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And finally, the French Reception

Our French wedding reception in the Loire Valley took place nearly 9 months after our civil ceremony, 3 months after the Green Card, 3 weeks after our religious ceremony, and 3 days after the end of our Honeymoon. I worried that the event would feel anti-climatic. The day before, I regretted our decision to re-wear our wedding attire, for fear that it would feel as if I were trying to recreate our wedding day in a totally fake and even dishonorable way. I began conjuring (fake?) superstitions about the perils of wearing the same wedding dress twice.

A week beforehand, while we were in Spain, we began getting gloomy text messages from my mother-in-law about the weather forecast for the weekend of the reception. “Pouring rain all weekend,” she warned. I tried to cheer myself up by reasoning that, until then, we had been very lucky with weather. It was flawless in PA for our wedding (and then poured rain the following weekend). It poured rain in southern Spain days before we arrived, but then cleared up for the duration of our stay (and then promptly poured rain the night we left.) So I wasn’t surprised that we were due for pouring rain in France.

Except, I was surprised. Because it didn’t rain a single drop! In fact, during much of the four day stretch that we were in France, the weather was sunny, unseasonable warm, and simply magnificent. Any worries that I had about the event disappeared when I saw our guests frolicking on the grounds of the chateau, their content faces beaming at Mr. Pinault in his tuxedo and me in my wedding gown.

There are over 300 chateaus in the Loire Valley. To get married in a chateau in France is nearly a universal dream. Indeed, some of the French relatives talked about a Japanese wedding party at a neighboring chateau, which is apparently a common sight. They will hire a bus to take them to a chateau, hold a Western-style ceremony, and then leave the next day, their ultra-romantic wedding dreams fulfilled. And now I’m in a position to answer the question: Is it worth it?

Well, here is the chateau where we got married:

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Okay, that’s a total lie. The chateau pictured above is actually the renowned Chateau at Amboise. This is the chateau where my wedding reception was:

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Not exactly the apex of grandeur or pinnacle of pomp, but a perfectly acceptable chateau located in the pleasing French countryside. (I just read this to Mr. Pinault and he feels I’m being disrespectful to our chateau, so I must clarify that I’m being tongue-in-cheek snotty. I’m a middle-class girl of no great beauty from Pennsylvania. Any chateau is too good for me. ) We had a fabulous time. We drank, we danced, we ate rabbit, we cut a cake that resembled multiple turrets of Munchkins. Here’s my piece of cake:

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Still, one of the coolest things about having a wedding reception at a chateau in France is that whenever I tell people that I had a wedding reception at a chateau in France, their American imaginations will run freely wild with no prompting from myself, picturing this:

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By Meredith – October 20, 2008

Honeymoon Days 6 and 7: Valley Hiking

Day #5 was supposed to be a rest day in Granada, but given the geography of the Alhambra and other attractions, we ended up walking constantly and uphill to boot. So when we returned to the cortijo in La Alpujarra, we decided to do a shortish hike on the following day #6 and then spend our last day #7 on a longish hike on what our guidebook called “The best Alpujarran path.”

Day #6: 4 Miles from Bubion to Capileira

We drove 45 minutes to Bubion, a rustic white-walled village that clings to the side of the Poqueira Valley. The trail descends the valley to the river and then ascends to Capileira, another picturesque village that capitalizes on its quaintness and does a brisk tourist trade selling goods like wool blankets and pottery. In this picture, Bubion is the cluster of white buildings on the left. The village on the right is Pampaneira. Both have populations under 200. This picture was taken from an era, which is a paved threshing platform that belonged to the cortijo near the bottom of the picture:

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We passed several abandoned cortijos. This one appeared to still be in use, although it is probably not the farmer’s primary residence:

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Crossing the river at the bottom of the valley:

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I spied this spider and totally spazzed out, more from amazement than fear. It’s as big as it looks:

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When we reached Capileira, one of the first things we saw was this terrific blue door:

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We scoured the village looking for a bakery that our guidebook raved about, but when we finally found the street, the bakery was not there.

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I liked the chimneys. The scale of the buildings, doors, and streets sort of reminded me of Munchkinland. “Mr. Pinault, I have a feeling we’re not in America anymore.”

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Day #7: 7 Miles in the La Taha Valley

La Taha is a grouping of 7 small white villages that were established by the Moors, although there are also structures that date back to Roman times. We started out in the village Mecina, descended the valley to the Rio Trevelez, crossed to the other side of the valley, ascended to where we could get a view of La Taha, then descended back to the river, and then ascended back to Mecina. The path — constructed hundreds of years ago to support agriculture and industry along the river — was billed as “the best Alpujarran path” because of the kind grading, ample width, and rewarding views. Here is the ancient Roman bridge that crosses the river:

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I believe 5, maybe 6 of the La Taha villages are visible in this photo, taken from the other side of the valley:

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When we were ascending back to Mecina, we encountered another enormous herd of sheep and goats, feeding ravenously on the trees and grass. Here is the herder:

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Mr. Pinault stalked the goats with his camera as they fed on leaves from the olive trees:

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This guy is our favorite: hikingb

After we got our fill of photos, we continued on the trail. Only… some sheep started to follow us. And I guess the other sheep started following them. Soon the whole herd was after us, gaining in speed (I have a great video somewhere), and we panicked and stepped aside to let them pass:

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Very soon the herder came racing down the path to catch up with his herd. I felt badly that the sheep had followed us in the wrong direction and worried we had ruined this guy’s livelihood, but one minute later, the herd came charging back!

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We continued to Mecina, stopping at this public fountain that has dispensed healthful iron-rich mineral water for hundreds of years. I couldn’t resist drinking the water.

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So ‘the running of the sheep’ pretty much brought the Honeymoon to a rousing close. We went back to the cortijo, showered, packed, and checked out of the cortijo. Before we left, we took one last Honeymoon picture at the cortijo:

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And then hit the highway towards Madrid for our flight to France the next day. Here is a picture of the mountains and the olive groves taken from the car as we sped out of Andalucia:

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By Meredith – October 19, 2008

Wedding, Act Two

So after a 10-day intermission, the nuptial extravaganza picks back up, with the Spanish Honeymoon commencing tomorrow followed by the celebratory reception with my new extended in-laws in the Loire Valley.

Snore. Even I am weary of my own bridal narcissism. I vow that after I return from the Honeymooon, I will give myself a weeklong window during which I can prattle freely and indulge my bridal narcissism. After that, this website will once again become the whimsical creative playground of a frustrated technical writer with vague literary ambitions, a glut of cynicism, and an attention span the length of a .

I realize how vapid all this wedding talk is getting. So instead, I bring you… wedding pictures! Yes, yes, I cannot run off to Spain without spreading a bit of my sparkly white glory. The photographer sent us a DVD with over 2000 pictures on it. This seemed like an overwhleming amount of pictures until I realized that my eyes are closed in two-thirds of them.

So here comes the bride, ad absurdum.





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By Meredith – September 30, 2008

Ms. Green In the Billiard Room With the Candlestick

Six or seven years ago, I went to the wedding of a billiard buddy/co-worker who married his high school sweetheart. He was a mellow, funny webmaster with a penchant for South Park and she was a tightly-wound medical school student who could be coaxed into a state of uneasy relaxation after a few beers and a few games of pool, if she was shooting well. You wouldn’t know it by looking at her, but she came from money, and the wedding was a grand, elaborate affair in the swank Omni Parker House, replete with relatives and parental friends from all over the world, a four-course meal, a popular local surf-rock band, and a post-party in the private room of our favorite pool hall. It was the nicest wedding I’ve ever been to (if “nice” means expensive and not necessarily “attended by likable people” or “no one looked at me like I was a crasher.”)

They were registered at Bloomingdales, of course. A week beforehand I logged into the online gift registry and gifted them with a set of pewter candlestick holders, cringing a bit when I purchased them. Still, it was either the candlestick holders or a single Wedgwood place setting, and I didn’t want to look stingy.

Soon after the wedding, I got an email from Bloomingdales saying that the candlesticks were on backorder and would be delivered to the couple when they were available. I played pool with the couple and some co-workers about three times a month, and I mentioned how the candlesticks were on backorder. They seemed nonchalant about it, like you would expect an early-20s couple to be about pewter candlestick holders.

Life went on. Whenever I saw the couple, I was reminded about the pewter candlestick holders. I imagined the resentment they felt towards me, a good friend who made a decent living, who went to their ornate wedding celebration and had not yet conjured a present. I called Bloomingdales months later. The candlesticks were still on backorder for an indeterminant number of weeks. I could get a refund, but everything else on the registry was bought. “Does the couple at least know that the candlesticks are coming? Do they know thay I bought them a present?” The customer service rep pled ignorance.

I apologized several times to the couple. “If I had known they were being forged by elves in some distant enchanted forest, I wouldn’t have ordered them,” I joked to mask my paranoia about how much my lack of gift has offended them.

They thought I was obsessed with the candlestick holders. And I was: They were my friends, they had a first-class shindig, and I owed them was a gift. Finally, more than 14 months after the wedding, my friend informed me that the pewter candlestick holders had been delivered the previous week. “Do you like them?” I asked anxiously. “Yeah, sure, they’re great,” he said, with a snarky tone to his voice, like whopee, candlestick holders.

Then he said something that I never totally believed until I recently got married. “Of course we thank you for the candlesticks, but we’re more thankful that you were at our wedding. We can buy our own candlesticks. We can’t buy a loyal pool buddy who can’t shot straight to save her life but can bankshot like a fiend.”

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By Meredith – September 29, 2008

Oh Lolly Lolly Lolly

Mr. P’s sister is planning to entertain the guests at our French wedding reception with a slideshow and I was asked to provide old photos of myself for fodder. I’ve been to a few weddings with similar presentations that embarrass the Bride and Groom by invoking life’s more awkward phases, so I was tempted to pick only the most flattering, cute pictures to scan and send to her.

But how snore-inducing would that be? Wouldn’t French people much rather be scandalized by this uncouth picture of 2 year-old me, back when my underdeveloped hand-mouth coordination rendered me unable to efficiently consume a lollipop? I can already hear the hush of shock, as the French with their impeccable table manners and their deep-seeded distrust of snacks realize that the woman they are welcoming into their bloodline is, at core, a sugar-smeared American who consumes gigantic lollipops with a dull vacuous look in her eyes.

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By Meredith – September 27, 2008

A furlough to normalcy!

There were a lot of depressing, terrifying articles in the New York Times today. America’s economy has collapsed and Washington can’t agree on how to fix it. WaMu became the largest bank seizure in American history. The credit markets are frozen. China’s space program is on pace to overtake America’s space program within my lifetime. The country of Myanmar is turning into North Korea. Obama is resorting to un-truthy campaign ads against McCain. There are countless dead or stranded cows in Texas after Hurricane Ike.

This is the sort of depressing stuff that feeds the cynical, nihilistic monster who lurks beneath the wafer-thin deposition of cheer and sanguinity that I manage to project on days when I get enough sleep and when I’m wearing sneakers.

But the most distressing article, the one that made all the sunshine within me shirk like a spooked cat, was an article in the New York Region section called “A Sample Sale at Hermes Defies the Wall Street Malaise” (here), about the annual sale at the luxury goods manufacturer that attracted scores of women who arrived in driver-navigated Escalades and carried $8,000 purses.

The article juxtaposed the bleak atmosphere of the current Wall Street crisis with the still-raging consumerism within the upper-class women of New York. A well-noted symptom of economic recession is that lipstick sales go up, because while women can’t buy a new dress, they splurge on small things like lipstick. These women make small splurges on $900 boots and $280 leather-bound hunting horns the size of a comb.

“Some things are recession-proof, and this sale is one of them. Even if I don’t find anything, I still spend a thousand. It’s like Costco,” say one woman. “It makes you feel a little better – like maybe there’s some normalcy in the world,” says another. Costco! $2,000 jackets, $300 change purses and $200 toddler robes! Normalcy! I’m crying because I’m laughing! I’m laughing because I’m crying!

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By Meredith – September 26, 2008

Tales from the T

Red Line, 5:30pm. “Mommy, look! Blue!” howled the little brunette seated next to me, staring at my fingernails with wide incredulous eyes.

I smiled at the child and her mother, a long-haired woman with sensible clothes and an array of tote bags slung over her thin frame. All week I’ve been conscious but uncaring of my fingernails, painted a pale blue to fulfill the “Something Old, Something New” adage that brides must abide by lest they meet with an unspecified ghastly fate. I culled the idea from Modern Bride magazine, which didn’t have a suitable suggestion for updating the “sixpence in her shoe” guideline that I wound up flouting anyway because I wore sandals.

“Yes, doesn’t it look pretty?” her mother said, smiling back at me with a resigned look that said My darling child just won’t shut her pretty little yapper.

“No! Blue is for boys!” the little girl declared.

Her mom tittered dryly. “Yes, but boys don’t wear nail polish, do they?”

The little girl looked stumped, and began examining her own nails, which bore chipped glittery pink paint. I smiled at the mother, willing to pardon the politically incorrect parenting I had just unwittingly participated in, and turned my attention back to the New York Times. And then I couldn’t stop picturing Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson painting their fingernails.

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By Meredith – September 25, 2008

When it Champanges, It Champours

Let us now extend extra congratulations to my husband Mr. P, who in addition to having recently acquired a foxy new wife, has a new job! Today he accepted a generous offer for a challenging technical leadership position from one of the largest private universities in Boston. He first interviewed for the position in June. We have waited for the job offer with bated-turned-raspy breath, and constantly jinxed his luck by telling everyone “He should be getting the job offer any day now.”

Well, today was the day, and there is a ticker-tape parade happening in my head. Not only is the position an intellectual step-up, not only are the people awesome, not only are the benefits terrific, but this is job security. The economic apocalypse is nigh, and Mr. P’s present position is about as stable as a three-legged chair. So I am relieved that he will sinking into a cushy La-Z-Boy to ride out the next 15 years of economic stagnation that will result from the Bush Administration’s calamitous reign. As the Greater Depression dawns, there is no greater job security than working at a ginormous well-endowed private university with extensive continuing education programs to which all of the out-of-work corporateers will flock.

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By Meredith – September 24, 2008

Abatement of Bridal Adrenaline

I was surprised by how easy it was to quit drinking coffee. Just trade the black joe for white tea; endure a week of headaches, lethargy, and mild confusion; and get thy buzz from life! For the past three months of caffeine abstinence, the odd temptation has struck, mostly induced by olfactory allure of certain coffee shops that I doggedly frequent despite being a treasonous tea drinker, but I’ve never really experienced a full-blown craving.

Until today. I woke up to my 6:30am alarm after my first deep night of sleep in over a week. I spent a good two minutes deducing which day of the week it was before last’s night Monday Night Football game jogged my internal calendar. On my way to the shower, I sustained 3 collisions with various architectural obtrusions, including a knee-to-toilet impact that caused involuntary whimpering and an instantaneous bruise. At breakfast, my white peony tea went down like flat tepid water. I somehow stumbled to the office, sat at my desk, and pounded on the keys in time to the pounding in my head.

I wanted a rancid punch in the mouth. I wanted the blood in my skull to run as slippery as mercury. I wanted my eyes to dance the crazed waltz of insomniacs. I wanted my heart to beat against my breast like a spunky knock on the door. I wanted coffee, black as midnight on a moonless night, rich as a piece of Belgium dark chocolate, and hot as Hell.

(I staved off the urge by eating several Sour Patch Kids. Honestly, the prospect of drinking coffee after having purged my body of all caffeine spooked me. I remember drinking coffee as a teenager with no caffeine immunity and totally spazzing out. Like, talking so fast I would bite my tongue and scream-singing television theme songs.)

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By Meredith – September 23, 2008

The Eiffel Tower of Weddings

I could ramble endlessly about my wedding, which finally took place this past weekend. But in the spirit of brevity, I’ll cut straight to the point: having a somewhat traditional wedding was, for me, like visiting the Eiffel Tower.

Hear me out.

Last summer, I visited the famed Parisian landmark with low expectations. I was ready to dismiss it as an overhyped tourist trap but quickly found myself enchanted. At first, the approach was uninspiring, and climbing the stairs to the second platform triggered ten minutes of vertigo so intense I was sure I’d pass out. But then, standing there, gazing out at the stunning panorama, I suddenly saw it for what it truly was: a masterpiece of engineering and a celebration of the very best of Western civilization.

In much the same way, as my wedding day approached and my life became consumed with preparations, I started to doubt whether the event could possibly justify all the time, effort, and money invested by myself, Mr. P, and our families. I recalled a coworker’s advice: “I wish I’d eloped instead. Sure, the wedding was nice, and we have the pictures, but we could’ve put that money toward a house.” Her words echoed in my mind as Friday’s festivities began, even as I enjoyed the time with family and friends. I couldn’t shake the sneaking suspicion that I’d gathered everyone out of obligation—because tradition demanded a ceremony and reception, and society expects it.

Then came Saturday afternoon. As the organ swelled and my father walked me down the flower-strewn church aisle, I felt the same rush I’d had on the Eiffel Tower. A wave of vertigo, the simultaneous urge to cry and faint, and a deep desire to cling to Mr. P and never let go. The pastor’s voice—familiar to me since childhood—rose above it all, steady and grounding. In that moment, as we exchanged vows surrounded by family and friends, it became clear: this was the best day of my life.

Yes, the cake will be eaten, the flowers will fade, and the dress will be carefully packed away. But the memory of that moment in the church—of pledging my love and life to Mr. P, of feeling bound to him in the most profound way—will endure. The joy of knowing we’d made our families proud, the sheer beauty of the day, and the unshakable confidence that I’d never looked better in my life—these things made every second of planning worthwhile.

Even the updo was worth it. (Photo below, courtesy of one of my wonderfully attentive bridesmaids. In the name of humility, I’ve chosen to share the least glamorous shot of the day.)

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By Meredith – September 22, 2008