The Soon to be Formerly Decayed Gentlewoman

I'm getting married in 3 days! I really happy to have a little time to blog since I've been BUSY this week, but I'm going to keep it short for obvious reasons.
Wedding preparations are going great and I am so grateful to my darling fiance because he he has been incredibly involved and helpful throughout this entire process, but especially this week- he's been working his butt off to get everything ready. A girl couldn't ask for a more responsible, considerate or hard working fiance! I appreciate him so much and I'm so happy and excited that we're getting married this weekend! I don't want to get too sappy, but I can honestly say that before I met my darling fiance I couldn't have imagined that someone so perfect for me even existed. It was more than I even thought to hope for. I thank my lucky stars that I was able to meet and fall in love with him. :)
When I'm not busy stressing myself out over a million little details (because let's face it, it's kind of inevitable the week before your wedding), I'm really aware of how lucky I am and I feel so happy. I'm overwhelmed by the love and help and support that we've received from our families and friends and I feel so lucky to have so many wonderful people in my life!
I'm also really thrilled that we have so many people who care enough about us to come in from out of town for our wedding. I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of people I haven't seen in quite some time (and some of my darling fiance's family I haven't gotten a chance to meet) and I'm so flattered that they've chosen to travel to share our day with us!
I can't wait for Saturday! I'm looking forward to seeing everyone, enjoying the celebration, and most of all, getting married!
I'll leave you with the music that will be played when I walk down the isle- Bach's Wachet Auf. Enjoy!

Thriftiness

Inspired in part by Grace, I went by a used clothing store (Glue on Oak) in search of a steal or two. I think in general the stock is more 70's polyester/costumey- but I was pleased to find that everything in the store is currently 50% off.
My favorite thing to buy at thrift stores and used clothing stores is jeans. In general, I'm never completely happy with the jeans I own and am always on the lookout for the perfect pair. I've found that a good way to get designer jeans on the cheap is to look at used clothing stores. I think they have more name brand jeans than Salvation Army type stores do these days because people know they can sell them. The other benefit of shopping for second hand jeans is that they're perfectly worn in!
On this particular shopping trip, I found a pair of DKNY jeans for $16. Sweet! Less sweet was the logo in cursive on the back pocket, surrounded by tiny rhinestones. Personally, I don't like my jeans to scream "Hey! Look directly at my right butt cheek!"
Fortunately, I know from experience (I'm looking at you, Michael Kors. Put down the bedazzler and walk slowly away.) that it's not all that difficult to remove rhinestones and logos that aren't embroidered from your jeans. Rhinestones tend to pop right off if you use your fingernails and I had good luck shaving the logo off of these jeans with a knife blade. (Mine was pretty dull so I didn't have to worry about cutting myself- if you're going to try this at home, use a cutting board!) Sometimes when I do this, I can see a little bit of an indentation where the rhinestones and logo were, but a couple runs through the washer take care of it. Of course, I didn't think to take a picture of the jeans until I was done so you'll have to take my word for it. Sorry!
As I was scraping her name off the butt of my new jeans today, I wondered who would be more dismayed by my anti-brand attitude- Donna Karan or the 6th grade version of myself who would have killed for a pair of brand name jeans (specifically, Girbaud, since it was the early 90's)?

Do you buy used clothing? If so, what are your fix it up tricks?

Birthday Boy

This weekend, I helped my darling fiance celebrate his last birthday as an unmarried man! On Friday night, we enjoyed happy hour drinks and $0.75 sliders at the American Sector, then hung out with our friends Steph and Brandon at our house.
On Saturday, we attended Hogs for a Cause and ate lots of Barbecue while helping to support pediatric brain cancer research. I had pulled pork macaroni, boudin balls, brisket sliders, and a salted fudge brownie. Stephanie and Brandon gave him a confederate flag belt buckle/beer opener for his birthday. I'm sure the people in Maine will love it. :P

What a beautiful day for a BBQ!

That night, we went to the LPO and saw Sir James Galway. Sir James Galway was awesome- incredibly talented, very Irish, and really quite adorable. I told my darling fiance that I want to take him home and keep him in a shoe box under my bed. (For the record, I also feel this way about Danny Devito.)

Wearing the Derby hat I gave him for Valentine's Day and sporting a seriously cute beard

Sunday was my darling fiance's 31st birthday. Of course, I chose to celebrate this momentous occasion with lots of food. In the morning, I made him eggs with black truffle butter, and for dinner I bought a pheasant from Rare Cuts for him to cook on the grill. The pheasant turned out really well- I butterflied it, rubbed it with honey and olive oil, and then he weighed it down on the grill with several cast iron skillets and cooked it for 30 minutes, turning it every 10 minutes (then every 5 minutes for the last 10, so it would be even). I served it with a side salad and mashed celery root with cranberry wensleydale cheese.
Dessert was a double peanut butter iced cake with chocolate ganache. It was a hit. :)
Hopefully, we'll have at least as much fun next year for my darling fiance's first birhtday as a married man! :)

Name Change

One thing about getting married again that I'm still torn about is whether or not to change my name. I don't like to write about my divorce very much, but one issue that was particularly emotionally charged for me was how long it took for me to get my name changed back to my maiden name. For whatever reason, it was a huge ordeal and I still have that old name on my cell phone and cable accounts because they make name changes particularly difficult. I felt really strongly about getting my maiden name back and found the difficulties in changing it back to be really upsetting. I still feel disgusted when I see my ex's last name on my cable and phone bills.
I came to value my name as something that was mine because I worked so hard to get it back and I'm not really psyched about the idea of changing it again. I've used my name professionally for a number of years and it is also on both of my diplomas- I think it would be especially difficult to try to go by a new name when potentially applying for jobs because all of my references know me by my maiden name.
On the other hand, it kind of goes against my sense of fairness not to change my name this time. My darling fiance doesn't care one way or the other, as long as our children have his name rather than a hyphen (which is fine by me). So he, at least, isn't concerned with the fairness of the act. (He does joke that the people at our kids' school won't let me pick up the children without calling him-haha.)
I've been putting off making a decision because I can't change it until after the honeymoon anyway due to my passport being in my maiden name. I'm kind of leaning towards not legally changing my name and using it professionally but not minding if people address me socially with my darling fiance's last name. Hopefully this won't cause undue confusion.

What I really would like is advice from other women who haven't taken their husband's names. Did you have any complications dealing with things like signing loans together, getting on each other's insurance, etc....?

I almost forgot!!

The most random thing about my bachelorette party is that when we picked our car up from the Ritz, I saw Shaquille O'Neal! So cool!
(Also, I'm wearing 2 inch heels in this picture.)

Love in a Cold Climate

I meant to blog about Match Day prior to the actual day because I was really nervous and full of deep thoughts about what the future might hold. Of course, I suck at writing about anything remotely meaningful, so that post didn't happen.
What did happen, however, is that on Match Day, my darling fiance matched into his first choice for residency! We're moving to Portland, Maine!!!
Despite living exclusively in the deep South, I've always had an odd fascination with New England. I can't wait to live there and I'm tuning out all the mocking I've been getting that starts with "wait until your first winter...."
Planning for a big move adds all sorts of additional complications to the craziness that's been going on (even though it's not entirely unexpected since there was only one residency darling fiance could apply to in New Orleans and 13 spots on his rank list), but hopefully I'll be able to juggle it all. We have basically zero details worked out at this point, but I'm sure I'll be blogging more about the move as it gets closer.
Leaving New Orleans will be incredibly bittersweet because I have a great job and great friends here. I also truly love the city and enjoy being fairly close to my family. However, my life is only going to get less portable and I feel like I'm at a "now or never" point in terms of having a big adventure.
Other notable things that took place this week included getting our marriage license and my bachelorette party. My darling fiance and I had to go downtown to get our license, so afterward we took advantage of Happy Hour at Domenica and had some half off pizzas and cocktails. My pizza had garlic, oregano and clams, and his had roast pork shoulder, fennel, and apples. Both were outstanding!
My bachelorette party was on Saturday. First my friends took me to tea that Ritz. Then we got cocktails at the Hotel Monteleone's Carousel Bar, and then we went back to my friend Sarah's house for a lingerie shower! Finally, we went to dinner at Slice. It was a fun day that didn't end with me dancing on a table (my main request) so I'm calling it a win. :)
Today was a pretty slow catch up day. I did laundry, helped tidy the house, bought groceries, and roasted a chicken. As usual, I wish the weekend wasn't over so soon!

Of all the places you've lived, which one was/is your favorite?

Crazy

Please excuse my even longer than usual absence from blogging. I've been unbelievably busy, both with wedding planning and with work. My company recently merged with another company and I've also taken on some new projects- and as a result I've been working at a frantic pace for weeks, with no end in sight.
Add to that the disruption of having my bathroom redone (it's done, thankfully) and dealing with a misbehaving cat (Pancake, obviously) and Mardi Gras festivities- and hopefully you'll understand why blogging has been at the bottom of my to do list. I think I'm managing pretty well, but when I'm this busy, my free moments are filled with a nagging anxiety that I'm forgetting something.
Of course, it hasn't all been bad- I had a good time during Mardi Gras, got fake eyelashes (so glam!) for the ball I attended this year (and as a trial for my wedding look), got a wonderful hot stone massage last Wednesday, and made some really awesome homemade granola tonight (seriously, go make this granola now- it's easy and so so good!).
I'm also doing pretty well in terms of not biting my nails. Getting a manicure every 3 weeks or so is really helping- as is wearing fun nail polish colors. My current favorite is OPI's Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous, a platinum grey with kind of a satiny finish. It's kind of bold for nails, but I really loved wearing it during Mardi Gras.
The biggest news of course is that I'm getting married in a month!! Of course, I'm really excited and I know that any wedding related stress will be so worth it in the end. :)

Are there Mardi Gras parades/celebrations where you live?