Our wedding has a home

I'm happy to say that Mike and I have finally made a decision on where we will have our special day, Sweet Briar in Geneseo, NY! Both of us are really happy with the place and know it will be a beautiful backdrop for an intimate celebration with our closest family and friends! And it all happened because I missed a train....

Long story short, I miss read the time on my ticket by 20 minutes, missed the train and came up with the great idea of having Mike meet my mom, sister and I in Geneseo (about half way between where my two homes are) to check it out! I showed them around the place, because Will, the owner, was busy with a rehersal dinner, and they loved it as much as Bridesmaid Jamie and I did in May. So we grabbed Will and signed a contract, for exactly one year from the day! :)

Its so nice to have that decision done with, and with the place I kept coming back to every time I sat down to think about our wedding.

My last few post were only a small percentage of the locations that we looked for. Since I've graduated and summer camp hasn't started yet, I had time to do some serious searching. Bridesmaids Jenny, Jamie and Holly all got in on the act. It got pretty stressful there for a while. There may have even been a few tears. I wanted to make sure that we could find the best place for our money, which isn't a whole lot. So I searched and searched Buffalo, the finger lakes, Rochester and Syracuse. I wrote tons of e-mails. I made spreadsheets. But every place, I compared to Sweet Briar. As the days ticked away, I got more and more nervous we'd not find a better place and miss out on one that I knew I liked. As my mom says, everything happens for a reason. If I hadn't missed the train, Mike would have never seen the place, fallen in love with it too and agreed to make it our place. I'm happy its done and we have a beautiful location!

So, if there are any ladies out there that need some ideas in the Western/Central NY area. Let me know, because I know what its like to be stressing over that....

Potential Wedding Location: The Sweet Briar Inn

Because Mike is very consumed with the completion of his thesis, I'm really working hard to narrow down the list so we can have a place picked out by the end of June. (You wouldn't believe how fast places are being snapped up!) Since I was back out in the WNY area, I decided to spend some time checking out our selections out that way.

Bridesmaid Jamie and I took a trip last Friday out to The Sweet Briar Inn, which is just a hop, skip and a jump away from our alma mater, SUNY Geneseo and neither of us had a clue of its existence! One of my mom's co-worker's daughters is getting married there this summer and tipped me off. I'm so glad she did, because this is definately the place I'm most in love with so far! I have to say, I was a little reluctant posting this because I didn't want to give away my little secret. Like all the good places I've found so far, the number of days that they have available for next year is quite limited!

Like the Hillside Inn, this used to be a private estate. Its has the long driveway and in the middle of no where. This place steps it up a bit more though. The inside is all gleaming hardwood floors and earth tones and hundred year old murals on the walls! The place is also a spa. What more could you ask for the day before your wedding!?

The site has lots of wandering space, a nice white tent already on site, and a two beautiful sites to have the actually ceremony!

The first area is a little bluff overlooking the Genesee Valley. I'm not sure if you can see it in the picture, but the stones on the ground are the foundation of a little old chapel that used to be on the grounds. How cute! To get to the bluff, the wedding party walks about 400m down a windy path of cedar trees. What an entrance! Plus, we wouldn't need too much in way of decor because of the natural beauty of the landscape!

Here's Jamie standing in as the bride, because as usual, she was dressed way cuter than me!

The second location is in the yard with the actual ceremony on the steps on the side patio of the house. Again it has a lot of natural/structural beauty and wouldn't need much decoration. See those pretty greens, that's Wisteria, which when in bloom, looks like a dripping purple grapevine and smells amazing!

Other amazing things about this place include the fact that you can get it for the whole weekend to yourself! I can see myself now, the day before the wedding, getting spa treatments and hanging out by the endless pool with my soon to be husband and my best friends. Sigh...

In other words, I need to get my butt in gear, check out some of the lingering possibilities on the list and get a deposit in somewhere, quick!

So, I've been a bit slacker....

But really only in blogland, because recently:

* I had some crafty moments
* I won some cool things from other blogs
*I finished student teaching
* I graduated with my master's degree in Deaf Education
* I've been applying for teaching jobs like crazy...
* I got a kayak as a graduation gift from my parents (Thanks Mom and Dad!). A sweet Dagger Alchemy 140S in Flame color :)


I have a few weeks now before my summer job starts, so I'll really try to get back into the swing of posting! (Unless I spend all my free time out on the lake... but I can't really be blamed for that. Really, just look at that awesome kayak!)

Condesending? Once

I have a big fear of being thought of as condescending. I think someone told me once that I was, and though I don't remember who it was, or when or what it was regarding, it is something that has been bothering me for quite sometime. Its something that I have been trying to consciously change, and there are times when I feel that I have been condescending that I just feel awful about. One of the ways this appears in my daily life, especially at school, is regarding knowledge. I really get excited about things I know and I want to share that knowledge with other people. I'm sure thats why I am going to be a teacher, and probably (hopefully) will make me be a good one. Here's the scenario that I really struggle with. In classes a professor will be lecturing and will either pause, waiting for someone to finish the sentence with information we're supposed to know, or asks a direct question. Sometimes the information is right there in my head and I want to fill in the blank or answer the question right away. And sometimes I do. After this happens several times in a class, I realize, guiltily that I have been answering most of the questions. So I have to make a conscious effort NOT to answer, even if I know it, and even if no one else is saying anything for a minute or so. This is a big effort for me. I know that other people in my class know the answer and its not fair for me to just jump in all the time. Wait time, its called. Its a skill that teachers have to practice when questioning students, so maybe its good that I'm having to practice it now. Other times, I want to offer constructive criticism, like on the structure of powerpoints presentations, my pet peeve thanks to a great professor at SUNY Geneseo. Today told one of the girls in my class that her power point was excellent, and had a lot of great information, but that many of the pages had too much text and it was a little overwhelming to a viewer. I worry now that I hurt her feelings, when I just meant to help. Also, I want to add my 2 cents to topics that I know about, because I want other people to know the cool things I've found out. Today, a professor was giving a presentation on something that I had just done extensive research on for a paper. I had to practically bite my lips in order not to add something. I wasn't always this way actually. I remember teachers in late middle school and early high school telling me that I couldn't get an A unless I raised my hand more in class. I had to make a big effort to do that then. I remember keeping a tally of how many times I raised my hand in French class to make sure I was participating enough. Then, I think, as I became more confident with myself, I was able to raise my hand more. Its funny now that the same thing is having the opposite effect on how I feel about myself. I guess I'll just keep trying though.
So I left school feeling pretty rotten, with all the stuff mentioned above, as well as the stress of the end of the semester work load and exhaustion from a long day. I turned on NPR as I pulled out of the parking lot, as usual. Fresh Air, which is a arts show was on. They were talking about an indie film called "Once" that had won some Grammies, but that I had never heard of. But when they played a song from the movie in the introduction, called "Falling Slowly", my attention was immediately caught! I had heard this song before, as well as several others they played later in the show. It turns out that film is directed by a former member of the Irish band, The Frames, and the main male character is a singer for the band as well. This is a band that I was introduced to during my time in Ireland, and who I really enjoy, but don't hear about much here at home. I'm really excited now about seeing this movie, and watching the clips from the movie make me want to watch it more. That picked my spirits up a bit, and I will listen to The Frames for the rest of the night whilst I try to wade my way through the last remaining projects of the semester.