great proposal antics

This is great. Thought YOUR fiance was nervous proposing to you? Nothing compares to the nervousness of lying to an immigration officer and then getting put in a holding room at the border! I love, love, love the letter this guy pre-printed, just for that situation:
That's some pretty good planning: assuming there's a high enough risk of getting caught at the border that you create documentation to explain your sketchiness, yet still being unable to play it cool enough at the border that you DON'T raise suspicions and get caught. Hmm.

By the way, there are 9 months until our wedding. Two more need to pass before I can apply to be a Weddingbee. Well, maybe just one more, assuming a month of review, rejection, and re-application. Hurry up, already!

Dreams/Nightmares

I woke up this morning in the middle of a really weird dream. We were at my friend Jamie's wedding, but instead of the fancy, black-tie-requested affair that it was, in my dream it was a little more informal -- like most other weddings I've been to, not that it wasn't formal at all. I wasn't a bridesmaid, and for some reason I didn't think that was weird, especially given that in real life I was a bridesmaid, and Eric and I got seated at a table with all of Jamie's friends from when she lived in Ohio -- which has never happened in real life.

Then the DJ started doing his thing, and his thing turned out to be this weird dinner theater stuff, where the whole bridal party was enacting a murder scene or something. I think the premise was that one of the bridesmaids had shot Jamie, and now the place was on fire and a real fire engine even showed up. Except throughout these events, my attitude was, "Oh my god, this DJ is so cheesy and lame. I guess I give him props for actually getting a real fire engine to show up, but this is so obviously all faked."

I don't know what happened next, because I woke up. Definitely a weird dream, and one of those dreams where in the dream, you know it's weird.

The one interesting thing about the dream was the food. The dinner was a buffet, and Eric and I were among the first to get our food. The buffet was a whole series of dishes that had nothing to do with each other but that I knew were Jamie's favorite things (they were dream-Jamie's favorites, anyway). Lots of Indian food (served on too-small platters with too-large serving utensils), and then a huge plate of barbecue ribs, and a bunch of stuff on a ghetto candy buffet
(like, it looked like a kid dumped out his Halloween bag on the table, not one of those nice buffets everyone's doing now). My reaction was positive -- "Oh look, these are all of Jamie's favorite foods! How nice!" even though the food was all pretty unconnected to each other and would have made for a weird dinner.

Maybe it's a sign? We're in the middle stages of picking a caterer and finalizing our wedding menu, so maybe my subconscious wants me to stop figuring out which vegetables go with seared tuna and just serve naan and ribs with dim sum and snow crab legs with drawn butter. Now that's an idea.
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I don't think I ever shared my first wedding nightmare with you. It happened about a month ago, and it was one of those totally vivid dreams where everything is REAL (and usually going badly) and there is nothing you can do about it. In the dream, it was my wedding day, only it was actually that same day in July that I was having the dream -- in other words, I had to go ahead with the wedding with only whatever planning had gotten done up to that point. So we had a place and a photographer, and that was about it. For some reason, I wasn't freaking out about the fact that we had no caterer and I can't remember what the wedding dress situation was, but my #1 concern was that my hair was all messed up. [I often sleep with my hair in a loose pony tail to keep it out of my face at night] and I apparently had to get married with my hair looking the way it did at that very moment, because there were no bobby pins or curling irons or anything to be found. So it was going to be messy, half-pony tail half-pull-through-bun, with pieces sticking out everywhere. It was quite frustrating.

So I guess I've passed a milestone of some sort, where the wedding planning anxiety, though still very mild, is important enough to invade my subconscious while I sleep. These are the only two wedding dreams I've had so far, and as long as they keep occurring no more than once a month, I can handle it. Maybe I should pay attention to my subconscious, though, and finish with the catering plans and figure out what I'm going to do with my hair.

Purple dresses, continued

So you remember my story of the purple bridesmaid dresses, right?

Well, look what showed up in my inbox today:


Ann Taylor has new purple dresses, in a color called concord grape. The picture of the color looks great, but the name worries me, because colors called "grape" are usually a very true purple, and I'm looking for more of an eggplant. But still, I think they're worth a stop into Ann Taylor after I finish my rotation next week.

Unfortunately, they only have those two styles shown in the ad in that purple color, but they also have dresses in a color called "sangria purple," which looks more pinkish, but might be all right in person:



The biggest problem is the price. At $198, I'm not a huge fan. Still, I'll probably go check them out, just for research purposes...

Oh yeah, and the new fall J. Crew purple that came out this month, "plum"? It's a very bright purple.



Still, it might look OK in person. You never can tell. J Crew doesn't carry their special occasions in stores, though; I'd have to order it to be 100% sure, and I'm probably not going to bother.

So Ann Taylor looks promising in the color category, but not so much in the price or selection category, while Mori Lee remains in the lead with color, style selection, and price. We're actually beginning to get to a point where it's prudent to start thinking about bridesmaid dresses for real, so I guess decisions are in order.

Product endorsement: Seaweed Mattifying Day Cream

I have oily skin. It's time I came right out and admitted it, and I mean admitted it to myself. I tend to deny basic facts about my body, for who knows what reasons. I used to pretend that I had dry face skin, so I would buy heavy-duty moisturizers. What did that do? Just kept me oily all day long and give me more breakouts. One mental breakthrough came a few months ago, when I went to buy a new bottle of Clinique yellow lotion, and the salesperson suggested I try the then-new yellow gel, instead. I love it, and I use it every night after washing my face. I still produce oil, but the gel doesn't add any extra, which is nice. So that was a big moment in my beauty routine.

However, my face still gets very oily throughout the day, so much so that if I use those oil-blotting papers at any given time, I have to use at least two or three to make my face shine-free. In the process of being oily all day, my makeup just falls off my face, so by the end of the day, I look completely makeup-less (except for my eyes, because of an awesome eyeshadow base I discovered a few months ago and now use religiously). Not good. Especially not when thinking about keeping my wedding makeup on all day next May.

However, a few weeks ago I started looking into mattifying products that would keep me oil-free throughout the day, and I found a great one. It's the Body Shop's seaweed mattifying day cream, and it's great! I wash my face in the morning, then apply the cream, and let it dry (which happens very quickly). I then go ahead and put on my trusty Oil of Olay moisturizer with SPF 15 (SPF is a must, throughout the year, and I like this one because it doesn't smell too much like sunscreen).
(The Body Shop has an SPF version of the mattifying cream, but I figured I would try things this way first, since I had a brand new bottle of the Oil of Olay lotion anyway, and so far I'm satisfied with how things are turning out.)

Then I put on my makeup, Bare Escentuals' i.d. Bare Minerals, as usual. At the end of the day, I now look pretty much the same as I did when I walked out the door that morning! The seaweed cream somehow keeps you from producing as much oil, or else it soaks it up if you do produce it, or something like that. On days that are quite sweaty, like when I have to walk a few blocks to catch the bus, I do still get a little oily, but one oil blotting paper takes care of that and my makeup still stays on.

Overall, I'm very happy with this seaweed stuff, and it is definitely going to be in my beauty arsenal on the day of the wedding!

Happy Engageiversary!

It's a holiday. Really.

One year ago Monday, we got engaged! (I was planning to post this on Monday, but that's how busy I've been this week.)

It's hard to believe, and the year has flown by. Only 9 months to go!

Craigslist

You most likely know about the beauty of Craigslist. You, like me, might look for cheap-o vendors in the "services" section. You might scroll through the "for sale" section to see if there's anything that strikes your fancy -- vases, decorations, wedding dresses, or unwanted wedding/engagement rings. Or, you might just type "wedding" into the search box and see what pops up. It's fun; I'm sure you know.

But what if you're looking for a particular item, and you've exhausted all of your local search options (Craigslist, consignment shops, yard sales, etc) with no luck? You're pretty sure someone, somewhere, is selling what you're looking for, but you don't know how to find them, short of hitting every single Craigslist site out there.

Enter: Google.

I love you, Google.

First, Google "craigslist." The first link it returns is the one you want. Below it, you'll see hotlinks to some of the biggest/most popular Craigslist locations. Below that, you'll see another search box, that says, "Search craigslist.org."


Use that search box to type in your query. Say, for instance, you're looking for paper lanterns; they're light, they're cheap to ship, and they're likely to be resold after other brides use them in their weddings (yes, they're very trendy right now, but that's not stopping me from using them). Just type in "paper lantern" -- everything that comes back will be from a Craigslist posting. And if, for some reason, you are picky about where it comes from, the first part of each URL it returns will be the host city. I got 148 hits back.

Not bad!

And if you're a Google fiend and like search shortcuts, here's the one you want:

search term site:craigslist.org (italics not necessary, of course)

A Craigslist-specific search every time!