honeymoon sneak peak

This is a little sneak peak for those of you out there who have been checking a few times a day for the last couple weeks in the hopes of an update and are desperate for some news, any news...namely Pete and Crem!

Wow is all I really have to say about the wedding and honeymoon. It's a bit daunting to sit here and try and sum up my emotions in a blog post, so I probably won't today, and maybe not even tomorrow, and maybe it won't all come out in one post at all, but will instead be scattered throughout the upcoming wedding-honeymoon posts and you can sit and pull and piece everything together yourselves over a cup of coffee and a piece of toast.

In truth the pictures say more than I could ever really hope to type in a post. I didn't really know what to expect from the photographs, but friends have been sending us their photos (if you haven't sent us photos and you took some, send them!!) and our amazing-wonderful-uber fabulous photographer Amanda just started sending us photos yesterday and I think the words smile and love sum it up. Zach and I are beaming in each and every photo and looking at the photos makes me smile all over again.

I just finished downloading the honeymoon photos and I am beginning to sort through them, but the one above of the leopard yawning in the tree is an early favorite. I can't promise a full honeymoon post today, but I'm hopeful that I will get one up soon so stay tuned. In the meantime visit www.orchardcovephotography.blogspot.com for some rehearsal dinner photos and later today some wedding photos!!!!

we're MARRIED!

photo by Amanda Herzberger of Orchard Cove Photography

This is Talley Mayer (!!!!!!!) writing from the Orlando International airport. We are off to South Africa for our honeymoon. There really aren't words to describe how wonderful this weekend was. To our friends and family reading this - we LOVE you and loved spending our wedding weekend with you. Off we go...!!

a whole lotta lovin

I cannot believe it has been almost two weeks since I last posted from the Lufthansa terminal in Frankfurt. Time flies, so much so that our sixteen month engagement is about to come to an end - we are getting married THIS weekend! I arrived in Florida on Saturday and Zach flies in from Zurich on Wednesday night. It is so nice to finally be in the place where the wedding will take place, a calmness settled over me the moment we arrived. We are so excited, our guests are excited and it looks like it is going to be a beautiful weekend!

This post was something I had planned to post right before I left Zurich, but I never quite got around to it with all the packing and organizing and chocolate buying that I was doing. Anyway, Zach's favorite food, next to bacon, is anything that has coconut in it. Coconut cream pie, mounds bars, coconut sorbet and of course coconut cake are all among his favorites. Not to ruin it for any weddings guests reading this, but one of the tiers of the wedding cake is coconut so I thought I would make us a coconut cake to celebrate our last night in Zurich together before I flew to the states. I like coconut, I don't love it, but I do love chocolate so I decided to add some chocolate into the cake. I mean why not?
I was surprised to find coconut in the local Coop, just sitting there amongst the potatoes and apples. It only cost about 2 swiss francs, which I thought was reasonable, until I remembered that I had to figure out a way to crack it and get to the flesh. I ended up using a screw driver to make a hole in the bottom so that I could release the fluid and then I put it in the oven at 400 for about fifteen minutes, which helped with the cracking.
The flesh was good, but not as sweet as I had initially been thinking. The recipe called for sweetened coconut, which I was not able to find in the market, so I added a tablespoon or two of sugar.

I'd love to post the recipe in this post, but it's been so long since I made it that I actually can't remember where I found the recipe. I will have to do some research and post it when we get back from the honeymoon. Although, at that point I'll be so busy posting pictures of giraffes and elephants that you probably won't care about the recipe for this coconut cake.
I initially planned on making just one cake, but then it came out of the oven and it looked so small that I decide to make a layer cake with two round cakes. The cake was incredibly moist, perhaps due to all of the canned coconut milk and butter!
The original recipe called for a buttercream icing, but I decided to substitute it for a white chocolate whipped cream frosting, which was absolutely delicious, and much lighter albeit not in calorie count.
And so I leave you with this coconut cake. I don't think I will be posting again until after we return from our honeymoon at the end of April. I hope you have enjoyed my posts over the last few months and that you will come back to read it when I start posting again. Perhaps I'll lure you back with wedding photos and honeymoon shots?
This photo was taken a long time ago, at the beginning of us, before the word marriage or husband/wife had even entered our minds. I believe this was taken in the spring of 2003, or was it 2004? I'm not quite sure, but I do remember that it was a sunny spring day in New Haven. So here I am hoping for a sunny spring day for Saturday.

love lugano: part 1.5

I'm not sure how this is quite possible, but somehow our wedding is right around the corner. I am writing this post from the Frankfurt airport where I have a layover on my way from Zurich to Orlando. Where did the time go? I tried to cherish every minute with Zach in Lugano knowing that I wouldn't see him until the Wednesday before our wedding, but somehow even then it didn't feel real. Honestly, it still doesn't feel real. We said our goodbyes this morning as I lugged my two obscenely heavy suitcase onto the train (I really have no idea what I packed, some of this, some of that and a whole lot of who knows what) and off I went to the airport. The suitcases are so heavy that I think I pulled a muscle in my back. Sugar. Not great time as I get ready to dance the night away at our wedding.

Anywaaaay...time for me to sign off as I run to get two (okay, five) last bags of Haribo gummi bears, buy a trashy Euro mag so I can read about the royal wedding and run to the loo before I board the plane. Oh what a long flight this will be. I take off at 9am US time and arrive at 8pm. There better be some seriously good movies on this flight.

Thanks for reading and I hope to post the rest of Lugano soon.