Welcome!

Alison and Austin got married!  Now we’re going to bug you with cute pictures and funny stories from the wedding.  You’ve been warned.

Your pictures: we wants them

When we started this website we looked around for a good way to collect pictures from all of our guests.  We settled on using The Wedding Lens, and so far we’ve been very pleased with the site.  It lets our guests upload and organize their own pictures, and lets everyone view and commented on the collected photos from our wedding.

We just sent out email invitations to all of the addresses we had at hand, but some of you may have slipped through the cracks.  If you’ve got pictures you’d like to show us, but didn’t get an email with instructions for uploading them, please check out our Pictures page, write down the access code, and then click on the Wedding Lens slide show playing on that page.

Thanks for a great weekend!

Otter-toberfest

This is what I would do with any free time in STL this weekend:

In honor of the fun-loving North American River Otters, the Zoo will host Ottertoberfest, a fall event featuring traditional German biergartens, live music, kids’ activities and more. At the biergartens, visitors can purchase beer, root beer, bratwurst, potato salad and other German specialties…

Keeper Chats and Enrichment
Each day of Ottertoberfest:
10 a.m. — Keeper chat at North American river otters, Emerson Children’s Zoo
1:30 p.m. — Keeper chat and enrichment at North American river otters, Historic Hill

Beer and otters are both in my top five favorite things. Luckily for Al, she’s number one, so I guess I’ll go to the wedding instead of drinking beers with otters.

Free limited time offer!

Spamalicious title aside, this is pretty cool:

After Washington University lecturer Todd Sproull created an iPhone app for MetroLink timetables and station info, one of the first things he did was call Metro Customer Service and let them know about the app and that he was giving it away for free for a limited time.

If you’re one of them iPhone folks, grab it now and laugh knowingly as us poor luddites sit listlessly at the train stations waiting for the unknown.

Big updates

We’ve been away from the site while dealing with a few small changes in our lives. What changes, you ask?

  • Austin submitted his dissertation and scheduled his defense for 12:30pm on September 13, 2010
  • Alison and Austin moved to New Haven, CT
  • Alison started her new job at Haskins Labs

Everything’s going great, though we’re a bit behind schedule on getting invitations sent out to all you fine folks.  We promise that there is a real invitation coming in the mail, and soon!  In the meantime, have you booked your hotel room?

A week of wedding planning in STL

Al and I recently made the drive back to St. Louis to start finish some of the planning for the wedding. We managed to get a lot done and also had a lot of fun with the last-name-Austins. This included an outdoor performance of Damn Yankees at the Muny and a Cardinals win at Busch stadium. We closed out the visit with a brewery tour for Austin and a bridal shower for Alison (thanks Aunt Becky and Aunt Chris!).

It wasn’t all fun and games, though– we had important work to do as well. Examples of these onerous chores include tasting BBQ for the picnic and sampling cake for the reception. We took our duties very seriously, and can confidently report that you’ll be knocked out by the BBQ deliciousness of Pappy’s Smokehouse and the confectionary genius of Sweet Arts.

Still smiling at the end of the shoot!

Finally, we also treated ourselves to an engagement photo shoot with our photographer, Ryan. You can see the first set of shots from that morning in this post on Ryan’s blog. More to come as soon as we have them!

Even the BBC loves the STL

Here‘s a neat article about craft breweries in St. Louis.  I’ve been to Schlafly and have enjoyed everything I’ve had there— highly recommended.

What will you do while you’re here?

(Besides come to our wedding, of course.)

What good timing!   Here’s what the New York Times thinks you should do while you’re in St. Louis.

Congrats to Al!

Alison submitted her thesis on 6/23! I couldn’t be prouder of her.

Next up, Al’s defense will on 8/2 (or so). I’ll submit my thesis by 8/11, and I’ll defend on 9/13.