Wedding of Wonders – The Blog

After months of planning and preparing for our wedding around the world, the time has finally come for us to pack up and hit the road! It seems like only yesterday that I turned to Mike and said “screw it, let’s take a trip around the world,” but more than a year has passed since that fateful day and as a result we will be spending the next 5 weeks visiting some of the most amazing places on the planet.

Packing has been quite the challenge for us. Although we wanted to carry on all of our luggage and avoid losing a bag along the way, the amount of things that we just HAD to bring with us made that physically impossible. Long story short, at around 4:00AM (5 hours before our first flight was scheduled to depart), we decided that checking bags was our only option. Between all of our clothes, toiletries, camera equiptment (1 SLR, 1 pocket-sized, 1 digital video) and odds and ends (Mike’s school books, our computers, etc.), we each had one bag too many. Oops.

So, after an all-nighter of packing, cleaning and other random trip preparations, the time had come to hop on the plane to our first stop:  San Francisco.  My super awesome brother volunteered to drive us to the airport at the crack of dawn (i.e. 7:30am – yes, I know it’s not THAT early, but my idea of a regular wake-up time is between noon and 4:00PM) to catch our 9:30AM flight out of Philly.

After the usual airport headaches (checking in, checking bags, strip search at security, etc.), we made it onto our US Airways flight and got situated with our brand new Bose noise-cancelling headphones (thank you to Nick, Bobby Lux, Doug, Brad, Tami, Joe, Gurpreet and Trent for the awesome gift!) for the long flight ahead of us.

After our 6 hour flight (with the best landing I have ever experienced on any flight), we made it to SanFranciso!  We quickly made it to Fox Rentals and picked up our Jeep Liberty in order to make the quasi-longish drive to Yosemite.  The drive was absolutely beautiful and we made a few stops along the way.

At around 11:00PM (PST) last night we finally made it to the Westin in Mammoth Lakes where we will be spending the next 2 nights after our adventures.  We will be hiking up to Glacier Point today and will post more about our adventures when we return this evening (that is assuming that we make it back in one piece and do not have any encounters with large, dangerous wildlife).  Stay tuned…

Of course, being the procrastinator that I am, I waited until the last possible second to order my tux just so I could make Katie extremely stressed out and nervous that I wouldn’t have a tuxedo for our trip around the world. We leave in LESS THAN 24 HOURS and my tux just arrived! Once again, thanks to Luping for making an incredible tux and Zhen for being an incredible friend and translator (and thanks to Blue Steel for the inspiration to model it).

::sigh:: but now on to the least fun part of the trip, packing. Katie and I will toss up another blog post this evening detailing our packing adventures (and if you’ve ever traveled with Katie, you know that packing is an adventure). We’ve also been receiving incredible send-offs from our friends and we just can’t wait to tell you about it! Thank you all for you love and support, we’ll talk to you soon and I can’t believe that 24 hours from now we’ll actually be flying around the world!!! I feel like a giddy little fat kid in a candy shop, and for those of you who knew me when I was younger, I know very well, first hand, what that feeling is like

I’ll be honest. The idea of having to pack for 5 weeks away from home is somewhat terrifying. Considering I usually bring a huge suitcase for a weekend in New York (and then subsequently get made fun of by Mike), I have no clue how I’m going to fit my entire life into one bag. Oh yeah, did I mention we are carrying on? Uh, yeah.

So, for the past few months, I have been building a small arsenal of items (clothing, shoes, etc.) that are versatile yet stylish to get me through this terribly difficult time. (Totally kidding…I’m super duper lucky to be going on the trip of a lifetime with the man of my dreams!) Since we will be eating out at some of the best restaurants in the world in between hiking and sightseeing, I needed a few dressy options that I could wear out on the town while still being practical from a packing perspective.  Enter twobirds.  I heard about this dress via one of my favorite wedding blogs, Style Me Pretty and became intrigued by the concept.  One dress that can transform into 10 different dresses?!  Where do I sign up?!  Not only was the dress beautiful, but it would give me 10 different dress options without taking up my entire suitcase.  There was only one problem.  Twobirds typically requires 6 weeks lead time for dresses and we were leaving for our trip in a little over a week.  I decided to chance it and sent an email to Ariane, the talented woman behind the twobirds concept and company.  She got back to me almost right away and told me that they had one black dress in stock that they could ship to me right away.  Score!  4 days later, I was the proud owner of an amazing twobirdsdress.  At first I was skeptical considering the $270 price tag, but after trying on the dress, I am a huge fan of what Ariane has created.  It is flattering, comfortable and extremely versatile (obviously, considering the 10 different options).

Yesterday I had the opportunity to try my hand at a few of the different dress configurations and it was actually a ton of fun!  I never knew that getting dressed could be such a creative process!

For those of you who have not been to China, in my experience it is an amazing place, full of wonderful, extremely nice people who work very hard and take pride in their work… Compared to the US, the level of service is very refreshing. So when I had the opportunity to rent a tuxedo from The Men’s Wear-hurting for $130 (that’s Men’s Warehouse, but the guys I work with like to incorporate the word ‘hurting’ into anything that is not good) or buy one custom-tailored to me for $80. Like any savvy shopper, I chose the best value for my money. Unfortunately there are two problems with ordering a tuxedo from China: the first is that once your tux is finished, it’s still in China; secondly, the people that make your tux speak Chinese, so you need to as well. If you can get past those two obstacles, then it’s a no-brainer.

Let me first say that my Chinese is infantile, so I was not ready to tackle the challenge of explaining to someone in China that I wanted the color ‘charcoal’ (have you ever tried to explain to someone in English what the color ‘charcoal’ is? I still struggle… it’s gray, but it’s kind of black, but not really… you know what I mean). Fortunately I have two connections that are making all of this possible: when I was in Shanghai I found a wonderful clothing shop managed by Luping where I bought a bunch of custom suits and shirts – wonderful work; and my amazing friend Zhen from Duke, without whom I would be completely lost in this whole process. While in Shanghai I was incredibly impressed that Luping would work long hours and stay late to make sure we all got exactly what we wanted, then go to her accounting classes at night – this is the kind of business I gladly support (and if anyone wants her contact information I will gladly provide it).

So when it came time to choose the groomsmen’s outfits for the special day, I knew just who to call. After quite a few Skype conversations, emails, pictures and an enormous amount of Zhen’s help, finally we came to an understanding of sizes, colors and specifications. Luping was extremely patient with my email that she kindly referred to as a “very bad Chinese email” (I’m not being facetious! That really is kind! …Trust me, it’s a terrible work of written communication). But alas, we have closed the communication gap and the tuxes are underway! I’ll let you know how they arrive!

At risk of sounding like Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat (a far-too-long book that was about 10 years late on the concept of globalization), I do find it quite amazing that an individual in the US can order directly from a manufacturer in China and receive better products than much more expensive, locally sold ones. But I suppose that’s why I’m in business school, because that kind of thing is interesting. Katie has had her fair share of ordering from China as well and I must say, we’ve both been very impressed.

So thank you again for following-along our blog; I promise it will get MUCH more exciting as we head off on our journey around the world (I know, I didn’t update The Trip page yet). But until then we’ve still got a few tricks up our sleeve – so stay tuned!

So we’re sticking it to the Swine Flu and tacking on 2 days to our San Fran stop to make it an awesome California road trip. Some necessary stops will be Yosemite, Muir Woods, The Golden Gate Bridge, Lake Tahoe, Mono Lake, Eldorado Forest, Napa and Sonoma Wineries (we’ve got our favorites), amazing dinner at The French Laundry in Yountville, and of course, Sprinkles Cupcakes. Thanks to all for your suggestions but unfortunately one of the major deciding factors was the fact that US Airways is the worst airline EVER and they significantly limited our options (even though their policy is to credit you the amount of your ticket affected by Swine Flu). So as much as we wanted to hit up another destination, they wouldn’t let me do much else than remove our flights to/from Cancun and replace them with a single flight to San Francisco. But we’re still excited, it should be an awesome time.

In the meantime, we are LESS THAN TWO WEEKS FROM DEPARTURE! Oh man, it is closing in fast! I’m desperately trying to straighten out what to do in our far-too-short amount of time in each city. I am grabbing an international driver’s license just to make sure we don’t have a problem if Katie and I need to rent a Land Rover in Egypt and drive out to the White Desert, hit up the Blue Mountains in New South Wales Australia or cruise out to Stonehenge in the beautiful English countryside of Wiltshire. I’ve never been restricted from renting a car with a US license before except in Dubai, but I suppose better to be safe than sorry.

I also picked up my final visa today from the Brazilian Consulate; this weekend we bought 90 more liters of wine (to go with the previously purchased 90 liters and the 45 liters of champagne to be bought this coming weekend). Katie placed the flower order; I changed our hotel in Rome to the St. Regis (looks amazing), and we are just checking things off our list left and right… This is finally starting to seem real and I can’t believe how fast it is approaching. Thank you everybody for all your support in helping us pull this together!

Keep your eyes open for a post tomorrow on the many challenges of obtaining wedding clothing and Chinese outsourcing (sorry if outsourcing offends those of you staunch republicans, but you have to admit, sometimes you are just dumb)!

Before some of you panic at the potential loss of the two most amazing people that have ever graced this fabulous earth, no, neither of us have contracted the terrifying Swine Flu. It has, however, created a major problem since Chichén Itzá is now deep in the bowels of what may be the worst disease since Monkeypox (you’ve never heard of it before? Yeah, neither have we — that’s how widespread it was).

Being the responsible people we are, Katie and I have decided it is probably best if we do not make our first stop on a 10 country tour in a place with a contagious disease that we can then spread to the rest of the world (Katie decided really, I’m pretty sure we could handle the Swine Flu). But as badly as I wanted to make some joke pretending that I’m at Chuck Norris’ level of invincibility like “Mike and Katie are not terrified of the pandemic spread of the Swine Flu, the Swine Flu is terrified of the pandemic spread of Mike and Katie”, Katie is probably right and we should pick a new location less Swine Flu-ey.

That being said, HELP!!! We need to find a new destination between Philadelphia and San Francisco to spend approximately 2 days (May 16th – 18th). Obvious precedence goes to any location with a world wonder, and the location should be close enough that we can actually get there, see what we need to see, and get to San Francisco in two and a half days (I was hoping for Machu Picchu, but that is just a little too far away). Though preferred, a world wonder isn’t necessary and we are entertaining ALL potential locations. Thus far some of the suggestions that have been proposed are Niagara Falls, The Grand Canyon, Glacier National Park (Canada) and Las Vegas but I’m sure there are more great locations out there (and no Lux, Cincinnati is not one of them). Panama? Costa Rica? Belize?

So please help us out and post comments to this blog post with your ideas, votes, feelings, etc. Feel free to comment on the comments of others and help us figure out what to do!!! We probably need to make a decision in the next week or so otherwise Katie will have an anxiety attack.

There have been a number of other huge developments so I’ll probably start writing a blog every 2-3 days from here on out (since we leave in about 2 weeks) so check back soon!

Thank you to everyone! We look forward to reading your comments and posting our own over the next few days!

Today was my official wedding hair and make-up consultation at Antoinette’s Day Spa in Paoli, PA. I didn’t really know what to expect since 1) I have never been a bride-to-be before 2) I haven’t been to Antoinette’s since high school and 3) the idea of having 2 straight hours of pampering is quite foreign to me considering most of my days look something like this: wake up, class, class, meeting, class, homework, dinner, sleep, nightmares about law school/wedding day disasters, repeat. So, needless to say, I was extremely excited about a fun morning at the spa.

I was lucky enough to have the extremely fabulous Keighley (whose sister coincidentally attends the same law school as me!) work on my hair and she was absolutely fantastic! She didn’t make me feel bad for not really knowing what I wanted going into the appointment and she did her best to feel out what I liked and didn’t like. In the end, I was incredibly happy with the job that she did. Once my hair was finished I moved onto the makeup chair. Selena, the woman that did my makeup was a little more straightforward than I anticipated (“Do you trim your eyebrows?” aka “You NEED to trim your eyebrows,” “Do you exfoliate your skin?” aka “You really REALLY need to exfoliate”), but considering how condescending and judgmental I can be on a regular basis (just ask Taraneh), I guess it was refreshing to have someone just cut to the chase and tell me what I needed to do to beautify myself before the big day. Long story short, she also did a great job of figuring out what I wanted (I mean, aside from stealing Kerri Russell’s complexion, hair and overall perfection) and translating that onto my face through her skillful make-up application.

So, without further ado…the result of my hair and make-up morning at Antoinette’s.

Now, I am not the superstitious type; however, sometimes I do wonder if someone is playing a practical joke on us when it comes to this wedding planning stuff. I know this process is not meant to be easy (heck, that’s why there is an entire industry devoted to helping brides plan their special days), but some days I just want to throw my hands in the air and yell “cut me a break!” So, being the ultimate pessimist that my friends and family have (hopefully) come to appreciate, I have decided to take a stroll down memory lane with a list of my Top 5 Wedding Planning Fails (So Far). Drum roll, please…

Mike flies out to L.A. to propose to me during GRAMMY week and the ring does not arrive. Instead, it sits at the shipping center in Philadelphia. Oops! (Perhaps a sign that this long road to the wedding would not be easy?)

After months of perusing Ebay looking for a pair of my dream wedding shoes in my size, I find them and win the auction. Wait, what happened? You can’t ship them to me because they were stolen off the seat of your car when you forgot to lock the doors (actual story)? Fantastic!

While waiting for our Save The Date cards to arrive, we find out why the printers have not responded to our calls. They moved to Alabama. Super!

We finally book our tickets around the world. Everything is great…except for the fact that Star Alliance has entered my entire itinerary under the wrong name. I can see it now: “Come on Mr. TSA Agent…I know the name on my passport doesn’t match the name on these 12 tickets, but you can trust me! I pinky swear that I’m telling the truth!” (The Department of State lets you enter the country on a pinky swear, right?)

And, the number one wedding planning fail (so far) is…
1. Getting ready to fly to Napa, CA to tour our dream wedding location and sign the contract. What’s that you say? The property was just sold after being on the market for 3 years and the new owners are no long renting it out? Awesome! Back to the drawing board.

 
My.  Wedding.  Shoes.  Arrived.  Today.  Swoon.

For those of you who have not been through the torturous wonderful process of planning a wedding, you have absolutely no idea how stressful truly fantastic and involved gratifying the entire production can be. Although I may have made things more difficult on myself considering my admitted perfectionism (and the fact that we will be traveling around the world for the 5 weeks leading up to our reception), there are about a million things that must be taken into consideration before the big day. While I have been pretty great about finding bargains for everything from our reception centerpieces (Ikea vases + wholesale flowers = awesome) to my wedding dress (Ebay, baby!), there is one thing that I absolutely refuse to cut corners on: Wedding Photography.

As soon as Mike and I nailed down our official wedding date (after numerous instances of failure), I began to hunt for a photographer that fit our needs with regard to style, personality and budget. This may sound like a simple task; however, there are about a million photographers out there who are either too traditional, too uptight, too expensive or all of the above. After perusing about a million wedding blogs and contacting a handful of potential candidates, I stumbled upon an exciting piece of information. My friend Tanya from high school (a fantastic writer with an outgoing personality and great attention to detail) and her husband Ian (a professional photographer with an eye for just the right shot and passion for traveling the world) had decided to enter the wedding photography business. Although Mike and I had met up with Tanya and Ian for dinner in Paris a few years earlier (completely coincidental), I knew very little about Ian’s photography abilities, so I decided to do a little research. Off to Google I went. A few clicks later and I found my way to Ian’s websites: www.IanGrantPhotography.com and www.DistinctPhoto.com

Not only was I instantly blown away by the images that flashed before my eyes, but I could tell by the blog entries and overall style of the site that their approach to wedding photography possessed a certain effortless appeal that I had been looking for all along. I sent them an email immediately and crossed my fingers that they were available to fly across the country from Los Angeles to photograph our wedding reception near Philadelphia (and that we could afford such a proposition). I received a response within a few hours (sweet!) and Tanya was happy to answer all of my crazy, stressed-out bride questions (phew!) and give me a price quote that didn’t make me roll on the floor laughing (one photographer sent me a quote for nearly $30,000 and I laughed for nearly a month). While I was 99% sold after looking through Ian’s photos online, my emails back and forth with Tanya officially sealed the deal. Through our conversations, it quickly became clear to me that Tanya and Ian don’t just click, print and cash the check. They become as emotionally invested in the wedding photography as the bride and groom. To them it is not just a business. It’s a passion and way for both of them to use their talents in a manner that really showcases the beauty of each couple and each wedding that they photograph.

So, although the stress of wedding planning has kept me up many nights writing lists and having nightmares about things that could possibly go wrong, I know that the images of our “big day” will be a beautiful reminder that we picked the perfect photographer to capture it all. One click at a time.