Thai lanterns

This is one of the lanterns that Kira and Chris brought back from Vietnam. So pretty! We’re going to borrow them for decorating the dinner area.

Other Vietnam fun stuff:

Jack’s teeny tiny little suit. Isn’t it adorable?

Here’s Morgan holding the suit so you can get a sense of how little it is.

Also, for those of you getting ready to organize your wedding weekend, here’s the basics you’ll need to know in order to camp at Horning’s with us or get a hotel nearby. We can’t wait to see you!

Getting Measured

I promised some pics of Jack and Trisha getting measured and here you go:

Check out the miniature buddha belly!

Our tailor friend really had to stretch the tape to get around those monster pectoral muscles. And speaking of pectoral muscles:

Trish left the tailor in quite a state trying to figure out how to politely get her chest measurement!

Two more fun photos for good measure.

1. Debi goes down the slide at Horning’s Hideout:

What you can’t see in this picture is the huge drop off right at the end where the slide dumps down into a mini canyon. YIKES.

and 2. Morgan being very proud of his handiwork:

Bespoke 3 Piece Suits…yum.

The last time Kira was in Thailand, she had some local tailors make custom 3 piece suits for Morgan and his brother Carson (pictured in his three piece suit on the roof of Artists Rep).

This inspired Morgan to organize a three piece suit fashion show as his Self Expression and Leadership Program project (one of the workshops presented by Landmark Education– a FANTASTIC program we’ve both been through). The picture to the left was taken to promote that fashion show by our friend Chris McCollom, a phenomenal photographer.

The fashion show didn’t quite work out according to plan, but our mutual love affair for three piece suits has not faded. After all they are so elegant- what man doesn’t look effortlessly charming in a three piece suit?

So when Kira headed back to Thailand and Vietnam (she’s there now, check out the pic of her and her boyfriend Chris in utterly gorgeous tropical splendor) she offered to arrange for all the groomsmen (and woman) to get custom (also called “bespoke”) suits made while she was there.

Why get suits made instead of just renting tuxes? Well, beside the obvious idea that every man could use at least one well-fitting suit in his life, it turns out that you can get custom suits made in Vietnam for under $100. So for less than the cost of renting a tux you can get your own suit, cut to your exact measurements. Pretty fabulous, eh?

The plan is to get suits in brown, but to keep things fun and special, to have the inside of the jacket lined in peacock blue thai silk and the back of the vest lined in the bright orange thai silk. If you’ve received a wedding invitation, these should be familiar colors. Our hope is that as the groomsmen get hot (it is, after all, a June wedding), they will shed their jackets and reveal the colorful backs of their suit vests.

This week we’ve been arranging to get all the measurements done for all of the groomsmen. This is slightly more complicated than it sounds, because Vietnamese tailors need the measurements in centimeters instead of inches, and we had to download a special expanded measurements form from princehenry.biz that even asks questions like “how sloped are your shoulders? Do you tend to lean forward or backward when you walk? Its crazy. It was also a bit of a challenge to find someone who would do the measurements if they weren’t going to be making the suits. But we found one. So,

Morgan and his friend Trish (the groomswoman mentioned above) went on Thursday to the European Master Tailor, a charmingly accented gentleman who had tiny shell encrusted whale figurines decorating his tailor shop, and got measured. The “Master Tailor” has his shop in, of all magical places, Morgan’s Alley, right along side Portland’s only custom millinery shop (she makes bespoke hats- who does that anymore?) and a shop selling art and jewelry made out of blown and fused glass.

Saturday, Morgan’s mom Debi came down to visit and we took my son Jack to get measured. He looked so solemn and proud getting measured. We took some pictures and I’m going to try to post them when I find them. Afterward we teased him that he was not allowed to grow for the next 4 months now that he’s been measured.

This is actually a real concern- he’s just recently outgrown all of his school clothes and I’ve been sending him to school in SWEATPANTS.

I cheerfully told him he’d have to wear rocks on his head for the next few months and sleep in a box so he won’t grow. His response was typical:

[eyeroll]
[sigh]
“Oh, mom, stop. You’re not gonna make me sleep in a box.”

Afterwards we went out to Horning’s Hideout to show Debi the wedding location. It was great fun to tromp around in the mud and imagine what it will be like when the wildflowers are blooming and all the foliage has come back to the trees. Or, at least it was fun until we got stuck at a place in the creek where there used to be a bridge (it got wiped out in the post snow floods). Morgan and Jack nimbly found fallen logs to run across to get to the other side. Not wanting to prove myself the wuss I really am, I gamely tried to do the same- and ended up up to my waist in the creek when I slipped off the log!

Fortunately the creek was neither very deep or very cold. It still made for a very WET ride home.

And a good reminder that something like this:
is probably going to be a better choice for wedding day footwear than this:

For you as well!