The last three days were jam-packed with as many wedding (and shopping) things as humanly possible. I had to take full advantage of my matron of honor coming to town for the weekend. Adorable!

We spent most of our 46 hours together doing everything we used to do when she lived here. And when I say everything, I mean all the things we would normally do over a week or two we jammed into one itty-bitty weekend — from botana de queso at Los Dos Hermanos to coveting eye shadows at MAC to drinking peach bellinis at Macaroni Grill, we did it all.

Before she arrived on Friday, I had a tasting with our caterer. I wasn’t going to have one at all — our venue has an exclusive contract with our caterer — but I decided that I wanted to confirm my choices. I wish I would’ve taken pictures of all the food, because it was incredible. The dessert miniatures were delicious, the hearty mini chicken pot pies were savory, and there was so much more… teeny fingerling potatoes, little crab cakes, the list goes on. I was thrilled with how everything turned out — especially the items I specially requested that aren’t on their regular menu.

Then first up on Saturday (after the obligatory venti seven-pump nonfat no-water chai) was a trip to the florist to finalize flowers. I continued to gush over photos like this:

…and I shamelessly begged for peonies. Well, much to my delight, she thinks she can get them from California! Probably not enough to use them heavily on the tables at the reception (or, more accurately, my budget doesn’t afford enough room for liberal peony importing), but we should have some for my bouquet and at least some for the tables. I could have kissed her, I was so happy. Lily of the valley too, and tweedia. Hooray, hooray!

Next was Rebecca’s dress fitting. I didn’t take any photos at the seamstress’ studio, but I shoud have because her dress is beautiful. I can’t wait to see all three of the bridesmaid dresses together. I’ve only seen them one at a time so far, and the colors are better than I hoped. The lightest blue is oh-so-sweet, the middle blue is vivid without being overpowering, and the darkest blue — the one I was most uncertain about — is perfection. From the swatch, I feared it would be almost navy — way too saturated, and extremely dark. Instead, it’s a smoky gray-blue that effortlessly compliments the other blues. Rebecca’s sporting the middle shade, and it looks fabulous on her. Just wait until you see!

After brunch at Orchard Heights Winery this morning, we took a little trip out to the venue:

I am a wine snob in training (or geek in training, GIT), but Rebecca is blessed with an amazing palette. The owner of the vineyard calls those people “super-tasters.” She definitely qualifies as one of those and she had to come with me to select our wedding wines.

Never lacking in presentation, Zenith had a lovely fruit and cheese plate to accompany our tasting:

We chose two whites, one sparkling and two reds. The whites are creamy and decadent, and the pinot noir is very fruit-forward, soft and approachable. Yummy. The exact varietals are a surprise, but trust us, they’re going to be good.

I miss Rebecca terribly already, but it was an absolute delight to have her with me this weekend. It’s hard (okay, make that nearly impossible) to believe that the next time I see her will be less than two days before the wedding.

Let’s get one thing straight: I did not enjoy my wedding dress fitting process. I was not at all prepared for that to be the case. My wedding dress selection process was so lovely and pleasant that I think I expected the same to hold true for the fittings. And I haven’t heard much from other brides about their fittings, so I figured that it must be at worst uneventful and at best enjoyable.

Now, I fully expected the first fitting to be less than wonderful. My dress was ordered to my largest measurement, so it was a little more than three sizes too large in the waist, and I knew I wanted to remove the straps and belt/sash from the get-go. I walked out of the first fitting feeling like I still didn’t have a good sense of what my dress would actually look like on me when it fit but I was 100% confident that it would be fabulous.

Well, someone should warn you about second fittings. You’ve waited months for your dress, and now the seams are open and exposed and it still doesn’t fit and all of a sudden your brain kicks into overdrive. I always made fun of the girls on Say Yes to the Dress when they came in for their fittings and went on and on and on about how that wasn’t their dress and it wasn’t the same as the sample and the color/detailing/proportions/etc. were completely wrong. “They must’ve gotten my dress mixed up with someone else’s,” they would say. I now know that all those girls must just be there for their second fitting, because I was so there. I was so freaked out that I actually tried to go to Gabrielle’s and look at the sample the next day to see if it was different from my dress. And when I got there and they were closed, I called my seamstress and asked her to compare my dress to the sample the next time she was in the shop because I swore that the pleating was different. Seriously.

I ordered my dress when I was living in the San Francisco area last year, so I was hoping to have my dress altered and shipped to me in Portland after the second fitting. But I was way too traumatized after the second fitting to trust that everything would be right, so I decided to fly back down to the Bay for my third fitting. And let me just say that it was worth every penny — ultimately, it only cost me $50 more to fly down and back than to just have my dress shipped. I didn’t have to worry about my dress being rained on, tossed around, and stacked under hundreds of other boxes in shipment. My flight home was nearly empty, so my dress had its very own overhead bin. (Southwest will let you take your dress on board as a carry-on. They don’t have flight attendant closets like some larger airlines do, but if you carefully fold your dress in half, it fits nicely in an overhead.) And the dress had to be taken in again after my third fitting, so being there enabled me to have a fourth fitting to ensure that everything was as it should be.

Eight months, four fittings and two airports later, my dress is home and somehow looks even lovelier in my little pink bedroom than it did at the bridal shop. Not sure how that’s possible but it’s true.

We’re at the airport now, headed to LA for not one but two wedding showers this weekend! Saturday is my bridal shower in Pasadena, and Sunday is a family couples shower in Placentia.

Everyone warned me that the weeks leading up to the wedding would be hectic, and despite my best attempts to allay it, the crazy-busyness has definitely hit. But there’s so much to look forward to in these next few weeks that I really can’t complain.

I love wrapping gifts almost as much as I love giving them, and the shower hostess gifts are no exception… Now I just have to get them to California in one piece.

Green botanical bags and shimmer tissue paper, Target; dupioni and satin ribbon and millenary flowers, Oblation.