30th Anniversary...Lunch at Brasserie Four: Cuisine Francaise

This blog is more about the wedding than food this time.  Scroll to near the end for the food part.

It was good to go through the wedding album and pick a few photos in honor of our wedding day 30 years ago.  Weren't we just the skinnies?

I was 97 lbs in these photos.  THAT was short lived!

I was really into vintage anything.  Not much has changed has it?

The dress was quite the story.  Everyone has their own idea of what the most important detail of the wedding is.  For me it was the vintage dress.  I was prepared to make a dress I could wear again and when I showed a drawing of the vintage style calf length dress...

... I had in mind to my husband to be, he said no. "Have a full length dress with a train like Princess Diana (she got married the year before). There is no need to wear the dress again."  WHAT!!!???  I thought I knew this conservative man after 6 years of courting. But that took me by surprise.  This was a departure from both of our family's tradition of being practical and appearing humble.

So with the assurance it was what he wanted, I went all out, choosing the most difficult antique pattern I could find from a company that has long since gone out of business called "Past Patterns."  This is the 1905 Muslin Gown.

The vintage patterns were so outdated it was difficult to find things I needed to make it and had to improvise. This pattern called for boning which I'd never hear of before. Thankfully I had been sewing for many years by this time and when I ran up against difficulties I had aunts, a sister and a mother and a talented neighbor who stepped in with help and suggestions.   One of the things that was improvised was that I really wanted this watermarked appearance in the fabic.  I was in love with watermark at that time of my life as were many people in the early eighties.  However, the pattern was for a muslin gown and the fabric I found and bought without knowing better was drapey polyester. (I learned a lot on this project).  The fabric and the pattern so did not go together.  When I was a few weeks from the wedding and ready to give up, my aunt Gwynne suggested taking it to a dry cleaners for pressing.  You see the tiny pin tucks over the hips sewn on the bias polyester fabric were a nightmare that was not going away.  Well that worked and then I was off and running again.  The next hurdle was how the dress hung straight down and the train didn't stand out like it was supposed to.  I was sent to a wedding shop by my parent's neighbor, Debbie, to buy a slip with a hoop.  Voila!  That worked too.  With encouragement and support from the right sources I was able to wear the dress.  However, not as finished as my highschool Home Ec teacher taught me...the hem is still unfinished to this day.  It's sewn up and all, just has a raw edge under there and it's got pine needles and stuff stuck in it from that day so long ago.

And here we are saying our vows in front of our relatives.

Then....and now:

My husband was going to be away for work on our actual anniversary day so we decided to celebrate on the one weekend in August that was available.  It was such a last minute decision that I just loaded up the kids and drove an hour down the road to meet up with my husband, just returning from a week of work 3 hours away and drop off the younger children to spend the weekend with their sister.

We had dinner at PF Changs which was good.  We had never been there before.  Since my husband was gone recently he wasn't in much of a mood to go anywhere so we just headed back home and relaxed all weekend.  It was hard not to tend to things that needed to be done but for the most part we managed.  We went out for one lunch and it was excellent.  I spent some time in the kitchen because we were home.  That's where I usually am you know.  It's why I'm not so skinny anymore.  The skinny began to change about one week into being married and I've struggled ever since.

Brasserie Four is owned by the daughter of the lady I signed up to sell Demarle under.  So this owner being related to her mother and also owning a French restaurant certainly does use Demarle for some of her presentations.

The menu is amazing and so is the food.

We ordered the last item on the menu:  Pizze La Paysanne and here is a photo:

We split that and also ordered a Ceasar Salad.  Love how they stack it.  Great presentation and of course delightfully tasty.

Tick Tock goes the clock.  Fast forward a week and now my husband is gone away for the week to work.  It's the day of our anniversary and my daughter is visiting for the day.  After running errands we come home and this was sitting on the front porch.  Love!

Back in those days we actually printed photos so I put one of our wedding photos out for the week.