Ah, Portland! Just the very syllables in that name conjure up such wonderful images! Lobsters, snowy winters, clam chowder, and vacationing presidents in close proximity. You can almost smell the Eastern white pine trees! Unfortunately, you're thinking of the wrong Portland, in Maine — Julia and I live in Portland, Oregon.

Fortunately, we also happen to love this town, and in this section, we'd like to help you enjoy your time in the city occasionally known as Stumptown, The City of Roses, PDX, Bridgetown, and Little Beirut.

However, there is no way that this Web site, cobbled together by two people in their spare time, can compare with the remarkable resource that is the Portland Oregon Visitors Association (POVA) site. While our offerings here are inevitably less compendious than POVA's, they are at least more accurately biased.

Some kind of overview

Okay, then — what kind of images should pop into your head when you think of our wonderful home, if not lobsters? Well, far be it from us to tell you how to think, but ...

The first thing you may notice upon arriving are the geographical features — downtown Portland is nestled between hills and a river, and there are more hills (at least one of which is actually an extinct volcano!) and one other river nearby. On a clear day (of which summer is surprisingly chock full), you can see several snow-capped mountains, all of which are volcanically active. Note for photographers: if you take any panoramic photos of Portland, you are legally required to include Mt. Hood in the frame.

You may have heard that Portland is rainy, but then you may have heard that Greenland is green. At least one of these is a lie created by envious Californians. Fine, it does rain in Portland (although, as defensive types are quick to point out, the average precipitation is less than in Atlanta or Houston), but in August, it's a rare day when ye olde "liquid sunshine" is falling.

Perhaps as a defense mechanism for when things do get dreary, Portlanders love to drink loads of coffee and beer — there's something about a bitter diuretic that makes the clouds seem less gloomy. Portland has a ridiculous number of microbreweries, but please note that locals like their beer hoppy.

On the whole, Portlanders tend to be pretty environmentally-minded. The city has been rated as one of the best for bicyclists, and there's a wonderful transit system. Or you can just walk most places. In addition to the abundant, beautiful nature just outside the city, there's also a goodly chunk of greenery right in the middle of it — among the many other parks, Forest Park seems to be the largest something or other ("largest urban park"? "largest wooded city park"?).

Portland is also a rather casual city. It's not unusual to see t-shirts at the symphony or jeans at church (although it is unusual to see a Portlander at church). If you want to blend in with the locals, wear a Polarfleece® vest over a white t-shirt, with tan cargo shorts and a pair of sandals. Of course, to really complete the picture, you'd need to drive a Subaru Outback.

Anyhow, I hope you find these sweeping generalities to be helpful. More useful information can be found by following the links to other pages in the About Portland section.

Orientation

Portland is located in northwestern Oregon, where the Willamette River flows into the Columbia. North of the Columbia River is Washington state, specifically Vancouver, Washington.

The Willamette runs north-south through Portland and, along with Burnside Street (which runs east-west), divides the city into quadrants (there's actually a bonus quadrant, too — North Portland — but most visitors don't get that far).

All street names in Portland are prefixed with their quadrant (NW, SW, NE, SE, or N), so there's a difference between NW 23rd and NE 23rd (that being their location on opposite sides of the river). In general, numbered avenues run north-south and are numbered starting at the river and moving away, so SW 6th Ave. is six blocks west of the river. Street addresses on these avenues are measured by their distance from Burnside, so 400 SW 6th Ave. is four blocks south of Burnside. It's all terribly clever, trust us. It's also helpful to know that in northwest Portland, the east-west streets are named alphabetically (Burnside, Couch, Davis, and so on).

All of the wedding events will take place in inner southwest Portland, which is what most people think of as downtown.