Tuesday, April 29, 2008

Web Rank

We had a (loooooooong) coffee time with our wedding photograph, that I mentionned sometime ago, yesterday evening. It was a web-rank-geek-things session where we, or should I say him and my husband, tried to boost up his website rank on google search.

I take things more on the practical side as I noticed during all the hushy bussy of our wedding organization that most women - that means the wedding organizer, since men do not give much attention to all the small unimportant stuffs in a wedding - have a blog documenting all the things we are doing, testing, and choosing to have that one perfect day. This information, according to my experience, is much more valuable and reliable than those provided by companies and services that I feel unfortunately got involved more and more in some sort of a big-mafia-family of the very money-making wedding business. At least that is what happens in France.

I have never given any links or clues on what I tested or chose but after giving a thought I figure why not. Yes, I would give out excellent references for those who need ones! As a premiere, this is our wedding photograph whose work has satisfied us VERY much and that we won't hesitate to advise anyone who ask.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Royal Pastry

Stohrer - Official pastry chef of Louis XV's polish wife, originating from Wissembourg in Alsatia, continues to make incomparably delicious pastries for Parisians since 1730 in exactly the same kitchen and sells them in exactly the same boutique!

We had a stroll last Saturday afternoon in Paris 2nd quarter and passed in front of Stohrer's where I just could not resist to stop by their windows decorated by awfully mouth-watering desserts. I was not really hungry, in fact quite full from our late lunch, but the view was nourishing me. As for my husband, I could not stop him from going inside the shop. He spent 5 whole minutes to make up his mind, everything looking so tasty, before finally settled for an "Ali Baba", one of the house's specialities, sort of brioche dipped completely in rhum and garnished with pastry cream which my husband boasted later as the best he has ever tasted in his whole life.

Friday, April 25, 2008

In The Name of Love

I managed to drag my dear husband to a waltz private lesson this evening to prepare our Alsatian traditional wedding in a couple of months from now. I told him that it's better to humiliate ourselves in private now than later in public. He said okay. Was it for pleasing me or did I give the right argument?

Monday, April 21, 2008

How to be nice (and get squashed)

When we consented to celebrate our "real" wedding in my family-in-law's hometown, we thought of being courteous to the whole (big !) family by making it possible for everyone of this (huge) tribe to be present for the big day. We started making a list of friends to be brought over from a distance, we have after all 500 kms to go from Paris and we found out that we have to make a big sacrifice: we can not just invite any friends we want.

And then comes the big day when my parents-in-law gave us their lists and the first shock came in. 4 guests out of 5 are unknown to me, not even by name. They found it normal and I just thought, well... this is their first child's wedding so it is kind of difficult not to get over excited about inviting their good friends and neighbours. We made a deal that those perfect strangers will stay there for the cocktail party but we would have (only) close families for dinner. At this point, I was still motivated to be a miss perfect little daughter-in-law.

We started sending our invitations two weeks ago. From my side, I will have just a couple of friends and 3 members of my family. From my husband's side a few friends, and from my parents-in-law side we have a long list of ... strangers. I thought that it was all done and hell with it, at least until my new mother-in-law called to ask us for the left-over invitations because she wanted to invite (ONLY) 1 additional couple, whose name we have never heard of and still do not know, to our wedding dinner. We had a quarrel over the phone. I was beginning to feel that my wedding is turning to be a hey-go-here-to-party or worse, a big circus and me the weirdo creature everyone (that I do not know of) is coming to see. Okay, well, my imagination might run ahead too far but I was beginning to get upset. I was accused of being paranoiac and after convincing myself so hard that I can still make it to be the miss perfect little daughter-in-law, I sent 3 additional invitations for dinner to my mother-in-law. She insisted that she needed only 1 but I wanted to see if I was really going paranoiac.

Result came in yesterday. My mother-in-law invited more people for dinner without even asking us. Now, who is paranoiac? This time I am feeling that "my" wedding, which now turns out to be my mother-in-law's reunion party, is really getting out of my hand. She swore that she would not invite more but I would not count on it. One thing for sure, the next time she announces it, my game of miss perfect little daughter-in-law is finished and I would take it as a challenge for duel.

Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Post-marital syndrome ?

Previously, I brought the subject of family name-first name because I was about to get to a family name. It was done last Saturday, April 12th 2008 at 11.OO a.m., in Paris 15th's city hall. As we have decided that it was only paper-work and not the "real" wedding, we only had close family of my from-now-on-husband and our witnesses.

We had a wonderful time with our restricted "commitee". A surprise visit from a friend at the city hall, an awfully nice photo session with our photograph, now becoming one of our friends, and... flowers. Lots of white flowers. And then it was time for a wonderful lunch, almost to perfection, that my particularly difficult-to-please family-in-law did not say a single word of critics. True that the bill was a bit hard to swallow but nevertheless it was worth it !

I still wake up this week with our appartment in white, filled with white roses and orchids everywhere. All this fairy tale bridal atmosphere makes it so difficult to tell my brain that the party is over and to stop being dreamy. Perhaps it is also what drives my newly-appointed husband so charming and kind and gentle. Just like... a newly maried man. I just hope that this will be an "ever-after" even after I'll trash the dead flowers.

Friday, April 11, 2008

What is a name

I have lived my whole life in France, at least until now, as "XXXXXX, No First Name (NFN)". Yes, you have it right, it is written black on white "NFN", "XXXXXX" being taken as my family name.

Why on Earth would I want to have it like that? Because everyone has to have a family name in this country and if you don't then French bureaucracy would gladly put what you have as family name. Why? Because computers won't work if you don't put anything in the family name box. French computer software is so smart that they even refuse '-'.
That is how I end up as Miss NFN XXXXXX for the past 8 years.

By the way, be careful, the uppercase is important and it must be written exactly this way.