Engagement Announcement

Apparently we are officially engaged online ... check out the annoucement in the Jewish Community Voice here.

Save the date

So if you are reading this blog, you have probably already gotten your save the date card, but if you haven't, or if you misplace it or whatever, here is all the information contained in the missive, it said that you should reserve the weekend of May 29th through 31st, 2009 because that is the weekend we are getting married!!!

The events of the weekend will focus around the Tarrytown House, which is located at 49 East Sunnyside Lane, Tarrytown, NY, 10591. You can call for reservations at 914-591-3148 and use the code 2A5491 to get the preferred rate of 149$ per night for Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

The wedding ceremony and reception will be Sunday May 31st from 11 am to 5 pm.

West Coast Engagement Party

We will be having another engagement party .... look, that is what happens when you are a bi-coastal couple two very loving sets of parents who are pictured to the right, left and below ... aren't they great:) Anyway, this time the party is at Alahas cafe in Redwood City on Saturday November 30th, 2008 from 3 pm - 6 pm. All the details are on the evite that my parents sent out. Perhaps we will be hanging out somewhere after the engagement party as well, although that is to far in the future for me to be able to figure out. We are aware that we could not fit everybody into the place, so we want you to know that we will be in the Bay Area from November 24th to December 1st, to celebrate Thanksgiving, go the engagement party and do a bunch of other wedding business (its honestly amazing how much business there is involving a single day of ones life), but we would love to see people if we can find a way to fit everyone in ...

Also, Aviva and I and any of our friends who are interested will most likely be going out after the party, so if you are interested in that let me know ...

Engagement Photos

Last weekend, Aviva and I went to the New York botanical gardens by our house to take some engagement photos as kind of a warm up for the wedding photographers we are going to use at the wedding next May. Honestly, I thought that the idea of engagement photos was a little crazy, but the photographers said that they wanted to make sure to get our skin tones right and have some practice shooting us before the wedding. I mean they are the professionals and we want the wedding photos to look great, so if this helps, its great. So the photographers, Sarah and Steve Langdon (you can look at the other excellent work of Langdon photography at their blog here), came up and despite the killer heat (93, felt like 100 with humidity) we went to the Bronx Botanical garden to take some pictures. I have to say it was a fantastic experience.

Sarah and Steve were awesome and fun and we got to wander through a lot of the gardens, including my favorite area, the ornamental conifers section. They made us feel really comfortable about taking the pictures and we had a lot of fun with the experience, plus we had brought some pineapple, cookies, breads and cheese and were able to have a nice picnic in the garden. The whole shoot only took about 2.5 hours, and if not for the heat we probably would have hung out longer because it was so much fun. When we got back to the house, they helped me out with the computer editing of some of my own photos, as they knew a lot more about photoshop than I, and then they left for Brooklyn. A really great time, and now that some of the pictures are up, you can see the excellent photos here.

East Coast Engagement Party

Last weekend, Aviva and I went down to her parents house in Cherry Hill for the first of what may be several engagement parties. We weren't going to have one, but once we realized that this was a great way to get our families together and once that thought came up the idea just seemed better and better. Plus we would get to spend time with Dylan, Aviva's adorable nephew, something that always gives us both a smile.

Tanya and Bucky, Aviva's parents, were incredibly generous and offered to let us bring everyone together at their house. After a bit of negotiation about the date, we decided that the end of May, exactly 1 year before our wedding, was a great time to get together.

The whole weekend was fantastic. We started on Friday night, meeting my Aunt Debbie at the Met for a lecture by Oliver Sacks called the Minds' Eye. It was great, kind of a "fireside chat" between Dr. Sacks and some interviewer from NPR ... if you can call a conversation on a stage in the Met in front of a large crowd a chat. They discussed what it was like for Dr. Sacks to have lost his stereo vision due to a tumor in his left eye, it was really fascinating ... more so because Aviva has recently taken several classes on vision at Ferkauf and was able to answer many of our questions afterwards.

We dropped Debbie off downtown and headed back to Cherry Hill, arriving late and then getting up early the next day. My dad and Peg had flown in from California because they are awesome and we spent the day hanging out. Aviva and Peg went wedding accessory shopping while my dad and I just kind of hung out at the house, and then everyone got together for a family dinner in the evening ... Aviva's mom Tanya made breast of veal, it was delicious, she is such an excellent chef ... and everyone had a wonderful time. I even got a picture of Papa Stranger smiling, trust me, a rarity. But the meal was very heavy and soon after such a rich dinner everyone was tired and it was quickly called a night, though I stayed up to wait for my friends Scott and Michele who were coming in from DC. they arrived quite late, around midnight, with their daughter Calla, and Scott and I walked Calla around the block until around 130 am when she fell asleep.

I was really excited about Sunday and did not sleep all that well, and when we got up around 0830 the caterers were already getting set up, so Scott, Michele, Aviva and I took Calla and Aviva's nephew Dylan to a nearby park for a while. Watching the kids run around on the structure, play on the swings and coast down the slides was great. After a good amount of play, we got back to Aviva's parents place and changed quickly. Aviva got into a gorgeous yellow dress (which Laurie would later show up mimicking), and I put on a rumpled green short sleeve button up. When we came downstairs, I walked into the living room to say hello to Charlotte, Aviva's grandmother, and this conversation occurred,

Charlotte, "Are you going to change?"

PJ, "I already did."

Charlotte, "But don't you want to look at least a little nice, so that you can match Aviva?"

Variants of this conversation were repeated by various people throughout the day ... when my cousin Amanda came in she said, "I told Alex [her husband] that you would be wearing shorts, but I thought you might at least iron your shirt." It was my party (partially at least) and I figured I could wear what I wanted to, but I have to admit, the ladies looked much nicer than I did :)

The day was incredible. People I love just kept showing up, family fromNew York, and friends and parents, it was so awesome. The party was catered and the food was great, but the real pleasure was the company. Dave and Em were in town from California, my aunts, uncles and cousins from New York, my parents ... To see all these people who I care about so much in the same place, interacting with each other, talking and laughing and enjoying themselves together, it was amazing. And to see them all interacting with Aviva's family, my new family, well ... the joy of it was beyond words. As far as I can tell, everyone had an absolute blast. It was so much fun, talking with everyone ... almost every time I turned around, there was someone else to talk with who I couldn't wait to chat with.I know Aviva did, and that I did as well.

The party was catered, and the food was delicious. Bagels and all sorts of smoked fish, veggies, wraps, omelette bar and fabulous deserts ... everyone loved it. There had been minor issues with the drinks, as the kosher catering company required a special kind of wine (boiled grapes, mulvushel wine, quite new for me), but other than the wine the booze was also excellent. Bucky outdid himself, as usual, and quite a number of excellent scotches, tequilas, rums and other drinks were had downstairs at the bar in the basement. And the service was excellent, even a bit too excellent, as the head caterer followed me around all day picking up my plates and glasses and refilling them as soon as I put them down, a tad creepy ...

The day seemed to end almost as soon as it started. As people started to drift out, and the crowd thinned down, Aviva and I ended up sitting in the backyard with Dave, Em, and a bunch of Aviva's friends. After a while, as people started to fade out, Em took off and I drove Dave back to the trains station so he could get back to DC. When I got back to Aviva's most everyone was gone, so Aviva and I said our goodbyes, loaded up the car and headed back to New York.

Fantastic weekend.

Where we are getting married

So last Saturday Aviva and I got up bright and early (for a Saturday), ate some breakfast and headed north to check out some places we thought we might want to hold the wedding. One of my first comments to Aviva when she said that we should do this was, "Are you serious? The wedding is like 16 months away!" ... let me just say now that the amount of things I do not understand about weddings fills up more than a breadbox.

So we started looking. But because I want to keep this post relatively brief, I will not go into the details of the search, but you should all know that we spent a number of evenings pouring over bridal magazines and through The Knot and Wedding Locations and New York Weddings and god knows how many other sites. Thankfully (or not, depending on our mood at the time), we had a number of specific parameters that we wanted to meet, which helped us narrow the list quite a bit.

First off, you would be surprised at how many places in New York say that they can do Kosher weddings ... I mean I know that all the Jews in the world live here, but still, literally everywhere can do Kosher catering (now this does not actually mean that the places have Kosher kitchens, it means that you can pay A LOT extra to have a kosher caterer come in from outside and make up a good meal).

Nope, the big factor for winnowing down the locations was my strong, strong desire to have it at a location that was not a "wedding factory", and felt like it was outside the city and "among the trees." Yes, I now realize those are very vague desires, something which Aviva realized before I did (this realization subsequently drove her nuts for a while as she tried to figure out what I meant). So then we found big places, for 400+, which effectively eliminated all the castles that I was looking at (Oheka, the only castle left that holds that many guests, was so expensive that only the Rockefellers could actually get married there).

Then came the actual looking, which, fortunately enough, only took up two Saturdays and half a Sunday .... the first Saturday we looked only at places we didn't like. After an unpleasant day, we decided to go look at a place we really liked but was too small. We loved it, of course. But we decided to check out more places before modifying our wedding plans to suit the location.


But the next weekend, after looking at our favorite place again, along with a number of other places that we liked better ... we decided to go with our guts. So, next spring, we are going to be gettin' hitched at the Tarrytown House.

Registry

It begins. We have only been engaged for about 3 weeks, but already weddingness is dominating our lives.

The first thing I learned is that things are done a bit differently here on the East Coast. First, engagement parties and presents are a reality here .. this is not something I have been familiar with in the past but is apparently a big thing here. Going over to my aunts for dinner the day after we got engaged, we learned that people are going to start buying us stuff almost immediately, so registering and finding a site for the ceremony are taking first priority (we are working on that this weekend so there will be an update ...)

The registering, you'd think it would be fun to pick lots of things that people might get you as presents, but it is not as enjoyable as you might think. First, there is the whole getting over the idea that people are actually going to buy you stuff ... then there is the walking around with the gun. You know, the little scanner gun that you always see crazy people using in big department stores.

Those guns, they don't really work well. At least not at Macys. And I got tell you, it is a slow and frustrating process when every second or third scan does not work and you have to keep using a tiny keyboard that does not actually input the things that you want it too (Having said that, the gun at Crate and Barrel was much better).

And finally, there is the endless discussion that neither of you really care about, as to which antique frosted cutlery goes well with the white dragonfly china vs. the newish looking mikasa china. Or whether the aegean hand towels go better with smoke or chamois towels.

And finally, after a long day of shopping without buying anything, receiving bizarre gifts like Victorinox shopping bags (quite useful) and crystal heart-shaped bowls (not so much). And then, suddenly, thanks to the miracle of the Weddingchannel.com, you have our registry ... which we will then spend hours and hours and hours pouring over in the next 16 months, adding and removing random things over and over again ...

Update: In case you have trouble seeing the registries at weddingchannel.com, we are registered at Crate and Barrel and Macys for "normal" wedding gifts, at REI for "camping" gifts, and Amazon, for random stuff that we could not find on other sites.

Getting Engaged

In case you have not heard about how we got engaged, here is the whole scoop ....

So last November, while Aviva and I were in Cherry Hill for Thanksgiving, I grabbed her dad toward the end of the weekend, shoved him in a closet and asked him for permission to marry his daughter. He laughed, hugged me and said of course. Which is definitely a wonderful thing to hear from your future father-in-law. I had dragged him into the closet to try to keep my question on the down low, because it has been kind of assumed for a while that I will propose to Aviva and I wanted to keep some element of surprise.

Two days later Aviva walked up to me and said, "Its so sweet that you asked my Dad for permission to marry me." So much for surprise :) Not that it was going to be all that much of a surprise, while we were in California we went to Gleim Jewelers (the owner, Georgie, is a close family friend ... plus they are incredible craftsmen) and got her a ring, designed to her specifications (hey, when you are marrying someone who can make their own jewelery, you let them make the ring).

However, from that point on, the when of the asking, that was going to be my surprise. I found out the ring was finished about a week ago, and arranged to have it sent to my lab on Wednesday. Waiting for the ring to show up in the mail was agonizing, but nowhere near as stressful as having the ring and waiting to ask. Longest two days of my life, for some reason I cannot even fully articulate ... I mean, I was pretty sure she would say yes and be happy no matter how I did it, but I still slept for maybe 3 or 4 hours on both Wednesday and Thursday night, mostly laying in bed going over plans for the proposal. I made a reservation at Aureole, a really nice restaurant on the Upper East Side, for Friday at 6 and I spoke to my boss on Thursday about the plan. She was wonderful about it, encouraging me to leave early on Friday to set up the proposal.

Aviva had a conference in the city all day, so was going to be dressed up in Manhattan, so I suggested to her that I get dressed up and meet her for dinner. I also told her that I would be leaving work early on Friday to spend some time in Central Park taking pictures. I left work just before 2 pm, freshened up, changed into a suit and took the 5 down to 59th street. I was lucky, it was a beautiful day outside and rather warm, for February, at around 45 degrees. I got to the park at 4 pm, and walked around the area near the pond to find the right spot to propose.

I chose a spot just off the path, across the footbridge over the north end of the pond. It was just south of the ice rink, far enough away that I would not be proposing with to the background music of Eagle Eye Cherry, and I waiting. Aviva called around 445, and I told her how to come and meet me in the park so that I could take some pictures of us. When she got there I had her stand over by the water and pretended to set the camera for a timed picture. Then I moved behind her, and while her back was turned I knelt down and asked her to be my wife.

She didn't cry, or shriek, just giggled and smiled. And said yes.

We were both thrilled. Excited. Ecstatic. Walking around with huge, megawatt smiles. Honestly, I cannot believe I get to spend the rest of my life with this amazing woman. And incredibly, she seems to feel the same way. We are so happy.

After we got ourselves together, I packed up my camera and we agreed not to call anyone until after we ate and spent some time together. The rest of the evening passed happily. We walked over to Aureole, and had a wonderful meal, probably the best scallops I ever had. The monk fish was also spectacular, and the deserts were really excellent. Truly a wonderful restaurant. After dinner we just sat, talking, for a while, then we headed over to Madison Avenue, caught the BxM10 and headed back to the Bronx. We used our time on the bus to begin calling everyone we know, with maybe the best news I have ever had :)