And the wedding blog draws to a close

Now that the year of wedding craziness is over (was it really a full year? Whoa.) I think it is time to retire the wedding blog and return to our regularly scheduled programming at my old blog, dillard57.blogspot.com. Maintaining two separate blogs would be kinda confusing, and hey, not everyone wants to read all my various wedding obsessions.

Married life is good. So far, all is well in Braintree. We have lots of fun plans and I imagine we will have lots of fun adventures, which I can chronicle over at dillard57.

So I will leave you with a photo from Tina's wedding, a very fun day, 3 months after our wedding in June.

Thanks for coming along with us on our wedding ride!

And the summer draws to a close

Aren't hydrangeas just so Cape Cod-dy? These were growing near a lovely wedding we went to near Chatham, MA. And the name cards from our table -- the whole changing your name bit probably deserves its own post, but let's just mention that it is complicated. I'm officially Amy Cooper-Ayles, but you know, it's kinda fun to see it switched around sometimes. Mrs. Ayles indeed.

Amazingly, our wedding wasn't the only thing that happened this summer and bit by bit, the days grow shorter and the crickets get louder and now it's Labor Day Weekend. I'm blearily typing into the old blog while at the same time playing around with this newfangled facebook thing (it's all cf's doing), and going over the wedding photos yet again to decide what goes in the album, etc. etc.

So, nothing new. It's amazing how I'm still putting away all the deitrus that accumulates over a year of planning for a big event. There are still scraps of ribbons, scrawls of notes about potential sites, a dress to dry clean. I will post more pictures of something soon, type about something more interesting soon.

The biggest projects right now at the Cooper-Ayles household (in case you are interested)

1. this money thing. Hard! How to combine? I am trying out mint.com
2. so, a compost bin. Where can I find one? Where do I put it?
3. selling this house. Oy.

Ok, must drag self to bed. Happy Labor Day!

Photos Galore

(Edited: I have fixed the broken link!) Now I can finally say I may have enough wedding photos to play with. These few here were taken by my very talented sister, Sue.

I'm going to assume it's not nearly as exciting for you as it is for me to do so, but if you'd like to see a few more (as in about 450 more), here are two places to go:

There are the professional photos done by our very nice photographer, Simi Rabinowitz. You will need to register (just your email address and a password) but if you have any problems, let me know. It should let you in. Once you are in, instead of paging through, well, all 450, you can just click on "Amy's Favorites" or if you are pressed for time, "Top 20."

And here is a little page I threw together that tells the story of the day composed of photos that people have so kindly shared with me.

Hope you enjoy. I have been. I love seeing them. There are lots of little details I had forgotten about, and moments we never saw because we were elsewhere. I am very content when I think about what a lovely day it was -- you all made it wonderful. It really was a dream come true.


This last photo makes me laugh because I am making an embarassed face at being caught without my shoes on.

More musings soon!

And the wedding photo onslaught commences!

Here's some shots, more or less in order. The crowd, waiting for things to begin. My little flower girl and my maid of honor, coming down the hill. And the third one is me, trying really hard to not completely bawl in front of the crowd and only party succeeding. Followed by my dad and Rob shaking hands. Then us, happy and married and dancing! More photos soon, I promise.

We are married!

And back from a wonderful honeymoon -- more on that later!

Thought you might enjoy a few photos from week of and the day of. Angela Sarno was a champ getting photos that day so I'd have some idea what happened since we don't get our prof pictures back for a few weeks. I owe her and Tina big. If you have any photos to share, please send them my way!

It was wonderful to see everyone. We were just so happy to be with you all. And we couldn't have ordered up a nicer day.

First, here are a few shots from my family's descent upon the North End in Boston -- there is nothing quite like traveling in a pack of 14 people, trying to wade through enormous crowds celebrating the championship of the Boston Celtics. We just wanted some pizza so we trudged on toward our goal. We ate at Pizzeria Regina, especially for my mom.




Then on Friday, Lia, Angela and Bess treated me to a spa visit -- and they joined me! It was really fun to hang out with them as we got our nails done and drank champagne and tried not to completely take over the salon. What a fun and relaxing afternoon -- what great friends!

Okay, I got all distracted from the wedding pictures. I'll start them in the next post.

Two more Oleanna shots from Tina

Jesse and Karen display their fabulous newly arrived at the table Baked Alaska, and the shot below is our whole crew at the restaurant. This was a great dinner and a great diversion from obsessive wedding planning. Yay for out of town friends!

Tina visits 5 days before the wedding

Here we are 5 days before the big day at Oleanna in Cambridge. This photo was taken by my dear pal Tina T. I haven't quite figured out how to post photos from her online photo album but here's a start. We had a great time visiting with her and Jesse and Karen. I look amazingly relaxed considering the stressball I pretty much was for the whole month. Maybe it was the incredible baked alaska dessert we had.

The countdown and the details

Officially 12 days left on the calendar now. As we get closer, and you all may be making some travel plans, I thought we would put in a post with some details that might be helpful along the way.

I've mentioned it before, but another plug for our wedding map may be in order. We put our favorite sites in Plymouth on this interactive map. Just click on the link and you'll have all kinds of options for your visit. Amy and Rob's Map of Plymouth

If you want Boston options in addition to Plymouth, give me a holler. Of course there are a million things to do in town, so I can tailor according to your specific cravings for, I dunno, Thoreauvian vistas and chocolate mice.

In case you haven't memorized all details already, the day goes something like this:

Allow plenty of time to drive to Plymouth. It's an hour with NO traffic from Boston, and Saturdays are big traffic days on Route 3 South. If you arrive early, you can swing by and say hello to Plymouth Rock (see above map).

Please park yours car at the Plymouth Yacht Club. There is plenty of space there, and it will save you the aggravation of trying to find street parking in the town during a busy summer weekend.

Then you just walk two blocks away from the ocean toward the garden in the center of town for the ceremony! If it is raining, we will be holding the ceremony at the Yacht Club instead.

4:00 PM -- Ceremony outdoors at Brewster Garden near the women's fountain. There will not be chairs as they aren't allowed by the park, so we will keep it short and sweet. We will be standing in grass so high heels are probably not your best option. Don't forget sun protection!

4:30-5:30 -- While we are doing photos, you all can walk back down to the Yacht Club for the cocktail hour. This will be open bar with appetizers and a lovely ocean view right on the water! The open bar will end after the cocktail hour, and a cash bar will be available after that. Champagne will be provided for toasts.

The reception will go from 5:30-9:30ish. Come prepared for dancing, eating, and lots of celebrating. The Yacht Club is air conditioned, thank goodness -- we're having a heat wave this week!

We can't wait to see you all next week! Please just give a holler if you have any questions.

Tale of Three Tux Options

I'm not sure if Rob will approve of this message but I love these three photos as we were trying to decide which of the three tux vests to use. Rob obviously wasn't really excited about this process. Which do you think bring out his baby blue eyes the best?

Another Plymouth Update

Lots of fun photos from our last visit to Plymouth. The photo at the top here is the sign you'll look for after you have parked your car and are walking up to the garden for the ceremony.

There you see Rob holding the heart shaped bread loaf I made (not on purpose heart shaped). We had a picnic at our future ceremony site!


And I just thought this was a cool photo, taken behind the Yacht Club with Rob standing more or less at attention at the bottom there.

We did some wedding errands and then we met up with Rob's pal John and had dinner. We had seafood of coures, although this time we went to The Lobster Pot which Rob wasn't sure he would like, but it was very good. John recommends the shrimp especially.

It was a beautiful day!

I love being in this town and can't wait to have you all join me there. It really is pretty.

It's Next Month

For you, dear reader, the fact that June is next month may not seem particularly notable. For me, the fact that I can say "the wedding is next month" still regularly blows my tiny little wedding-obsessed mind. It's one of those "it's so close I can't stand it and so far away I may lose my mind" kind of feelings. Lovely!

Above is a picture of me and my junior maid of honor, Cassie, Rob's daughter. We are next to a cake made for my shower by Rob's mom, baker extraordinaire. Yellow cake with lemon filling. Oh my! I am so blessed by such an amazing, generous, gorgeous group of friends and family. I am just stymied as to how to be appreciative and grateful enough. So I'll just say thank you and try hard to say it enough and the right way to show I really mean it.


All is well in planning land. The RSVPs are coming in at a steady pace. The travel plans are getting made by people in various cities, states and countries. Rumor has it that there are showers afloat. The flower girl dress drama continues but you don't need to hear about that. We are serene ducks swimming on the water, while underneath, we're paddling like heck.


So a few things: if you are planning on staying at a hotel in Plymouth, please do let us know which one so we can make sure to welcome you properly. If you are in need of a babysitter for the reception, we have suggestions.

There will be a post or two before the big day, but I do love to say it, we'll see you next month!!!!

Update to our Wedding Map

I mentioned in an earlier post that we had created this cool interactive map of Plymouth. I've since updated it with photos and more sites. We'll keep adding more but this might be a little handier than a standard mapquest search on the address.

Meet the Best Man and Maid of Honor

Rob has two wonderful kids, Henry (age 11) and Cassie (age 9). Here is their photo from this Easter.

Cassie is my Maid of Honor and Henry is Rob's Best Man. The wedding will be a big day for them as well so we wanted to honor that and make them a big part of the ceremony.

The flowergirl will be my niece, Anna who is just turning 7. When I asked Anna to be my flowergirl, she answered, "I've wanted to be a flowergirl my whole life!!!" We are also having help from my two nephews and Rob's nieces and nephews.

Spring in Plymouth

We spent the afternoon yesterday in Plymouth doing weddingish errands and had a good time mapping things out a bit more. It is an easy town to navigate and on this blustery March day, we wandered around getting things done as well as finding more great things for you, dear wedding guests, to do during your visit.

We revisited the Plymouth Yacht Club for the first time since our initial viewing. It was as beautiful of a spot as we had remembered. Simple and quiet and right on the water. The picture above is us standing on the deck area where the cocktail hour will take place. Cold and windy but happy! Look at that view behind us!

It was an exciting day in the world of wedding planning. The level of detail and the number of banal decisions you must make to prepare for an event like this is truly staggering. I met my hairdresser in South Plymouth (she was great). I did NOT meet the make-up artist who blew off our appointment (not great, she's fired). I picked out linen colors. We mapped out where the heck to stand in the park. Where to put signs? Where to put the guestbook? Don't get me wrong. I really am having a great time planning this event with Rob. I just sometimes don't quite recognize myself when I just stymied about which shade of blue to use for napkins. Yikes.

We had a great meal that evening at 14 Union, a restaurant very close to the Yacht Club and right on the water with the requisite stunnning view. They had a great deal of 3 courses for $13 which they say will be in effect all year long, every day. It's definitely a hidden gem -- a little hard to find but the locals sure know about it. Here is a really good comprehensive list of restaurants from which to choose. It is always a lot of fun to spend the day in Plymouth and we really hope you'll feel the same.

More Lodging Thoughts

I wanted to add a quick note to the blog about another possible place to stay. I'm a big fan of supporting local businesses and the lodging options I've listed have all been local places and not national chains. However, there have been guests (my family mostly) who really prefer to stay at a place that they know well because they'd stayed at similar venues across the country. They were nervous about staying at places they didn't recognize.

So! They seem to have reasonable rates at the Hampton Inn in Plymouth. I hadn't even put them on the list when I was figuring out where to stay because they were $160 a night so not really a bargain, but rumor has it that you might be able to get a room closer to $115. I'll do my best to make a wedding block there which should help in this process. It's a few miles from the wedding but still close enough, and if you just like the oh so familiar chainy feeling, well, this is probably a very good option. You can give them a call and see what you get.

UPDATE: I spoke to them today and they really seem to be random about the prices they are giving out. You can give them a try but even with the wedding discount the lowest they would give me (unless you are staying more than 3 days) is $140.

Happy Spring and Hey, We Were In The Papers

Before I launch into my latest oh so fascinating blog entry, I want to wish everyone a happy spring! There is nothing like the transition of what seems like endless winter into the time when the world seems to blur a little around the edges, gets all soggy and muddy and little by little, greener and greener. It makes me feel all poetic. Anyhow. Yay for the vernal equinox! And most Happy Easter to you all. I'll post some easter photos soon.

Not that the seasons are all about me or anything, but 3 months from now is the wedding. Whew!

On to my story. At some point, Rob and I had to decide if we were going to announce our engagement in the newspapers. It's kinda fun to see the brides and grooms in print, etc. etc. However, being my thrifty (or is it cheap) self, I balked at paying $150 to put it in the local newspaper. Nonetheless, without meaning to, we still ended up in the paper, sortof!

Way back last fall when I was trying on somewhere around 850 dresses at the national chain of mostly affordable wedding gowns, a salesperson approached me saying someone The Boston Globe was on the line and wanted to speak to a "bride-to-be." I gulped at claiming that title, but gamely took the phone spoke to the reporter who was doing an article on whether or not men still ask for their girlfriend's hand in marriage from her parents . I gave the reporter my take on things, she asked for Rob's contact info to speak with him and that was that. I didn't think to ask where or when this might appear and mostly forgot about it.

Lo and behold, a few days later on the front page of the Boston Globe, this article appeared with Rob's words of wisdom included at the very end! Whoa. Apparently this article caused a mini firestorm of controversy on various discussion boards. I didn't feel that much drama about the whole thing, although I certainly have my opinions and approaches to some of the, er, shall we say, more paternalistic aspects of the whole wedding kit and kaboodle. I'm not going to go into them here out of lack of time, space, and I'm not sure this is the right forum for it. And in the end, every woman has to figure out her own way to walk down the aisle -- literally and metaphorically. (You'll have to wait for the wedding to figure out which one I choose). '

Oh and as for landing on the front page with this story, I'd say that's a pretty slow news day!

The Other Side of the River: Or, All It Takes Is One Cupcake Bakery and I'm Yours

The area south of Boston, locally referred to as the "South Shore" is Rob's native stomping grounds. Born in Quincy and then lots of time in Milton, Duxbury, Kingston and Braintree, the South Shore feels like home to him. This is part of why Plymouth seemed a good fit for the wedding. All of Amy's 10 years in Boston has been on the northern part of the city on the other side of the river. Not the North Shore exactly (that would be much further north), but Somerville and Cambridge, maybe Brookline and Arlington were places around here that Amy came to claim as her own, as places where she knew the nooks and crannies.

So as I (can I switch to first person now?) get to know Rob's home, and we start planning and creating our lives together on the South Shore where Rob owns his home, I've been slowly (and at times, I will admit, reluctantly), getting to know Braintree and Hingham and Quincy and Weymouth. Some of these towns I'd never even heard of while living less than 5 miles or so north. I really liked north of the city. I was suspicious of this South Shore thing. Who were these people and why were they living here when Somerville was obviously so cool? Is this just a big suburb with lots of malls or is there more? I wasn't sure.

Little by little, I'm finding my places down here. I really like the local library -- always a good place to orient oneself. I've figured out how to get to the local UU church on my own. The grocery store, post office and gas station are now less daunting journeys. It's funny how long it took me to get comfortable -- I think I assumed that it would be just another section of Boston but it feels like a different part of the country to me. And there are a few places I'm pretty excited about. The Talbot's Outlet for one, is pretty fun to visit, especially with CF. I love the wooded walking paths at Pond Meadow. There's a decent Mexican place we can actually walk to. I've found a natural foods store in Quincy that I think I like better than the big natural food chains. Rob and I found a fun Asian hotpot soup place in Quincy which we are always trying to convince our friends to try. And you can't forget the ocean is much closer to here than it is in Somerville. Finally, lo and behold, a bakery called Babycakes, specializing in cupcakes. The one above is a chocolate caramel cupcake, perfect for um, breakfast.

Little by little, it's growing on me, this new old world.

Cool Stuff in Plymouth

I've promised a word or two about the town of Plymouth so here goes a first pass. I'm new to the town too, so I'm as a much of a tourist as the next, um, bride. However, being the particular couple that we are, of course we'll be guiding you to some of our own favorites.

First off, the standard stuff is all listed at the general tourist website, which is worth a spin. They have the Rock, (no, not that one, silly), the Boat, the Beach, all of that good stuff. If you are into living history displays, I do think that Plimoth Plantation is a good way to get into the Pilgrim spirit as you can chat with some of those folks and their Native American sortof pals just like in the good old days. They also have an incredible garden completely unrelated to the rest of the plantation so if you are there, ask to see where all the weddings take place off site from the plantation as it is a surprisingly well-kept secret spot that we considered for our ceremony.

Now you may be thinking about cranberries during your visit. I'll be honest -- I've lived in Boston now almost 10 years and have yet to see a bona fide cranberry bog in action, although I have seen some hibernating over the winter. I don't know how much farming you'll see in June (harvest is in the fall), but it may be worth some sort of cranberry quest. You'll have to do that one on your own, but if anyone needs me to find them more info, let me know because Plymouth does have bogs. You can watch a fun little film about the berry on the site.

Finally, thanks to the wonders of technology, Rob and I are creating our very own personalized web map of the wedding and surrounding fun things. Yep, this internet thing is just a thrill a minute. It seems to be one of those internet things that are actually useful.

Like I said, I'm still getting to know Plymouth, but as I find out new cool stuff, I will keep you posted.

Christmas 2007

My dear pal Tina took this photo of us during a holiday brunch at the home of the ultra-hostess, Katie J (count 'em, four breakfast casseroles, including grits, yum). Rob was a trooper, driving 9 hours from Boston to Pittsburgh and then willingly spending the week with my family, followed by a 12 hour drive back. (headwinds?). So he has earned many points in my book.
So with the new year comes the actual year of this whole event thing. Maybe that's not amazing to anyone but me.
All is well in Boston. We are stripping wallpaper to beat the bandits.

A Little More Hotel Info

Okay, after doing some more research, I have found an Inn that seems to make most folks happy. Feel free to use this place as well -- they have a 20% discount price off the summer rate for our wedding so do ask for it. It isn't as close as those already mentioned but it is still within a few miles and with a reasonable price.
The Plymouth Bay Inn 1.800.941.0075 You will need to call to get the wedding rate.