Our Courthouse Wedding

New-to-me things for the wedding, both past season items I bought secondhand, but in new condition. The pictured shoes are not the exact style I wore. My pair is the same color, but was originally from Nordstrom, so it has a slightly different horsebit detail.

As of late last month, K and I are officially married! We are absolutely thrilled. Though to be honest, married life also doesn't feel all that different from what came before. After all, we'd already been living together for quite a few years.

Like all couples getting married since March 2020, K and I made the best of things as much as we could, taking into account international COVID travel restrictions; local public health and safety; and our loved ones' preferences and comfort levels as to COVID caution and risk. Given all that, the best solution was obvious: an immediate family-only courthouse wedding now, with the big event and celebration - hopefully including close friends scattered across the US and some family members living abroad as guests - to occur... someday... when things are better from Delta, or from any other future COVID variant to come. Said big party would almost certainly not be happening any earlier than a year from now, and I think it might be even longer than that, maybe a lot longer. 

K and I put together our courthouse wedding in a very low-key and low-stress way, exactly as we preferred. My mom and sister were able to fly in, which was the most important thing. (His parents are local to the NYC area, so their attendance wasn't as much of a challenge.) The judge I clerked for was kind enough to perform our ceremony, for which I am deeply grateful. Thanks to Kristy's recommendation for Snappr, we were also able to line up a photographer, even though K and I - being utterly clueless about reasonable and appropriate timelines for anything to do with wedding planning - had waited far too late to start trying to book one, in the last three weeks before the ceremony (oops!).

In keeping with the low-key and highly informal event we had in mind, I wore a casual J.Crew dress and pale blue croc-embossed Sam Edelman loafers. Both were from past seasons, and I purchased them secondhand in new condition, from eBay and Mercari respectively. (These items did not go into a monthly shopping reflections posts because I bought them solely for the wedding.) I also wore my gold J.Hannah Duet earrings. 

I swear I looked at practically every single white dress with the right level of formality from Nordstrom (after filtering out super high-end designer ones that were out of budget), Rent the Runway, Shopbop, and J.Crew and I didn't see a single thing I liked that was currently available for purchase or rent. So off to the secondhand market it was! 

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For shoes, my feet still haven't fully adjusted to wearing anything but sneakers or my trusty Fitflops - even though my COVID work from home days ended months ago, and I've intermittently tried to get back to wearing "real" shoes in the time since - so I definitely couldn't push it by trying to wear heels. I was only able to find a size 8 pair of the Sam Edelman loafers in my desired color on the secondhand market, not my usual size 7.5. But the size 8s were comfortable, and I'm starting to think it may be that my feet are actually an 8 now, and that's why so many of my old shoes from before the pandemic aren't comfortable anymore?

As with so many things these past two years, our wedding didn't look like what we would originally have wanted, were it not for the pandemic. But that's alright. We got all the most important things out of our day: we're legally married; our immediate family living in the USA could attend; we minimized the COVID risk associated with the event as much as we could; and we also have photographs of all of us together to commemorate the occasion. It was a good day and we got all that we really needed. 

Social Media Habits

The view from the Appalachian Boardwalk trail near Vernon, NJ.

It's been an extremely busy past few weeks, between K and I's courthouse wedding and my mom and sister flying to NYC to attend the wedding and then staying for a week afterwards to spend time with me (after we hadn't seen each other in person for 21 months due to the pandemic!). More on all that later. And now - after taking PTO to enjoy my wedding and the visit from my mom and sister - I'm back at the office and needed to hit the ground running when I returned to work. 

Did any of you also start questioning your social media habits in a surprisingly big way after that lengthy Facebook and Instagram outage on Monday? In NYC's time zone, the shutdown started early in the workday and lasted until after I left the office around 6:00 P.M., which was really something. I'm not familiar with any other example of a similarly big tech company or website(s) ever having been completely down for quite so many hours.

I was perturbed to realize I felt noticeably... out of sorts... throughout the Facebook/Instagram outage. Both platforms are admittedly a sizable part of my regular routine with taking brief little "brain breaks" when I transition between tasks throughout my workday or during lunch at my desk. But I still had access to plenty of other social media platforms that are also a big part of my little workday breaks, e.g. Twitter, Reddit, Corporette comments, other blogs, etc. etc. So I really shouldn't have felt as thrown off as I did to not have access to Facebook or Instagram for a few hours.  

Outside of limited times when I know I can't mentally handle big recent news stories - this has only really happened when Justice Ginsburg passed - and so I need to stay off social media for a while to avoid seeing discussions about those specific topics, I generally don't think my social media habits cause problems for me. Sure, there are probably other, better things I could spend my time on, but I generally think I get lots of interesting and useful bits of entertainment, knowledge, and food for thought from social media, even if I do also waste a fair bit of time scrolling to find the uncommonly good stuff. 

I do rely on social media more than usual when my brain is too tired for more intellectually demanding activities. For instance, there's no monthly book post for September coming because I simply could not focus on reading last month, instead I've just been looking at social media before bed. But I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with that. 

In terms of my previous view that social media was, at worst, a benign or neutral influence on my life, it likely helps that the pool of people who actively view or follow my social media presence - whether here at this blog, on Instagram, or on Twitter - is so small that I've actually never had even a single unpleasant interaction with someone engaging with me in bad faith on any of these platforms. I feel like this may be highly unusual in our modern internet age. On very rare occasions, someone was rude to me in response to my comments elsewhere, mainly on Reddit (and in one instance years ago, on The Financial Diet).  

But now that I know a few hours of forced time off Facebook and Instagram can noticeably throw off my day, I guess I have to reassess my previous view that my social media use doesn't have any noteworthy negative effect on my life. Clearly, I have at least some subconscious compulsion to keep checking both platforms throughout the day, and I hadn't fully realized that before. I'll need to ponder this issue a lot more, I definitely don't have any real answers at present. 

September 2021 Shopping Reflections

I mentioned in August that I thought I didn't really feel like shopping for fall/winter this year. But as it turns out, I've managed to become interested in a few more items than the list I originally had in mind. I still want the light gray chunky crew sweater from The Curated and the patina eclipse stud earrings from Porcelain and Stone. But there will probably be a few additional things that will also be part of my shopping through the end of 2021, including this month's purchases. 

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If you think these Reiss Lara dresses look like they are outside of my style comfort zone, you're not wrong! I've mentioned before - in the context of my one stretchy tee shirt dress purchase - that I generally avoid "unstructured" dresses designed to closely fit the body. As someone who definitely has some curves and soft spots, fitted stretchy fabrics don't always look the way I want them to on me. Thus, I've almost never wanted to even try on any sweater dresses in the entire time I've kept this blog, and it's only rarely I've contemplated any tee shirt dress for wearing outside the home. 

The draped top and sort of dolman sleeve on the Lara are slightly less outside my personal style comfort zone - I definitely have one sweater with a similar look to the top of the Lara dress - but I didn't previously have anything else like this in my work wardrobe. With that, plus the neckline's tendency to sit off one shoulder, the Reiss Lara is a bit outside the norm of my typical work dresses. 

Both Vee and Sherry have posted detailed reviews of this dress that were extremely helpful to me in initially deciding to order and then picking the right size. I'm curvier than both of them, so I sized up to a M. Because the top portion of the dress is quite roomy in order to allow for the draped effect, it may have been possible for me to size down to S even with my fairly substantial bust measurement, but I think the elastic waist would have been uncomfortably snug if I tried. (At 5'3'', I'm also shorter than Sherry and Vee.) 

Fashion - (TOTAL: $480.34)

• Reiss Lara Dress, teal, M - $312.47* - (also available at Bloomingdales) - Because sweater dresses generally don't look good on me and I don't always like the way stretchy knit fabrics skim over my curves, I wasn't sure I'd like this dress, even if Vee and Sherry both look great in it. This was the first time I've tried on a sweater dress near this price point, and it was a pleasant surprise. The fabric has a good thickness and weight, so the fitted skirt sits on my curves well, without clinging oddly anywhere, and the top half of the dress also drapes well. Like Sherry and Vee observed, the fairly snug elastic waist and more fitted skirt will probably determine what the right size is for most. The neckline is very open, so while one can theoretically drape the top so it covers both shoulders fully, I've found while trying the dress on at home that it's unlikely to stay that way. In other words, it may be difficult to wear this dress without leaving at least one shoulder uncovered. The teal color is similar to a J.Crew dress I bought last year, so I knew this color would suit me. Because the Lara is so unlike any other dress in my wardrobe, I worry a little that I might not end up finding it practical. Will I be comfortable wearing such a different silhouette from my usual to work? The dress is also made of a heavy enough knit fabric that I could probably only wear it comfortably in winter and the extremely brief periods when spring and fall feel balmy in NYC. In winter, I'd also need tights on underneath, and I don't know if the dress would look as good with my typical black tights. Because the weather hasn't cooled down enough in NYC yet to wear the Lara out, I won't get to road test this dress until later this year. But because I felt beautiful in the dress when I tried it on, I'm hoping it'll work for me as well as it does for Vee and Sherry. 
• Reiss Lara Dress, stone, M - $167.87* - (past season, sold out; similar in camel, cheapest at Selfridges even with international duties and shipping) - This stone shade is a past season color, so it's generally no longer available from retail stores. After looking at Vee's photos of the dress in this color, I thought it would also look nice on me, and it was a pity the only similar shade from Reiss this year was camel. (While I like camel coats layered with a top, dress, or scarf in another color, I don't think camel tops or dresses would suit my skin tone.) A week or two after I bought the dress in teal, I was taking a random look at the Reiss webpage and saw the Lara dress in stone had somehow popped back in stock in their sale section in several sizes. I couldn't resist ordering because I thought I'd have trouble finding this dress on the secondhand market, and the price was only a bit higher than I'd expect to pay on eBay, Poshmark, etc. I've only tried this one on briefly, but I feel like the neckline may be slightly less open than on the teal version, so it can stay put on both shoulders a little more easily if you try to drape it that way. Not sure if I'm imagining this difference, though. If I want to wear this dress in winter, I'm not sure the stone color would look as good as the teal with black tights. 

*Indicates that price includes tax and international shipping. Reiss's standard international shipping charges are substantial - a whopping $15 - if you're not ordering enough items to get to their free shipping minimum. 

And that's it for this month! I've actually already pre-ordered the chunky crew sweater in light gray from The Curated, but won't record it in a monthly shopping post until after it arrives - likely in mid to late October - and I make a final decision about whether to keep it. I've looked at lots of customer photos with detailed commentary about sizing, however, so I don't expect I'll have chosen incorrectly about my size or the design. 

Also, thanks to a discussion in the comments over at Kathy's, I recently learned about Amy Smilovic - the founder and creative director of Tibi - and her Instagram account, where she frequently shares tons of thoughts about personal style and design. And I'm totally obsessed! While my personal style is  definitely very different from Smilovic's and from Tibi's, the way Smilovic articulates her own personal style and how she thinks about personal style in general is really compelling and clear to me, and it's inspiring me a lot. I don't think this inspiration will cause me to shop too much more in the next three months than I was originally planning to, but it's given me a lot of food for thought when considering my wardrobe. 

COVID-Era Life Lately

Kushikatsu at Izakaya Toribar. We were mainly there to eat yakitori, but those dishes were less photogenic. The restaurant was very popular, all the indoor and outdoor tables were full when we came in around 7:30 PM on a Saturday, but we were able to sit at the bar so we didn't need to wait.

Very brief post today, as I'm quite busy with both work and personal matters this month! K and I's courthouse wedding will happen very soon, and even if there really wasn't that much to plan at all - we're doing this wedding in just about the most informal and low-key way possible - it's still a bit stressful. 

I've now been back in the office full time on a mandatory basis for roughly two months. Much more recently, my workplace finally got around to formalizing a policy that if any employee develops cold or flu symptoms - in other words, possible COVID - they should, in fact, stay home from the office. In hindsight, it's pretty wild that even though my colleagues and I have been required to return to the office full time since July, this particular issue was not explicitly addressed by our workplace policies until barely two weeks ago. 

I guess because most people in NYC are still masking on public transit, in grocery stores, and in many other indoor settings, no one at work had actually gotten sick with a cold or the sniffles in the past few months. So we're lucky that the lack of quarantine policy never really became an issue. Well, at least we have such a policy now, I was getting a bit worried that we were never going to get clear instructions on what we should do if we got a cough or sore throat. 

We're also officially back to being required to wear masks while around colleagues indoors. Though as I've mentioned, I never actually stopped wearing a mask at work - and in other public indoor settings - whenever I'm around people from other households, except when I'm actively eating or drinking. 

Because I'm a pretty big fan of US women's gymnastics, I originally wanted to attend the Simone Biles Gold Over America Tour ("GOAT" tour), at Barclays Center on November 6. But because that's the type of event that would almost certainly attract a significant audience under age 12, I don't think I'll ultimately be able to go forward with it, even if I'm happy to stay masked throughout the show. 

Under NYC's current rules, I believe all attendees over 12 at large events would definitely need to show proof of vaccination to attend. Maybe that means the NYC Simone Biles GOAT tour stop would actually be a relatively safe event for all guests, and I shouldn't worry so much? Either way, I'm more than 95% sure I won't be attending. It just doesn't feel right to me at this time, and I'm not optimistic that I'll feel better about it by early November.