Hollywood

So as someone who's lived on the West Coast for the last 4 years, I don't find LA very exciting or awesome or unique. When we were in New York for a wedding two weeks ago though, all the guests were so in awe of the fact we were from LA. And these aren't backwoods New York people -- these are consultants and bankers and people who grew up in the fancy New England / New York area who've traveled around the world plenty.

I guess LA has this cache of being Hollywood (which is by the way the nickname my husband got at the Lansing wedding last weekend) and fun and fancy.

I don't know -- is LA that exotic? And what about Orange County or San Diego? Do they count too?

And would people from the West Coast or even New York think Atlanta was an exotic or unique place to be from? To my friend N who's coming next week, you can let me know if LA is really all that :)

Blue Skies in Michigan

The latest wedding I went to was in Lansing, Michigan, about 2 hours east of Detroit. It was an outdoor wedding so when it was thunderstorming the day before, I was worried, but by Saturday the weather was sunny and beautiful.

And there were clouds! There have been very few days in LA with blue skies and fluffy clouds. Even if there are clouds, they tend to be smaller, dinkier puffy clouds or the wispy cirrus clouds. It was really nice to see such a beautiful sky.

Given that it was an outdoor summer wedding, I was excited to pull out my Target dress with the lace. I wasn't 100% sure if it was appropriate given that it was partially white, but after getting some assurance from one of my friends, I wore it, and it was fine. Actually, some girls were purely white / off-white dresses, which I thought was odd. But I guess it's a small town in the midwest and a casual summer wedding.

Some girls also apparently did not read the wedding website and showed up in stilettos. Bad idea given that the wedding took place outside and you had to walk around a lot through grass (especially the trek to the portapotties). I wore wedges and I was so glad I did. My feet hurt at the end of the night but it could have been SO much worse. This one girl had trouble walking and had to lean on her boyfriend for support. I would have totally felt awkward doing that so it's a good thing I had on independence shoes. Or something like that. Anyway, here's a shot of the husband's and my shoes.

P.S. The nailpolish was an emergency job when at 10 am that morning I realized my toenails looked horrible and I had to wear sandals. I didn't even take off the old polish -- I just layered more right on top. Now taking all the polish off will be very interesting indeed.

Long Awaited Update

The last few weeks have been really busy -- 3 weddings in the last 5 weeks, and 4 of the last 5 weekends have been spent traveling or out of town. The one week we were in town, we had a friend visiting us, so while it was really fun, we got no work done.

I'm really looking forward to having a weekend at home where I can relax, blog, catch up on TV, and work on business school applications.

So a fun story from one of the weddings: it was in New York, so the husband and I got dinner with one of my best friends from college. We went to this fancy Indian-Latin restaurant called Vermilion. The husband and I love Food Network, and the chef at Vermilion (Maneet Chaudry) was on The Next Iron Chef and is now a judge on Chopped. So I was really excited to go to her restaurant and made a reservation right after I booked plane tickets.

Friday morning in NYC, we're in the cab going from Penn Station to the hotel, and the husband is distracted by hunger and the traffic, so I'm trying to keep myself amused. I check Groupon for New York, just to see if there's anything interesting, and lo and behold, there is a Groupon for Vermilion. I get really excited, but I call both the restaurant and Groupon to make sure I can redeem it the same day I purchase it. The restaurant says sure, but Groupon says I can't officially use it until the deal closes. Basically, if the groupon shows up in my inbox, the restaurant will honor it. I take a chance and buy it.

We get to the restaurant and I check my email. No Groupon yet. We're sitting waiting for our appetizers, looking around, when suddenly I see Maneet Chaudry walk over to the kitchen and start working on the register. The husband and my friend suggest that I go over and I say hi. After feeling awkward for like 2 seconds, I run over there to introduce myself and tell her what I huge fan of hers I am, etc, etc. I come back to my table to see if the Groupon came, and no luck.

Anyway, dinner was really good. My friend ordered these amazing mushrooms and I had some spicy tamarind eggplant that was tasty and very unique. The food was definitely Indian but some spices were tweaked so there was definitely something very different - but tasty - about it. And of course, the chef was nice enough to give us free mango flan (I'm not a fan of flan so I thought it was sort of gross). The other dessert we got -- flourless chocolate cake with spiced orange and blueberry sorbet was amazing, as evidenced by the picture below.

And then the check comes, and I decide to check my phone one last time for the Groupon. There it was! It was like fate wanted me to save money at the restaurant :)

Anyway, that's my fun story from New York. More stories to come!

And here was my outfit from dinner. Sort of LA with the white dress, but class-ed up a bit with the metallic belt and a gray cardigan (not shown). I think I wore black flats. I apologize for the horrendous lighting in the hotel room.

Apologies

Apologies for not blogging sooner... things have been pretty crazy with work, out of town trips, and guests. Not that those are bad things, but my blog gets pushed to the wayside. I'll start you off with an outfit of the day...

Basically, my friend's friend's brother owns this clothing company called five four, so my friend often comes by with free stuff. It's a men's clothing company, but I did manage to snag a small mens shirt that I could wear to get into the "menswear" trend quite literally. I tried to get a few good pictures, but the first one didn't come out great. As Tyra would probably say on ANTM, you should know how the picture will turn out before you take it. And I clearly had no idea that the way I twisted would make the shirt balloon up on top. So it looks sort of awkward. I look more awkward in the second picture but at least the outfit itself doesn't look awkward. So I guess that's a win?

It's not the kind of ladylike look I generally try to wear, but it's something different. I'm not sure about how the ankle length pants look with a long shirt -- it might just make me look really short (a.k.a. not the golden ratio I learned about from Donald [Duck] in Mathmagic Land). I'm also planning on trying the shirt tucked into a pencil skirt for another look or maybe as a beach coverup. I think there's lots of potential for the shirt.

Anyway, that about wraps it up. I had a few more cute outfits last week but I didn't get a chance to take a photo (p.s. props to the husband for taking the above pictures).