This weekend was truly epic — K+D wedding in Santa Cruz, literally one of the best weekends I’ve ever had in my life. This was the first time I had ever been maid of honor, and boy was I in for a treat. I knew this weekend would be incredibly poverexic friendly, but I had no idea to what extent. Before the weekend even began, bff K gave me my maid of honor gift, which was this:
Basket of Heaven
IT WAS A CARNIVORE PACKAGE!!!!!!!!!!! I LITERALLY COULD NOT BELIEVE MY EYES. When K first handed this to me saying it was for me, I nearly started hyperventilating, no joke. There were more miracles in this wooden basket from Cheese Plus than I’d ever experienced in all my years of life, more than all my birthday gifts combined, better than any one present I had ever gotten from Santa. I almost started crying I was so overwhelmed by the beauty of this basket. In it was duck confit, sausage, chorizo, a soft cheese, a hard cheese, truffle mousse, truffle dijon mustard, red onion glaze, cornichon (which K and I demolished in 15 minutes)….
Miracles
…. AND THE B-I-G-G-E-S-T SLAB OF BACON I HAD EVER SEEN IN MY ENTIRE LIFE:
BACON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I just have to show this one again because it perfectly captures how I felt:
OMG!!! BACON!!!!!!!!
Have you ever had the Canadian Bacon at Peter Lugar? This slab of bacon was literally Peter Lugar X 10. You can’t really see the thickness of this bacon in this photo, but it was literally 4 inches thick (that’s what she said). And it was RAW and perfectly seasoned. I think I came when I took my first bite. It was the most delicious thing I could have ever imagined. And half of the slab was just pure delicious fat. I dipped some of the bacon into the truffle dijon mustard, and I nearly died. I dipped some of the bacon into the red onion glaze, and I vowed I’d give up fucking for the rest of my life if I could just eat this slab of bacon every day for the rest of my life.
I thought the weekend couldn’t get any better, but it was really all just beginning. The wedding festivities started Friday night at Hula’s in Santa Cruz where they served plates and plates of appetizers like chicken summer wraps and seared tuna on wontons, accompanied by Hula classics like the zombie, volcano bowl and scorpion bowl, which brought back really fond memories of scorpion bowl races at the Kong and blacking out after attempting a one-on-one scorpion bowl challenge against an unnamed football player.
Hula Wraps
And for main course I had incred fish tacos:
Fish Tacos
After-party consisted of margaritas in downtown Santa Cruz followed by one too many sweet tea vodkas with soda water. I was surprisingly pretty sober until I started on those sweet tea vodkas, which were amazing and tasted like my fav long island ice teas specially mixed by my fav waiters at the Kong whenever they could sense I wanted to have an especially good time.
Didn’t feel so great when I woke up the next morning but felt really great after Ladies’ Luncheon hosted by K at Chaminade restaurant, where I had a deconstructed cobb salad, a side of fries and a mimosa.
Deconstructed Cobb Salad
Ladies’ Luncheon was followed by the wedding rehearsal outdoors in the perfect 78-degree California sun and then the rehearsal dinner at Michael’s on Main, a fun Mexican place with an outdoor patio and live band and dancing indoors. The dinner was a buffet, which is clearly my style. Unfortunately I had to wait until the very end for my turn to let all the older people go first because I am polite, which made me super nervous as I watched the amount of beef and tortillas go down, but thank god I remembered it was a buffet which means the waiters are just supposed to keep bringing out food, endlessly. I got a heaping plate of salad, tortillas, steak strips, fish, chips and guac, and I went back for a second heaping plate toward the end of dinner when everyone was moving on to dessert. But I wasn’t about to let the extra dinner food go to waste.
Mexican Buffet
I thought I would be disgustingly full after the 2 rounds of dinner, but I had enough red wine in me that I just felt like a million bucks throughout the entire night. After dinner we went back to the resort and literally took over Chaminade bar where there was another wedding reception going on, but we definitely outnumbered the other party so just crashed the party. We danced the night away to 80s and pop R&B and drank by the outdoor fireplace, and it was a grand ole time with family and friends.
I woke up the next morning incredibly excited for bff K. We got breakfast, got ready with the other bridesmaids, took photos in the woods. K+D had a beautiful ceremony with a very awkward officiant, followed by a cocktail hour of baked brie and other hors d’oeuvres accompanied by endless cocktails. The reception after that was an absolute blast, and the salad and steak for dinner were incred (biggest cut of steak ever):
Steak
And for dessert was a candy table of K+D’s fav sweet treats, which I clearly stocked up on and brought home more than one bag full of candy for my trip home. Also their chocolate ganache and carrot cake wedding cake was delish.
Sweet Treats
K+D Wedding Cake
The party was epic and I must have had a dozen drinks: their signature pomegrante martinis, dirty martinis (my fav) and champagne at cocktail hour; countless glasses of red wine, champagne, more dirty martinis and margaritas at the reception. We were all having the time of our lives (J/M/I were really ripping up the dance floor), and this is when I met the kid celeb guest at the wedding: J. Pabst of – that’s right – Pabst Blue Ribbon. The only other pseudo celeb at the wedding was George Zimmer of Men’s Warehouse and he’s like 70 years old, so I felt J. Pabst was an excellent target for me and just my age.
I started to dance with Mr. Pabst and all I could think about was shotgunning PBRs. I thought I was having a good time until he started getting a little too annoyingly clingy and not leaving me alone when all I wanted to do was dance the night away with my best friends from high school, so I knew there was only one thing to do in order to get rid of him. I very quickly sneaked out of the reception, dragged him back to my room, had a god-awful 5 minutes due to some inadequacies clearly not on my end, then immediately kicked him out afterward and literally ran back to the reception.
Thank god I had only missed about 15 minutes total of the dance party including roundtrip — I made it back just in time for Taio Cruz and Jason Derulo and was able to spend the rest of the night with my friends and K’s family. We stayed on the dance floor until they kicked us out and spent the rest of the night out by the fireside, and I left the party with my friends bawling my eyes out that I wasn’t going to see them for another 6 months.
Such an incredible weekend. K+D, I love you — thank you for an amazing time.
Poverexic in NYC 