Seven months.

Chris and I will be getting married in seven months.

Eight was that funny place where it still sort of seemed like a long time, but here at seven that sense is gone. Rather, it feels as though we’ve rounded the top of the hill and are standing in that moment just before gravity takes hold. That moment where you realize how high you are, the vertigo landing in the pit of your stomach, and you feel the anticipatory dizziness of how fast everything is about to move.

It’s unsettling but it’s exciting.

We’ve made a lot of decisions in the past month. We’ve decided on the music, I found my dress (something that I was beginning to fear would never happen), and I had the initial meeting with the florist just the other day. It’s slowly beginning to come together and is mostly a matter of details at this point. We made the biggest decisions right after we got engaged, the first of which being the venue. I think I can safely speak for us both and say that, aside from the heart of what the day will represent, the venue is the part about which we are most excited.

We will be getting married at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, home of James Beard award winning chef Dan Barber. It was the very first venue that we saw, and from the moment we left our bar had been set. The restaurant is located on an historic, picturesque farm just north of Manhattan, and is part of the old Rockefeller estate. You can wander about and visit the chickens, pigs and sheep–the latter of which are closely guarded by a diligent white dog. There is an agricultural center and shop on the premises filled with cookbooks and adorable home accessories that are a struggle to not buy. The buildings are constructed of rustic brick and stone and sturdy wood beams, the main room of the restaurant (once a barn) retaining the original steelwork supports of its vaulted ceilings. Every square inch of it is lovely. We tried to keep an open mind when viewing our other options, but I think we already knew.

And then we decided, just to be certain, that we should have dinner there. If there had been a single ounce of doubt in our minds, it was gone by the time our first course arrived. The food, sourced from the farm itself (and a few neighboring farms) was exceptional. Even the most simple things we sampled were exquisite. That’s what you can expect when the vegetables that you are eating were pulled from the soil that very day.

Also, I should mention that Blue Hill is exceptionally accommodating when it comes to food allergies/sensitivies. Throughout our meal, I was given gluten-free bread made with chickpea flour (on which I spread ample amounts of fresh butter and parsnip salt). For our wedding especially, we needed to make sure that dietary needs could be accounted for as we have many in our families. My mom and I are both gluten-free, my grandmother a vegetarian, Chris’ sister is intensely allergic to soy, his grandmother cannot have salt, his grandfather no sugar, and his mom has a list so long that I need to restudy it and send confirmation e-mails every time we have his parents over for dinner. Blue Hill will be able to take care of everyone on an individual basis. While our guest list is small, this is not so difficult to accomplish when the food is fresh. And this is about as fresh as you can get.

I could go on. Oh how I could go on. Instead, I will leave you with this video that I came across recently. It makes my heart swell with anticipation and forces the admission I am almost as excited for the meal as I am to say I do.