26 Miles Across The Sea...

...the choppy, wind-swept, rock-you-to-and-fro-until-you-want-to-die sea.

This weekend, the MFDC and I boarded a boat on our way to Catalina Island to take care of some wedding bidness and also have a romantical getaway weekend so we could bond with the island and reconnect as a couple sans all the over-scheduling. We got off to a rough start with stop and go traffic and then choppy seas that effectively drained all the blood from my beloved's head.

My better half has juicy, red lips when he's not dealing with motion sickness, but on this occasion, they were tan and corpse-like. I'm gonna be honest here and say I was simultaneously concerned and repulsed. Mostly repulsed, though, since I was fighting my own battle with the sea.

Finally, upon arrival in Avalon, our legs hit firm ground, we started feeling better and then and we did not stop walking from that point on. Even though Avalon was smaller than I remembered it, we had lots to do this weekend and our hotel was up a very steep hill. I'm pretty sure it was like, at LEAST a 70 degree incline. That's like, 8.0 on a treadmill, for your reference.

Avalon is a tiny enclave on a large island, most of which is a wildlife and land conservancy. Because of this, the list of vendors providing wedding services was small. Of course, this appealed greatly to Dan and I, because we did not particularly relish having to make dozens of inquires and phone calls in order to fulfill our (in my humble opinion) basic wedding requirements. However, there's not much of a cushion if you strike out with an island-based vendor due to availability or, in one potential vendor's case, complete inability to think outside the box a little bit. But that last example has been our only encounter with any negative results in planning our wedding on Avalon.

We had a delicious breakfast at Jack's Burgers Fries and Pies. Despite the name, the are just as adept at breakfast! We wandered around a bit and did some shopping until we met and did a cake-tasting with our baker outside our florist's shop. We sat on a bench and Dan almost completely stole the remaining bits of our chosen cake until I interrupted my conversation with the baker to call him out for it. Overall, a very simple process.

Then, we met with our florist, who has an adorable little flower shop and pretty much does the majority of the weddings on the island. I showed her some pictures and together we sketched out something I think will be very beautiful but also not too expensive. Hopefully. I'm still waiting on the quote.

After that, we chilled in our room and then took ourselves out to dinner at Steve's Steakhouse, who will be catering our reception. We purposefully ordered the items we would be serving and we were so pleased and fat by the time we had to haul our giant asses back up the hill to our room, where we relaxed and assisted our digestion by watching Alien.

Sunday, we again at breakfast at Jack's Burgers Fries and Pies. A few hours later we look a submersible tour of the island's ocean life and saw lots of fishies and a huge kelp forest. The water is so clear and unpolluted surrounding the island that the visibility was excellent. Here is an example of how clear the water is and how easily delighted by fishies I am:


Catalina Fishies from Dan Certa on Vimeo.

Sadly, MFDC and I soon succumbed to another bout of motion sickness. We made it off the boat and searched for some soda to calm our bellies and a bench. We picked up some Dramamine for the upcoming boat ride back to the mainland!

We recovered enough to scarf down a slice of pizza and a huge ice cream cone each. Finally, my most anticipated meeting happened. We met with our wedding coordinator and she took us to the beach house which will be the site of our nuptials and ensuing party. Immediately I noticed they had made some excellent renovations to the place and I was even more excited about our choice to have the wedding there than I already was! It was helpful to walk through with the coordinator and get a sense of how things are going to work out with our timing and unique space limitations.

Our wedding is truly going to be the intimate affair we were hoping for, and it's such a relief to know that all our vendors know each other and have knowledge of each others' styles and talents. The people of Avalon are so friendly and easy-going. Just walking to breakfast in the morning we were greeted with a Good Morning at least 3 times every day! I'm so happy this is going to be the environment our guests will experience after spending good money and time to be present at our wedding.

It's been such a pleasure planning up to this point that I can't help but feel myself waiting for the other shoe to drop! I'm trying to enjoy how easy and delightful this has all been without anticipating choppy seas! I'm sure the stressful moments are coming, but so far, it's been smooth sailing. And, of course, the minute it gets crazy, you know I'll be bitching about it here!