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Just a few of my faves. 🙂

Much more here.

After a successful first week of Big Sur Marathon training, I. AM. SICK.

Sometimes I’ll get a little sniffly but can fight it off by eating well and getting lots of sleep, but there was no fending it off this time. I’m certainly not bedridden, but there’s plenty of sneezing, nose-blowing, and mouth-breathing happening.

Armed with Mucinex and ZzzQuil, I hope to make a miraculous recovery before New Year’s Eve. Cross your fingers.

On Sunday, before my descent into complete sickness, I hit the gym and did 20 minutes of easy spinning on the stationary bike for my cross training. (I know 20 minutes isn’t very long, but it’s better than nothing?)

Then, Aaron and I went to my mom’s house to watch the Seahawks WINNNN over the Rams.

Why tackle when you can karate chop?

My mom and I then ventured to the Bellevue Botanical Garden to check out the Garden d’Lights. So festive!

Shockingly, our gentlemen elected to forego the d’Lights, and stayed home to watch more football. They missed out.

By the way — as I segue from that Instagram photo — I’ve updated all of my social media stuff to my married name, so you can now find me on Twitter @devonapass and on Instagram @devonpass.

If you’d like to follow my old Twitter handle, you’ll find delightful (?) commentary from this Russian (?) disc jockey.

I mainly just tweet my Instagrams because I’m lazy and confused. When I do compose original tweets, there’s a 98% chance they’ll be about Taylor Swift or Serial.

Speaking of that, WHAT THE F$@# JAY!!!

Maybe the truth of what really happened that winter day in 1999 will come to me tonight in my half-asleep ZzzQuil haze. HERE’S HOPING.

It was a beautiful, sunny day, so why not take my 5 miles outside?

The best part about training for a hilly marathon (so far… three days in) is that I’m forced to find new places to run, since my old routine mostly involved the East Lake Sammamish Trail, which is super flat. Now I’m looking for hills, as many as I can find, and in the process I’m discovering some beautiful trails I never knew existed.

Side note: My favorite part about my town is the way the mountains catch the clouds. I marvel at this on the daily.

Now we’re off to my dad’s house to start the two-day Christmas extravaganza of eating and opening presents. Huzzah!

Merry Christmas Eve!

I took a nice little break after the Eugene Marathon in late July. I did short, casual runs when I felt like it. I ate mostly healthy, but had dessert and beer when I wanted to.

Then, about a month before the wedding, I realized I should really start cleaning up my diet and working out consistently if I wanted to look and feel my best in my dress!

You see, this dress has zero structure to it. It consists of two layers: a satin slip dress with a lace overlay. There’s no boning or corset or anything to suck in anything. Plus, I couldn’t wear any sort of shapewear because (a) the back is so low, and (b) the lines of even low-cut shapewear showed through the dress.

So… hello, gym.

I finally made friends with the free gym in my complex. I’m not sure what took me so long, because all the equipment is new and FREE and the space is clean and FREE and hardly anyone uses it and it’s FREE.

I got into a good routine of going at least five days a week, running one to three miles a day and lifting weights/working on core strength every other day. Nothing crazy — just enough to set a healthy focus for each day so I’d feel good going to work and ignore the office treats.

Meanwhile, wedding planning took over my life. I have exactly one (very small) crafty bone in my body, and I dug deep to use it to put together some DIY elements: place cards, signage, centerpieces, miscellaneous decor. I didn’t care too much about how the wedding looked, other than I wanted it to fit the following theme:

FUCKING FESTIVE AUTUMN HARVEST WONDERLAND

So I dragged some of my bridesmaids to a pumpkin patch the very first day it opened for the season and they helped me carefully select and purchase, I kid you not, four wheelbarrows full of pumpkins and gourds. For $100.

BARGAIN TIME.

Aaron and I also brewed our own beer for the wedding, because that is the awesome way to do it.

We brewed one batch of amber ale and one batch of IPA. It was super-delicious, cost-effective, and special because it was brewed by hand with LOVE. Or something. If you live in the Seattle area, Gallaghers’ is a fun place to spend an afternoon drinking beer and brewing some of your own.

I also DIYed the flowers. Or, I should say, my bridesmaid Gillian DIYed them, because I just ordered them, carefully trimmed them and placed them in buckets of water when they arrived at my house, and whispered sweet nothings to them for two days so they would stay beautiful. Gillian did all the work of making the bouquets.

I owe her.

If you’re into calla lilies, as I very much am, I recommend Pacific Callas. I ordered the orange/rust variety. The flowers arrived right when they were supposed to, and they looked just as beautiful during the wedding as they did when I first opened the box. I imagine they would have stayed beautiful for a while after the wedding, too, had I not left my bouquet out to rot on our back porch while we went on our honeymoon. I am a monster.

Let’s talk about the weather. What an exciting adventure it is to plan an October wedding! The week before the week of the wedding was an absolute shitstorm of rain and wind and doom. The week of the wedding was mixed. The days of the rehearsal and the wedding itself were fucking glorious.

GLORIOUS, I TELL YOU. We could not have ordered two more perfect, sunny, windless, 73-degree days. Thank you, sweet baby Jesus.

But let’s get back to the rehearsal. Here it is.

We practiced the ceremony outside, amongst the trees, at DeLille Cellars.

My MIL got a nice calf shot.

That is to prove that I still run even though I fail to blog about running.

The fun dress I wore is from my new obsession, Rent the Runway (referral link). I’ve also rented dresses for a friend’s bridal shower and wedding, my bachelorette party, my bridal shower, and another friend’s wedding. It’s so fun! But that could be a whole other post.

Here’s another shot that shows the beautiful setting. I’m doing some sort of awkward walk with our day-of coordinator, Megan.

Aaron’s mom and stepdad hosted an amazing rehearsal dinner for our families and the bridal party at Purple Cafe. The lovely speeches/crying started there, and just continued through the wedding day!

Fun fact: The weekend before the wedding, I fired my hair lady. After two hair trials, a few tears, and lots of frustration, she couldn’t get the look I wanted. So I did it my damn self! I used a straightener and lots of hairspray and it took me no more than 20 minutes.

I did hire a pro to do everyone’s makeup, though, as I have 0% confidence in my own makeup ability. (The above is before makeup, obviously.)

After we were sufficiently glammed up, we moved to the venue to get dressed. I went first because I had stuff to do, duh.

My dress had tiny beads and pearls sewn all over it, so there were stray threads galore, and the lace overlay had four clear, plastic snaps that were pretty impossible to find. It was a three-woman job to get me put together.

Once I was all ready, my daddy came to see me. In the photo below, we are in a glass case of emotion.

And then it was time to go say hi to my future husband! My dad played paparazzi from afar.

And then we did some photo things! LOTS of photo things. There will be many, many professional photos (and a video) to share whenever we get them back!

Umm, how ADORABLE is Aaron??

And then we did the marrying thing!

That was the best part. 🙂

And then the FUCKING FESTIVE AUTUMN HARVEST WONDERLAND came to life!

Snaps courtesy of our coordinator and her assistant, who set everything up and made it look beautiful.

The canvas peeking out from the right side of the above photo is simply this amazing painting of us that Aaron commissioned as a wedding gift to me. He consulted with the artist on it for eight months. No big deal! #kindofabigdeal

We laughed. We cried. We ate good food and drank delicious drinks.

Then we enjoyed the sunset.

And lived happily ever after.