. So, as it stands right now, unless my wedding dress was made by Speedo or transforms into a pontoon, we may have a problem.
My immediate plan is to call the onsite wedding coordinator. I’m sure she’s overwhelmed by panicky brides at the moment. I’m not planning on panicking about the situation. There are plenty of eventualities one can accommodate, but a collapsed bridge really is not one of them. I’ve been fretting a bit that I had forgotten something, but a bridge isn’t on anyone’s wedding prep list.
Now, I’m going to go to work, wait until Colorado business hours begin, and call a very overwhelmed wedding coordinator.
We’ve gotten nearly everything wrapped up for the wedding and hopefully, we’re done bleeding money for awhile. Oof.
Wedding dress picked up. This is a story in and of itself and I’ll post about it later. Suffice it to say that I would NEVER recommend getting alterations at The Wedding Shoppe in St Paul, MN. Their service for choosing and purchasing a dress, in my experience, was excellent, but the alteration process was less than optimal (and not just for me). I’ll share more of that story later.
Attendant’s gifts ordered.
Bridesmaids’ Jewelry – I wasn’t planning on buying jewelry for the bridesmaids originally, but decided that it would be a nice gift and take one more thing off of their plates. I stalked 1928 Jewelry for a few weeks and ended up finding some very pretty navy blue pieces on sale from the Blue Moon set. I also bought a faux pearl and crystal bracelet and earrings to wear with my wedding dress.
Card Box – Similar to the guest book, I just wasn’t sold with the easily available options and had postponed getting anything until I stumbled on a Wedding Card Birdhouse on etsy. It’s personalized and comes with one roof for the wedding (with a hole for cards) and another lid for the birds! Extremely cute and clever. I’m excited about it.
Discovered we don’t need a full kids’ table – only 4 kids attending.
Plane tickets to wedding purchased.
Going Away Dress – Purchased yesterday. We’ll need to leave our hotel pretty early the next day so I decided it would be significantly easier to have the wedding dress already under control. Since we were already at Bloomingdale’s* on a registry-related task, I checked out their plus-size selection. I found a lovely Jones New York Collection dress in our wedding colors – white with navy flowers with apple green leaves and centers. It seemed quite appropriate and it looked great with a fairly reasonable price tag (read as “on sale”). I’ll wear it with a cute pair of white sandals and then repurpose both of them for one of the dinners on our honeymoon.
Guest Book – I didn’t want a typical guest book, but still wanted to have a place for people to leave their names, thoughts, and hopefully, email addresses. I looked at the recipe card style boxes but it didn’t make sense to me beyond the day of the wedding. It would just be a dust magnet. Despite my leanings otherwise, I ended up going with a book as it made more sense in terms of keeping it. I found a lovely handmade one on etsy. It’s personalized with our names on the cover.
Matt’s ring picked up.
Turned in final paperwork for venue with best guess guest count.
Made final arrangements with vendors and altered orders based on the guest count.
Thank you notes! (Hooray for Matt writing them!) The list is ever increasing and he’s keeping up pretty well.
Now we need to pack for a week for pre-wedding, the wedding, and a week of honeymoon, as well as making sure the apartment is in a reasonable state. Somewhere in there, we need to spend quality time with the cat. Regardless of how much quality time we get in, he’s still going to make us pay when we return. I have no doubt in my mind.
Really, that’s the bulk of it. We need to finish our pre-cruise registration bits and print off or boarding passes and luggage tags, but hopefully, that’s by far the most complicated thing we have left to do. I’m really, really looking forward to the honeymoon, if for no reason other than we can both get some much needed rest.
*Just as an aside, prior to our setting up our registry, I’d never shopped at Bloomingdale’s but their customer service throughout our wedding planning have definitely won my business. They are one of the few registries that has a built in Thank You manager, as well as excellent service in person, including useful (and very few) phone calls (as opposed to annoyances).
Things that have gone wrong:
- My wedding dress no longer fits properly. Something went dreadfully wrong with the alterations and must be remedied.
- I’m running out of time to get everything done before the wedding.
- Our guests don’t seem to be RSVPing. I may need to track them down.
Things that have gone right:
- The bridesmaids’ dresses arrived and look lovely. Here’s hoping they fit everyone perfectly.
- Matt’s ring is purchased.
- Matt’s birthday. Enjoyable dinner followed by ice cream at Izzy’s. We were going to watch a movie, but his parents called and then we got distracted by other things. Regardless, it was still a nice evening.
Things to do:
- Wrangle remaining guests.
- Make sure wedding dress fits again.
- Enjoy our shower on Monday thrown by work friends.
- Enjoy Memorial Day weekend trip to Michigan for our shower thrown by his family.
Moving is complete, thankfully. We’re not unpacked yet and won’t be for awhile. We don’t have enough bookshelves for our books. They’re still in boxes stacked up in the den. The apartment feels absolutely huge, which is a welcome change. We can actually put the boxes out of sight and at least give the illusion of being moved in (until you walk into the den).
Save the Dates are mostly done and mailed. I have 26 addresses that we’re still missing. Before doing them, I’d forgotten how much work calligraphy is. I remember now. Handwriting all of the addresses took rather a long time. It’s why I ended up doing them in bursts. Matt’s going to run the last of them to the post office on Monday. Hopefully, we can get the rest of the addresses this weekend – or at least most of them anyway.
So back to the subject of the new apartment, I did mention it felt huge, yes? We’re on the top floor (the 4th) and the ceilings are extremely tall. In comparison, my last apartment was a hobbit hole. This just feels immense, in a welcome way. My television and entertainment center, however, look rather dwarfish. They were purchased for a teeny apartment. It’s a problem for another day, but I’m on the lookout for ready, cheap solutions furnishings-wise. We’ll figure something out. In the meantime, I’ll cheat by finding an extremely tall fake plant to put on top of it or something (not really). The cat, who is adapting quite nicely, would eat the plant. I’m sure of it.
Last, but not least, we had our engagement pictures taken on our speed trip to Colorado last weekend. She’s already finished with them – all 182. The session was a blast – Tattered Cover bookstore right across from Union Station. We used both locations and the pictures are great. Denver’s LoDo lent itself nicely and Ashley Davis, our photographer, is fabulous. We enjoyed ourselves and you can tell in the photos. I’m laughing in nearly all of them. Now, we have to pick out a handful for our various needs. It was a good experience and I’m quite glad we chose her for our wedding. I can’t wait.
If my life depended on identifying spices I own by taste, I’d die. I can identify some by smell (maybe). I couldn’t describe them to you or actually tell you what they do or rather, are supposed to do to food, “Salt good. Too much pepper bad. Garlic good. Too much salt bad.”
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