Our weekend labors

Having several days off from our full-time jobs, we put full-time effort into a wedding prep marathon.

Highlights include mailing our wedding license




and buying a ring for Yancy.





It felt weird -- a good kind of weird -- to be shopping for him.

Dress shopping: Day 1

I started my dress shopping with some significant challenges and advantages.


Challenges:

1. I was already in love with a dress I could never have from this collection by Colette Komm, who attends the same congregation I do here in Manhattan. http://www.colettekomm.com/. I love the skirt on Dress 3 and the jacket on Dress 5.
2. Many dress shops could not get dresses in my size in three months.
3. I want a dress that covers my shoulders.

Advantages: Sarah and Kortlyn.

We started shopping at Macy's, but the dress selection didn't excite us and the wait to see a "bridal consultant" was too long.

We left and when to RK Bridal, the Walmart of wedding retailers. We got to RK around noon and their waiting list to see a consultant was so long it had been closed for the day.

Then we applied Sarah's how-to-survive-in-the-city motto, "Everything is easier outside of Manhattan."

At David's Bridal in Queens we found a compromise: decent prices and decent customer service. You got to look through their catalog and try on your three favorite dresses.

These dresses were non-winners:

This was the best dress of the day:

Notice the bridal consultant tugging on my jacket.

This woman was the manager and she could sense a bride who might buy like a shark smells blood. This dress was much better than the others I'd tried, and as soon as I showed interest, she decked me out with a tiara, veil and bouquet, had me take a wedding walk around the dressing room and told me about how the whole day of my wedding my bridesmaids would to attend me.

I don't think being attended by Kelly and Collette will be quite like the vision she painted.

Warm rolls and gritty shivers

"Please put a picture of Yancy on your blog when you get a chance. I would like to see him. Your ring is beautiful.
Love you. Jan"

How can you say no to the woman who times the warm cinnamon rolls to come out of the oven just as you are shivering back to the beach house?

I now have a slideshow posted in the sidebar, and a short video so you can check out my "morsel."

Step One: Become a cliche (shudder)

I have contracted this attitude so prevalent in New York of desperately dreading anything cliche.

I blame it on tourists.

After a long day of heartlessly snipping cliches out of other people's writing (I don't care if it gives you voice!), I sometimes feel like would rather walk through East Harlem at midnight than be cliche.

And that is part of why I know I am in love with Yancy.

As of 11 p.m.-ish Tuesday, Aug. 12, when he put a ring on my finger, I have BECOME a walking, talking cliche.

The proof is in the pudding:

• I can't stop spinning my ring.
• Bridezilla briefly reared her ugly head when we shopped until we dropped for dresses.
• When he's around, I'm happy as a clam.
• Yesterday these words came out of my mouth: "Well, he needs a few more years to establish his career . . ."
• I cook my man dinner over a hot stove almost every night.