One Year Anniversary

Today is our one year anniversary! Hard to believe its been a whole year since our wedding -- and what a wonderful busy year it's been!

Of course I'm going to spend my whole anniversary on a plane getting home, so we'll have to celebrate it later. I'm in the Munich airport now after a quick flight from Basel and will be back in the SF airport around 8pm tonight if all continues as planned. It was a really great trip but I will be very very glad to get back home!

Anniversary

Its our 2 year anniversary today of our first date. We went out to dinner last night to celebrate at the restaurant we went to Aug 20, 2004, Maurizio's (like we did last year as well.)

It was a perfect summer day yesterday. We rode our bikes to the library and the farmer's market (where we stocked up on stawberries, blackberries, rhasberries and herbs for the garden -- including catnip! -- and we even saw someone we knew at the market!) Small delay on the way home at the bike store to get a flat tire repaired (luckily its on the way home anyway), then I finshed off Francesca Lia Block's wonderful new book Ruby and we watch A Knights Tale on TV before heading off to our dinner out. Lovely Saturday.

Anniversary

Its our 2 year anniversary today of our first date. We went out to dinner last night to celebrate at the restaurant we went to Aug 20, 2004, Maurizio's (like we did last year as well.)

It was a perfect summer day yesterday. We rode our bikes to the library and the farmer's market (where we stocked up on stawberries, blackberries, rhasberries and herbs for the garden -- including catnip! -- and we even saw someone we knew at the market!) Small delay on the way home at the bike store to get a flat tire repaired (luckily its on the way home anyway), then I finshed off Francesca Lia Block's wonderful new book Ruby and we watch A Knights Tale on TV before heading off to our dinner out. Lovely Saturday.

4th of July Party

Thank you to Martine and Hussein for throwing such a lovely party to help us get some of our West Coast friends and colleagues together as a late wedding celebration. Here's a few photos:

Wedding Video

For those of you who really want to see, there's a short video of our wedding now available on the wedding site. The format is a bit weird since I had trouble converting from what they sent me, but hopefully at least one of the links will play for most of you and not crash your browser (if you can't get it to work and you'd like to see it, let me know and I'll try again.)

... and we're married!

And in a blur it was all over and we're married! Unfortunately we'll have to wait to post pictures until people send them to me (since I forgot to get any on my camera). The live-blogging didn't work out, but otherwise everything was pretty much picture perfect! Thank you to everyone who came or who sent happy wishes to us!

The Big Day!

We're getting married today!!! To spare those of you who don't actually know me the blow-by-blow, some wedding blogging will be moved over to our wedding website and I'll post a summary of photos and things here when we get back from our honeymoon!

Rehearsal Dinner

Saturday night Dad and Jane and Shimon hosted a lovely rehearsal dinner at the Spyglass Restaurant.

More photos from the rehearsal dinner to come... here are some from Uncle Doug:

Our Moms opening their presents:

Shachar's sister and mother making a speech

I made a short speech _IN HEBREW_ to introduce my family to everyone

Great shot of Brian and Karen

Cookies

With a lot of help from Carrie, Heather, Jennifer, Meredith, Titania, Caroline, Alexis and more, we made dozen and dozens of cookies today for tomorrow's table assignments. Mostly, I wanted to make cookies with my friends and this seemed like a very good excuse (and more my style than a bachelorette party!)

(more pictures later)

Licensed

We stopped by town hall this morning and got our license!

Weather Update

Since we're now within the scope of the ten-day forecast, a personalized wedding weather update came today

At least it's going to be an inside wedding...

Shower!

The wonderful people I work with threw me a shower today after lunch. They apparently had a great time sneaking around planning it.

Two really yummy cakes -- one chocolate and one strawberry:

In the paper

Mom submitted our engagement notice (written by Carrie H. of course) to the local paper... and it was there in Wednesday's edition with some pretty big edits. Sadly they didn't give Mom or Bill the full bio's we wrote for them -- Bill's even mentioned the Concours and how it raises money for Westport-based Save the Children.

His and Hers

Mom also sent along this shirt and sweatshirt -- I assume you can tell which one is for which of us...

Getting Ready

So the wedding is 2 weeks from today... there are about a million little things left to do but we're feeling mostly on top of things (mostly thanks to Mom being so good at all of this!) We're heading back East next Friday for a week of last minute things like getting the license (though the town website seems to be down so we'll have to fill out the form there), following up with a few folks who haven't RSVPed yet, making place cards, greeting out of town relatives (including about-to-be in-laws), and other things that I'm avoiding thinking about until I'm there.

First one last week of work before we go -- including an all-day conference I'm attending on Tuesday, home inspectors Wednesday, the last in this set of Hebrew classes, a shower at work Thursday (they are SO sweet!!), various meetings and appointments and a long list of errands (better return all those library books before we go...)

Shower!

The wonderful people I work with threw me a shower today after lunch. They apparently had a great time sneaking around planning it.

Two really yummy cakes -- one chocolate and one strawberry:

Wedding Weather Page

Mom sent a link to the Weather Channel's customized wedding weather page.

Million For Marriage

A reminder as I get ready for the wedding that there's still work to be done to support the right of every American to marry, including gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender couples.

It is a tradition to make giving to charity (Tzedakah) a part of one's wedding and in addition to an environmental group (Sierra Club) and a literacy group (First Book), I will be supporting the Human Rights Campaign Fund to support those fighting for expanded marriage rights. (we even registered for charitable donations to these group through the i do network)

Wedding Tid Bits

Testing out a new database and learned a couple of interesting tidbits about Israeli weddings. These are from an article by Rebecca L. Torstrick on "Israel: Marriage" from Daily Life Online.

Some tidbits:

"Weddings can take place on any day other than Shabbat, a festival, a day of public mourning, or during the period between Pesach and Shavu’ot. They can be performed anywhere. Most Israeli couples choose to hire wedding halls or hotel banquet rooms, a few others may use synagogues, and still others have weddings outdoors in garden settings. Wedding invitations are distributed by hand to family members and mailed to other guests. Guests are not expected to respond, so invitations may arrive as close as a week before the event. It is not uncommon for 300 or more guests to be invited to the wedding. A wedding is a major event in Israeli society, and families spend considerable sums of money on them.

In the typical lavish wedding, the bride’s gown is rented and her hair and makeup are professionally done before the wedding. Most couples have a professional make a wedding video. Prior to the actual ceremony, couples in their wedding garb often pose in various key locations around town. The actual wedding and reception are then added to the video later to produce a professional film. On the wedding day, the families of the couple form a receiving line at the wedding location to greet guests..."

6 weeks

6 weeks from today we're getting married!

Also, special congratulations today to both Hanna and BobbiLynn whose baby showers I'm having to miss.

Anniversary

Happy 1 year anniversary to us. We went back to Maurizio's, the restaurant we had our first date at one year ago today.

Today Throws a Wedding

Aunt Judy wrote to suggest I apply to the Today Throws a Wedding. Of course, I am a HUGE fan of the segment -- Lisa and I have been watching and comparing notes each week every summer that it has aired. But sadly, we are not eligible to apply because of the requirement that both parties have valid United States passports. It certainly would have been a wonderful way to deal with the wedding planning though... and I'll certainly be watching it!

Big News!

I was trying very hard to keep this a secret until I was home in CT Thursday in front of a large chunk of my family, but I'm absolutely bursting to tell so I'm just going to jump in right here and tell you all at once. (I'm at work until 9pm tonight, so there's no point in calling until tomorrow if you have a reaction that isn't fit to comment here). :)

Shachar proposed.
I said yes (of course!)
and we're engaged.

But I don't have answers yet to any of the other questions you're likely to ask.

I'm very very very very very very very happy and excited.

Love you all -

-emily

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