Ladies Day in the City

April 11th

Ladies Lunching

Ladies Shopping

A Day in San Francisco

As fast as I am on my bike I am equally as slow in making any wedding decisions. With only 6 months to go I still had no dress in sight. The problem is I’m such a true triathlete my whole life is like a transition. I’m always scurrying around between work, workouts, and fun adventures with Tim. I needed to find the ultimate wedding day detail: The Dress.

At the rate I was going I was likely to show up wearing white Assos bike shorts. I think others around me had the same fear. The groom actually might have appreciated them. In true fairy tale form we could have gone riding off on our bikes after the ceremony. You know like a Knight in shining armor whisking his bride off on his horse.

After my brief dress shopping experience I was relieved when Val and Cindy offered to go dress shopping with me. Lord knows I needed feedback from people who appreciated swimmers arms. I was slightly perplexed about this dress hunting. The thought of driving all over San Diego county to different bridal stores sounded more fatiguing than completing a full Iron man. I had seen some dresses I liked but the idea that one was going to magically jump off the rack and declare itself was highly unlikely in my idea.

Now that's hott!!!!

Val and Cindy suggested taking a look at a botique designer in San Fransico. I logged on to the website and to my delight I liked these dresses much more than any of the others I had seen. The catch was I would have to go to SF to check them out. I told Val and Cindy I’d have to talk to Tim about that. Hmmmm……drive all around San Diego and be overwhelmed by all the choices or spend a day in SF shopping, chatting, lunching, and enjoying the sights of a magnificent city. Hmmm……it’s a tough choice. Tim thought going to SF for a day was a great idea. (I think he liked the geographical distance from the wedding details. I booked the appointment form Amy Kuschel for 1000 April 11th. I double checked the appointment three times. After my Oceanside debacle I was relieved when I listened to the voice mail reminding me of my next appointment. Tim and I actually thought about flying up with our bikes for a mini training camp/dress shopping combo. It was not meant to be though. (ticketing snafu….ask Tim about that)

Some of you may be wondering what is wrong with this blog. Usually it is full of athletic adventures and now I’ve gone all GQ Fashionista on you.

Don’t you worry

A) I’m multi dimensional.

B) This is the Jenny Blog, there is always adventure.

My flight out was at 0730. Tim dropped me off at the airport early. I had my ticket. I was armed with my purse and glossy magazines, oh and the directions for using the BART. I would meet Val and Cindy at the Embarcadero at 0915.

Uh –oh. I soon encountered the longest security line I had ever seen. I slugged into the back of the line and it didn’t seem to be moving forward very quickly. If I was a fingernail chewer I would have gnawed all of mine off. I began to think about how if these people were triathletes the line would move a lot faster. Triathletes frantically move through transition without wasting a minute. T1, T1, let's get moving I wanted to yell as the minutes ticked away. I started thinking about the 10 mile run I wasn't going to get in today. Well I was certainly getting my heart rate up in this long line.Knowing that walking around the city wouldn't be challenging enough to equal a 10 mile run I wore heels. One mile walked in heels must equal 5 miles of running in Newtons. Right?

Luckily I made it through security and to my gate. Everybody else had bored and when I got on the plane the only seat left was center front. Like a rock star too cool to wait in line I slithered into my front row seat. T1 accomplished.

My plane arrived in SF a little early and I followed the signs to the BART as Tim instructed. I boarded the train (headed in the right direction) and headed to the Embarcadero. I let out a sigh of relief. Country girl in the city was going to do alright. That sigh didn't last long because when I exited the subway at the Embarcadero there must have been 4 different streets I could have exited onto if I took the wrong exit I might be blocks away from Cindy and Val. I read my yellow post it note over and over again. Tim directions didn't include this part. I took a guess and climbed the stairs out of the station and into the excitement of the city.

The sun was shining and even at 9:00 am it was warm. Highly unusual for San Francisco. I took this and my front row seat as a sign that things were going to go right today (I put the Oceanside debacle another step behind me). Thank goodness for cell phones because I was on a different street than Val and Cindy. We soon connected were off. They say all brides should have a ladies lunch before getting married. A day in the city to do girly things. A chance to discuss very important details that everybody else will forget about and the groom doesn’t care about. I had a lot of details to attend to and I needed a chance to discuss them.

We arrived at Amy Kuschel on time and the assistant asked me if there was any thing in particular I was looking for? I replied that my one request was that I didn 't look like the top of a cake. I'm not sure what they thought of me then but I figured it was my dress and I didn't want any cake top look or the muffin top look. Thank goodness for my swimmers arms :)

I loved just about every dress they showed me. After trying a couple on I became nervous. They were all so nice. The sales assistant kept placing the dresses into the maybe pile. Then I tried on the fourth dress and I felt something different. The sales assistant asked if I wanted to try a veil with it before moving on to the next dress. As she went to fetch the veil I realized I didn't want to try any of the other dresses. This dress was the one. In the spirit of a true triathlete I had picked out my dress in under an hour.

After the dress shopping was complete. The three of us were famished. We refueled at a side street cafe. It was so nice to sit outside and enjoy lunch knowing the dress was taken care of. After our nourishment we moved on to shoe shopping. This didn't take long either. It was pretty easy for me to narrow down the shoes into two categories. Can walk vs. Can not walk in. The can not category was pretty big. The shoes are so super they will appear in their own blog some day after the wedding.

Since we were in the city, on a roll and ahead of schedule Cindy slipped on a few gowns that looked fabulous. I thought it was great fun to watch her but she refused to seriously consider the dresses because she didn't want to upstage me "Bridezilla"