Christian W. Klay Winery (401 Days to Go)

First off, I could totally kick myself for forgetting my camera in the car.  I mean seriously, all I had to do was say, "Oops, I'll be right back."  Less than two minutes.  But no, the camera remained in my bag, in the Mini, sitting in the parking lot.

I think it's partially because Jeff and I got to the winery a little early this past weekend and decided to get out of the car and stretch our legs after the early morning drive for nearly two hours.  Driving back into the Laurel Highlands from Pittsburgh involves some patience, the turnpike, and some back country highways that twist and wide up and down the mountains.  At first we weren't sure what to make of the place.  It had just finished raining, was gray and bleak, and we were situated at the bottom of a valley.  All we could really see was the barn from the outside, looking up at the ridges where the vineyards were, and a man-made pond with a fountain.

Christian W. Klay Winery is set into a valley in the Laurel Highlands less than ten minutes away from Ohiopyle  State Park and and about 20 minutes away from Falling Water.  When we finally got up with the vineyard's groundskeeper/manager, he gave us a driving tour of the property (since it was muddy and since it was a relatively large piece of property).  We got to see the main vineyard, the apple orchards, and a beautiful hill top grass field that feels as if the entire world is just dropping away from it.  There was even a valley field set further back on the property too.  Our favorite two spots on the property were the first two that we saw (probably lucky since we wouldn't want to be towing people back and forth much further than that).

The vineyard is at it's peak after the start of June.  Before that it's in the middle of needing pruned and the grass is about two feet high between all of the grapevines.  But by June, the grass is turned over and the vines are budding and turning green.  So for our wedding date, it would be in peak condition.  Essentially, we saw it at it's worse, and I think I could still work with it.  Except for maybe the two foot tall grass.  The vineyard itself is set on top of a ridge and the view looking out is exceptional.  The mountains are covered in trees and there's only a few houses and farms spotting the valley view below.

The field that was situated at the top of a ridge was a little more clean looking.  There were no orchards, grapevines, or any other agriculture.  Nothing but open air and a few trees on nearby ridges.  In all directions, it looked down into valleys much like the view from the vineyard.  And of course the mountains were gorgeous.  It was a perfect 360 panorama of Pennsylvania's nature at its finest.

The last possible location, and the furthest back, was a field set down into a valley.  We were informed it has lost its popularity over the years because it is no longer a field of wildflowers.  Both Jeff and I were a little disappointed that we are apparently getting married five years to late to enjoy this splendor.

Back at the barn, there was a fenced in field for event parking.  I'd imagine that there would be no trouble finding space for parking even with the large numbers that Jeff (not I) is expecting.  On the other side of the barn from the parking is the entrance with giant sliding doors.  Inside, the columns are wrapped in dried grapevines and twinklie lights and spot lights have been hung from some of the cross beams for the dance floor and additional lighting.  With only half of those lights on during the day, it was relatively well lit and provided the beginnings of a romantic setting.  The man who gave us the tour did not know all of the specifics (as he's not the actual event manager) about how many people could be seated in there, but he knew that there had been about 200 people in a banquet before.  In one corner of the barn was a walled off section for the catering prep which included stainless steel tables and a refrigerator--no oven/stove.  Also, a pair of wheeled bars were there as well and the floor was concrete.  The walls on two sides were newer than the other side.  This created a slightly discordant appearance, but Jeff and I talked about it and decided that with a little decorating, it wouldn't be noticed.

Back outside again, there was the pond that I mentioned earlier that even came with two geese.  Actually they were trying to give away this pair of lovebirds.  So if your interested, go pick them up.  But near the pond was a newly built pavilion.  Not a very large one, but after some chatter between Jeff and myself, we decided worst case scenario (that being rain of course) it would serve as an appropriate and still beautiful choice for a ceremony site.

And to sum up our tour of the winery, we got to do a wine tasting.  Jeff and I are anything but wine critics so our comments were pretty much limited to "amazing", "eh" and a scoring based on the 1-10 scale.  We're classy all the way.  This was important to us though that the let us taste the wine.  Especially since if we decide to go with the venue, we're required to buy at minimum two cases of wine.  We decided that only two wines weren't that good and that we would have no trouble selecting at least one white and one red wine to serve.  And we'd probably have to buy bottles of every desert wine to serve instead of a champagne toast.  As we drove away we were even talking about buying an entire case of their wine in order to open one bottle a year for our anniversary should we get married there.

Now, as we had been approaching the winery, we passed over the tippy top of a mountain and right past the Summit Inn Resort.  This place looked like it had dropped down on top of the mountain straight out of the 1940s (or even earlier).  No, I don't mean in a shabby run down way.  I mean in the elegance of the place.  It had character.  You could just tell by driving by.  On our way back, we decided to stop there and have lunch.  It seemed like a logical place to stay for the weekend if our wedding was at the winery so it would also be a logical place to have our rehearsal dinner too.

Before we could even get to the restaurant, we accidentally walked into a side door and right into their reception hall that was being set up for somebody else's wedding.  Oops.  I told you, we're all class.  So we glanced around, giggled a little at our mistake and ducked back out again.  But already, we were falling in love with the place.  The hall had been enormous.  The seating that was there for 100 barely even began to fill  a third of the space.  We finally found the main entrance which made me practically swoon at the huge patio deck.  It was gorgeous, absolutely picturesque.  I wanted to see me and my bridesmaids lined up against the rail looking radiant.  I wanted to get dressed for my wedding in this hotel.  

Once inside, I felt like I'd stepped back in time.  The lobby was enormous, a staircase leading up and to both sides like something out of the Sound of Music.  Actually, both of our first impressions was that of the Shining, but without the creepy girls in white dresses asking us to come play with them.  We got our lunch and Jeff went bonkers as his taste buds sang and danced.  He asked if we could instead have our wedding reception here.

After we ate, we talked to the women at the reception desk and found out that our date was already booked for another reception but that there were still plenty of rooms available for the weekend and that it wouldn't be a problem to have our rehearsal dinner the night before and our after party there the night of.  They even gave us the keys to a couple of different rooms and allowed us to give ourselves our own tour of the hotel.  The rooms were a tiny bit dated, but very clean looking.  And by dated, I simply mean the TVs were old.  But seriously, who's going to be watching TV that weekend?  There's going to be booze!

Everywhere we looked from the hotel, the view was gorgeous.  It was all valley views from the front.  And the back looked onto a slope of trees.  And in case our guests really are bummed by the old TVs, they could go play golf or jump into the enormous pool they had.  Or perhaps the heated out door hot tub?

We're still going to look at one other place in another week or so, but I have a feeling we're very quickly going to try and get everything booked and reserved to have our wedding between this resort and the winery.  All I know is that I'm definitely going to jump on the fact that Jeff is actually excited about planning our wedding.

Mother's Day Gifts (403 Days to Go)

So Jeff and I went shopping for a mother's day gift for his mother this weekend.  I had already gotten and given my mother her gift at Easter: a gift card for the Pirates so that she and her boyfriend could go to a game of their choice sometime this month.

Jeff had in his mind a charm bracelet that could have all the birthstones for everyone in the family.  Since the family is grown exponentially fast recently and hardly anyone's birth months overlapped, it seemed excessive to try to buy a ring at this time.  When we got to the jewelry store we found out that there weren't any linked chains that could be used for charm bracelets.  Jeff was a little frustrated that the only options they had in that style cost a couple hundred dollars.  Apparently Pandora has quite literally knocked down the demand of the traditional charm bracelet such that you can't even find them anymore. 

So, there we were look at Pandora bracelets.The first step was picking out chain which Jeff went with a silver lobster claw.  We also decided to get at least one clip in order to make sure that the beads stay in place the way they're supposed to without the risk of them falling off.  We went with this one:

We next checked out the different options for birth stones.  Jeff wanted to start with just his own and his brother's and for the following holidays we would start to fill in the rest.  It sounded like a great idea until we started adding up the cost of the different charms and the add-ons that we hadn't expected, such as the clip.  The birthstone charms that the lady first showed us were definitely a) out of our price range and b) completely inappropriate to represent her two sons.

Our second option was a dangling charm for the birthstones but I told Jeff that on my "knock-off" bracelet that the dangling charms tended to press into my wrist awkwardly or get caught on things.  So we quickly decided against that particular style of charms.  Especially since we were informed that they were discontinued and we'd never have a chance to get a matched set by the time Christmas rolled around.

The third option was a more recent design that wasn't necessarily meant to be birthstones but just came in a wide variety of stone colors.  We liked these, but it was still out of our budget to afford both Jeff and his brother's stones and didn't seem right to buy only one of theirs.

So we started contemplating what single charm we could buy that would be appropriate for Mother's Day.  Of course considering the occasion we looked at the newest "MOM" charm but decided to not go quite that obvious or cheesy. 

We instead got her this:

Can't go wrong with something tropical for this scuba diving family.  So now we've got to make sure she knows that we'll fill it in over time and to not rush out and buy all the charms herself.

Ex's (404 Days to Go)

The other day I was on Facebook and I realized that someone I went to college with was planning her wedding--for the second time.  When I had known her, she had dated a common acquaintance and right after graduation they were engaged.  Now, I had known there was some rough spots in their relationship and thus was not entirely surprised to find out a few months later (again through Facebook) that the engagement had been broken off.  But before the engagement had been broken, she had published a ton of professional engagement photos on the social networking site.

Out of curiosity, I went to see if I knew who her new fiance was.  I didn't.  But what really surprised me was that pictures of her ex-fiance were still shown in the top banner as being some of her most recently tagged photos.  When I clicked to see all the photos of her I saw that nearly all of them were from her engagement photo session with her ex (or from sorority life during college) and there wasn't even a single shot of her with her new husband-to-be.  Now, this was the exact opposite on his page (oops, his security settings weren't up to speed and I can be a stalker when curiosity gets the better of me), for his profile picture was a couples shot of them.

Both members of the couple have their entire walls covered in statuses and comments having to do with their upcoming nuptials but it really surprised me that she had never edited her Facebook to diminish her ex-fiance's presence especially with her wedding coming up in the fall.  So my question isn't really about whether or not she's wrong or right, but what is the proper etiquette in the situation?  Do you erase your past life and pretend it never happened?  Or do you at least more thoroughly establish that you have a new life that doesn't include that other guy you had a professional shoot with?

I'll admit, I never went through my account and deleted everything that went between my ex and myself.   The pictures, comments, even the connection as "friends" remains.  In fact, I hadn't even realized we were still FB friends until I saw his comment a week after I announced my engagement to Jeff about how he'd dodged two bullets in one month in reference to myself and another of his exes (and one of my bridesmaids).  I contemplated removing him, but didn't.  I have an attitude about removing FB friends that essentially dictates that I have to wish them dead before I remove them, thus no one ever has been.  

However, I feel as though I had been active enough on FB while I was single and while I was dating Jeff to establish very thoroughly which guy I plan to spend the rest of my life with.  It wasn't as if I was completely inactive during the two year span between wedding planning periods as this girl I once knew had been.  It was just slightly jarring to me.

I'm curious to know how others have handled their exes on social networking sites like Facebook.  Did you erase your pictures of your ex?  Did you remove them as a friend?  Or did you let the past be just as it was no matter how prominently it was displayed?

The Royal Wedding Fashion (407 Days to Go)

Because let's face it--this is all that really matters today when it comes to the topic of weddings.  

Already 2 billion people have watched footage.  Yes, 1/3 of the world population.

Kate's dress was of course amazing.  I've been hearing the word "understated" tossed around quite a bit but I'd like to think that the Duchess is merely sensible, classy, and my favorite: timeless.  The simplicity will never cause no one to ever look back and think "What was she thinking?!"  Because if we're all honest with ourselves, that's what we'd say about Princess Diana's poofy shoulders.  But that's something we'd never say of Princess Grace Kelly.  I feel like after half a century we'll have a truely classy princess once again.

As customary, she had a long train, but not so long that it required a troop of girl scouts to carry it--only her sister Pippa.  And of course Pippa looked absolutely lovely too in her thematically matching Alexander McQueen dress. 

I loved the lace bodice that Kate wore in order to meet the Abbey's requirements.  It was subtle and beautiful. Sigh.  And can we talk about the hair?  Half-up, half-down in an effort to exhibit her own style as well as appease her new royal fam.  I don't envy her the sacrifices she has to make for the sake of appearances and tradition.  But she is certainly doing a fantastic job of making the best of it.

Royal Wedding Budget (408 Days to Go)

So with the Royal wedding less than 24 hours away and trying to work out my own wedding budget, it made me wonder what exactly went into the royal budget and how much different it was from the average American wedding cost.  Someone else put together a very, very basic breakdown of cost by comparing the royal wedding, to Chelsea Clinton's wedding, to the average American wedding. 

So for the overview budget, Kate Middleton and Prince William will have spent a whopping $32 million.  To put this into some more perspective, the Clintons dropped only a tenth of that amount on their own "princess" and in America, the typical "Daddy's girl princess" spends approximately $27,000--less than one hundredth of the British royal wedding's cost.  Already, I'm starting to feel like I'm not prepared to spend enough on my own wedding.

Going a little more in depth, next we'll look at the cost of the cake.  Around Pittsburgh, prices tend to run from $1.50 to $3.00 a slice for some really impressive looking and tasting cakes.  So, going with the highest price, and my relatively large guest list (250 people), I'd be looking at paying around $750.  Excuse me while I pick myself up off the floor.  This is actually considered over the average price for a wedding cake in the U.S.  So I'll definitely keep looking to find a cake a little cheaper.  The Royals will be dropping somewhere around $80,000.  Divide that amongst the 300 guests and you're looking at $266 slices of cake.  Yikes!  That better be the most incredibly moist and delicious cake ever.

Kate Middleton's dress will cost somewhere in the ballpark of $434,000.  The average American "princess" will spend just a little over $1000.  I personally spent just under $700 on mine (after taxes) and I'm darn proud of that because I managed to get a designer gown.  I can only imagine what the average price will be of the royal wedding knock-off dresses that we can expect to start seeing in troves next month.

An astounding $800,000 will be spent on just the flowers for the big day.  This is just shy of half of what was spent for Chelsea Clinton's wedding.  But the average American bride will spend a little less than $2000 for her flowers.  It makes me wonder what the exact price of Kate's bouquet (which will be left on the tomb of the unknown soldier) will be.  I'm planning to try and spend not a penny more than $100 for my own bouquet if at all possible.

The engagement ring actually falls significantly less than an American celebrity's ring.  Chelsea Clinton's engagement ring cost a whopping $1 million dollars whereas Diana's ring which was passed on to Kate is valued at $136,000.  Still, this is a lot more than the average American's engagement ring which clocks in somewhere around $5000.  Out of respect for Jeff, I won't reveal how much mine is worth.  But for most of us girls, we care more about the thought our men put into the ring than how much it cost.  It means so much to me that Jeff had mine specially designed and kept in mind that I wanted a flat ring.

Next up are the wedding favors.  There's no exact price that's been listed, but the customized scarves that will be given out to the guests are made by a company, Centrex of Ludhiana, India, that at the high end makes scarves valued at 300 pounds (~$500).  Since these are custom scarves which will be offered in three different color schemes, I feel like this is probably a safe bet on the pricing.  Considering that most American brides aim to spend as little as possible on their favors, I'd say that this is at least a hundred times more than the average favor price.  In fact, I'm having my mom crochet small seashells as favors for minimal cost (before the manual labor of course) and having a photobooth with the money saved on favors.

But all of these costs broken down don't even come close to the cost on the British economy.  The royal wedding will more or less shut down the country for a day.  Estimates have been made that the national holiday could cost the economy $10 billion (which is the low estimate; the high estimate being $50 billion). Impressive considering that the average American wedding does nothing but boost local economies by putting vendors and their employees to work.  That and our guests are so wide spread throughout the region and businesses that even if they need to take a day or two off to attend the wedding (or merely recover from their hangover) it would do no great harm to the economy.  Granted, they have also calculated how much the wedding will help the economy with a surplus of around $1.5 billion from the sales of memorabilia.

So the next time that you and your family or fiance get into a fight over the wedding budget, try and keep in mind that it could be worse--or better depending on how you want to think about it. 

Starting a New Career (409 Days to Go)

So I can officially announce that I've gotten a new job.  I received the offer by phone last Thursday and the offer packet in the mail this afternoon.  I gave my two weeks notice to my supervisors yesterday with a resignation letter and to the best of my ability, an in-person chat as well.  My middle supervisor was more or less a little shocked (that I spoke to him first) and wished me the best and gave me some words of warning about ever wanting to move up into management type positions.  All I could do was arch an eyebrow and say that I'd keep it in mind.  Personally I find my ambitions to have the option to move up into management to be healthy.

My direct supervisor didn't get to work until late (this is actually a norm for him and part of the reason I'm moving on) so therefore I didn't get to tell him until later.  When I did speak to him, he hadn't even noticed the e-mail dangling at the top of his inbox titled "Resignation" but instead talked to me for over an hour about the results I'd e-mailed him late last Friday and then about what work was ahead for the next several months.  I sort of just "uh-huh"-ed my way through the conversation without ever getting a word in edgewise to mention I was quitting.  When I did finally tell him, it was sort of like a little "oh" and that was about all.  Then a few questions about where I was going to be working now.

I still haven't told my head supervisor.  That'll be later this morning.  That's when all of the shit hits the fan if you will.  I'll be informing him of exactly why I sought out new employment elsewhere because of my direct supervisor being a jerk to put it mildly.  All of my coworkers have begged and made me promise that I will do this today.  That in itself should tell you that his "management skills" are a concern.  The past two days I've been at work very late because when I gave my two weeks notice it was apparently waving the flag that said give me two months worth of work to do and don't give me time to catch up on paperwork that has to be done.

Apparently in the sciences, it's not often that they have a technician who actually leaves with things in order (let alone wanting to leave things in order).  So I guess my supervisor better get used to the idea that he's going to owe me some major overtime in order to insure that everything that I used to do is in order and ready to be handed over to one of my coworkers.  I'm crossing my fingers that this week will be the last for experiments and they'll leave me an entire week for just paperwork and bureaucracy.  I'm sure I'm being way to optimistic.

Visiting Succop Conservancy (410 Days to Go)

On Saturday my FMIL and I headed to Butler County Community College's Succop Concervancy.  If I actually book this as my venue I'm going to have to shorten this somehow for the invitations.  That is a mouthful!  But it's looking relatively unlikely because they're already booked for the date that Jeff and I chose and we would have to postpone the wedding by at least a few months.

Succop is a beautiful location that would be appropriate for ~150 guests.  Their outdoor event pavillion has ceiling fans, space heaters, and drop sides available in order to stay off the weather should it decide to be unwilling to behave.  (See below for photos of these amenities) I can just imagine how pretty it would be as the sun began to set and it was completely covered in twinkly lights.  The only downside is that there is no built in dance floor--you would have to rent one.  The pavilion is located extraordinarily conveniently between two of the possible ceremony sites and the house.  A path leads from the kitchen door of the house to the pavilion for the catering staff's ease.  Which by the way there is only one available caterer for this venue, however their food is actually very good.  Also very near by is a pond which has a small peninsula.

As I mentioned before, there are two locations that are ideal for the actual wedding ceremony.  The first is the brick path right in front of the house.  The bridal party would all enter the aisle through the front door and walk straight out along the brick path which would serve as the aisle.  The chairs would be set up along the blacktop.  They have an awning that they can set up in the middle of the path to serve as the altar and be decorated.  It's a very scenic location and allows an outdoor ceremony that is very classy and elegant--just in case you're not into the down-to-earth setting of an herb garden.

The herb garden was the other setting that was very nice.  They have an awning that is permanently affixed there and is set at the end of an aisle that goes between the garden sections.  If I were to get married here, this is the setting I'd choose.  I even scoped it out that you could move from the house (kitchen door) around back through a back parking lot and around a structure.  Sounds silly, but if you're like me, you don't want everyone to be watching you slowly approach the ceremony from what feels like a million miles away.  I'd rather go a little out of my way in order to achieve a grand entrance.

But directly behind herb garden is the restrooms.  Don't panic.  They are not blatantly labeled as bathrooms.  That sign above the door simply says "Herb Garden".  But the reason I'm showing you this is because as I was saying earlier, the way you would probably make your entrance is by coming from behind this building.  And it's also very conveniently located to the pavilion.  There are only two bathrooms, but they're at least of a somewhat decent size (meaning there's room in there for both you and the MOH who needs to hold your dress up.

Going back to the house from the reception pavilion, there's a cute little patio behind the house.  There's only room for two tables, but depending on the number of people you have, it'd be a cute little place to hav brunch or tea before you start getting ready and dressed.  But it is one of the many places in and around the house that would make for beautiful photo opportunities.  The house is just as pretty inside as the grounds surrounding.  In fact, that was one of my favorite parts about the venue.  They had a really nice set up upstairs for dressing.  The bride and groom each had their own side which included two rooms.  The bride's side was a little more done up and had a much larger bathroom, but let's face it, what do the men care?  Also, there was a door that insured no peeking.  I liked the close proximity though because for us, we'll only have one photographer.  So it's nice to know they'd be able to easily move back and forth to take photos in both "camps."

I included all the other photos that I took that day so that you can get a better feel for how the Succop looks.  Like I said, there are many beautiful places around the grounds in order to take advantage of for photos and for your guests to wander during the cocktail hour.

Ceiling fans in the pavilion

Drop cloth walls to protect you and your guests from inclimate weather.

The path from the kitchen to the pavilion.

Standing in front of the bathrooms, and looking from the herb garden to the pavilion.

Walking out onto the peninsula in the middle of the pond.

Nearby walking paths

The park bench out on the peninsula

From the park bench looking back at the herb garden.

The barn located behind the house and pavilion.

From the pavilion path looking at the kitchen end of the house.

The bridal bathroom

The groom's changing rooms