We arrived in Rochester Sunday the 24th after having moved half of our apartment that morning in New York City.  It was a long day.  Luckily, Rochester greeted us with clear blue skies and this:

courtesy of Lily Twomey

The table was filled with goodies, from gluten-free snacks to soda bottles with out photos on them to a beautiful bottle of champagne and scotch.  All these was courtesy of Alex’s amazing family and the incredible staff at the hotel that they own.   And, it was all a surprise.  I had nothing to do with any of it.  It wasn’t just us that got these goodies, every guest upon arrival received the m&ms, the soda, the napkins, local beers (courtesy of my Mom!) and a plate of cheese and meat.

The staff was amazing all week- they were willing to help in any way they could.  On the morning of the wedding when it was pouring rain, Alex asked the front desk for “8 yellow umbrellas” and they looked at him and said, “we can make that happen.”  The best they could do was black, but that was more than fine!

courtesy of James Twomey

On Saturday, the day after the wedding, when we were running around trying to figure out what to do with everything, the (amazing) Chef offered to personally look over over wedding cake for the year while we were away and keep it safe for when we returned.  Suffice it to say that we felt very special and our guests were treated with the same amazing attitudes and service.

*all photos mine, unless otherwise stated

Transitions.  That’s the word that has been floating around in my head and in my heart and also frequently coming out of my mouth lately.  It’s the word that describes exactly what my life is right now.

Three weeks ago, today, I got married.  In one week, I will leave my job I’ve head for three years.  In another 2.5 weeks, I’ll be on a plane to Vienna, Austria, where I’ll live for about a year with my new husband.

When I was first engaged, I didn’t really think about the transition that was happening then.  I was getting married in about a year, and all I knew was that I had to plan a wedding.   Wedding planning became my time, my energy, my happiness, my stress, my life for one year.  What I didn’t realize was that the Wedding was replacing this blog.  You  of course have noticed that I haven’t written nearly as much as I used to.  And, frankly, it wasn’t just because I didn’t have the time, it was because it just didn’t seem as important.  I had taken a big step last July when I purchased a domain-name and wanted to create a site that was uber-personalized and uber-me.  I didn’t get there.  By the end of 2010, wedding planning was all I thought about and all I cared about.  And now, it’s over.

There is something frequently talked about among brides- the post wedding blues.  I have the post-wedding blues.  The minute we got back to our hotel after the reception ended, I started feeling an overwhelming sense of sadness.  It was over.  All my hard work, my time, my energy, my happiness, my life, felt over.  A wedding is a celebration of love and marriage but for me it was a project that I didn’t want to see end.  Work never gave me the same sense of fufillment that wedding planning did.

And.  I’m moving to Vienna.  Soon.  Another transition. This initially freaked me out post-wedding.  The idea of being far from my family, not having anything I have to do, not have that project to focus my every minute on.  But as it’s becoming closer and real-er I am getting truly excited about it.  I’m signing up for German courses.  Alex and I are planning a road trip that will take us through 5 countries in October.  I’m thinking about volunteering at a therapeutic riding ranch or at a museum.  I’m going to make an album from our engagement photos.  I’m going to start research on gluten-free businesses.  Big or small, the opportunities and possibilities are endless.  And while that sort of terrifies me, it excites me too.

There’s another project that I intend to work on.  This blog.  Readers, this blog will also experience a transition.  This blog was originally intended to be a resource for gluten-free eaters in New York City.  I think in my more active months, it was that exactly.  Now, though, it’s time for this blog to serve me too.  It will be more of a travel journal.  The domain will remain the same, but the writing will be a little different.  I’m still gluten-free and I’ll still be living in a large city and while I will write about my gluten-free life, my regular life will appear more often as well.

I started this post wanting to write about my wedding.  But, it didn’t feel right.  It felt too trivial to sum up one year of my life in a post about gluten-free food.  So, I won’t do that.  When it feels right, I’ll let you in on every detail of the wedding, not just how delicious my cupcakes were.

On Saturday, a friend of mine sent me an article from the New York Times about gluten-free (another one, so soon?!).  It was about the recent growth of gluten-free focused businesses like bakeries and stores resulting from the owner’s dreams of a “plan B.”

It is fitting that I would read this article now.  Although I’ve revealed to my readers that I am getting married soon through posts about gluten-free cupcakes, menu tastings, and how to accommodate guests with food allergies and dietary restrictions, there are more big changes ahead in my life.  Alex and I are moving to Vienna, Austria in September.  Alex is a dual Austrian/American citizen and to keep his Austrian citizenship must complete civil service with the government for 9 months.  It’s a temporary move, and while necessary, is also about the experience: traveling, learning and hopefully speaking a foreign language, making friends, exploring a new city, and doing this all before we have to “settle down.”  I am incredibly excited and incredibly nervous.  But, it’s really happening now, we’ve bought our plane tickets.

Of course with this move, we’re leaving our jobs and leaving New York City (not to mention friends and family- but they’ve promised to visit).  I’ll be sad to leave the life I’ve made here, but I’m ready for a change.  I have been happily employed at my job for three years starting right out of college.  I’ve realized in those three years, that maybe, what I thought I wanted to do after college, isn’t playing out how I imagined.  While I do love my organization, and the people I work with, I’m not sure that the office-desk job is right for me.  So, I have a plan B.

Maybe I’m a little young for a plan B (did you figure out how old I am?).  Maybe, it’s really Plan A 2.0.  Whatever you want to call it, it’s a big change from what I’m doing now.  Going gluten-free had a huge impact on me: from learning how to adjust to the new diet to writing this blog, it’s a big part of my life and I think I’d like it to be even bigger.  You see, I’m just like those women in the New York Times article.  Even though gluten-free awareness has certainly grown, it’s not mainstream, and in a city a large and all encompassing as New York City, there are still only two dedicated gluten-free bakeries and dedicated gluten-free shop.  I don’t think it’s enough, and I’d like to do more for the gluten-free cause than just write this blog.  I want my own gluten-free business.

The most common question I get when I tell people I’m moving to Austria is, “What are you going to do when you’re there?”  Well, first I need to learn German.  Then, I’d like to travel.  And when I’m not doing either of those things, I’ll be working on my plan B.

When I first wrote about food allergy etiquette at Weddings, I talked about how I would make my own wedding food allergy-friendly.  I came up with the idea that I would include an option for people to write down their dietary restrictions on the reply cards that they use to RSVP.

Here is what I came up with:



This is a trick I learned from planning conferences at work, where we allow participants to make their dietary restrictions known through online registration.  While this works pretty well for finding out what dietary restrictions we have to work with: gluten-free, dairy-free, vegan, vegetarian, kosher, halal, etc;  making sure the person with the dietary restriction ends up with the right food is another story.  When I was in Hong Kong last year for work, we decided to request that separate menus be created for each diet and then pass out the menu to the person as they entered the restaurant.  The problem was, that people took vegetarian menus or gluten-free menus, even if they hadn’t requested the special meal.  So, those with the real dietary restrictions sometimes ended up sans special menu.

Once I know what dietary needs I’m dealing with when the reply cards come back, how will I make sure these people get the right food?  It may not be the most efficient way, but I think the most effective way will be to tell the caterers that we have a certain number of vegetarians, nut allergies, or kosher folks (to name a few special diets) and then liaise directly with my diet restricted guests to let them know to tell the servers that they have a special dish.  We could even remind people to do this on the menu that will be at each seat.  For example, after listing each dinner option it could say, “please let your server know if you have requested a special meal.”

Does this seem like it could work?

It’s the end of March now, and that marks our 4 month countdown to the big day.  We’ve hit the three-quarter mark of planning.  While I do feel that we’ve gotten a lot done in terms of big stuff, I have a feeling the devil is in the details.

One thing I’m excited to be able to check off our list is deciding on our cupcake vendor.  I am excited to announce that we will be working with Donna Marie Gluten-Free Bakery.

Although I was pretty psyched about the vegan bakery, Eco Bella, Alex wasn’t.  He just didn’t love the dairy-free frosting and preferred Donna Marie’s traditionally sweet, moist, and creamy cupcakes.  This was also a moment where I put the guests wants before mine.  I wanted my guests to have the best possible first gluten-free experience.  That meant to me, not knowing it was gluten-free.  Donna Marie delivered on this point, where Eco Bella’s more hearty, whole-grain cakes would definitely have raised some eyebrows.

Glad to be done with the hard part, it’s time for the fun part: cupcake flavors and decor.  Even though we’ll be having cupcakes, we still wanted them to look like a wedding cake.  Enter the tiered cupcake stand:

LIke the image above, we’re having a small cake to cut into as well.  When Donna Marie asked me for decorating ideas, I just sent her a bunch of my inspiration photos and an explanation of what the decor theme would be.  What I should have done was look for images of cupcake trees and send those because when we chatted to talk about her ideas, I wasn’t entirely prepared to be commenting on them, I mostly just said, “yeah, that sounds great.”  Right afterwards, I regretted not doing my homework here.

Here’s what we decided via our phone conversation.  There would be four flavors of cake: lemon, red velvet (squeee), chocolate and vanilla.  We’d have 100 mini cupcakes and 100 regular cupcakes.  I had the idea of having each flavor be decorated different to identify the flavor.   The regular cupcakes be frosted in off-white, with accent frosting flowers in coral, robin’s egg blue, pale orange, and a coffee-colored brown (for the chocolate).  The mini cupcakes would be frosted entirely IN these accent colors.  The cake on top will be frosted in off-white and the focal point will be our lovebirds cake topper.

That sounded great in the moment.  Now, I’m not so sure.  My main concern is that it will be too colorful, as most wedding cakes are white.  My other concern is that it won’t be formal enough and won’t match the overall look of the wedding, which is more subdued in the color palette and natural/rustic in the feel.  One thing I’m not concerned about it them being delicious.  We’re meeting with Donna Marie in May, and hopefully it will all come together then!