Best Combination EVER.

On Friday, Todd and I decided to go on a fairly long hike on Russian Ridge, in the hills above Palo Alto.  We took a long, winding drive through country roads punctuated by many "Horse X-ing" signs (and at one, a rider was actually crossing!), made some wrong turns, discovered a fabulous little square at a junction way up in the mountains, stopped at the "Skywood Trading Post" to get drinks to go with our packed picnic lunch, and finally made it to the trail head.  

We started the hike, through wide, grassy slopes filled with hundreds of varieties of wildflowers (I judiciously decided NOT to take the camera, as I wanted to enjoy the hike without documenting it...).  It was beautiful - brilliant yellows, pinks, and purples, blue and white and orange butterflies, dells cluttered with ancient gnarled oaks and brush-choked streams.  There was good mix of sun and shade, steep climbs and easy rambling downhills.  We ate on a lichen-covered boulder overlooking Stanford University like a tiny red speck in the distance.  

However, much like our drive to the hike, our hike was also filled with a few wrong turns, meaning that a five miler ended up being more of an eight miler, a hard eight miler.  We were very relieved and happy to turn that last bend and see our car waiting for us in the parking lot.

On our drive back down the mountain, we again stopped at the trading post and got a huge bottle of water. The proprietor recognized us from our first visit (when we were much less  exhausted and bedraggled looking) and chuckled at our further hydration...

When we got home, we decided to reward our tired, hungry bodies with dinner so we headed to Domino's to try potentially the most "wedding day diet" destructive food on the planet: PASTA, covered with CHEESE, in a BREADBOWL.  And, boy, was it good.  And totally worth it. :-)

Come on, we still have two and a half months to go before my dress has to fit, right?!

Tired.

Tomorrow is my third to last final and, truth be told, I'm kind of running out of steam.  I mean, I'm just kind of bone-tired.  But at least the two remaining finals after Criminal Procedure - Constitutional Law II and Community Property - have their virtues: one's a 24-hour take-home, and the other has a fairly circumscribed and straight-forward set of laws and precedents attached to it.

It's kind of shocking that in a little over a week, I'll be driving down to Los Angeles, and the Monday after next, will be starting my clerkship at the Federal Public Defender's.  The HR woman just sent me all the tax documents today (fun!) so it's finally beginning to seem real.

It's only ten weeks, but I know Todd and I are going to miss each other a lot.  One of the stop-gaps to that is the fact that we already know we'll be seeing each other at least a few times during that period:

- when he flies down so that a bunch of us can see the new Pixar movie Up on opening night at the El Capitan on May 29

- when we fly to south New Jersey for Suzi's wedding in late June

- potentially, when I come up to San Francisco over July 4th weekend for my law school friend Anna's wedding (and my 26th birthday)

- and my job will end on July 17th, so I'll be driving back up to help with the last minute things for our wedding and then we'll drive back down to Disneyland together on July 23

Looked at from that perspective, we're really not going to go more than three weeks at a time without seeing each other!

In wedding-related news, we stopped by the post office to weigh our complete invitation "suite" and found that it comes in just under the newly increased postage rate of 44 cents - yay for it being light!  And the post office woman showed us a beautiful (and non-pastel-entwined heart) wedding stamp: a photograph of two brilliant yellow gold rings falling together.  We'll probably be mailing the invitations around the third week in May through the first week of June, with the international invites being sent out first.  Also, Todd found out that couples can send their wedding invitation to the White House six weeks in advance, and we'll receive a signed photograph of President and Mrs. Obama -- I can't wait!

Also, following a trend recently remarked upon on WeddingBee (and bucking superstition), yesterday, I signed up for a new e-mail account, one that I won't use until after we're married of course.  I was really happy it was still available, given the popularity of my first name!  Starting after our wedding, and in accordance with my name change, I'm going to discontinue my current gmail account, and begin using this one: emily.rosenfelt@gmail.com :-) it makes me happy to know it's there, just waiting for me to settle into...

Feeling Slightly Accomplished...

Todd and I have just finished another wedding-related project: inserts about the website/ rehearsal dinner for our invitations! 

First, we went through our guest list and decided who was being invited to the rehearsal dinner and who wasn't.  Then, we drafted the copy for both types of inserts (rehearsal dinner + website; website only), and saved it as PDFs on a USB stick.  Next, we picked out some heavy weight mid-blue paper at Michael's,  and brought the paper and PDFs to Kinko's.

Within a day, Kinko's had printed and professionally cut all the inserts, and they came out wonderfully!  I'm glad, because I was kind of concerned that the inserts would look "homemade" and non-professional compared with the invites, but they look fabulous!

Next project: bringing the entire invitation suite to the post office and seeing what the new (enhanced) postage rate will be for each invite.  Then, choosing which stamps we'll use.

Also need to: select ceremony music, decide on wedding Readers, and set up a hair/makeup trial.

Altogether, I'm happy that we seem to be staying on track and keeping up with our wedding timeline, relentlessly updated on The Knot. ;-)

Disney Ride Table Numbers

After taking a bunch of pictures of various rides on our last Disneyland trip, we narrowed the selection down to fourteen winners, uploaded them to a memory card, went to Target, edited the photos and added names to some of them, and searched high and low for suitable (and affordable) frames.  We picked up the finished 8X10 photos (excellent quality!) and finally found some lovely cherry wood frames to put them in.

Last night, this is what I started with:

And here's how they ended up:

Close-up of Space Mountain, Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Caribbean, and Splash Mountain:

Close-up of It's A Small World, Matterhorn, Peter Pan, and Teacups:

This will be the table number for our sweetheart table - though I was sorely tempted to use the Disneyland Railroad, since we've had many happy memories on that ride:

Since we'll probably have 12 tables, we'll have two extra ride frames, which we'll use for the guestbook/ program table at the ceremony and the placecards/ gift table at the reception.

Veil Decisions

On mom's recent visit, she brought along my Aunt Lisa's veil and headpiece (which she has generously allowed me to borrow for the wedding).  So we visited the lovely Leila of Persepolis Designs (my second visit in two weeks, since I had been there the week before with Todd's mom!).  We wanted to see how the veil and headpiece would look with my dress.

Here are the results.

Front view:

Back view:
Side view:
We also decided to try out a much simpler veil (basically just a piece of tulle attached to a comb).

Which do you prefer?

Spring Wedding Fashions

The editors of Martha Stewart Weddings (and the MSW blog) have been attending every single wedding fashion show in NYC this spring (lucky ducks!).

Below are some of my favorites from those shows.

A beautiful classic/modern dress from Angel Sanchez:

I love the bows at the off-the-shoulder sleeves, and the way the fabric highlights a woman's curves.

At the Oscar de la Renta show:

It's so ethereal and light and romantic,  more like Claire Pettibone than de la Renta...

Two from Carolina Herrera's show:

Her theme was to have each dress be inspired by a different artist who highlighted fashion in his or her work.  I think the dresses fit the theme very well indeed!

This one is based on Degas and his paintings of ballerinas.  It's actually a pale blue, and could double as a bride's "something blue"!

This one is inspired by Georges Seurat.  I love the thin black tie at the high neck, very chaste and sexy at the same time.
I'm happy I have my own Carolina Herrera to wear on the big day.   If I had to choose an artist that could have inspired it, I'd say maybe... Van Gogh (because of all his painting of flowers, especially sunflowers) or Mary Cassatt (because of all her paintings of women in big, flowy, be-ribboned dresses)

Which artist could your dress have been inspired by?

New Car!

After about six car shopping adventures to various dealerships around San Francisco (Colma, Burlingame, San Bruno, Berkeley, and Hayward), we finally found the perfect car!  Basically, during our search, we were looking for a vehicle that was:

(a) roomy - a hatchback or a good-sized trunk

(b) fuel-efficient - preferably over 25 mph on streets and over 30 mph on highways

(c) fairly new, so that it'd still be under warranty - 2006 or newer

(d) had fairly low mileage - under 40,000 miles

(e) that we could buy without financing - we hoped that this would be a bargaining chip, and we wanted to avoid any additional monthly expenses

I spent a good amount of time on Vehix, Kelley Blue Book, and Edmunds reading reviews of various cars and seeing what was available at nearby dealerships in our price range ($11,000 - $13,000).  Turns out, almost all of the contenders ended up being American cars!

The selection:

(1)

2007 Saturn Aura - beautiful wood-paneled interior; Mp3 jack; great gas mileage; comfy

downsides: Saturn is going out of business; already had a Saturn which I liked, but which had pretty poor pick-up; a sedan, so not as much trunk space

(2) 

2007 Chevrolet Malibu LT - really nice interior; seat warmers and power everything; good gas mileage; comfy

downsides: know a few people who've had problems with Chevys; a bit "old person"-ish, in Todd's words; a sedan, so not as much trunk space

(3) 

2007 Ford Focus - light, bright interior with six CD changer and Mp3 jack; hatchback; beautiful blue exterior

downsides: leather seats; mixed reviews about reliability

(4) 

2008 Nissan Versa - really comfy seats; hatchback; great styling

downsides: a bit too subcompact; very basic features (no power windows or locks!); not much pick-up

(5) 

2008 Pontiac Vibe Sport - great interior space; high seats; HUGE trunk; CD player and A/V jack; hatchback crossover; good gas mileage

downsides: Pontiac, like Saturn, may be going out of business; no Mp3 jack

which one do you think we picked?

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In the end, we went with #5!  We managed to get a GREAT deal on it at Berkeley Honda and, after signing the papers yesterday, and paying for it today, the car is ours!  I love it!

Now, onto the pictures...

View of the car from our apartment:

Interior, front:
Front view:
The glass part of the hatchback opens separately!:
A BIG trunk - yippee!:
I am already really excited about driving this car down to LA for the summer and using it as the perfect repository for all sorts of wedding stuff when we drive down for the wedding.  It kind of resembles a big, white wedding dress, no?  I think it's the kind of car where the people in the back seat will be just as comfy as the people in the front and, since the backseat folds down, we also finally have a car that can handle any ready-to-assemble bookcase that IKEA tempts us with!

Hooray!  This Friday, we plan to take our new car on an excursion...