Wedding Wednesday

I've discovered a new loophole for daytime drinking, besides the obvious ones (brunch, tailgating, cruises). It's tasting wines for your wedding reception, an activity I didn't know existed before today and now count among my favorites. Actually, wedding planning in general has magically become something I love to do, now that people are beginning to RSVP and most of the big decisions have been made. It also helps that I swore off reading wedding blogs cold turkey (there are currently 388 wedding-related posts languishing in my Google Reader), because for some reason I was feeling overwhelmed by them.

Today's meeting at our reception venue went exceedingly well, and I don't think that's just the wine talking. I'm saving most of the wedding plans to share with you after it's all over (July 9th is the big day, by the way), at which point you'll be inundated with every little detail and many many pictures, but I will say our reception is being held at a restaurant around the corner from our apartment. Our meeting was with the manager and the head chef, and they were so flexible and accommodating that I left completely elated. They've prepared an incredible menu for us of food that promises to be more delicious and more exciting than any wedding food I've ever had, and on top of that, if somebody doesn't see anything they like, the chef will just, you know, make something else, no big deal. Oh, and they'll set the tables however we want, and they'll organize the flowers, and they'll load our favorite music into their sound system, and there's a piano there, and outdoor and indoor spaces, and we can stay as long as we want, and come any time beforehand to decorate. Also, they trust us, I guess, so they don't need a deposit (a strange and fascinating policy that seems to be held by most of the people we're dealing with about the wedding).

Oh, and when we asked about a fish they had on our wedding menu (that we've never had before), the chef took us back to the kitchen to show it to us, and it was so fresh it was still wriggling when he picked it up.

Yeah, I'm pretty excited.