Out and about in Old Town, Alexandrea

While I’m home in DC I tried to meet up with a few of my girlfriends. Especially Whitney (WAJR), she and I are birthday twins (though I’m a year and a few hours earlier). We went out for a wander in Old Town yesterday (Friday). We looked at sample dresses at Gossypia, ate falafel, looked at cookware, saw Michelle Obama’s dress at Talbots, sadly it didn’t fit either of us and was a little outside both of our budgets.

WAJR and Andrew married this past August in Staunton, Virginia, Andrew’s home town. Here are a few photos from their wedding ceremony, reception, and hanging out in hotel rooms afterward:







pretty flowers (while looking for my purse after the reception)



“after party” with some HS people and their SOs


then going to play Apples to Apples with Maria, and WAJR and Roo’s UVA buddies


Will and Will

Sequoia Restaurant, 30th and K, Georgetown

Our number one venue in Washington, DC is Sequoia, in Georgetown. It is apparently named after the presidential yacht, not the tree. Though the yacht might be named after the tree... Anyway, here are the photos. It is SO pretty. Here's a review showing what it looks like in the winter: review.

It's super pretty. You can see the Kennedy Center looking down the river, and you can sorta see Georgetown looking up (or just the Key Bridge)[sorry, no photos of that view]. Across the Potomac is Roosevelt Island, a National Park. Here are my pictures:

^ yes, that IS the Kennedy Center

Oh yeah, we can rent the WHOLE patio for ourselves!

Logistically, it'll be very interesting. There's no rental fee, if we meet the minimum (no problem), but there is an extra fee to rent out the patio. If we don't rent out the patio, re risk gawkers being seated out there, and that would be lame. Also, because the bow of the restaurant (there's a mild nautical them) sticks out over the promenade, and can get some really harsh sunlight, the event coordinator strongly suggests that we draw the curtains during the ceremony (and try and time it between security fly-overs along the river, where helicopters like to skim the Potomac while playing leapfrog with each other).

There's also a really plush private room off the main restaurant that would still be open to the public, it seats 40 in big leather chairs and sorta looks over where we would put the dance floor. For lunch, the coordinator says that she doubts anyone will want to sit there and that we'd  have the main restaurant, bar, and upper patio (the lower patio can't be rented at all, but it's really a bar/grill and much less fancy-shmancy) all to ourselves!

We’re registered!

We've registered for china, flatware, serving pieces and lots of other cool things on our wish lists (Bloomingdales, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Crate and Barrel). We'll add towels and bedding and other white goods in about a year.

In other news, my grandfather passed away last week. He has not been well for the past 5 years or so, so it's nice that he's no longer in pain. Seriously weird though. I miss him from before he was sick, but I missed him while he was still alive too.

My grandmother is planning to someday downsize her house, but she wants to stay for another few years out in Solomons. She loves her gardens too much to leave and she probably wants to see if the housing market will drop out anymore before she has to be selling at the bottom. Anyway, because she'll be moving from a 4 bedroom house to probably a 2-3 bedroom townhouse or condo, she said we could have whatever furniture we want! SWEET! We're also getting custody of my great grandmother's fine china (it will have to be made available for Passover every year). Wow. She's one generous gramma!

 

We have a date and a rabbi, we just need a dress, a suit, oh year, and a venue

But I'm starting to burn out on wedding crap already! Poop.

I started looking at wedding crap about a year after we officially moved in together, in May 2008. Now, after about 6 weeks of being officially engaged, I'm burning out. Thankfully we've got the part that we really care about set, our rabbi. He was happy to have free plane tickets (my parents have a gajillion frequent flyer miles) and 2 nights of lodging. We'll let him pick the dates/airports for his flights and then he can vacation in the DC area too.

Potential venues need to be contacted. I need to go visit them with my mom and the dude while I'm home for a week around the first night of Passover (first full week of March). So far we've got 4 major contenders, the DC JCC, Airlie Center (one of the secure locations outside of DC, in Virginia), Algonkian Regional Park, and The Atrium at Meadowlark Botanical Gardens.

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="448" caption="Meadowlark Gardens - The Atrium"][/caption]

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="360" caption="Algonkian Regional Park - Meeting and Events Center"][/caption]

To keep me going for the next month, I asked my dad to buy and send me copies of some local wedding magazines so that I can look at the advertisements from home instead of the ones for where I live (Colorado), which aren't very helpful in planning from a distance. He's in advertising, so he thought it was GREAT that I wanted him to buy me some trashy reading just to read the ads. Maybe he'll have a look in the magazines too.

My dad also told me that my mom was a very "whatever" kind of bride. Ben and I have decided that we're not having any attendants and that we don't want to write our own vows. We're just fine with picking out a bad-ass ketubah and having that read out loud. I kind of want my dad to read Oh, The Places You'll Go and have someone (Ben's sister, who gave me the book) read a passage from Tuesdays With Morrie and an excerpt from the Mass. Supreme Ct. decision upholding same sex marriages 'cause I think that rocks.

Registries

We've been engaged for less than a month, we're planning a wedding that won't be for at least a year and a half, and people are already asking where we're registered!?



Does anyone have any opinions about registering on Amazon in addition to brick and mortar stores? Where else can I add a Wii, a Flip (sorry about the sound on the link) video camera and my dream rice cooker? Though we're totally excited to the Crate and Barrel registry party, especially since I found out their carrying the new GreenPan Frying Pans we've been waiting for! (oh, and the registry party gift is cute too).

Does Ikea have a registry? Would that be weird? Would anyone actually buy us furniture or should we just register for more high-end stuff at C&B?

Oh, and next weekend we're going with some close friends (who are getting married on the 4th of July) to a FREE LUNCH and wedding-venue-visit thing at the Hotel Boulderado, here in Boulder. It should be fun, but the dude was disappointed to point out when it is because he REALLY wanted to go to synagogue and this thing is at 1 PM on a Saturday. He doesn't like doing stuff most Saturdays, whereas I usually don't mind so much. Oops..... I probably should have waited for his email response instead of just hearing back from our friends (immediately) and then RSVPing for the 4 of us. Doh. We'd get free food at shul too, and it would be nice to go since I didn't make it by myself this past Saturday (because I was up reading until 4 AM).

Should I cancel our RSVP and just let our friends pig out on free gourmet buffet alone? It's not like either of us is actually interested in the venue, we're just milking the wedding industry for all it's worth!

So yeah, so far we're thinking C&B, Amazon and Macy's (even if we'd rather register at Bloomies for the same prices and better customer service, there are sadly none in Colorado).

APRIL UPDATE:

Grama bought us the rice cooker! WOOHOO! I’d never even heard of engagement presents before, now we have a rice cooker, a blender, a gorgeous salad bowl and a lovely address/birthday book.

Jewelry Porn =)

I took that one after Ben gave the ring to me and before he proposed. Yes, he gave me the ring, we were both full from dinner, took a potty break, and then went across the street to the plaza in front of the Boulder County Court House to properly ask me to be his wife.



This is one of my favorite pictures of the ring. It was still to big/chunky then, it's little sleeker now, I should take new photos.



 

That's the best picture I got that shows the sides and stuff of the ring.

Needless to say: I love purple almost as much as I love my future Mister!

Temporary LDR (long distance relationship

The Ben is going away for just over a week. I've never been home by myself before since we moved into our own apartment together. It'll be weird.

I think I'm going to be spending a LOT of time on the phone with my dad, my grandmother and my aunt talking about wedding crap. I live in Boulder, CO and we're getting married in the DC area, where I grew up. Plus, my mom travels for 10 months of the year for work and we haven't really been especially close since I moved out 10 years ago. So yeah, lots of phone time, internet time and hopefully gym time.

Has anyone ever gone contra dancing? The Ben's little sister is really into and I'd like to go, but he's such a dance-phobe! Would contra/line dancing a "My Big Fat Jewish Wedding" be -too- weird? I'm afraid that might be the only way I can get the dude to do a first dance with me.... or maybe any dance. He won't even hug-and-waddle like a middle schooler, just skulk around and avoid dancing.