Sorry for the long draught in information dear readers. If you haven’t had a chance, you can view pictures from our wedding here. The password is “kristi”.

While we expect to have our full wedding video in tow as soon as we get back to the STL in early August, we at least have 35 minutes of Honeymoon related video right here for your enjoyment. I would expect most couldn’t sit through it all, but if you’ve got a boring ass job and internet access then sit back and relax. Follow that link, the password is “nk”, Click Play.

As I alluded to, we are currently in the motherland of California enjoying a typical summer vacation. Indeed 2008 has been one of travel, and Kristi and I have already got to explore good veg dining and good shopping in San Fran, visited a host of picturesque wineries in Napa last weekend, and we are headed to Mecca itself (San Diego) next. I pine, I perish, oh CA. May the sun from the West find you all smiling . . .Hope you like the wedding stuff. Big props to Dipps for developing his chops for the upcoming relaunch of the You Served blog by toying with our raw video. Thanks!

We’ve also both survived our respective single’s parties and I’ll look to post pictures on those pages here soon. Kristi had an amazing time here in the STL and the gents and I had a once-in-a-lifetime trip to Barcelona and Amsterdam. This past weekend, we also stopped by Circus Flora in Grand Center, ran the Science Center 10K, hit the CWE Art and Taste Fair, and watched some Euro 2008.

Ok, let’s get formal (sadly) for a moment - If you are checking the website for info then I thought I’d just put it all right here.

Rehearsal
The Rehearsal itself begins promptly at 6 pm on Friday evening at St. Paul’s. Dress up a little bit and be ready for a good time. The dinner afterwards is at Sage in Soulard, which should run from about 7:15 til whenever. Read more about it and get directions here.

Pre-Wedding
Ladies will be meeting over at Kristi’s house in the morning. Give her a call for info on times, etc.

Gentleman, I’m thinking we can go for a lovely brunch around 10:30 or so, optional of course. Get ready on your accord and be at the church by 1 pm. Remember to pick up your tuxes on Thursday evening or Friday. For those of you playing golf on Friday, we are teeing off at 10:15 in the AM at Greenbriar. Wear a collared shirt.

Wedding
The Wedding begins at 2 pm. Read about it here.

Reception
The Reception begins at 6 pm with a cocktail hour in the front room at Greenbriar. It’s going to blow your mind.

Hotel
If you are in need of a hotel room for Friday and/or Saturday night, we have a discounted block at the Hilton-Frontenac. There will be a shuttle going to the events that departs the Hilton at 5:40 pm. The return departure will be around 11:30 pm (as the Reception closes).

Our Address, Contact
I posted our new address on the Address page.

The weather is warmer these days so we’ve been outside enjoying the trail, FoPo, and Twilight Tuesdays as one would expect.  Kristi turned 24 a few weekends back and we celebrated with a dinner at Sasha’s.

This past weekend marked Kristi’s sister Katie’s graduation from UMKC.  That’s Dr. Hotaling, D.D.S. to you.  Good times, and we look forward to her and Todd returning to the STL in the near future.

Of course, there were many showers for Kristi in the past 6-8 weeks.  I’m sure the ladies enjoyed getting together and gabbing it up.  All I know is there were a lot of gifts for me to carry.  Combine those with the ones we’ve been getting in the mail and it has been quite the experience.  Thanks to everyone for being so generous.  Our loft is going to be well-outfitted with consumer items and household comforts.

Everything else is squared away . . . bring on the wedding.   Here’s your beautiful bride.

New Standard Productions has been brought in to do the video of our wedding, ensuring I will have more time to waste posting video snippets here post-celebration. Just between me, you and Firefox here, I think this whole wedding idea might actually happen. No way out now.

We decided to vary up the Honeymoon plans a little bit as well - we’re going to spend 2 nights in Lake Como, Italy on the tail end of the trip. I figure it will be more exciting to visit Como at this point in our lives than spending multiple nights in Switzerland.

Onto current events . . . we spent a recent weekend visiting Wedding Party participant Will Ball in his adopted town of Chicago. Highlights included two meals at the Chicago Diner (meat-free since ‘83), the always-enjoyable Ra Sushi, a miniature shih tzu named Jepedo, and some competitive darts and bags.

As you can see, we did the STL proud in Cricket.

We’ve got the STL 1/2 next weekend and many showers for Kristi in April. Cool wedding sites are all the rage. See you soon.

March is here, and Crate and Barrel says it’s 103 days until our wedding. So what have we been up to? On the wedding front, we ordered our invitations, got a cake, updated our registries a few more times, and bought some furniture. There are many showers for Kristi on the horizon. Also, our announcement in the local paper ran last week. Exciting.

A few weeks back, we celebrated Valentine’s Day by going to dinner at Five in the Grove. It was a superb meal - you should check out the menu here. You can sign up for their email list and get notifications of future events where they do the set menu thing. We highly recommend.

We were at a Party Zone-turned-Asian restaurant this past Saturday and got a nice pic of the crew below. You can’t go wrong with sushi and sake can you? I think not.

We’re both running in the St. Louis Half Marathon again this year, so we are attempting to prepare for that despite the despondent weather in this part of the country. I’ve been doing my best to get out of town (hey, it’s March. Time to travel), although Kristi doesn’t always agree with me on the frequency of these trips. Ah well.

It’s getting closer to the B-I-G day and we’re happy. See you soon.  Look, a ring:

We recently took our engagement photos for the local paper, and here’s a sample (Kristi looks good). Suburban Journal subscribers in the south and southwest areas of St. Louis County can see it in black and white in the near future.

In other news, we finished signing off on our upgrades for the loft yesterday and that was fun. Apparently we get to do a ‘walk through’ of the framework come July. That will be the next step. October is when we get to move in (not sure which year).

The always awesome-ass Plus1 Marketing holiday party was this past weekend. Kristi and I got to partake in demolition ball and laser tag with fellow Plus1-ers, as well as an elegant dinner at the Drunken Fish downtown and some time at the Dubliner and Flamingo Bowl. We have the best company on Earth.

Other than that, we’ve just been planning hotels and places to hit up in Greece, France and Swazi-land. Keeping it rolling. Later.

Kristi and I had a lovely holiday season and we’re excited that 2008 is here and upon us. Christmas time was an enjoyable one once again - we got more gifts than most 8 year olds do (not complaining) and spent some time skiing in Breckenridge to ring in the New Year.

Snowboarding is an activity we both enjoy and there are a lot of good spots to eat out there - My Thai, Eric’s, Mi Casa, Mountain Flying Fish (for the birthday), and the Brewery all make the list. Wedding party participant Sarah T. joined us on the excursion. A fun time.

Also, I’m sure if we had a forum up on this site it would feature “Did you see your rehearsal dinner spot burned?” and “Your loft is still a big hole of dirt.” Well, respectively, yes and sooo . . . zzzzzzzzzzzz. Not much worried about it are we. I’ve spoken to the manager at Chili’s and they think they can fit us in right after this 4-top, but we all have to order either the pizza shooters or the ‘extreme’ fajitas. As a bonus, the guy said Kristi and I can shack up with him in his studio until Park East is built. See - no problems.

Also, two pairs of our friends got engaged since my last post. Tim and Lauren, Emily and Chris. Congratulations. You should start a website, it’s a lot of fun.

- Running the Turkey Day run in Webster/K-wood.

- Completing our registries at Macy’s and Target (Crate and Barrel is done too).

- Meeting with our sage religious advisor and preparing a budget.

- Trying to pick out options for our loft. The list is long, and the possible terms of debt are longer.

- Zootini.

- The MU/KU game at Arrowhead. Katie and Todd joined us.

- Thanksgiving.

Restaurant update: La Gra in Dogtown is tight, so is Rasoi in the CWE. Hash House in Kansas City closed last month. We have vowed never to set foot in KC ever again. You heard it here first.

This past Saturday, we took to the pavement for the Pumpkin Run out in Chesterfield for breakfast, and then headed down to the CWE Dog Parade for lunch. These combined events made for a perfect opportunity to update the wedding site . . .

The run was a 10K and Kristi and I both placed highly in our age groups (not that we are competitive runners). We always start in the back so our chip times suck but our overall times are much better. It was a great morning for a run through a flood plain though, let me tell you. Fun times.

After that, we headed down to the West End with Kristi’s dog Minnie to take part in the Halloween dog parade down there. I was pretty surprised at the turnout of people and canines. The neighborhood erects a stage around the intersection of Maryland and Euclid every year and has separate competitions for kids, dogs and adults throughout the day.

Minnie decided to come dressed as Snow White. She was a good sport about it all and she met a lot of new dogs. And there were over 50 dog/owner combinations to take the stage before we decided to roll to Pickles - people really get into it. I think all of you out there who have dogs would enjoy hitting up this parade next year. We’ll probably be there.

The rest of the day involved watching hockey and eating at Boogaloo. Unfortunately, all pictures of my paella have been destroyed. Later on y’all.

For those of you hungry for an update, go ahead and check out the Our Loft page. It’s up and running. We’re nearing completion of all the pages here on the site (I just haven’t linked to them all yet), so when you get your Save the Date card in the mail come back by and see NathanielandKristi.com in all its glory. Less than 8 months until the big day . . . in fact, we celebrated the one year anniversary of our engagement just last night. How the time flies.