Stamboul! Okay, only part 1 of 6...

So I was in NY this weekend, and the two people who read here regularly certainly heaped it on me for not having posted in at least a month, and I sit here, chastised but unbowed. Actually, I sit here, thoroughly lazy and immobile after taking stupid @(42z7(_)W(_W)@@&*#*# Amtrak back from NYC at the crack of dawn this morning. But I digress. So much to discuss, and I'll put it all in this post and promise to get to details later. I'm asking you, Fearless Reader, to acknowledge at least the well-meaning intentions of that last sentence - at this moment, I do actually mean it. I'm totally lying.

So, crazy trip to Istanbul with now-Doctor Bub. Well, first we had a wedding in Tribeca Labor Days Weekend and I was on call all weekend with bridesmaid-y duties. Fortunately it was for an old friend who is veeery cool; so cool, in fact, that we had this exchange two weeks before her wedding:

Me: "I just got the cutest dress for the bridesmaids' luncheon! It's red and white and I bought it in the same store where I got my dress for the rehearsal dinner a few weeks ago."

Bride in 14 days" : "That reminds me...I should probably go shopping for a dress for the rehearsal dinner, shouldn't I" (if I could indicate with type that the inflection in her voice did not change at all, I would do so here).

Me: "Um, I was stressing about not having that dress two weeks ago--and I'm not the one getting married. Dude."

Bride, unfettered: "Well, we did just pick out the cake, so all in good time."

This story and this bride are especially noteworthy when compared to the saga my mother has been through over the past 18 months, as her assistant plans the Greatest Orgy of Excess in White that has ever been planned. I make it a point not to ask this girl a damn thing about this circus and no matter how much I duck and jab, she manages to bring it up within 5 minutes of my seeing her.


Me (not even directed at girl, talking to my mother in her office): "So I'll send you that thing by Wed-"


Scary Bride: "Did you use a word that starts with W? Wedding starts with W too! We just booked the dancing monkeys."


So I took a certain amount of glee in relaying that my friend who was getting married in 14 days had just picked out her cake. I honestly thought Scary Bride was going to choke.


Some wedding photos...it was a really lovely event.





ok, maybe not - blogger is acting all wonky. More photos to come!

A beautiful LA wedding

"you have the loveliest eyelashes, dear..." the woman in sky high black mules with a dramatic flower pattern is saying to me, and I'm smiling, "where did you get them?" And with the Gary Coleman look on my face, I'm thinking, um, in the mirror with a few coats of Maybelline? But I stop and look around - I'm standing next to a pool which has lilies and candles floating strategically in it (prevented from congregating over the filter with fishing wire), to my right is a lush grassy area with a looming lilac tree under which we've just seen two people get married in a sweet and poignant (and funny) ceremony; while to my left is the tennis court on which we'll sit for dinner at white tables with purple accents and mojito martinis. And I remember, I'm in LA, nothing is real. I'm at the home of the bride, where I've spent many hours lounging in this space and hanging in her parents' 8-headed shower (they weren't in it at the same time). And sure enough, I look closely and the woman's eyelashes are like daddy longlegs, and purple. And they are wicked cool, they make her eyes look green, and they are totally fake. And she may be dans un certain age but she's kicking it. "Oh, these old things? These are mine - I left the heavy duty ones at home!" And we laugh, and within minutes are talking about how fat can be injected into the balls of your feet to make it easier to wear stillettos, and I find myself considering whether I should have this done. And then I find myself referring to "my orthopedist" who, from the two times I saw him certainly seemed cool, but I doubt he'd like to hear me refer to him as I would a puppy. We're having a blast.

And the women are in perfect shape and you can't tell anyone's age and the men are tanned and all have hair and this is a scene to be remembered. But more importantly, we are at this fun and lovely wedding that isn't stuffy, mainly because the bride and groom are too offbeat to do this seriously - no one's freaking out about the purples coordinating. And Caro's mom officiated at the ceremony, making us laugh and think back to their first encounter a million years ago (she set them up). And then I think back to Caro, my Paris roommate, and meeting her at the salad bar in school in Cannes and when I was thinking about how when I was chatting up this cool girl picking at the tomatoes I couldn't have imagined that 9 years later, we'd be standing here, and how we have so many good stories to regale each other (and crowds) with, and that's really the point of friendship, knowing someone - in our case because we were far away from home and living in a small space without a lot of money and sharing a room that was like the Bat Cave, it was so dark - so you can tell funny stories about them and they about you which other people hear and exclaim "that's so true!"

And the party went on and the music shifted from Harry Connick Jr to dance music and we were perfectly chilly so sometimes we stood under the heat lamps, and so we ate a lot and danced a lot and then, whoops, the bartender left his post for about a minute so I took the liberty of bringing a few bottles of champange back to the table so we didn't have to walk the whole 10 feet to the bar. And the bride danced and her mom danced and we danced and all of a sudden, it was 1AM and we're cheering on the groom's rendition of "White Wedding" and there is no one else around. And we would've let them take away the heat lamps and kept dancing, but I'm sure a neighbor somewhere did not appreciate hearing that Dre song "California" (she played it for me, I used to play it - on tape, I think - in Paris) and we stumbled back to the Beverly Hilton, briefly considered crashing an Indian wedding, and unfortunately decided against it, and instead crashed in our very fluffy beds. And somehow made it to the airport the next morning.

All photos courtesy of 14th Girl friend and fellow wedding traveler, Lori, whose birdseye view is way more artistic than 14th Street Girl's. And she never puts her finger in front of the lens.

When I said "just a few more" I was totally lying

really, the last few...

Just a few more...

...pictures from Barbados and the wedding...our friend Lori, who I had been told takes the loveliest photos, just sent hers out. I couldn't not post them because they look just like the images I saw in my mind when looking at the wedding and the whole weekend and have unsuccessfully been trying to evoke in simple words. So, let them speak: