From Paris to Paris

I'm getting married!! Finally.

I've been engaged since August 2012, and since I have a blatant disgust for weddings, I pretty much had no tolerance for planning one, until now.

Tim and I have decided to marry in Vegas at the Parisian-inspired Paris Hotel and Resort, have a low-key reception for the families at The Sugar Factory, then party all night like rock stars with our buds.

After that, we're going to clean up, pack it up, go home, and then go to real Paris. I am so excited for all this.

I am mostly excited about the 15-minute ceremony and the 2 1/2 hour reception. It's only painful for about 3 hours and then it's all done and we can go on with our married lives... in PARIS!! 

So excited. So very, very excited.

Runway Season Survival

This was a hard season for me as a patternmaker. The design aesthetic developed at a pace pretty challenging to keep up with, since we squeezed the development of an entire full show season into only a couple weeks of preparation. We struggled to remain in control of our mostly dresses and soft woven line as more and more emphasis was placed on hard woven garments.

That said, this season has been viewed as a success by critics, and I really feel it has been a personal success, as well.

Here are some garments that I worked on:

 These are just the ones I made and I enjoyed watching them walk down the Runway. There were plenty more which didn't make the final cut that I was really excited about making, too. I always feel a teeny tiny bit melancholy when I only have a couple pieces walking, but what can I do? Hopefully, I can continue to grow, learn more, and become more useful overall. I have the heart, I'm just waiting for the talent to develop more fully. Until then, though, I'll take pride in the accumulation of all my hard work, even if my labor only bears a small amount of fruit.
xo

On the friends who refuse to forgive...

For a while I was angry at all of us- we all have the blood of our friendship on our hands. 

Then, I pretended you were dead. 

Then, I realized that's silly because you are very much alive and life is short. I reached out but never heard back. 

Now, sometimes I catch myself wondering if I'm the dead one, really. I could be living cluelessly in a pretend-reality as part of an afterlife. I have my dream job, my work is challenging but personally rewarding (and one day it will be monetarily rewarding as well, I hope). I am engaged to a handsome, caring, intelligent man who really, really loves me. I have other, new friends who are a blast. 

The surreal thing is that I can't share it with you. What if the fallout was part of some elaborate façade of this pretend life as a way of explaining why you aren't here? What if the reason we aren't speaking is that I'm the dead one and you're alive? 

Then I think about all the Sallie Mae debt and I wonder, in all my death conspiracy, am I in hell?

But there are people in my life, gems and diamonds, who have been there for years, who have forgiven and also forgave, people who equally had the blood of friendship on their hands, who made amends, and how there's no death there. 

And I realize, this forgiveness issue isn't mine. I wasn't so horrible in an isolated display of aggression. I was a human being losing it because she'd been pushed to a point. That person feels so different from who I am today. Through my forgiveness, I've grown, cleansed my soul, made peace with the equally inappropriate actions of myself and others. 

Still, I pity those unable to forgive. It doesn't mean they are unchanged or unmoved, just that they move on with the blood of a lost friendship still on their hands.