Yes, we have goofy nicknames for each other already

So, I imagine that you are all tired of reading about wedding stuff. Which is good, because I'm tired of writing about it. Eventually I'll post the Costa Rica pictures and tell you again how fucking awesome that country is. Really, all you need to know is that A) we stayed here for most of the week and here for the last two days, B) we went on a 10 mile horseback ride and the horse I was riding FELL DOWN, C) in Costa Rica, gourmet filet mignon dinners are only $14 and imported French Syrahs are only $20, and D) I got to see monkeys taking a nap in a mango tree. If you know those four things, then you know how awesome the trip was.

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I made the most perfect batch of chocolate chip cookies in the history of the known world on Tuesday night. (Yes, on a Tuesday. I came home and made dinner, did the dishes, then baked a batch of cookies. Nesting much, anyone?) I gave one to Kevin when they were done and he said they looked like a fake cookie, they were so perfect. Even the ratio of nuts to chocolate is perfect, as is the cookie tecture....chewy but not half raw. They are so perfect that I am only giving them to a select few at work, rather than bring the whole container in for the kitchen vultures to devour with no appreciation of how perfect they are. Only people able to appreciate the sublime pleasure of a perfect cookie are allowed to have them.

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The Adventures of Hubben & Woompty, Episode 1

Scene: Local Diner, end of dinner
Woompty: Hey, I get the tip and you get the bill...sweet deal for me.
Hubben: Yeah, whatever.
Woompty: Well, that's what you get.
Hubben: For what??
Woompty: For watching a baseball show instead of paying attention to your wife during dinner. (Note: This was roughly the 15th time Woompty had made a comment along these lines)
Hubben: *glowering* Don't turn me into a wifebeater.

Scene: Later, during the car ride home
Woompty: It smells like bacon in here.
Hubben: That's probably my pants.

(I think this episode means that the honeymoon is officially over.)

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Hey, guess who has a fully employed husband?

ME!!!

Yeah, Kevin got a job at Otter's company (BEST WEDDING GIFT EVER!!!) and he starts on Monday. Normal hours, better pay, better job in general. So very, very awesome.

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In other news, I had a very frustrating day today. My boss and I were just NOT understanding each other so we kept sniping at each other. We have a day like that ever month or so (and NO IT IS NOT BECAUSE OF PMS, it's because we are both stubborn and don't mind arguing with each other). And frustrating days are best cured by Sudoku, perfect cookies with ice cold milk, and married sex.

Gotta go.

Recap, schmecap

There is no way in HELL I will be able to tell you about my wedding in any coherent way on here. The story is way too long to tell on a blog and I'm not going to subject y'all to a book. But here's a list of important thoughts regarding that momentous occasion:

1) My hairdresser is crazy. I forgot this until 10pm the night before the wedding when he called me to tell me that he wasn't sure how he was getting up to Julian but that he would be there for sure, and by the way, what's the latest he could get there? This was followed by a phone call at 11pm, during which he told me he would be there at 10am but his ride needed to be back in Del Mar by 1:30pm, so he'd have to work fast. He got there, eventually, and my hair did look fabulous. I apologize for any holes in the ozone layer we may have created by using gallons of hairspray to hold it up through my 3pm wedding.

2) We (mom, LoLo, Beth, Kris, and Kevin's mom) spent 3 hours the night before surrounded by piles of foliage, filler and flowers. They were all wrangled into centerpieces and bouquets and corsages and boutennaires, and somehow three bottles of wine disappeared while doing so. Well, the flowers still looked nice and that's all that counted.

3) In addition to the hairdresser debacle, the iPod froze, the cake wasn't there, the carriage was late and the wedding was starting in 30 minutes. But then our photographer fixed the iPod, the cake got there, and the wedding started only 10 minutes late. I truly believe that having so many people all over the world wishing us well (thank you, Internets!) helped make our day go perfectly despite the issues. No one will ever convince me otherwise.

4) We did our formal pictures in a field full of burned out trees. Seriously. Except for the ones we took in town, which prompted some crazy old lady to say "Hey look, Spanish!" upon seeing Kevin's kilt. Wackaloon, that one. You can see a few shots from our photographers on their blog. Between them and the friend who did the pictures in the slide show, and my camera and my uncle's camera and my mom's boss' camera and the 20 other digital cameras that were there, there are roughly a gajillion pictures of us out there. I posted some more candids in the Flickr account if you want to see them.

5) Kevin looked hot in his kilt. Seriously. And I looked like a pretty princess with big boobies that people kept grabbing. At one point, my friend grabbed my boobs right as my boss looked over at me. Hee-larious.

6) The ceremony just flew by. Like ZOOM! Whoosh, you're married! I want to get a copy of the vows from Kathryn, because they were awesome and made me start crying. Which was when Kathryn told me to stop crying because it was making her cry.

7) There were a lot of tears that day. What really surprised me was the way people reacted the first time they saw me all put together with the dress and the veil and the makeup and the jewelry. They all gasped a little and started to tear up. Even Missi.

8) I love my husband an awful lot. I know that some people think it's just a piece of paper, and maybe for them it was. But getting to stand in front of all those people who love us and support us and were just there and happy for us made things...different. I can't tell you how it's different or why it's different but it is. He's mine, and I'm his, in the eyes of the law and the eyes of all the people who were there for us that day.

9) Man, I am glad that we kept the guest list small. As it is, I still feel like I didn't get to talk to everyone as much as I wanted to. But we did get to talk to everyone for at least a few minutes (at least those people who bothered to stay until at least the toasts) (but that's another story for another day), and in the end it felt like just another party. Our friends all got along really well, and we already have plans for a group of us to get together soon. There weren't any hookups, although Kris did spend an hour flirting with my gay boyfriend Spike (because Spike will flirt with anyone, which totally tricked her).

10) The food was really, really good. There were these stuffed mushrooms which were AWESOME, and I totally macked on a plate of leftover ones that night after everyone left. And the chicken was perfect, the stroganoff got rave reviews and the cake. Oh my GOD, the cake. My friend made the cake for a huge discount (we basically $1/slice), which would have cost us at least $600 at the bakery we liked best. Top and bottom layers were a chocolate cake layered with chocolate ganache and chocolate mousse, iced with buttercream frosting. Middle layer was a Meyer lemon cake layered with lemon cream cheese frosting and iced with the same frosting. The whole thing was covered in hand rolled fondant and looked like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. It was awesome.

11) The almond champagne from Wilson Creek Winery was a huge hit. People who didn't like champagne were drinking it and loving it. I myself did not drink any champagne, even though I too adore Wilson Creek champagne. I decided not to drink anything that day because I didn't want to have alcohol flush in all my pictures. What's funny is that even without drinking a damn thing other than Diet Coke, water and apple cider all day, I still felt that drunken giddiness. Apparently, getting married offers a natural high. Who knew?

12) My something old, borrowed and blue was a ring that my grandmother gave my mother when she was 12. My something new was everything else, and both the bouquet I carried and the broom we used in the ceremony had lace from my mother's wedding dress wrapped around them. It was really important to me to carry part of my mom and grandma with me.

13) People are really too generous. We have got SO MUCH STUFF now, and most of our old crappy stuff has been replaced with new, awesome stuff that will last us for years instead of months. It's like we're grown-ups or something.

14) The honeymoon was awesome. Everyone should go to Costa Rica. EVERYONE. But not when we go. I'll write more about that later though, because this is long enough as it is.

Most everything is different, forever

Some things will never change
Originally uploaded by Minarae.

We got back into town last night and the cats were so happy to see us that they followed us around meowing for at least an hour.

I am now in posession of one wedding ring, a zillion new household items, a full set of camping equipment, a slightly used wedding dress complete with carriage wheel marks, and roughly eleventy gajillion pictures of the best week of my life.

The wedding was perfection. It all went so fast, but it's all still crystal clear in my mind. There was the moment when Nate, our photographer, totally saved the day by unfreezing our iPod when it mysteriously stopped playing half an hour before the wedding started. And the laughter when LoLo forgot to come get my flowers from me during the ceremony. And the smiles through tears as Kevin and I looked at each other while we said our vows. And the photo sessions with Nate & Jaclyn, which had us laughing, again. And the fact that neither Kevin nor I got a good night's sleep the night before, thanks to one too-small sleeping bag and one horribly rundown sofa couch. And the hairdresser drama! Oh, that was funny. But the very best part was having all the people we love the very most surrounding us and laughing with us and just being truly happy for us.

Eventually I'll finish typing it all up and then I'll post it here. But not tonight. Tonight I need to go curl up in bed. With my husband.

(Oh, and if you want to see some pictures you can go here; email me if you need help getting into it.)

Wedded

Wedded
Originally uploaded by Minarae.

We done got hitched

The night before the night before

Well damn
Originally uploaded by Minarae.

Today almost broke me. I am so very, very tired.

First, the flowers were delayed. We got a phone call saying that there was a broken plane or something and they were stuck in Northern California. I spent the rest of the day trying not to freak out too much.

Then, I had a very mice lunch and nail day with my mom and Kevin's mom. Pretty nails, hairless legs and flowered toes. I'm all set for the wedding in that department.

But then, to top off the day that left me frazzled, this guy managed to back right into me when I was just sitting there minding my own business and waiting for a parking spot at the airport. And whammo, just like that I had a big ass dent in my rear quarter panel. Best wedding gift EVER.

Filed the claim, and now I am forgetting about it. It will be a funny story to tell tomorrow at the Unrehersal Dinner.

Y'all, I'm getting MARRIED. In less than 48 hours even. How 'bout THEM apples?

Attack of the parentheticals

I am bored out of my everloving skull right now. Which is just crazy talk, right? Because here it is, the Monday before the Saturday when LIFE AS WE KNOW IT CHANGES FOREVER, and I'm bored.

I'm only bored because I managed to actually get every last urgent thing done last week before my last day in the office and now no one is emailing me or calling me with any new work. Seriously, last week I kicked ass without bothering to take names and managed to delegate every last bit of my work out to five other people. Not that I'm saying it takes five people to equal one of me, I just didn't want to dump everything off onto one person because the other admins all have jobs too, you know? I have more than a sneaking suspicion that my job as I know it will be drastically changing when I get back to the office too, which made it even more imperative that I clear things off as much as possible.

Last week we finished a lot of the last bits of wedding things as well. We went and picked out some very nice jewelry for our moms and then a watch for his dad, as thank yous. I finally got the seating chart printed and mounted on some foamboard, finished the programs, did yet another hair trial with Ray,and picked up buckets for toting the vast amounts of flowers around. Yesterday we stocked up on essential honeymoon-in-Costa-Rica stuff like bug spray and SPF 5000 sunblock and gigantic beach towels. (We've also started taking the anti-malarial pills which I am happy to say only give us a minor headache and no hallucinations.)

Tomorrow I have a rough day planned. "Working" from 8-12, a chiropractic appointment at 2 and a massage at 4:30. Harsh, I tell you. I also need to call the flower people and make sure everything is on schedule for the delivery on Thursday (We are having roughly 50 gajillionty flowers FedExed to our apartment; I am hoping that Riley does not eat them all.) (Speakig of Riley, the fur that the vet shaved off STILL hasn't grown back, like...at all. And it's been a month. Should I be concerned?) (ANYWAY....)

People start getting into town on Wednesday, I finalized the cake stuff and the cermony stuff, and Kevin's kilt already got here. (And that was quite the entertaining afternoon, trying to figure that out.) (It looks quite smashing though; we will be very gorgeous, the two of us.) The most awesome thing is that Melissa and Erich and Mary & Joe get to join us and our families for lunch on Friday. I cannot tell you how awesome it is to know that people are willing to take time off and literally fly across the country to be at the wedding. Really, it's all making me feel a little too special. (Also making me feel a little too special: Checking our online registries. I know, I am a horrible person! But someone bought us a tent! I am so excited I could pee my pants because now WE CAN GO CAMPING! Which is good, since that is all we'll be able to afford after this little shindig.)

Now if I could just figure out the last 45 minutes work of music that I need for the dancing, I'd be all set for some wine .

(Screw that, I'm ready for some wine anyway.)