Jessica and Kevin

(We post this on behalf of last weekend)

We wanted Jacqui, Melissa, Jeff, and Sanjoy to be able to meet each other in a relaxed environment before we all did the wedding thing together (no matter how fun an event is, we know that when you're the ones planning it, the days beforehand get wacky busy). We were lucky to have Melissa for almost a week, but Friday was the start of the wedding party weekend.

After picking up Jacqui and Sanjoy in the early parts of Friday, we were all business, separating and talking wedding clothes and theming and brainstorming with our halves of the party. On Friday night, however (the only night we had all four together), Kevin presented an amazing five-course meal and beverage experience we'd planned to celebrate the five countries we've been together.

Course 1 - New Mexico, USA: chips and a salsa we bought (Starchaser's Rocket Fuel) on our first "date" after meeting in person, at X-PRIZE Cup 2006.

Course 2 - France: escargot and one of our favorite white wines

Course 3 - India: tandoori chicken and Kingfisher beer, one of the only safe things to drink in Hyderabad (where we spent a month together on our first international trip) and the first beer Kevin ever really liked

Course 4 - Scotland: haggis and tatties, a glass of Auchentoshan 12 year single malt whisky, and a shot of IRN-BRU, the official soft drink of Scotland.

Course 5 - Canada: maple leaf-shaped and maple-flavoured chocolates, with a shot Melissa called a Captain Canada, which was maple syrup and rum, and very delicious.

Throughout the prep and comfortable time between courses, Jeff, Melissa, and Sanjoy consistently rocked the Guitar Hero World Tour.

***

Saturday started with Kevin making French toast with a yummy maple-y cream sherry and Jessica making (heating) "sausage" (vegetarian).

In what must be a harbinger of the wedding morning, it took a few extra minutes, but we finally got everyone out the door -- to a lovely limo Kevin had rented to drive us all about the Santa Clara Valley wine country.

The 40 minute trip to Gilroy had rarely been as awesome as the one we spent deciding whether to open the champagne yet and exploring the features of our spacious ride.

As the six of us arrived at Hecker Pass Winery, the first one of the day at around 11 am, we explained that this was where the rehearsal dinner was going to be, and that we fell in love with it because of their very tasty dessert wines, and gorgeous vineyard view. We tasted and noshed for a bit, meeting the long-standing Italian family (who were having their own hectic day due to the combination of the Wine Passport weekend in which we were participating, as well as a home-and-garden show they were hosting) which owned the winery and wines, and made their own wine.

Next on the list was Fortino Winery, which is where we'll get our toasting champagne (sparkling wine), then Kirigin Cellars, which has a mocha wine which tastes exactly like Sixlets candy. We headed to Casa de Fruta for some incredibly fruity wines, and really yummy "Gilroy Special" garlic spread and cheese sandwiches. After lunch, we took the entirely bizarre and kitchy 1-2 person-wide train ride around the Casa de Fruta campus, seeing more animals that don't belong there than one could shake a bison at; they also had a couple hundred years of old farming equipment laying about "on display". This was obviously Jacqui's favorite part of the day.

We explored a couple more wineries and tasted a couple more wines before 5pm hit and the passport experience closed for the day. At this point all of us were surprisingly feeling completely responsibly driving-worthy, so we stopped by a wine shop that was having events that evening, and bought a tasty bottle of Grenache wine for the trip back toward our place.

We dropped Jeff off near the airport, and upon arrival back toward Sunnyvale, we still had time for dinner before our limo time was up, and we had to get Melissa through In-N-Out Burger, so we asked Steve, our driver, to stop by there. We grabbed hamburgers and fries and started munching on the way back while finishing our wine. It was a very satisfying day.

***

Sunday morning was very relaxed, with a breakfast of scrambled eggs and homemade hashbrowns. The boys were picked up by Kevin's mom Christy at about 1pm, and the ladies left about 30 minutes later to head to Morgan Hill for an open house event at the actual wedding location.

Upon arrival, we grabbed some drinks and food and wandered about, having our guests brainstorm with us. Afterward, we briefly stopped at another winery to pick up some port and try a couple more wines, then came back to let Sanjoy and Jacqui pack before their flights that evening. After dropping Jacqui off, the wedding party weekend was pretty much over, though we did get to enjoy Melissa's company for the next few days.

We are very thankful that four of our favorite people were able to take time out of their busy lives (grad school, film school, new baby!) to get to know each other and have a fun weekend with us in Northern California!

Well, we've finally done it. After looking at over 30 possible locations, we chose what we think makes the perfect ceremony and reception place for our wedding.  Check out the Wedding Details page for more info.  Save the Date mailings should go out by the beginning of March (edit--ha ha, every vendor had a hold up, so most went out in June), with actual invitations probably in July.

You might also notice a different look to the website.  The previous one was a template, but we wanted to start making it a bit more "us".

Since our shared passion of space brought us together, we wanted to reflect that to our family and friends in our wedding.  We'll start now, with our "logo", two intersecting orbits forming a subtle heart around the Earth, as seen from space.  You know, if space had ginornous copper-colored orbits in making a heart.

So, uh, we're still deciding where to get married. We've made lots of other (little) decisions, though!  We have a wiki so full of links that you don't even want to know. 

Anyway, this week we'll hopefully be doing final site visits.  Next week we'll sit down with our spreadsheets and make the decision.  We like spreadsheets. 

We should be able to announce the date and location by the first of 2009!

We took a bit of a break from thinking of the cool wedding stuff we've got floating in our minds for our trip to Glasgow, Scotland. This actually marks the third international trip we've been on together...

First was the Space Generation Congress and International Astronautical Congress last year in Hyderabad, India, where we stayed for a month.  Next was a trip to Paris where Kevin had meetings, so I got to bring my sister Jacqui along for her first ever trip out of the US. For this trip to Scotland, which we loved, we were there over two weeks. Again, it was for Space Generation Congress, which we were organizing, and International Astronautical Congress, in which we also had constant roles. This was extra special, because Kevin got to ask Sanjoy to be his co-best man and I got to see my co-maid of honor Mel for the first time since the engagement! There was much giddiness all around :-)

We have pics from most of those trips here, on my picasa site: http://picasaweb.google.com/Jessica.Culler

We look forward to many more trips, especially with some of our favorite people! We'll see Jacqui and Jeff at the end of the month! Hopefully they'll get a chance to meet then for the first time!

We've just started the webpage, and are very excited to be planning our wedding.  We feel like we can totally handle it though, because, seriously, we've done YNBA08, a twelve-hour 8000-person space party on federal property.  A wedding should be cake compared to that, right?