Posted Wednesday, June 25, 2008 6:27 PM
This weekend, my fiance and I finally had a chance to unpack the presents I received at the shower the week before.
Thank goodness. I was so tired of walking into the living room and thinking that I was in a garage. One corner of the room had a pile of boxes, that had been somewhat consolidated before I came back to Houston, but most of the gifts were all packed by Crate and Barrel in boxes that were much too huge (I have no idea why 4 cheese spreaders need to be individually wrapped in a whole issue of the New York times and put into a shoe box).
Saturday we finally unpacked a lot of it, ran it through the dishwasher, and found places in the cabinet for it. Some of the items were replacing old3er things that one or the other of us had bought when we were in college, so we also packed up a couple of boxes to go to Goodwill with.
The living room was looking more or less like a living room again, when UPS, Fedex, and the postal service each delivered a wedding gift to the door. Time for another trip to the dumpster...
Note: I realize that the above post may sound ungrateful. I am not bemoaning the fact that we are receiving generous gifts from our guests, merely the fact that C&B and BBB insist on using giant boxes to ship gifts.
Posted Wednesday, June 18, 2008 2:22 PM
Here is the sequence of events that has made me greatly dislike my reception site (ladies don't say hate):
June
3: I email the reception site to set up the "big meeting" which is
supposed to take place about a month before the wedding (August 9). I
ask to have the meeting on June 13 (since I am planning on traveling to
Houston that day).
June
4: I get a response saying that June 13 is much too early; I won't
know a lot of the little details (no indication what those might be).
June 17: Having returned from previously mentioned trip, I try again to schedule the meeting, this time for June 27th.
Now that I have found the perfect part-time job, I only have Fridays
available to go to Houston, and I have two other appointments scheduled
for that day.
June
17 (after arriving home from work): I am told that the month of June
is extremely busy for them (duh) and they have many Friday weddings. I
am given a list of days and times when we can meet. Of the 10 or so
days, one is a Friday (July 11), which happens to be the day of the bachelorette
party. The coordinator expresses that she understands that it can
difficult to plan a wedding from out-of-town, and maybe I could send
someone else. At the meeting we will go over the timeline, the table
setting, and other details.
I, upon reading the email, become
irate. 1) I could have had the timeline ready for the last meeting. 2)
How can I entrust such a meeting to my mom, who was flustered at the
florist when asked her opinion of the bouquet? 3) Yargh.
After
15 minutes of venting/fuming to my fiance, I decided to ask my sister
and my mother to go and they can call me if they have questions.
More posts at http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com
Posted Saturday, June 07, 2008 10:27 AM
My two sisters, one the MOH and one a BM, have been lovely enough to plan a bridal shower for me next weekend. Many of the guests are family or friends of my mom's, but the few people still left in Houston are invited as well (although I must say that none of them have RSVP'ed to sissy - harumph).
One of my other bridesmaids "K" recently reminded me that one my greatest fears will soon come to fruition. Since we were sophomores in college, K has had a plot to embarrass me at my bridal shower, which really goes back to the first time we watched Pulp Fiction. For whatever reason, K thinks it would be hilarious to have me open her gift at the bridal shower, in front of my grandma (which is an integral part of her comedy scenario). Inside the pretty white paper and ribbons would be a ball gag.
"She can't really want to do that," is what you're thinking. No, she can, and I am now terrified that she will. Although she is in California and can't come to the shower, my sister has received a package in the mail for the shower. She thinks I am being difficult because I have refused to open it. I just can't.
Da-dum, da-dum, da-dum.
More posts at: http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com
Posted Saturday, May 24, 2008 12:05 PM
I do not envy my fiance or any other person that has to look for engagement or wedding jewelry. It truly is an ordeal. When we decided that it was time to start looking for rings, my fiance decided that we should shop around, which makes sense, especially since we live near a mall, we have two jewelers right near us, and then we wanted to go back to K's where my fiance had found my engagement ring.
We first went to BBB, where we were greeted with a very lukewarm handshake by L. She sat me down in front of one of their collections and asked which style I liked. I told her and she had me try on a few rings, of those there was one I liked, but the ring I looked at was over $1800, which is at least twice as much as we were looking to spend. I really didn't like the store, and I was getting frustrated because the only rings she showed me were from the collection in front of me, which were all platinum. I didn't want a platinum ring, my engagement ring is palladium, so we were looking for that or white gold.
It was the kind of store encounter where the salesperson is intent on showing you a certain set of things and you feel like you can't even ask to see something else. L never asked us how much we wanted to spend, we had to sneak looks at the price tags when she wasn't looking. Oh well, on to the next store.
Posted Thursday, May 22, 2008 3:37 PM
The saga of the honeymoon flights began the day the flights opened up for reserve on Continental. We moved our frequent flier miles around and decided that we would use them to try to upgrade our seats to BusinessFirst. Since we're flying to Greece, we thought that being able to walking up to the gate and trying to get an update with "honeymoon points" might not work.
Since the end of September, I have nearly been obsessed with checking the seat assignments to see how many other people have been booked in the BusinessFirst cabin. One, then two, then three, then nothing - aaah, when would we get upgraded.
Last Friday, my fiance called the airline to see if there was anyway to figure out when we might be upgraded. He talked to the customer service representative, let it slip that it was our honeymoon and then asked if he could let us know when we would find out about the upgrade. The representative was seemingly less than helpful and told my fiance that it could be as soon anywhere between then and 24 hours before the flight. Great.
THEN - that afternoon - we got the emails that our flights between New York and Greece were upgraded, during my graduation, no less. Yippeeeeeeeeee!!!!!!!! My fiance thinks it was coincidence, but I am confident that the service representative is a kind soul who upgraded us that afternoon.
more posts at: http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com
Posted Sunday, May 18, 2008 1:46 PM
Whoo hoo! We got our first official wedding present today. Not from an engagement party, just a real wedding present. How exciting. I felt bad because I opened it without my fiance, thinking that it was a graduation present from his parents.
When I opened it, there was a smorgasbord of presents in the box and one of our friend's names on the tag. Such a good present - right off the registry. I went through the packing list, and I discovered that one of the items was missing. I called up Crate & Barrel right away. The woman on the other end of the line was super helpful and said that they would immediately ship the missing item. Very cool.
Posted Friday, May 16, 2008 8:21 AM
Today I took my dress to the seamstress. I felt so relieved to drop it off because:
1) it is heavy
2) it takes up a lot of room in the closet
3) when I tried it on, it zipped up perfectly!
Why - you might ask - are you even worried about number 3? I'll tell you. A couple of months ago, I went home to Houston and took the dress there to stay for a while (see number 2). I also wanted to show my dad what it looked like, in an effort to stop him from tearing up, and then me from tearing up, on the big day.
I tried on the dress, which fit, with just a little sucking in, when I picked it up at Belle Saison. My mom totally freaked out when she was zipping it up. "It's not going to zip!" - so I sucked in and it zipped, barely. Honestly, it was a little tight.
But, it was no reason to freak out, because, as I told her, I had just finished midterms, and in typical girl fashion, had baked and half eaten a batch of monster cookie bars. Which means that I was not at my "most svelte." When I told her this, she was not convinced and said something about the fact that my weight shouldn't fluctuate that much (keep in mind that the dress DID zipper, just a teensy bit tight - and I'm not lying about "teensy").
After I successfully zippered the dress myself today, I decided to call my mom and tell her not to worry. "I'm not worried about your dress. My dress fits, so that's all I can worry about." I realize that this may seem innocuous on first read, but read it as if worrying about whether or not the bride's dress fits was "anti" on your mind at all hours of the day. Yargh.
Posted Sunday, April 27, 2008 10:16 PM
Part I: http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com/2008/04/my-bridezilla-weekend.html
Part II: Shortly after the fuchsia email picture came in, the groom-to-be and I were due to go into Houston to visit the fam. Despite having a crapload of work to do for (grad) school, I allowed myself to be dragged down to the Galleria to look for other dresses. I just knew that this was going to be a fruitless journey, mostly because we were going to Neiman's, Nordstrom's, and Saks. My mother is cheap - most of the time when we were growing up, she bought her jeans at Academy (nothing "wrong" with that - just unlikely that she will be OK buying a special occasion dress at Galleria prices.
For most of the morning my mother entertains herself pulling dresses that are tangerine and pink and made for a nineteen-year-old. As I said before, I just don't understand why - she wore a light green suit to my sister's wedding and seemed to be perfectly happy. I suggest a couple of silver numbers, but "silver looks bad" on her.
As I knew we would, we wound up hading back to T. Carolyn (which is only 15 minutes from the house) where I managed to convince her to try on a few more MOB-ey dresses that I find. She also pull several other dresses - which all look like cocktail dresses - especially when hiked up around her waist - as shown in the picture on the previous post. Finally, I convinced her to try on this one dress-jacket combo (shock - in light blue), and she liked it! Note: in the picture, she is indeed wearing a full length dress, but while she was being rung up she made sure to get the number for a seamstress to take it up.
More at: http://catholicweddinggirl.blogspot.com