Adventures in Shoe Shopping

If you're male, go ahead and skip this post right now.

Now that it's just the ladies...

Shoes. Obviously this hasn't been a huge concern for Kenneth. He'll wear whatever they've got where he rents his ensemble, but it's been a minor major concern for me.

I wanted to have my wedding shoes figured out before my dress came in alterations started. I also knew with my long list of particulars, it would take a long, long time to find The. Perfect. Shoe.

My wedding shoes had to be:

1. Less than $100. Our budget just wouldn't allow for more, and truth be told, I pride myself in my ability to find gorgeous shoes while never paying full price.
2. Seattle-in-spring-appropriate. I don't know if you've heard this before, but it rains in Seattle. This means no suede, no satin, no silk, and no faux versions of those materials either.
3. Something I'd wear again. Yes, they should be festive, but I just can't bring myself to purchase anything I'll wear/use one day except my wedding dress. (Ok, and my veil). I'm a frugalista bride and it doesn't seem practical to wear one-day-only shoes.
4. Peep-toe. Nearly all my pumps are peep-toe because they're just so much more comfortable than other heels. I wouldn't feel like myself wearing something else.
5. 3" or less. I discovered this later in the hunt, but Kenneth wants me to be shorter than or the same height as him on our wedding day. Definitely a fair request since he otherwise never minds my height adding shoes. It was also a welcome requirement because it gives me an excuse to wear shorter, and thus more comfortable, heels.

Preferably, they'd also be some fabulous shade of blue, so we could get fabulous pictures like this (imagine the shoes are blue instead of green):

Adorable, no? (Source)

I knew I was picky, but I didn't expect it to be so hard. (Did you know most bridal shoes are $150+, and those that aren't are usually satin? I certainly didn't.) After hunting through many a clearance rack and after many an email to poor mom and sisters-- "What about these?" "No? Ok, what about these?"-- I gave up on blue shoes. I'll settle for metallic, ivory, or any fabulous color. (Does it have to match the decor? Nah.) Finally, while strolling Nordstrom Rack, I found something like these (shorter heel though).

Source

Silver is in our colors, and I'd wear anything by this designer. They were comfortable and affordable...But after bringing them home, I decided they weren't festive enough.

Then, another day at The Rack, I found these, except in gold:

Source

After bringing them home, it was determined that they were festive all right, but the 4" heel brought out the fiance's veto. On second look, they were pretty gaudy anyway.

J.Crew had some fabulous options, but not in my price range, so I started stalking Ebay. (Oh, Ebay! Why did I not see your virtues before wedding planning?) I'm a bit trigger happy on Ebay since I rarely win, so when I bid on these, I thought they would work, but didn't think much of it. They fit my criteria, and at that point, that's all that mattered. Bidding ended in 2 days... so if I didn't win, there was always more shopping that could be done later.

Source -- not actually where I found this picture, but I haven't been able to track it down since I found it. This is as close as I found.

I placed my bid and later in the afternoon I skampered off to Portland for the weekend to visit my dress that had just arrived. Mom and I made a wedding-weekend of it, so while I was there, I had my first dress fitting, shopped for invitation supplies, picked up our save-the-dates, decided on mom's mother-of-the-bride dress... and of course, went to The Rack for more shoe shopping. That's when Mom found these:

Source

Beautiful. Not too guady. Heel height at 2.75". Comfortable, re-wearable, festive. We checked the price tag--$79 for a pair of Stuart Weitzman shoes! -- and I was sold. The shoes were purchased and we continued on our merry way, with me basking in the glow of victory in the hunt for shoes.

That is, until I checked my email that night and found that I had won the J.Crews. Of course, the one and only time I've ever won an auction on Ebay. Sigh. Now I must choose betwen the gold Stuart Weitzman's and the ivory J.Crews.

B.

We interrupt this broadcast to announce...

Source

Comments are now working!

We've heard that some have had trouble leaving comments, so now we think we've got it fixed. You should now be able to comment away!

Because We Love You

Today we took a bullet for you. We scoured the Seattle Area eating more cake than either of us has probably had in the past 12 months. That's right, we did it all for you. We sampled close to 15 different flavors and filling from 4 different bakeries. Never mind the sugar crash I'm experiencing and that Brianna's hands are a wee bit shaky from all that sugar, we did it purely out of care for our friends and family. Undoubtedly, those of you who are checking on our planning progress will want a bit of a report on the bakeries we've visited. Without further ado...

We started our morning at Mike's Amazing Cakes. If you tune into the Food Network occasionally, you may have seen some of Mike's impressive work. The bakery specializes in cakes that that look unlike any other cake you've ever seen. Truly spectacular artwork. Follow the link I embedded in the name for a more spectacular viewing experience. Here are the samples we tried. To the right you'll see spice cake with cream cheese filling and white cake with chocolate filling. The spice cake was incredible, and the cream cheese frosting was perfection.

After looking hard for the wrong 110 Denny Way Seattle- in fact, there are two 110 Denny Ways in Seattle- we ventured into Morfy's. Brianna has classified them as having the most moist cake in Seattle. We forgot to take a picture before we polished off the champagne cake. My apologies if you're only reading to see the pink cake but you can still see white  with raspberry filling, lemon  with lemon chiffon filling, carrot with cream cheese frosting, and chocolate cake with-- you guessed it-- chocolate frosting. Normally, Brianna will have nothing to do with carrot cake, but she actually liked theirs. Apparently, the raisins didn't permeate the cake enough to turn her away from it.

After stopping for lunch, since man can't live on cake alone, we visited a favorite bakery of mine, Madison Park Bakery. Madison Park doesn't joke around with cake tastings. They find out what flavor and filling combination in which you're interested and they make cupcakes for you. The cake here is fantastic. All of the fillings we sampled are delicious. I used the present tense "are" because we were losing steam at that point and had to bring home leftovers. We tried chocolate cake with hazelnut, coconut, chocolate fudge and chocolate mousse. (Clockwise starting at the frosting H.) Brianna had the flu and couldn't go to our original scheduled tasting a few weeks ago. The nice folks at Madison Park sent me home with some cupcakes to get started, and we rescheduled this bakery visit.

After a short stop to browse wedding bands, we ended our cake-stravaganza at our reception location, Salty's on Alki. The "Best Chocolate Cake Ever" has quite a name to which it needed to live up. This cake was rich. Fudge frosting over chocolate cake, with chocolate filling, this cake was as dense as it is delicious. Their signature "White Chocolate Mousse Cake" contrasted the other sample with a very light texture. Both cakes were fantastic, there's no question about that.

So there you have it. Our day long cake-walk through Seattle's Bakeries. Honestly, we aren't ready to make a decision yet. All the cakes were delicious. As much of a challenge as it is to eat cake four times in eight hours, it offered us a chance to compare our contenders in quick succession. No pressure here, but the cake has become a decorating focus for the wedding. If you're new to our blog, and you haven't seen the inspiration cake yet, there's a picture of it to the right.

So that's all for today. Hopefully we'll decide on a bakery soon and be able to cross another item off the wedding to do list. As for us, we're off to go for a run.

KH

BEEP!

For a slight change of pace, Kenneth will be writing this entry. Early on in our wedding planning adventure I decided the most fun activities in wedding planning would be cake tasting and registering for gifts. Little did I know it would spark a debate that spanned several weeks.

Once upon a time, engaged couples walked into department stores, made a list of the things they would need for their new home and voila - months later they would be showered with amazingly matching dishes, towels and sheets. Of course, when Marshall Field's began offering this service in 1924* nobody could have imagined that you'd have access to everything that comes with a global communication tool.

*(I didn't actually know that. I got it on Wikipedia. Also, thanks Britannica for the classic picture)

Call me olde fashioned, but I figured registering for gifts would be just like that. Brianna and I would get in our brand new Model T and drive over to The Bon Marche - she's be wearing a lovely dress and I'd be wearing my best suit and fedora. We'd search for all the things that would complete our home and, using the Dewey Decimal System, they would catalog our wishlist.

Apparently, this "internet" allows people to register for items from any manner of stores. I don't just mean the "beyond" in Bed, Bath & Beyond. You can register for honeymoons, Dodger Tickets and even goats to be given to starving third-world communities. Needless to say, this was going to complicate things for our naive hero.

One thing we all know about Brianna is that she has a heart as generous as anybody any of us will likely know. It's one of the reasons I love her. She very much likes the idea of sharing our good fortune by having a charity or similar registry. For example, see this handsome young boy with the goat I found on Heifer International's website.

I, on the other hand, am a bit concerned about the aging fleet of cooking utensils we currently employ. Upon my insistence we registered at Macy's. Fortunately, Macy's is kind enough to donate a portion of purchases made off our registry to the American Cancer Society. Macy's didn't necessarily have everything for which we were looking, so we also registered at Target.

To be completely honest, we're still discussing either a honeymoon or some other new-fangled and hip registry. So if neither of those registry lists has something that fully encapsulates your affection for us, stay tuned.

"Uh, Kenneth, I dozed off there in the middle of that block of text. What did you say?"

Oh, sorry. Sometimes my typing gets away from me. For the Too Long, Didn't Read version:

• The internet changed the world.
• We've registered at Macy's and Target.
• Everybody loves Brianna.
  
• There may be a third registry option in the works.
• I'm a tad long-winded (Does it count as winded if I'm typing?)

KH

Side Effects from Attending a Cousin's Wedding

Poor Kenneth somehow ended up off to the side.

Chris and Ashley walk down the aisle; first steps as Mr. & Mrs.

Whew! Going to my cousin Ashley's wedding this weekend, which was beautiful, btw, made me a little anxious about our wedding. For one thing, her wedding was exactly 6 months from our wedding day.  That means it's time to get serious about planning! For another, it was intimidating to think that many of the people at her wedding would be coming to ours-- all the love that surrounded Chris and Ashley is a lot to live up to!

I'm sure it's no shock to learn that Kenneth and I talked most of the drive home from Salem to Seattle about what we liked, and what we would do differently at our wedding. We talked through who to have in our wedding party. We're still sorting that out, but we're much closer! We mulled over music options, discussed our registry, talked through rehearsal dinner ideas, and talked more about first dance and parents dance songs. We also realized that some things just can't be helped-- our ceremony is going to be an hour long, and we'll do our best to keep it lively for those with short-ish attention spans. But some things we can control, like making it a meaningful day. Ashley wrapped her bouquet in one of Granny's scarves, used Granny's cake topper, and had Ave Maria play before the ceremony. (Ave Maria was sung by Granny's dad at her wedding and the wedding of all her siblings. It's also been played at all the family weddings since.) Those little touches made the wedding truly special.

Last picture with Granny while at my cousin Jack's wedding, May 2008.

She was really a sweet, jolly old lady, even if the picture doesn't show it.

While we're being sentimental: Losing Granny last November was hard. (I'm absolutely giving an understatement here.) Since then, at each of the 4 weddings I've been to, at some point I have found myself tearing up thinking about how I won't get to see Granny's face or get squeezed in a great big hug from Granny on my wedding day.  Since starting to plan the wedding, it's been hard walking the line between my desire to make Granny as present physically as she will be in spirit at our wedding-- while also remembering that life is for the living. How do we honor our family members in heaven while also holding tight to the joy of the day? To make things more difficult, I'm stumped on how to honor my Granddad. I never met him since he died before I was born, but his marriage to my Granny is one of the best models for lifelong love that I've ever seen. A love that lasted nearly 30 years after one partner died. That's the kind of love I ask God to give Kenneth and I.

One last thing about the weekend: We finalized our guest list and addressed our save-the-dates! I stuck the little polar bear stamps on each one and sent them today. Being a bad blogger, I've got no pictures since my camera is still MIA, but rest assured it was momentous dropping those suckers in the mail box. One more major wedding task DONE! I'll post on the save-the-dates soon.

B.

And what will we dance to?

We've been having some trouble picking out our first dance song. We've got about 6 months to go, but since this is such a dang difficult decision for us, we're starting now. Here are some of the current contenders:

Can't Take my Eyes Off You, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. This one is "our song."

Come Rain or Come Shine, either this version, or maybe even this one.

The Way I Am, Ingrid Michaelson

Oh, Dave Matthews

I'm Yours, Jason Mraz

Till Kingdom Come, ColdPlay

What a Wonderful World/Somewhere over the Rainbow, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. Oh so ubiquitous , but beautiful, right?

And, neither of these are first dance contenders, but we can't have our reception end without hearing this song, and this one. They're both silly jokes of ours, but no songs remind me of the very early days of our friendship and relationship than these. Especially the first one.

Wedding toasts

um.... right. Not exactly "us."

The wedding toasts are probably one of the more scary portions of the whole wedding reception things. Neither of us are terribly sappy people, except when it's absolutely necessary-- like, oh, our wedding. So, we'll indulge in a little sappiness on our wedding day, but toasts could end up being sappy overload.

Luckily our appointed toast-givers are more likely to be funny than sappy.

HIL-ARIOUS!!

Ok, so that's not Kenneth's kind of humor so much as mine. (You've probably already heard me tell my favorite joke before: What do you call a fish with no eyes? Fssssh. HAHA! Makes me laugh every. single. time. Love me a dumb, corny joke.)  Hopefully our toast-makers can find a way to maneuver both of our senses of humor...I just hope it doesn't end up looking something like this.* You may have heard of cake wrecks. Well, if there was a site to post bad toast videos, this would be on Toast Wrecks.

*Warning: the best man in this YouTube video has a bit of a potty mouth. You probably shouldn't watch it at work or around young folks.

Ceremony Venue: Blessed Sacrament Church, Seattle

When I first moved to Seattle, I wanted to get back into the habit of going to church regularly. I'd always gone for Ash Wednesday, Easter, and Christmas with my families (What? You don't have more than one family?), but I desperately wanted to get into going regularly. I lived just a couple blocks from this church, so despite the presence of  a Newman Center for UW students, I found myself going here nearly every Sunday. 

I immediately felt a strong connection to this church. This is the place where my dormant childhood faith woke up and started living again. Here I saw, felt, and worshiped God.  Yes, God is in all Creation (here's lookin' at you St. Francis!), but never is my faith firmer than when I'm praying inside these brick walls. I knew early on that when someone came along that I would marry, here is where I would marry them. After attending for a year, I decided to register here, and make it my "home," which I'm glad I did because it made our wedding a bit more affordable! :)

What I didn't take into account was Kenneth's family, and their strong attachment to their church. Truth be told, over the last year, I've probably gone to church with his family more often than I've gone to my own church. Still, my church holds a special spot in my heart. I couldn't immediately get over the idea of getting married in any other church. We talked it over, and after Kenneth visited my church, we decided to get married here-- but with his family's priest, from his family's church. :)

Why do we need an theme?

Kenneth asked that when we first started seriously wedding planning. He hadn't been to a wedding with a theme before, and didn't see the need. Never mind the fact that his aunt's wedding featured a cake with shamrocks on it, an Irish band with an Irish flag behind them, his aunt's ring was a claddagh, the flower girls' dresses had subtle little shamrocks on them, and the favors were CDs with names like "Blarney Stone" and "Killarney." (Can you guess the theme?)

I convinced him that a theme or central inspiration image would help with decision making if certain things were automatically excluded. With a theme of say, Scottish traditions, all else being equal, we could automatically exclude black and white polka dot invitations in favor of plaid invitations. With him on-board, I began making suggestions. The only thing we knew for sure is that it had to work with this cake I found in an old wedding magazine that we fell in love with early on:

First up: birds! I love birds, and have something with birds decorating every room of my apartment. My great-grandmother gave me an Asian screen with birds on it when she died because the first word I said was "bird" while pointing at it. It would look lovely with blue and brown, the colors I wanted.  Table centerpieces would be beautiful bowls of robins egg candy with sticks around them--- not quite looking like a bird nest, but suggesting it. I would get to use these beautiful tags somehow too:

Kenneth was not as excited as I was. (We aren't exactly members of the Audubon Society. It didn't feel like "us.")

Next, "Spring in Seattle." Think cherry blossoms and sculptural metallic elements. A few more colors would come in to tie with this inspiration image:

Again, Kenneth didn't share my enthusiasm. He rightly pointed out that it would be too hard to make it come through in a way that would make sense for people who haven't experienced the cherry blossoms on the University of Washington campus in the spring.

Then, it came to me! (And when I say me, I actually mean my sister, Sara who called to tell me the idea.) Why not just make the cake the inspiration!? Kenneth was pleased. (Success!) White would become more prominent, but little bits of brown would still be integrated into everything. Silver too. So with that, I created our inspiration board and we are able to move forward with centerpiece, website, invitation, flower, and color inspiration. 

The story thus far...

Since there's a chance Kenneth might be moving far from family before the wedding, we thought it might be helpful for family to be able to follow along with our wedding planning on a blog. Plus, we've tried sending lots of emails to family... but they don't like being bombarded as much as one would think. (You mean the world doesn't revolve around our wedding? Huh. Weird.) Finally, we want to be able to look back on these in-the-moment observations, dilemmas, and feelings when we're in our 50th year as a married couple. So with that, here we go. Presto-change-o, and now Brianna's triathlon blog is a wedding blog!

According to our sources, the beginning is a very good place to start. Here's how our lives changed on a very hot day in Italy:

After a year of planning and saving, Kenneth was going to propose over breakfast at the Columbia Gorge Hotel in Oregon, a breakfast Brianna had been raving about since they had met. For Christmas 2008, he gave her a card "good for the famous breakfast and trip to the spa" at Columbia Gorge Hotel. Unfortunately, soon after, the historic hotel closed.*

On to plan B. In May 2009, Brianna, her mother, her mother's husband, and Kenneth left for 2 weeks in Italy to celebrate Brianna's graduation from the University of Washington. Kenneth seemed particularly preoccupied with avoiding pick-pockets throughout Italy-- the Rome subway, throughout Florence, while wandering Assisi, and so on.

The trip ended with a special trip to Cinque Terre, a region of 5 villages along the northwest coast with hiking trails between them. The trails opened the way for interaction between villagers from different towns--- including marriages between lovers from two different towns. The trail between two particular villages-- Riomaggiore and Manarola-- is known as Via del'Amore or "The Path of Love." The trail has the names of famous lovers carved into the cliff side-- Romeo & Juliet, Cupid & Psyche, etc. From the trail, every so often there are rickety stairs leading down the cliffs to giant rocks in the water, and Kenneth suggested we go down one to the water. We got up to go, but the setting was very romantic, and they hugged before heading back.

Kenneth stopped though and said "I wouldn't have imagined we'd be here, when we first met 5 years ago. Now, I want to spend the rest of my life with you." Before he had a chance to pull a ring out of his pocket (which he had carried with him at all times during the trip-- no wonder he feared pick pockets!) Brianna blurted out "Is this a proposal? Are you proposing right now?" He showed Brianna the ring and asked if she would marry him. She responded "Really!? Yes!"**

*It all turns out well in the end: Kenneth had a back-up plan. As for the Columbia Gorge Hotel, it was bought and re-opened in September 2009.

 

** Why was Brianna so surprised that Kenneth would actually propose? She had been dragging him through museums, on trains and on mad-dash tours through Florence (in 5 hours) and Pisa (in 3 hours, including lunch). Brianna is still trying to understand how eating could ever trump a tour through the Vatican Museums and St. Peter's Basilica. Kenneth is still trying to understand how the love of his life, who normally would stop everything for a pasta and wine lunch, could ever say "we don't have time to eat!" We discovered our travelling styles differ, but not until after spending half our time being cranky with each other. Clearly, love really does conquer all... including grumbling tummies

Team Kendy

This picture is of the team of co-workers I did the Danskin with. Why did we call ourselves Team Kendy? One of our team-mates was diagnosed with breast cancer 2 months out from the Tri. We snapped into gear to support our dearest team-mate who could no longer compete with us., We made dinners at one of those Dinners Ready places. We committed to using our training/work out time as prayer time-- to pray for her. And we made these AWESOME shirts. None of us actually raced in them (as had originally been planned), but we wanted to show our support for her. Now, the shirts are being made into a quilt for Kendy. We can't make the darn cancer go away, but we wanted to show Kendy that we cared.

So how did Kendy find out she had breast cancer in the first place? She started training for the tri and noticed she had some skin irritation going on after work-outs. If she hadn't been training, she wouldn't have found out as early as she did. (That God guy...He knows what he's doing sometimes.) Kendy says signing up for the Danskin saved her life.

She's been having chemo every other week since June, and that'll continue for a little while longer still. She also had surgery to remove the cancer. She's amazing though-- still works almost full time if not full time most weeks.

Another thing-- the event raises money and supports women who are going through or have survived cancer. Some of the waves were just for cancer survivors (they wore pink caps of course). There's really nothing so inspirational as having a cancer survivor kick your ass in a triathlon.

Kendy is planning to join us this year. Go Team Kendy 2010!

(Oh-- and this is another one of my "join me in a tri!" next year posts. Not only will it motivate you to stay on track with working out and getting serious about getting fit-- but it might just save your life)