Honeymoon, Day 2.

Woke up at 9:15am to a full breakfast set up on our porch. Fruit salad, assortment of French pastries, a plate of brie slices, jams (mango-lime, chocolate-coconut!) and coffee. I could seriously get used to this. Ate outside looking at the ridiculous view of the ocean and trees, completely surreal. After breakfast we went swimming in our private pool. I realized that I love pools as long as they're fresh water and I have a raft to lay on. We swam for what seemed like forever and then realized that it was only 11:00am. Time definitely slows down in the islands. Showered and got ready, picked up our rental car at reception (a Mini Cooper convertible) and made our way to St. Jean. Ok, so the roads on St. Barts are TINY. So narrow. And winding! If I could compare them to anything I'd say that it's like driving on the Pacific Coast Highway, only half the width, more hairpin turns and a lot steeper, with a speed limit of 30 km per hour (18.6 mph) but most people want to go double that. I realized halfway to St. Jean that I must have gotten a lot more sun than I had thought (I put on spf 8 tanning oil, I usually wear no more than spf 4 at home, if anything) because my arms felt like they were on fire with the top down.

Got to St. Jeans, had lunch at Nikki Beach. I ordered the Seaweed Salad and Tuna Tartar, Brian got the Mozzarella, Tomato and Proscuitto Salad and the Lobster and Crab Spring Rolls. Everything was surprisingly good since I thought Nikki Beach was a cool, trendy place but figured the restaurant was subpar. Definitely noteworthy! I ordered the sorbet trio (also figured out on this trip that when it's hot outside, I love sorbet!) and Bri ordered the Caramel Ice Cream with Nutella and Banana...he loved it. Waitress gave us a whole bottle of Sex on the Beach, on her! So nice! Love Nikki Beach!

Something interesting I realized about St. Jean: even though nudity is outlawed in St. Barts, and Saline Beach is supposed to be the only beach where nudity is accepted, the European tourists in St. Jean don't seem to know that. I saw SO MANY BOOBS. Most of which I (as well as probably everyone else there) never want to think about ever again. I don't want to sound like a prude American or anything but really, I don't need to see fat old women topless while I eat my lunch. No thanks.

After lunch we drove around the island (SO SCARY) and made our way back to the hotel. Made dinner reservations at Do Brazil and hung around the hotel looking up fun things to do while here. Mapped out our route to Do Brazil (it is in Gustavia on the opposite side of the island) and left for dinner. This was my first time driving on the island at night. It was absolutely terrifying. I am a New York driver so I'm used to crazy cabs, narrowly avoiding accidents and psychopathic drivers, but NONE of those things prepared me for driving at night on St. Barts. First of all, there are barely any street lights or road signs. There are road closures, street repairs, and ditches everywhere, hardly any guardrails on steep turns. At one point we came around a blind curve and practically ran into a gathering of locals who were hanging on the side of the road, then saw a few of them on scooters coming up on us about a mile down the road. I was convinced they were going to jack us for our rental car but Brian insisted it was a pretty safe island. Still, I didn't take his word for it. Insane. Had a huge panic attack but eventually made it to dinner. Do Brazil is right on Shell Beach and is very pretty. Most dining in St. Barts is outside so we sat on the patio overlooking the beach. We were brought hummus Amuses-Bouche (they love that here!) and drinks, I ordered the Prix Fix menu: an asparagus shooter (which I never received), grilled eggplant and other mixed vegetables, scallops with hazelnut risotta as the entree and grilled pineapple and vanilla bean ice cream (glace) for dessert. Brian ordered the plantain and prawn tempura with spicy chili sauce, and some sort of fish burger that he said was "delicious. It was crazy." He ordered this dessert, oh my god, strawberry ice cream sandwiched in a giant macaron, which he said he ordered with me in mind. Aww. Speaking of macarons, I'm really surprised I haven't had any since arriving. There is plenty of time left...

All dinner I was very anxious about driving back to the hotel...seriously, I can't stress enough how terrifying it is to drive on St. Barts, but we made it home in one piece. Again we were so tired that we went to bed by 11pm.

Wedding down, Honeymoon to go. Day 1.

Our wedding was this past Saturday, June 11th, and was literally the best day of my life. It went without a flaw (I had read an article that at least 3 things would go wrong and to just expect it...), everything was beautiful and everyone had a great time. Success! More on that at a later date.

I had meant to buy a travel journal before our honeymoon but with all the chaos of planning a wedding, I completely forgot. I will be keeping track of the day to day events here so I can write them down later. We left first thing Sunday morning for our honeymoon to St. Barts. After having a few drinks Saturday night I was kind of a zombie the next morning and I still had to pack. I made the car service sit outside my apt. for 20 minutes while I scrambled around but thankfully didn't forget anything important. Got anxiety on the plane (nothing new) so I took a Xanax for the first time in like 8 years (I learned how to deal with my anxiety on my own but certain situations, plane rides being one of them, take me to that next level where I can't even handle it) and it helped tremendously. I calmed down enough to stop freaking out and finally fell asleep, waking up in St. Maarten. We transferred to a puddle-jumper (minor baggage transfer issue but it worked out) and were in St. Barts 15 minutes later.

This is our first time here and it's very exciting! David from our hotel picked us up at the airport and gave us some important island info on the way back to our hotel. We're staying at Hotel Le Toiny, which is absolutely gorgeous. It's not on the beach but we have our own pool right outside of our door on the porch and insane views of the hills and ocean. They had champagne, fruit and coconut cake waiting for us when we got to our room which was perfect, it gave us a chance to sit and chill and just take it all in. We unpacked, then got ready for dinner at the hotel's restaurant, Le Gaiac, which is supposedly one of the best restaurants on St. Barts. In NY, French food is definitely not our go-to when it comes to choosing restaurants, but when in St. Barts...

This trip has definitely opened our eyes because the food here is DELICIOUS. We had an amuse-bouche of tomato gazpacho in a shot glass with a straw and some sort of gelee on a cracker. Very good. For an appetizer I ordered the Mahi Mahi ceviche which I'd never had before...so good, I shared with Brian and we devoured it. He got the crab meat and avocado which was served over some sort of tomato, also delicious. They gave us a passion fruit ice in between which I really wish was on the dessert menu because I would have ordered it. As an entree I ordered the carrot ravioli with ginger, Brian ordered a whole local lobster that they had freshly caught. Both were amazing, we were in awe of how good the food was. For dessert we ordered the sorbet quartet and the ice cream quartet. I had the most unusual and incredible sorbet...pineapple and basil. I could eat this all day, every day. The bill came, our first of the trip, and all I can say that the dollar-to-euro exchange rate is not friendly to Americans! Oh well, we only get one honeymoon!

We went back to the hotel and were so surprised to see that they turned down our bed while we were at dinner. Definitely a 5-star hotel, I've never had that kind of service anywhere. We were so exhausted from the wedding, our traveling and suffering from a slight food coma due to dinner that we went straight to bed. At 10:30pm. Unheard of for us!

Vera = love!

Ok so I know I'm getting married in a little more than a month. And I have the most perfect wedding dress that I love. If none of that were true, however, I would be going crazy trying to find this dress! I am so in love with it! I always thought I wanted a white dress but this is the first non-white dress that I've seriously lost it over. I am in love with the shape of it...the fitted bodice with the asymmetrical neckline and the flowy, goddess-like bottom. Ugh, this is the first dress that I like as much as, if not more than, the dress I currently have. Why do I have to read bridal blogs??

Vera Wang Spring/Summer 2012.

Requisite "Stuff I NEED for the summer" post!

I love the summer. LOVE. And what's not to love? Sun, tan skin that's blemish-free thanks to the sun, warm weekends spent in the park or just walking around enjoying being OUTSIDE, free-flowing clothes that don't make you feel like the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man (or the tire guy from the Michelin commercials), gardening (and if you don't garden, enjoying all the fresh produce that the warm weather allows us to have locally), the beach and running around in the waves, I can go on and on! It is my favorite season and unfortunately the shitty New York climate shortens it to a mere 3 months. I also love my city, though, so I will take what I can get (and when all else fails, I can take a mid-winter breather in South Beach and justify it by claiming it's solely to visit my parents). Every year I get so excited for the roll out of summer clothing and accessories because it's how I wish I could dress all year long! Here aresomethings that I HAVE TO have (or, in some cases, things I've already bought!):

Wave Break dress, Free People, $98

Bought this in grey. I want to wear it as a dress, not just as a cover-up, but I'm still trying to figure out the bra situation.

Beaded Geometry Bag, Anthropologie, $228

LOVE. Why is this back-ordered until 5/16!?

Jayde Boyfriend Shorts, True Religion, $176

Everyone needs a good pair of cut-offs! Not necessarily these but I like the length.

Tye Dye to the Max dress, Free People, $168

I have been obsessed with this dress since I first saw it, unfortunately I am 5'2" and I don't think the material is that hem-able.

Haleigh dress, Dolce Vita, $242

So, I guess I have a hippy/Mexican/tribal pattern theme going here. Whatever! Wish this weren't $242.

Nyle sandals, DV by Dolce Vita, $68

Fun beaded flat sandals.

Dipped Shrunken Sweatshirt, WILT, $127

I love light-weight comfy sweatshirts for cool summer nights.

Slinky Yarn Mott Street Pullover, LA Made, $92

More comfy-ness.

Virgo Dress, LA Made, $79

Effortless, throw-it-on-and-go dress. I like that it's racerback, too.

Fernanda Wedge, Juicy Couture, $150

So I don't like Juicy usually at all, but these are really cute. I love espadrilles and I like the black and natural colors woven together, it's a little different.

Horoscope Tote Bag, M Missoni, $29

Fun tote bag for the beach, plus it rolls up small so it can fit in your regular bag.

My life.

Complete with pizza & pikachu, this is the story of my life.

I want to be the girl with the most cake.

A couple of weeks ago we had our cake tasting for our wedding cake. To be honest, I was looking forward to this more than any other pre-wedding happening. I had contacted Betsy from Nine Cakes because 1. she works mainly with buttercream frosting, and 2., because her cakes look like this:

So we had been emailing about cake flavors and icing flavors, we were going to be tasting some hazelnut frosting, some green tea frosting, mocha frosting, peanut butter frosting, almond cake, chocolate cake...god I can't even type all of this without getting insanely hungry. Basically, I imagined that she would be putting heaven on plates and serving it to us. Which, luckily, is exactly what she did. It was insane. She even threw in a surprise flavor, caramel buttercream with sea salt, which sounds weird but was the most perfect combination of salty&sweet I've ever had. That with the almond cake was my favorite, by far. Brian of course loved the chocolate cake with peanut butter buttercream, which we all knew would be his favorite before we even tried it. I almost wish it weren't such an easy decision so we would've had to eat more and more cake before we could figure it out.

So, the cake part is done. Each "vendor" (look at me, I'm so official now, I know all the wedding terminology) we get squared away reduces my stress levels by, like, a lot. We're meeting with, who will hopefully be, our photographer next weekend. I have more florists to call since the one I had been waiting to hear back from is "not available" (which I think is her polite way of saying she doesn't want to work with us, I do know exactly what flowers I want so I think I might have smothered her artistic creativity a little). So after that I guess it leaves the DJ/band and ummm I think that's it? Oh and an officiant (another fancy wedding term...look at me). I just remembered today that we need to get our marriage license, too.

New Favorite Song

I don't know how I slept on this song, but "I Love U So" by Cassius is so good!

Does this mean I'm a Gleek?

Ok, let me start off by saying that I'm not a fan of Glee. Bri and I watched it once to see what it was all about, actually we only made it through about 15 minutes, and were left completely confused. Is it a sitcom or a musical? Is it supposed to be serious or funny? I have no idea. I don't get it.

Sephora and O.P.I. did a good job with these nail polishes, though. I don't really know what they have to do with Glee but whatever. I like them.

"I Miss Blogging" somehow became "So I'm Planning my Wedding..."

I can't believe I haven't blogged since September! Tisk tisk, self. I need this. I have to release everything going on "up there" into print and then read it over and over and obsess over it. Otherwise the past is a total blur and I have no documentation of where I have been and how far I've come.

Anyway, so much is going on! What most people have been asking about lately is how my wedding planning is going, which is weird, but good, because I've had to talk about it so much and it's actually making me more excited. I guess the most notable update is that I'm now planning my wedding sans full-service wedding planner. Which is insane because when I go back and read this post I can't even believe it turned out like this. I don't even know where to start with that story. I guess I shouldn't have mentioned this first, since now I'm going to go on a total wedding rant, but whatever.

I don't even know where to start with this story. She started not being as amazing and proficient as she claimed to be almost immediately. She wouldn't be in touch for weeks (almost full months) at a time, she would take weeks to write back to emails (and sometimes would only write back after I emailed again saying, "Hey, yeah, so, I emailed you over a week ago..."), so I started getting stressed about that. Oh, and that monthly to-do list that I was so excited about? Never received even one! I got more stressed when I went to buy my dress and everyone who helped me kept saying that I needed to find a venue really soon. Then four months had passed and we still hadn't gone to look at a single venue. When she finally made appointments for us I had to look at venues on my own because she was busy/sick/etc. (not part of the contract). When I went to one venue, they had canceled my appointment with her and she had never told me. That was really awkward because I was literally walking through a FUBU photoshoot to check out the space. The girl showing me the place and I both had no idea that FUBU was even a brand anymore, but they are, and it happened.

That night I emailed my planner to tell her I fell in love with a space and we wanted to book it. She started the email with, and I quote, "We have a bit of a miscommunication I need to clear up:" and went on to tell me that on the date of my wedding, the date that she was sending me on venue appointments regarding, the date that we had been discussing since August, she was planning another wedding that had been booked before she even met me. My head pretty much exploded. She offered me her assistant, who I didn't even know existed, and when I declined she said, and I quote again, "I wish you much luck in your wedding planning." AND. She refused to give me my 50% deposit back. Livid doesn't even begin to describe how I felt. I still don't even have the words for how I much I despise her. I've calmed down since then (this was at the end of November), though, and realized that court is there for just this reason.

It was honestly a blessing in disguise because now I'm working with two girls who are AWESOME. I ended up contacting the venue that I loved on my own and booking it anyway. The woman who runs the space (it's called Smack Mellon) put me in touch with them. Anna and Elizabeth from Just About Married are like fairy god-planners. They are so much like us! They only offer day-of planning so I have to be way more hands on, but I'm loving it. They have referred me to so many great vendors (and great people!) so far. Yesterday we went for our tasting at Three Brothers Butcher BBQ, which doesn't sound like a classy wedding caterer, but they are! They're catering company is called CaraLeo Catering and they are incredible. I can't even believe the meal I had yesterday. I'm literally still full. The menu and the way they cook is all that we wanted and more. We didn't want fancy small plates with puff pastries and pate or anything like that, just simple, good food that has a definite Italian style. I can't wait to see their proposal, I would LOVE to have them as our caterers. We brought some of their BBQ stuff (wings and ribs) to our friends' football party afterward and everyone said that they're so stoked for our wedding. Nice! Anddddd I just made an appointment today for a wedding cake tasting! Look at me, I can work 6 days a week AND plan a wedding. I'm a:


So, now we have the date, the venue, hopefully the caterer, hopefully the cake, I have my dress, things are falling into place and it's good.

This was supposed to be a life post, not a wedding post. I don't want to become one of "thoooose people" who only talk about their weddings. WELL, people who post pictures of their babies all over facebook ARE worse, but still...don't want to even be comparable. I promise to space out the wedding updates from now on so it doesn't get gross.