A picture is worth a 1000 words

OK, I couldn't come up with 1000 words to say about this picture. I can say that I like it. I guess we clean up OK!

Another shot of us:

And my favorite photo thus far:

Just wait till I get these images into Photoshop, baby. I'm going to lose 20 lbs and Andy's going to end up with a tie that is tightened properly. And we'll make everybody's teeth whiter, just for fun.

Thank you!

The thank you notes are all done! I hope you all received your thank you notes (although, the number of types and spelling errors that have accumulated in our wedding database is astounding - no wonder some people never got back to us with RSVPs...). We deeply appreciate everybody for participating in our special day, even if you were not able to attend. If you couldn't make it, you did miss an awesome baked brie appetizer, but don't feel bad - I didn't get any of the baked brie either!

Best! Gift! Ever!

So today we had two late gifts trickle in. One was from our friends in Maryland, and it was a lovely stick blender that I've been wanting for quite a while. This gift is especially nice since we never technically got them a gift for their wedding (but don't tell them, maybe they have forgotten!). The later gift was our first cake in a Cake of the Month Club. All I can say is that this gift is 100% awesome. Cake! Every month!! Yum! The only hitch in this sweet present is the complete and utter lack of information as to who sent it. We have no idea, and if you have an idea, please let us know!

Love,
Mr & Mrs

We're back!

After our wonderful road trip through northern California, Andy and I are back in good 'ol Portland and are enjoying a few last days of relaxation before returning to work. We'll post some highlights from the honeymoon once we've uploaded photos and gotten our butts in gear (the later is the sticking point...). We'd like to have a photo sharing site where others can upload their photos of the wedding for all to see, so check back and see about more information later!

Love,
Mr & Mrs

10 -- 9 -- 8 -- 7 --....

10 days till "I do!"

Chocolate!

Some of the best spots in Portland to get a fix for your sweet tooth...

Chocolatiers:

• Cacao --414 SW 13th Avenue, 2 blocks North of Powells. The best drinking chocolate in Portland! This stuff can only be described as liquid heaven. There are regular and dark varieties, but fair warning: this stuff is so thick that a little goes a long way... www.cacaodrinkchocolate.com
  
• Sweet masterpiece Chocolate & Coffee Bar -- 922 NW Davis, in the heart of the Pearl District. This place offers traditional truffles as well as an extensive display case of cakes, pies and torts. The best thing are their hours - you can get a sweet fix anytime before midnight on the weekend. Our recommendation: the coconut bon bons. They are like huge versions of the Mounds candy bars that have that white-ish tinge, except that these are 100% delicious dark chocolate and coconut.
• Moonstruck Chocolates -- several locations including NW23rd and 608 SW Alder Street downtown. This local favorite has gone Hollywood glam, and is the only chocolatier whose products appear in the annual Acadamy Award baskets. This is a fact that I really don't care about -- what is important to me is that their truffles are always excellent. And in the cutest darn shapes! Try the spicy dark chocolate for something really unique, but if you love traditional stuff make sure to get their amazing hot chocolates with their homemade chocolate dipped marshmallows.
  

Coutdown!

We're officially in the month of the wedding, which means that my stress level is about insane. But that's OK, as I am assured that this is 100% normal for brides-to-be...

We have finally secured some details about the rehearsal dinner. It will be catered by our friend Lauren, but before you think this will be some random dinner made by a friend with a big box of pasta and chinet plates, let me assure you that Lauren is a talented and accomplished chef. I have to admit to being a little worried that our rehearsal dinner will be better than our wedding reception, but I'm confident that both will be great. Lauren is working on the menu as I type, and it looks like it should please every pallet (with the possible exception of Ted, but he doesn't like anything) including vegetarians. Her cooking is so delicious, in fact, that she has wrangled volunteers from my lab to help plate and serve the dinner with her food being the only payment. What can I say, she's that good!

We have also finalized a location. We will be holding the dinner in an old schoolroom which has been converted to my local community center. There are chalkboards on the walls, and many signs that implore you to wash your hands, so it's just like elementary school all over...

I'm excited to have these details done. I'm really looking forward to some banana chocolate chiffon cake with chocolate ganache and vanilla and chocolate whipped cream!!

Why We Love Portland: Ground Kontrol

This has to be one of the finest ways to spend an evening here in Portland. Well, if you are a nerd like myself, that is. Ground Kontrol is a classic arcade, featuring all the best of arcade games from the original Ms PacMan and Frogger to slightly newer yet still older Mortal Kombat as well as the hilarious original Dance Dance Revolution. They also have a wide selection of random pinball machines, many featuring truly awful movies (Demolition Man, point and case). And the best part? All of the machines play for a quarter or two. This means that your five dollars can go a long way, especially if you know what you are doing. Sadly, I do not. I loose right away (especially when I have no idea what is going on -- I still don't know how the Track and Field game works, despite almost two dollars worth of attempts). But it is fun even if I can't get past level one in Joust!

Ground Kontrol is a bar (albeit canned beer only), so those under 21 will have to find alternate entertainment. For a detailed listing of the games go to www.groundkontrol.com, including information on Portland's thriving pinball leauge. Who knew?

Countdown

Holy Buckets - 30 days left till the big day. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't nervous. But I'm excited!
I've added a handy countdown timer in the upper left. Mostly so I can begin hyperventilating every time I look at it, but also for your enjoyment. I can't wait to see everybody!!

Being a Wino is Fun!

Portland may be known for its fine microbrew culture (which is something I did not fully appreciate until I moved to Missouri where Bush is the highlight of brew culture), but it also offers many opportunities to try the vino experience. Not only are we located in the midst of the ever-growing Willamette Valley wine industry, we are also within driving distance of many fine Washington wineries. The closest hotbed of tasting rooms and open wineries is located along Highway 99, heading from Portland to McMinnville. Passing through Newberg and Dundee, there are dozens of local wineries that are well worth the drive. Our favorite is Sokol Blosser, which offers a mixed white and mixed red (named Evolution and M) that are some of our favorite wines. Evolution is a crisp but very smooth white mixture that we frequently use in a wine marinade for Chilean sea bass. Andy is an excellent cook, did I mention that? We gave the M bottle a try simply on its association with the winery, and I was pleasantly surprised to find it a well rounded and very fruity wine that is easy to drink. We first enjoyed it on a sunny picnic at Sauvie Island (a great Portland getaway), and the warm sun and excellent company always come to mind when we drink this wine. Other wineries that we have tasted at and enjoyed are Erath Vinyards, De Ponte Cellars (their wine tasting room is associated with an excellent restaurant), and Torii Mor Wineries. Also highly recommended are the Andrew Rich Wines and the Rex Hill Vineyards.

If you don't have time to take the scenic drive, there are many places to sample wine here in P-town. In our neighborhood, Sip D-Vine offers flights of red and white of selected vineyards which rotate weekly. For a great late night venue, try South Park (named so before the popular TV show came into existence, and in fact named after its location South of the Park blocks). It is in downtown Portland, and offers a great bar menu that includes a creme brulee that is drool-inducing. As an added bonus, you can order wines by the quarter glass, which is especially helpful if your name is Jackie and you don't handle your alcohol that well. And, if you are in the mood for good wine with a minimum of frou-frou fuss, then head to Johns Market. John's is well known as having the best beer selection in Portland, but it also carries a well selected array of wine. Since everything is scaled down and pared back to bare bones, the market saves on expense and manages to deliver cheaper bottles than many of the finer establishments in the area. Of course, John's is also well known for the worst produce selection in Portland, if not the entire Pacific Northwest. Ah well, you can't be an expert at everything...

Our favorites:
Sokol Blosser http://www.sokolblosser.com/
South Park http://www.southparkseafood.com/

Where to Stay: Hotel Modera

There is a new hotel in downtown Portland that may be a good option for the wedding. The Hotel Modera opened this summer after a complete gutting and renovation. If you book early, you can get a rate of $139 per king sized room with your choice of a view of the cute courtyard or the city proper. By clicking on the special rates button, if you enter the code TZOO you can also get free parking (normally $27 a night). Although the location is a bit farther away from our reception than other hotels we have recommended, the Modera is still in the heart of downtown Portland. The streetcar is close by, which makes it a simple step to the reception! For more information, check out www.hotelmodera.com.

RSVP YES

Yeah for RSVPs in the affirmative! We've been getting them in (most of the Minnesota RSVPs are in- way to go, Midwest!) and it's exciting to see who's going to be there. So far, only two negative responses. Hopefully that number will remain low.

The best answer thus far has included a "solution" to our word problem, which points out that if we are in a speedster, we could be in Mexico during the reception eating enchiladas while everybody sits at the brewpub wondering where we are. Intriguing. Belatedly I realized that I sent an invitation to an actual mathematics professor, but luckily they didn't criticize my faux math problem too much...

Keep the RSVPs coming! We love getting them and hopefully we'll see you all October 18th! Unless we decide to abscond to Mexico, which I must admit is an intriguing option.

Andina

To celebrate my 29th birthday, our friends Paul and Sylvia joined Andy and I for lunch at Andina. Billed as "novo Peruvian cuisine", Andina has been an oft mentioned restaurant among friends and has long been pegged as a place that we have to try... as soon as we have a suitable occasion (translation, as soon as we have the cash to give it a go!). Located right in the middle of the Pearl district (and only a few blocks away from our reception site), the restaurant maintains an atmosphere of relaxed chic with exposed wood furnishings and brightly colored linens. Your dining experience can be enjoyed one of two ways: tapas-style with shareable plates of varying sizes or with traditional entree selections of upscale South American dishes. The tapas dishes are sized small ($7), medium ($12) and large(22) regardless of what items you choose. This is odd in that you'd pay as much for a salad as you would for river-caught smoked fish or rack of lamb with new potatoes. Any of the proffered ceviche dishes are particularly tasty. In addition to some unusual corn-based drinks (looked dark purple and apparently taste not like corn at all) and other South American classics like margaritas, Andina carries a well rounded wine selection. In fact, there is an associated wine shop below the restaurant. All of the dishes we had were excellent, from the mixta nikkei (spicy tuna, crab and shrimp on fresh potatoes with lime) to the anticucho de pollo (marinated chicken kebobs with a hucatay-peanut sauce). For the four of us, we ordered five dishes and it worked out well, leaving us full and not too terribly broke (for lunch, roughly $15 per person. Dinners are more, but if you order off of the tapas menu, the prices are the same). Surprisingly, one of the highlights of the meal was the beginning bread and dipping sauce. A trio of sauces is served in a white porcelain dish which off-sets the vibrant colors. There is a vivid orange mango habenera sauce, a deep green lime jalipeno concoction and a creamy peanut/cheese sauce. I'm a sucker for bread and dipping sauce, and the vibrant and bright flavors were a pleasant kick off to the meal.

If you are looking for an upscale place to enjoy a fresh meal, Andina would be a great choice for a special occasion. Its steep pricing puts it out of everyday dining, but if you are looking for a good meal and have reason to celebrate, Andina makes a great choice.

For full menus and more information, head over to www.andinaresturaunt.com

First RSVP!

The first RSVP has come in, and luckily nobody's tried to attempt any complicated mathematics on the card... Hopefully we'll hear from all of you soon!

google map of the church and reception

View Larger Map

Blocked Rooms

We have checked out many hotels in the vicinity of our wedding, and here is our summary of offerings. We have booked a block of rooms at Inn at Northrup Station under Wirz/Bernards wedding for a rate of $166 per double queen room. This includes two queen beds, a mini kitchen and a small living area. The hotel is very close to the reception site.

Unfortunately, there are no super cheap hotels in the immediate vicinity. The Silver Cloud Inn is the cheapest we found, but only by a ten spot. There are larger chain hotels outside of the downtown area that may be cheaper, but by and far they are much less convenient (the two that we checked out were cheap but already sold out on our date or not cheap at all). Please investigate local B&Bs, as they are oftentimes cheaper and have much more personality than your average chain hotel. The downtown area has many boutique and fancy-pants hotels where room rates started above $200, so we haven't reviewed them here. But if you are willing to spend the money, there are many interesting hotel options in the area. The best deals downtown are the Ace Hotel ($100 - $300), the Hotel Fifty (about the same as the Inn at Northrup Station without getting the kitchen) and the Modern Hotel (not reviewed yet as it is just now open).

There are two fleabag hotels in downtown that are under $100, but the bullet hotels and lice may make your stay less than amenable.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact either Andy or I.

Where to stay... Ace Hotel

I am now about to recommend a hotel that is far, far, far too cool for me. This is a young and hip place that makes me feel geeky and deprived of a date to prom simply by walking through the lobby. (Side note, I did have a date to prom, which is good. But he made me buy my own ticket to prom, which was bad!) The Ace Hotel (www.acehotel.com/Portland) is billed as "vintage-mod", "boho grand" and as a "super-cool grass-roots hotel". Hummm... I think I'd go with the former rather than the latter (doesn't the use of the phrase 'super-cool' kinda by definition make it NOT so?). The Ace is actually the second hotel by the Ace group, the first of which is located in Seattle. Inspired by rock and roll bohemia, all 79 rooms at the Ace feature local and national artistry as well as recycled headboards (made from army ponchos, but rest assured they don't look like ponchos) and reclaimed wood desks and furnishings. The retro feel comes, in part, from the historic nature of the building in which it is housed. Built in 1912 (and used as a set while filming Drugstore Cowboy in 1989), the hotel has many vintage touches such as an old fashioned photobooth and vintage refurbished deep-soak bathtubs. And if you book one of the 14 suites, your room comes complete with turntables and crates of vintage vinyl.

Did I mention that this place is waaaayyy too cool for me?

The Ace is conveniently located less than a block from Powell's bookstore, and is sandwhiched between downtown and the Pearl district. The downstairs coffee is some of the best in Portland (Stumptown, a local brewer, and their stores use amazing equipment from Italy to brew your daily upper). The street is very busy, and if you want a quiet night this may not be the hotel for you. And if you didn't manage to score a date for prom, I'm not certain they'll let you in the door. OK, that's not true, but if you do want to test out the digs they'll run you 100 (private bath down the hall) to 140 clams for a regular room with suites starting at 175. And that doesn't include the $20 parking fee. After all, being hip in Portland means you ride a bicycle, right?

The world has ended...

... Andy purchased a suit today!

And two ties!!!

I think I'm about to pass out from shock. Actually, I think this could very easily be a common response on our wedding day. We'll have to provide some brown paper bags to help with the hyperventilation.

In my efforts to look good, I got a makeup consultation yesterday at the NARS counter at Nordstrom. I think I've washed my face four or five times since then and I'm still wiping off foundation and eye makeup. Probably not what I want on my wedding day. I'll have to keep on trying -- after all, I have to try and look as good as Andy on October 18th!

Grr...

We're busily working on making our 'formal' invitations (formal is in quotes because, quite frankly, they aren't all that stuffy. Nary a piece of extraneous tissue in sight!), which means printing more envelopes. The first time round, printing the envelopes was an adventure because the save-the-dates were smallish, which meant that more often than not the printer would spit out a slightly skewed address on the envelope. Luckily the invitations are larger, and the printer can handle it just fine. What was frustrating was tracking down all of the addresses. Again.

The first time round we gathered addresses in waves (his family, my family, stragglers, oddballs) and collected the disparately sized pieces of paper in our save-the-date box. Realizing that more organization will be necessary for future stuff, I finally got off my keester and entered all of the addresses onto the guest list service at theknot.com Normally I wouldn't trust the knot to do much more than display annoying videos of overpriced dresses (check out their webpage - it is horrifying), but their guest tracker service allows my parents (and his) to log in and correct info and tracks a million little details like whether or not their name is to be spelled differently on the inside of the envelope as compared to the outside (none of you will be getting this courtesy, just to let you know). Most of it I won't use, but I decided to give it a whirl. I entered everything manually and saved. I SWEAR that I saved. Then I checked that I saved the document. Then I logged off.

Guess what? It didn't save.

I know, I'm probably the moron here, but I went to theknot.com message boards and found that this isn't an uncommon complaint amongst knotties. Anywho, the long story short is that I couldn't print all of the envelopes while visiting my parents over the 4th of July holiday. Then they lugged the printer up to me this week and I finished printing at 11:30 last night. Thank god we saved all of the scraps of paper upon which addresses were written. The good news is that it is done. The bad news is that I was tired and there are probably typos. So if you receive an invitation for "Witz" instead of "Wirz", just let it slide, OK? Thanks!

Typhoon!

I don't know how I made it through the first 13 years of my life without eating any Thai food. I don't recall feeling deprived of such deliciousness, but then again you never miss what you never had, right? Actually, I did eat a lot of noodles as a kid. Spaghetti noodles. I must be part Italian, which would explain my thick and curly chest hair! OK, maybe I didn't eat THAT many spaghetti noodles, but I can say that eating multiple bowls of the stuff helped prepare me for the goodness that is Phad Thai. Of course, the famous peanut-noodle dish has a reputation as being something that only foreigners would eat. Well hell, I can't use chopsticks well so I must qualify as a gastronomical tourist.

Typhoon is a small restaurant chain in the Portland area that specializes in Thai cuisine. The downtown location is associated with the Hotel Lucia, so if you stay there you can order up some Tom Yum soup at a moments notice. The original location on Portland's trendy Northwest 23rd avenue has doubled in size due to its popularity. Always a good sign... Actually, the "hipness" of Typhoon is probably its biggest downfall - as the restaurants get trendier, the prices have been slowly creeping up. Although much of the food is just as good as any other Thai dinner, there are a few standout options that really make Typhoon a place to dine.

Firstly, Typhoon has an extensive tea menu. Yes, tea. They have a selection that covers almost every imaginable type of tea as well as an exotic menu that offers some rare white tea varieties that are quite spectacular. If you don't like tea, then you can order off of the wine/cocktail/beer list which is pretty straightforward.

Secondly, Typhoon serves up the best drunken noodles I have had the fine pleasure to eat. They are spicy and not overly stir-fried, and are so delicious that I am drooling slightly as I type. They come in veggie form, too, so our vegetarian friends may still enjoy this simple yet highly recommended dish.

Lastly, Typhoon offers "pine cone fish", which is a large fillet of fish that has been cubed with the skin on and deep fried. It comes out looking like a round pine cone, and chunks of the fish can be torn off and dipped in a refreshing lime cilantro sauce. It is the best fish and chips without chips that you will ever have.

Typhoon is not without its problems, however. The price is a sticking point that gets increasingly difficult to justify when you are on a graduate student stipend. And the restaurant is less "authentic" than other, smaller and local Thai restaurants. However, for an occasional treat, a dish of Drunken Noodles and a Thai iced tea from Typhoon can really hit the spot.

Check out their webpage at www.typhoonresturaunts.com

(Tom Yum Soup from Typhoon)