Getting to Austin (and around Austin)...

Flying - Austin is a relatively small city but its airport is serviced by most major carriers. From the NYC area there are direct flights on both JetBlue out of JFK and on Continental out of Newark (currently only $225/ticket round-trip leaving 2/27 and returning 3/1!). Most flights to Austin come through either Houston or Dallas however. Another option would be flying into either Houston, Dallas or San Antonio and then driving to Austin (see below).

Driving - Austin is a 3 hour drive from Houston, a 4 hour drive from Dallas, or 1.5 hour drive from San Antonio. This can be a good way to get a feel for how big and beautiful Texas really is!

Local Transportation - Austin's public transportation system consists of mainly busses. They are usually very prompt, surprisingly clean and can get you almost anywhere yet it can be confusing to get around in them. If you are staying downtown there are usually some cabs to be found, but outside of the very center of the downtown area you will need to call a dispatcher to get a cab. We recommend a rental car if you plan on exploring Austin at all.

Places To Stay...

We are recommending the following hotels for wedding guests. The room rates listed below are the current rates (including taxes) that we're seeing on hotels.com as we write this. The rates on hotels.com appear to be even cheaper than the 10%-off courtesy rates they offer wedding parties, so we recommend booking through hotels.com...

For the relative locations of these hotels to the wedding events, check out the map above.

1) The Driskill - One of Austin's nicest, most distinct and centrally located hotels on world famous 6th Street. It is approximately 10 blocks (0.7 mi) from the wedding venue and 4 blocks (0.1 mi) from the rehearsal dinner location. A standard room is $250/night.

2) Doubletree Suites - tucked between The University of Texas and the State Capital building, this hotel is located 5 blocks (0.4 mi) from the wedding venue and 13 blocks (0.9 mi) from the rehearsal dinner location. All rooms here are actually 2-room suites and they are $195/night with advance purchase. The Doubletree can provide shuttle service to the Allan House upon request too.

3) Any bed and breakfast - there are tons of cool little bed and breakfasts around town. We live in the Hyde Park section of town which has several nice little B&Bs within walking distance of our house including The Strickland Arms, The Woodburn House, and The Adams House. All of the above are roughly 3 miles from the wedding venue and probably require a rental car for getting to the weekend's events.

There are lots and lots of other options as well. Give us a call if you need more details or help finding somewhere!

Things to do in Austin

If you are going to be in Austin for a few extra days there are lots of things to do and see. There are lots of websites out there with lists of things to do here, just google "things to do in Austin", but these are a few of our recommendations:

- First and foremost, eat a lot of tex-mex and barbeque. Almost anywhere is good, but feel free to call us for recommendations (or to invite us!)...

- If the weather is decent we recommend driving out into the hill country to the Oasis on Lake Travis to see a sunset and have margaritas. Its about a 45 minute drive each way from downtown. Get there before the sun goes down to take in the impressive views. This is one of Austin's can't-miss places to go, although the food is typically not the highlight of the experience.

- Go to the State Capitol Building. Its dome is 14 feet taller than the nation's Capitol and its just architecturally cool. Just walk on in, its open to the public.

- Drive down to San Antonio if you have an entire day free (it is a 1.5 hour drive each way). While you are there check out the Alamo and the Riverwalk. Take a boat ride on the riverwalk.

- Hit up the outlet malls in San Marcos (45 minutes south of Austin on I-35). The outlet malls are absolutely huge and have every brand/store you could imagine from Nieman Marcus to Pottery Barn to Armani Exchange.

- Check out the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas. Stroll around and check out the University of Texas.

If you get bored call us for more recommendations!

Yikes!

We're apparently not very good at keeping up with our blog! At least we're keeping up with the actual wedding planning. We've found our cake and planned out the center pieces for the tables. I found a dress I love, but being me, I wanted to make it my own so I'm having things added and taken away. I'm not really sure what it will look like when the seamstress is done, so it's possible I'll be doing a last minute, mad-dash shopping trip!

We've found our location for the rehearsal dinner - now we need to choose which wines we'll serve, so we'll be having a fun night of wine tasting with some of our friends soon. I'm not sure which is better - wine tasting or cake tasting?

I've gotten hooked on Bridezilla and Wedding SOS - not exactly quality tv, but I can't seem to stop myself. Maybe I'll actually learn something from it:)

Save the Date!

Steve and I have set the date and found the perfect location for the wedding! We are going to be married on February 28th at The Allan House in downtown Austin. We walked the dogs by it tonight and got to peak in at another nighttime wedding. The dogs all agreed it was perfect too - Zeke kept trying to crash the wedding but we told him no! Then we high-tailed it out of there before they called the cops on the weird stalkers outside.

The proposal

We got engaged on 888 - August 8th, 2008- on the Riverwalk in San Antonio, Texas.

After spending an afternoon in New Braunfels, TX at Schlitterbahn (recognized by the Travel Channel as the #1 rated water park in the world!) we hurriedly drove the rest of the way down to San Antonio to make a dinner reservation at the Caliza Grille in the Westin on the Riverwalk.

After a quick shower, we raced along the Riverwalk, eventually making it to a tiny little island in the river known as Marriage Island with two little benches with hearts carved in them, and a giant, ancient tree towering over it. Stephen pretended like his feet hurt and took Cara onto the island to sit down for a minute on one of the benches. After getting Cara to look away for a second by pointing to the water behind her and going "what's that?", he proposed...

Legend says that couples who get married or engaged on Marriage Island will have a long, happy and prosperous marriage.

But the funny thing is earlier as we were racing to get to dinner Cara had put on new shoes and they were really bothering her so we had already stopped once on the way to dinner because of foot pain! Basically Cara tried to ruin it all by stealing Stephen's carefully planned yet lame excuse to get her onto the island.

How We Met

Once upon a time Stephen adopted a dog from the Town Lake Animal Shelter (a labradoodle named Zeke) to befriend and occupy his other dog, a mentally retarded golden retriever named Sampson (see Sampson's popular YouTube video below!).

One of Zeke's littermates was also adopted by Stephen's good friends Danny and Susan. They named him "Brother". It's a weird name, we agree... Anyway, Danny and Susan discovered a dog training and dog day care business that they would bring Brother to every Friday named Buddy's Chance that was conveniently located really close to Stephen's house. Zeke loved every opportunity to play with his brother Brother, so Stephen began also bringing Zeke in to day care on Fridays...

Needless to say, the dog day care business was owned and run by Cara and is named after her rescued former racing greyhounds- Buddy and Chance. Zeke and Brother were/are little terrors when they get together, yet despite them trying to mess things up by making Cara want to kick them out of daycare several times, she didn't, and we eventually started dating and the rest is history...

One interesting note is that Stephen and Cara both grew up in New Jersey... Cara in Summit and Stephen in Westfield. The two towns are virtually adjacent yet had never met until they both ended up in Austin! Even weirder, Stephen's father and Cara's mother both grew up within a few blocks of each other in Jackson Heights, Queens (NYC)! Even weirdererer-er-er, Cara's sister Emily and Stephen's sister and brother (twins) all share the same birthday... December 3rd!