Wedding Wednesdays: Wedding Week Insanity

As Carrie has already told you, we did all of our on-site planning in short bursts in the months leading up to the wedding. We tried to do as much as we could ahead of time, but there were still lots of projects that ended up needing to be done at the last minute. Looking through our to-do list now, I'm a bit overwhelmed by how much we (with the help of many family members!) were able to accomplish in that time.

Our wedding was on a Saturday. We flew in on Wednesday afternoon. (Note to future brides planning from afar: if you can spare the vacation time, give yourself more time than this.) Our first stop was to pick up the rental car, which led to semi-awkward interaction with the rental car guy while Carrie filled out the paperwork:

Rental Car Guy: So what brings you to town?
Carrie: Um, our wedding.
RCG: Oh....blah blah blah try to upsell rental car crap...would you like to add a second driver for $$$ per day?
Me: I thought your company's policy is that spouses and domestic partners are free? (Yes, I had a printout from company's website if needed.)
RCG: Wait, are you already married?
Me: Yes.
RCG: Oh, okay then. Well if she (looking at Carrie) trusts you...

We then went on our merry way to pile our stuff into the tiniest, cheapest rental car ever--I had no idea that factories are still making cars without power locks and windows. But fear not, we had Sirius satellite radio!

Seriously, the window has a crank? Seriously?

The airport timing worked out such that Carrie's grandmother was arriving around the same time, so we picked her up a few minutes later and were off. Carrie and I still had a bunch of errands to run, so we made a quick stop at her parents' house and then headed out to buy last-minute supplies. One of the projects still TBD was the card box. Our plan was to pick up something at Michaels that we could decorate, but that plan failed when Michaels didn't have a single box of an appropriate size. Fortunately, a helpful employee directed us to the nearby HomeGoods store, where we settled on a black leather box that needed some alterations but would do. I am terrified of hot glue guns, so this entire project became a bonding moment for Carrie and my mom (with a bit of help from Carrie's dad). Sadly, it appears that despite their painstaking efforts, we don't have any pictures of the process or the finished product. This is actually sort of a theme from those few days--apparently running around like crazy people does not inspire one to meticulously photodocument the experience. We did have a relaxing dinner that evening at a Mongolian BBQ restaurant that was one of Carrie's favorite restaurants back in the day. It's hard to go wrong with DIY stirfry assembly.

In those few days, we had lots of last-minute paper projects to tackle--table signs, other random signs, and what would quickly become my nemesis: place cards. We had everything all set up ahead of time. The formatting was done, the mail merge was done, so it was just a matter of feeding the sheets into the printer and then hand stamping them. It turned out that the stamping was the least frustrating part of this process. The first few sheets printed fine, and then suddenly we had all sorts of problems. There was weird gray fringing. There was smudged printing. There were parts missing of some letters. We played with the printer settings, we shook the toner cartridge, we put in a new toner cartridge, and the gray smudginess was still there. At this point we were out of blank place cards despite having bought twice as many as we needed, and I was Freaking. Out. My mom went off on a trip to Staples, which involved her talking to a couple managers and going to multiple locations around the Twin Cities metro area before she found the cards in stock. And while she did that, Sean took apart the printer a bit and cleaned some parts so that once my mom finally returned victorious from Staples, we were able to print the rest. Oh yeah, and all of this involved me running laps back and forth between the computer that had Publisher on it and the printer in a different room. I think that may have been the only exercise I got that week, so it was probably good for me.

Me at the printer. I think the expression on my face is "Carrie, why are you taking my picture? Can't you see that I am freaking out here?"

Fortunately, Thursday evening also involved a wonderful treat: dinner at Lindey's Steak House. It's a very old-school steak place that Carrie's family occasionally visits for special occasions, and apparently wedding preparation was a noteworthy occasion. Stuffing ourselves with steak and potatoes seemed like a good antidote to the earlier stresses.

Friday, of course, brought more stress. We had planned for mani/pedis for us, our moms, and whomever of our bridesmaids were around and interested. Despite the fact that we'd scheduled an appointment for all of us, the nail salon was rather understaffed, and we ended up being there for several hours.

All of us pretending to read magazines while I'm trying really hard to suppress a giggle.

Under the dryers

We all had fun, but it was time we hadn't really budgeted for, so the rest of the day got rather hectic. Basically, we got home from the nail salon at around the time that we were supposed to be dropping off favors, place cards, etc. at the reception venue. But not only were we not ready, there were still a few random signs that needed to be made and the kids' favor bags needed to be assembled. Oh yeah, and as of this point, we hadn't even started putting together our photo slideshow; the photos had been scanned but still needed to be sorted, put in order, and set to music. And we needed to be at the rehearsal in just a couple of hours, and not only did we all need to get ready for that, but I needed to pack for the next couple of days because I was spending that night at the hotel (yeah, we're traditional like that). Carrie started the slideshow, Jen worked on the kids' bags, and I ran around like a crazy person. I'm not even sure if I was doing anything useful--I may just have been flapping my arms and making scared noises.

At one point I definitely started hyperventilating because the menu sign wasn't sized to fit right with a double matte in the frame we'd bought for it. Yes, the menu sign was where I finally lost it. The menu sign. People had already picked their meals ahead of time--this was just a courtesy at the entrance to tell them what the sides would be, etc. In other words, it was totally unnecessary, but I couldn't see that at the moment, nor could I think calmly enough to be able to handle fractions and recalculate the size. Fortunately, at this point Sean jumped in. It turns out that geeky guys are perfectly suited for measuring and aligning a beautifully double-matted menu sign. And while he did that, I finished off our list for the venue and started loading all of our paraphernalia into the car.

Carrie and I pretty much showed up at the venue in a whirlwind, dropped the bubbles, favors, place cards, signs, and whatever else happened to be in the car (I'm surprised we didn't leave them the spare tire). We were hyper-organized (and mildly paranoid about the idea of something not going perfectly as planned), so we had a list for them of everything we'd brought and where it should go, as well as a diagram of the venue with table names, high chair placement, and labels for where all our stuff should be. We talked through that list at about 90 miles a minute, then ran out the door and back to Carrie's parents' house to get ready for the rehearsal, which it was quite clear that we were going to be late for. I know that this is somewhat to be expected at weddings--lots of things don't start on time. But I really hate inconveniencing people, so I was having all kinds of stress thinking about our nearest and dearest sitting at the church waiting for us. Apparently though, these things don't start without the brides, so they were all mingling happily when we arrived.

This post has already gone on far too long, so you'll have to wait until next time to hear what happens next (I know, crazy suspense, right?) But what I couldn't really capture here was A. what a blur this whole time was, and B. how much of it we couldn't have done without our families. There were all sorts of other things happening that I haven't written about here, in part because I don't even remember who did them, but they got done. Dresses were taken to the cleaner to be steamed, lunches were made, the church was set up, and all sorts of other things that I wasn't involved in. Oh, and in case this wasn't enough insanity, there were two toddlers running around the whole time. It was certainly not a calm, quiet way to go into a wedding, but does that ever happen? I may not have reached a point of pre-wedding bliss, but we spent those days surrounded by family and friends who were willing to join us in the frantic frenzy that was necessary to make our wedding happen.

One of the little men, being as helpful as he could be. I think we all wanted to join him in that nap.

Wedding Wednesdays: Dress Shopping Surprises

I wasn't feeling particularly inspired to write a regular recap post this week, but fortunately Carrie's mom suggested an idea for a post related to wedding dress shopping. For those of you who only had/have one bride in your wedding, be glad that you get to avoid this issue!

Carrie and I decided that we both wanted our dresses to be a surprise. Given that we normally do and choose just about everything together, keeping our opinions on dresses secret was no easy task. There were many evenings of both of us sitting on the couch with our computers angled away from each other so that we could look at dresses online without the other seeing. In addition to that, we both did much (in my case, all) of our dress shopping the weekend that we were in Minnesota in May. With the whirlwind of things happening that weekend, we also had to schedule appointments at some of the same stores in a way that we were sure to not run into each other in the process.

We had considered the possibility that we might fall in love with the same dress but figured it was unlikely since there are thousands of dresses out there and we are different people after all. But just in case, we agreed ahead of time that our moms could compare notes on dresses and at least warn us if we were picking the same one. I don't even want to think about what the negotiations would have looked like if that had happened...

Fortunately, we did not choose the same dress, but we did come rather dangerously close! In retrospect, our moms must have been cracking up when they were comparing pictures after our crazy day of dress shopping.

For your viewing pleasure:

This dress was my back-up plan in case Carrie happened to pick my first choice.

Carrie, sporting the same dress

Another dress I tried on

Carrie's actual dress (so pretty!!!)

This was in Carrie's top 3 (she actually had the consultant convinced enough that she was going to buy it that they let her take pictures despite a no-photo-unless-you're-buying policy.

My actual dress. Yes, the neckline is literally the only difference.

That last one was definitely our closest call. The store that I bought it from (Wedding Shoppe in St. Paul) was my last stop of the day but had been Carrie's first stop. I explained to the consultant that Carrie had been there earlier that day, so after I tried on this dress, tried on a few more, and then went back to this dress and declared it the one, she went and grabbed Carrie's paperwork from that morning. She then came back into the fitting room looking sort of stunned and dragged my mom out into the hallway. She tried to pretend like they were doing a good job of hiding it from me, but I'm not an idiot and knew that Carrie had either been interested in the same dress or something shockingly similar. But the advantage I had over the consultant was that Carrie had already sent me text messages at lunchtime saying that she'd liked a dress there but it wasn't her first choice. There were definitely a couple of tense days while Carrie figured out what her first choice was before I could actually order the dress, but obviously it worked out great in the end. To those of you who know us in real life, I'm sure our similar taste is no surprise, but I'm glad that we didn't both want exactly the same thing!

Wedding Wednesdays: Planning from Afar

The first decision we made about the wedding was where to hold it.  It was always a given that we would have a legal ceremony in a state where it would be called marriage.  But whether that ceremony would be the ceremony was initially up for debate.

When we got engaged in November 2009 there was buzz around New Jersey that New Jersey would pull it together before Corzine left office, and we dreamed briefly of asking our friends and family to travel to our home state to hold a single celebration of a newly legal marriage.  We also pondered acting politically with our financial investment of a wedding celebration and holding our party in Massachusetts or Connecticut, where same-sex marriage was already legal.  But in the end we decided that the best answer for us was to hold the wedding we would want to have if it were legal, and not let haters dictate where or when we should celebrate our relationship.  Sadly, the Minnesota government is currently seeking to reaffirm their disdain for our relationship by amending the state constitution to ensure that our marriage could not be recognized.

In an acquiesence to political reality, we did conduct a tiny legal ceremony in Massachusetts, which you can read about here and look at pictures of here.   But for the most part, we consider the Minnesota ceremony and party to be "the wedding" and "our anniversary."  (And it was certainly the bulk of the wedding spending!)  I grew up in Minnesota and Becky grew up in Wisconsin, we both have family and friends and family friends centered in these two neighboring states, and we were able to get married in my childhood church.  Initially the decision felt like we were selling out the idea of putting our money where our politics are.  But ultimately I have no shame in financially supporting all of the wonderful, supportive vendors we worked with.

So, planning a wedding in a state you don't live in is a lot like planning a destination wedding.  Except my impression is that when you plan a Jamaica wedding or a Mexico wedding, most of the vendors are geared towards destination wedding go-ers.  Apparently Minneapolis isn't high on the destination wedding list.  So we had to sort it out ourselves.  To be fair, we had a bit of a blue print in my sister's wedding planning from five years ago, but she was primarily willing to allow my mom to be her wedding planner.  In our case we had not one but two brides who wanted to control every little detail, and also not one but two mothers-of-the- brides who also had opinions and needs. 

Our overall strategy was to do big chunks of planning in marathon wedding weekends, during which Becky and I, Becky's mom, on a few occasions other relatives, and my mom had wedding retreats in my parents' house.  This involved some quick bonding for our mothers who had only met for the first time in December 2009! 

Our first trip to Minnesota was in January 2010.  We toured four potential reception sites, were stood up at one arranged site tour, and drove by two other potential sites.  We met with six photographers and were canceled on by one additional photographer.  And even just reading that right now I feel like we were crazy.  But part of the stress of planning from afar was that we had to have lots of options lined up, because we didn't have the luxury of loving one vendor on the internet and then going in person and hating it/him/her and then trying again the next weekend.  This whirlwind approach forced us to do our internet homework and then jump in and do.  I think it was an advantage that we saw everything/met everyone all at once so we could easily compare and choose.  But it certainly felt stressful at the time!  When I got the e-mail from the photographer who canceled (she had a family emergency) I almost broke down crying, because somehow her cancellation solidified for me that she was the one photographer we were destined to love.  Crazy much?  Never fear, we picked ourselves up and loved another.

This is me diligently studying the reception contract, ever cautious to not sign away the rights to parent our first born (I'm fairly certain we avoided this, but I won't be entirely shocked if one of our vendors shows up at the hospital someday expecting that!):

I think the whirlwind version may have been good for our indecisive selves also, because at the end of the weekend....we obviously weren't going to pick a photographer we didn't interview or a venue we didn't view, and thus we had to just freaking make a decision.  And ultimately, those big decisions from weekend one were the easiest.  We loved in person the same venue we loved online.  We both easily agreed that the photographer we thought we loved online was unnecessarily expensive and not a personality click, and that the photographer we did pick was an easy personality match.  Of all your vendors, your photographer is the one whose personality you should like.  Ours felt like she could have been one of our college friends.  Win.

Our second trip to Minnesota was in May 2010.  We managed to connect it to a Wisconsin trip we were planning to take anyways.  We got a private food and wine tasting at our reception venue (special perk of long distance planning!), met with four florists, met with four bakers, took engagement pictures, scoped rehearsal dinner venues, met with the minister, shopped for invitation supplies, and shopped for wedding dresses.  Once again our selection of vendors was probably overkill, but I don't regret meeting with any of them.  I like to make informed choices!  The one thing we really could have done at home was wedding dress shopping, but we wanted to have our moms in on part of it at least.  I ended up buying mine off the rack at a boutique in Minnesota and then conning my mom into shipping it to New Jersey for me to have altered.  Becky ordered hers through a shop in Minnesota and they mailed it to her to have altered here.  Alterations was one of the most stressful parts of the wedding planning, and I would highly recommend buying your dress from a shop where you plan to get it altered.  While in Wisconsin we also went bridesmaid dress shopping with Becky's sisters and made a tentative decision.  Like the colors??

 

We didn't go back to Minnesota until three weeks before the wedding.  Pretty much all of the detail finalizing with all of the vendors we did over phone and e-mail, we hired DJ and limo companies over the internet, we instructed our wedding party to order outfits over the internet, and we worked on all of the paper goods and favors and all the little details from home.  We ordered box after box of stuff to be sent to my mom, who would open boxes on Skype and show us our unity candle or our boxes of dozens of bubbles.  We also asked each of our mothers to take care of buying or doing certain things for us, like sorting out only red and purple Hershey's kisses from dozens of bags, or tying personalized ribbons. Not everyone was equally enthused about ordering their outfits:

 In October the whole gang descended on Minnesota again, and we did hair trials, had a shower, re-tasted our cake (to be sure of the flavors!!), and worked on finishing and folding and organizing all of that stuff that our moms collected for us!

People on the wedding internetz talk a lot about wedding planning taking over your whole lives....  we definitely had lots of days where we didn't really have any wedding related tasks we had to complete, but that freedom was obviously created by these intense whirlwind planning weekends.  I might be a little crazy, but I liked the intensity of being forced to get so much done at once, and of having our families with us in our intense focus for just those weekends.  When my mom first warned us of how many planning trips we would need to take to Minnesota I was a doubter.  Now that we've done it I think it's a miracle that we didn't need more.

ETA: ARGH, I did it again!!!  :(  This post was written by Carrie, despite Blogger's claims that it was written by Becky.

Wedding Wednesdays: Bachelorette & Shower

When we started planning the wedding we weren't really expecting much in the way of a bachelorette party or a shower. We don't have a huge circle of friends (moving around too much combined with being introverts?) and our close friends and family are fairly widely geographically dispersed. For the most part I had accepted this as a sad but true reality, while Becky was privately pining for these celebrations. Blame it on the big evil Wedding-Industrial-Complex (or just theknot.com) if you will, but somehow having a bachelorette party and a shower felt like an important right of passage as brides/further legitimizing force/just plain good time.

Happily, our friends and family came through. And they did it in fun ways that fit us. I apologize for the exceptionally poor quality of some of these photos; we were having camera issues.

Bachelorette

Our friend Kara, who has been featured in several of our bloggy adventures (Staten Island, Superbowl, Dim Sum, probably lots more...), had vaguely hinted that she might do something bachelorettey for us. We even had a suspicion on the day that it might be the day. But then when we confirmed plans it seemed to genuinely be a low-key business as usual meet up in Central Park. And truth be told, Kara is usually a horrible liar, so we took this at face value. In fact, so much so that we called and told her we were running 20 minutes late because we needed to do an errand. We were quite surprised when we approached the appointed meeting spot to see two other friends (Kim and Stephanie) and learn that another was supposed to meet us later!

Kara delivered us goody bags filled with candy and plastic engagement ring shot glasses and dorky bride-to-be tiaras and water bottles filled with Strongbow cider. She even decorated our water bottles in our wedding colors (and apparently also deserves an award for securing bachelorette swag that did not have penises on it!). Here's us in Central Park with the lovely tiaras:

We then started off a whole afternoon/evening full of shenanigans with our friends sponsoring a carriage ride in Central Park. Becky and I started a New York City to-do list before we moved here, after having had tons of fun checking things off of our Boston and London to-do lists. Almost five years settled in to our Big Apple experience we've gotten lax with the tourist pursuits, and there are still items unchecked on our original list. Kara secretly consulted the list, which is scrawled on the back of an envelope and attached to the side of our fridge, and picked an activity to help us complete. I apologize to the animal rights activists and cheeseyness police, but the carriage ride has been a quintessential New York experience in my head since early in my Midwestern childhood! And now I can happily report that we did it on our bachelorette day.

From there we headed to a delicious dinner (and drinks) at Five Napkin Burger. Becky and I try hard to be frugal when it comes to eating out, but Kara knew we had been salivating over the idea of these over-priced burgers and so she put them on the itinerary. And I can tell you they're seriously worth the price. Yum. Definitely competition for the best burger I've had. We followed that up with drinks at a local bar, and then capped the evening off with desserts at Edgar's Cafe. We cannot thank our friends enough for pulling off such a fun-filled surprise day of bachelorettey-ness. And, we especially enjoyed spending time with these lovely ladies, as they were among the young friends who were decidedly unable to make it to the also amazing shower.

Shower

The shower was not a surprise, as that would have been logistically impossible considering that it took place in Minnesota. But initially the fact that a shower was being thrown in our honor was definitely a surprise, as was the content. My sister (and matron of honor) was the mastermind behind the shower, though she also had a lot of help from both my mom and Becky's mom, and from a family friend who is also the mother of my bridesmaid. Neither my bridesmaid nor Becky's sisters (her wedding party) were able to make it, but my bridesmaid did make an appearance on Skype live from her German home!

We managed to coordinate a weekend about three weeks before the wedding for a whole host of people to descend upon the Twin Cities for wedding-preparation-palooza. Becky and I flew in from New Jersey, Jen and her son Matthew (free under-2 flight FTW) flew in from Massachusetts, and Becky's mom and aunt drove in from Eastern Wisconsin. We did hair trials, tied ribbons on favors, re-tasted cakes, folded program parts....and partied! (And yes, you read correctly, we tasted cakes for a second time.)

Our lovely hosts did up the fellowship hall of my church for a delicious English tea, and invited all of the women who were invited to the wedding. There were tables set up with small flower centerpieces in our wedding colors, several kinds of tea, fruit, scones with jam and clotted cream, and finger sandwiches. But most of all, there were three desserts, all cut into scrumptious tea-style bite size pieces. The desserts were designated Carrie's dessert, aka a childhood favorite called Chocolate Indulgence, Becky's dessert, aka pumpkin bars with cream cheese frosting, and the joint dessert, aka the cake that we adored at cake tasting but rejected due to the personality and attitude of the baker herself. It was pure caramel apple deliciousness, and for a shower cake the baker apparently did not feel the need to insult our design choices or stuff it full of styrofoam dummy cakes. A few points off for my mom though, who accidentally revealed my sister's well plotted surprise by including Becky and I on a planning e-mail. Oopsie!
Becky's mom planned a fun little trivia game regarding places that we have traveled together, and put together a photo album for us of pictures from many of those travels. She also supplied many of those pictures (y'know, the ones of us with food...because we apparently love to take them!) to my sister for use in an ingenious shower gift, especially for people with lots of long distance friends and family. We received a cookbook filled with recipes and memories, submitted by tons of our wedding invitees including many who were able to attend the shower and many who were not able to attend. It was especially nice to see some of our younger friends represented who both couldn't attend in person and weren't able to send shower gifts - but obviously still wanted to send love! Here is us examining our cookbook with my sister:

And here is an unfortunately blurry picture of our mothers bonding at the shower (note our purple and red wedding colors in the centerpieces!):
But yes, we did also receive lots of very generous shower gifts for which we are very grateful as well. During the gift-opening Matthew entertained himself very well by ferrying gifts to us and used wrapping materials from us to the trash bag. He also did an excellent job helping set out folding chairs and helping my dad load our presents into the car at the end of the event!

Wedding Wednesdays: Invitations & Paper

Our wedding was almost 6 months ago, but we never really did full-on recaps afterward. And since I know a few of you wandered here via the wedding blogosphere, we figured a few pretty wedding posts couldn't hurt! For the next few weeks, we'll (try really hard to) have a Wednesday post with wedding-related content. If weddings aren't your thing, well, we'll see you next post!

To kick things off, I wanted to tell you a bit about our invitations and other paper items. Sadly, we forgot to have our photographer take a picture of our invitation, so some of the pictures here aren't the best. (memo to brides-to-be: send an invite to your photographer or have an invite there on the day of and then remember to give it to him/her to photograph.We missed that step.)

We sent out Save-the-Date postcards about six months before our wedding. We designed them in Microsoft Publisher and then got them printed through Vistaprint. If you're looking for cheap postcards, they're a great source, but make sure you do a quick search for freebies first! We got our postcards free but had to pay for shipping and a set-up fee for the custom design.

Image came out a little blurry here, but they printed great!

The back of the postcard had information about the where/when and a link to our wedding website. We had to send out the postcards before we had our actual engagement pictures done, but fortunately we were able to con a friend into doing a photoshoot for us in Asbury Park and Ocean Grove, our favorite spots on the Jersey Shore.

The invitations...were probably the one area of the wedding where I went the most insane. From the moment I heard the word "pocketfolds", I was in. They're so organized! And neat! And all the little cards line up so nicely! Also, they are expensive, so clearly we needed to find some ways to make them less so. We ordered the folders and envelopes from Cards & Pockets, and I seriously cannot say enough good things about them. The prices were great, quality was excellent, their shipping was quick, and the customer service was awesome. We designed the invitations and inserts in Publisher, with a little bit of work (map cards, some image stuff) done in a free 30-day trial of Adobe Illustrator. I used this tutorial to design the map card, and I am proud to say that I managed to get through it without actually throwing my computer out the window, though I was tempted at many times.

We then had the lovely custom printing people at Cards & Pockets print the invitations. Our printer is ten years old and we don't bother to keep color ink in it, so printing the invitations ourselves would have involved buying a new printer. By getting them to do the printing, we ended up saving money and avoided the hassles of printing and cutting all of the pieces. And their rates were extremely reasonable--much cheaper than we were quoted anywhere else.

Once we had all the pieces, step 1 for us (well, me) was addressing the envelopes. Since I did these by hand, in cursive, it took a little longer than I anticipated. While I worked on that, Carrie painstakingly stamped our return address and the little squares we cut for the belly bands. For those of you who are new here, check out these awesome pictures of us hard at work on these projects.

Once those steps were complete, we dragged everything up to Carrie's sister's house for a weekend of invitation assembly. We set up a big table in their living room, and Carrie, Jen, and I became a craft factory, while Sean kept the boys out of the way for a miraculously long period of time. (Thanks again, J and Anonymous!)

Important lesson: old medical school textbooks are extremely good weights for ensuring your adhesive is stuck.

Finally: the finished product!

We used the belly band squares in place of the inner envelope, so for everyone else, these said the guests' names.

Once those were on their merry way, the biggest paper project left was the ceremony program. We designed these in Publisher, and after trying to find a local printer that was even remotely reasonable, we decided to have Cards & Pockets print them as well. Then all we had to do was cut the vellum, hole punch them, and tie ribbons through each one. Voila:

Photo by Becca Dilley

You can't really see it at all in this photo, but each program has a red ribbon, similar in style to the ribbon on the belly bands but much thinner, tied in a bow. And here's a tip: if you're printing something that has to be hole punched, mark the holes on your design so that they're printed right on the paper and you don't have to mark it on each one later.

For those of you keeping score at home, here's what we used and where we got it:

• Folders, envelopes, silver backing for belly band squares, and printing: Cards & Pockets
• Purple hemp paper for backing on main invitation panel: Paper Depot, Minneapolis, MN (also great customer service and lots of ideas--definitely worth a trip if you're in the area!)
• Adhesive: Tombow MONO adhesive (Bought at Paper Depot but I've since seen at A.C. Moore)
• Custom return address stamp: Etsy seller kiss + tell
• Ribbon: Michaels (gotta love their coupons!)
• Swirl stamp and ink pad: The Ink Pad (super-cute stamping store in NYC)
• Vellum paper for programs: Paper Presentation (in NYC)

100 Posts! And a New Name!

Well, despite our silence for all of last week, we have reached a blogging milestone: this is officially our 100th post! So thank you, dear readers, for sticking around even when we fall off the face of the earth for a bit. We're hoping that last week's insanity in our lives will be an anomaly, and we'll be around more to give you a little somethin' to read.

In celebration of actually sticking with this blog thing, we have a super-duper exciting announcement: we're changing our name. No, not our real names--we already did that. We're changing the blog's name. We finally admitted to ourselves that "Adventures of Two Midwestern East Coast Liberals" was about the most ridiculously long-winded blog title on earth. It seemed cute to me when I first came up with it as "Adventures of a Midwestern East Coast Liberal", but somehow the pluralization of it when Carrie came on board just made it feel even longer. It's time for a change. Fear not, we will still regale you with tales of our adventures. There are still two of us. We are still from the Midwest and live on the East Coast. And despite the best efforts of one family member, we are still liberals. 

So what's the new name, you ask? (Okay, maybe you don't ask cuz it's staring at you from the top of the page, but humor me here.) Our blog is now called "And the Next Day". 

The new title is actually a reference to our wedding vows. We wrote our own vows for our ceremony; I read them first and then Carrie read them. At the end she said, "And when I wake up tomorrow, I will promise this all again." I replied, "So will I.  And the next day.  And the next, each day choosing us again." It was really important to us that these aren't promises we're making to each other once. They are promises that we make to each other constantly, choosing one another and our relationship every day. 

Now that the wedding is over (we're still contemplating a recap series though--despite it being several months ago. Any interest, dear readers?), I feel like it's a particularly appropriate title. The wedding is over, we're together for ever and ever and the next day after that. And also, let's be honest, some of our posts are a little "We did blah blah blah and the next day we did blah blah blah." So, all around appropriate!

What do you think? And more importantly, what do you think of this winter that just. won't. end? I got all excited when it got warm earlier, but that seems to have come and gone. Please come back, spring?! Please?!

Wedding photos!

In all of the holiday craziness, we neglected to mention that our wedding photos finally came back!! Click here to take a look at the post that our lovely photographer, Becca Dilley, put up on her blog. Maybe someday soon we'll post a few more of the 700 or so that we received (don't worry, only immediate family have to sit through all of them! Speaking of which, are our parents and siblings still our "immediate" family? Inquiring minds have been inquiring.)

They're gorgeous and I'm very very happy with the pictures and of course the wedding. But a little part of me is sad to have everything, including the pictures, be settled and final and unchangeable. There's no more possibility that maybe we could throw another pose in or smile a little better or lose more weight or or or. I'm always looking for all the options!

We also got the video back from my brother-in-law over the holidays, as it had been previously held captive on his video camera, due to the power cord being left in Minnesota after the wedding. Videography is the one area that we ended up really skimping on, and had a friend video the ceremony using my family's camera rather than hiring a professional. He did a much better job than I ever would if someone asked me to do the same (take note, never ask me to video something important for you). The camera is steady, the sound is audible, and everything really important about the ceremony is captured. So, success!

I'm the one in the big white dress. No, the other one.

We arrived at the ceremony about 10 minutes before it was scheduled to start, popped out of the limo, and ran inside to freshen up and see our families. The little boys were dressed in their tuxes and the crowd was settling in! Right on time someone let us know that the pianist was starting in on the song we agreed would be the mothers’ entrance. We realized in this moment that we wanted to delay a little, to give people time to get settled. But it was just like it was all in motion and there was no stopping it…and so we forged ahead.

I hardly remember the ceremony itself, which I suppose is why people advocate getting a wedding video. We did have a friend video informally, so hopefully that will be enough for us. Pretty much I think it went exactly according to plan. We realized at the rehearsal that the two of us and the minister were the only ones who had any idea what was in the ceremony, which was kind of accidental fun. Meagan’s rendition of Gandhi/Buddha was lovely, the benediction worked great from the back as we had chosen at the rehearsal, and oddly people weren’t too squished in the church. I still haven’t quite figured out if a lot of people were standing at the back or if people skipped the ceremony or what exactly happened to make that work, but I guess it doesn’t matter anymore. I was a little sad that we ended up missing the postlude (in addition to the prelude, but we’d talked about expecting that). It’s strange to put time and effort into choosing things that you don’t see or hear!

We did the whole receiving line thing, which was a bit long, but was actually nice to be able to see all of the faces that we’d both been avoiding looking at in the church (it’s really weird to stand up in front of everybody!) Then we headed outside for some outdoor formal pictures. Other people complained about being cold, so I guess the fact that I was not is testament to a combination of the unseasonably warm November weather and the adrenaline. Not to mention the excessively heavy big white dress (side note: I have no idea how people get married in the summer. I would die of heatstroke.)



The limo ride back to the mansion was much more relaxed and jovial. We cracked open the Asti and the string cheese. Yum.

When we arrived we greeted a few people and then ran upstairs to freshen and fluff. A lovely friend brought up a plate of appetizers. We returned downstairs and mingled until dinner. As we were being called to the tables I complained (somewhat bitterly, no shame here!) to my mom about having not been able to taste the spanakopita-type appetizer. The amazing coordinator at the mansion overheard me, and appeared at the head table a few minutes later with a whole plate of them!

After sitting down to dinner for a while someone realized that we did not have a centerpiece at the head table. We had planned to use our bouquets for the centerpiece… which meant that the bouquets were busy cruising around Minneapolis in the trunk of the limo we had dismissed for the evening. Winning major customer service points again, the mansion coordinator apparently managed to track them down for us and before we hardly even knew it we were reunited with our bouquets.

Our fathers, maids of honor, and Miss Becky herself all gave loving toasts. I still can’t quite believe Becky let me stand by my declaration that I didn’t want to talk, but if I say that too much she’ll start to think I owe her one or something! The food was delicious. At the urging of my sister, Becky and I attempted to circulate and socialize in between the courses. This turned out to be a good thing, but we started too late and did an unfortunate job of pacing ourselves, which sadly meant that we didn’t have time to make it to all the tables – in particular the tables where some of our young friends were sitting. I think one big regret that we both have is that we weren’t able to spend more time talking to some of our younger friends who traveled to the wedding and who we don’t get to see very often. Overall I think we did pretty well for two introverts. But, between all of the things we were juggling and the fact that several people ended up leaving earlier than we expected we really missed out on a few, which does make us sad. (Yes, we’ve talked about this ad nauseum, so I can definitely speak for Becky too.)

They forced us (hehe) to cut into our gorgeous cake, and we fed each other a few bites of the pumpkin layer. It turned out to be the majority of the wedding cake I ended up eating, because we were so busy. Becky’s cousin’s four year old daughter was our most attentive guest, as she had apparently been drooling over the cake all evening. Her mom also brought her up to us at one point because she wanted to share with us her adorable observation that “I have the same dress as you.” Mine cost more, kiddo! Seriously though, it was a little trippy to be (one of) the one (s) in a big white dress being idolized by a kid in the princess stage of development.

And then there was dancing. And more dancing. As mentioned earlier, people cleared out a little earlier than we expected, but a decent group stayed and danced until the end. We had a lot of fun rocking out to a pretty eclectic mix of music – including John Denver’s Thank God I’m A Country Boy – which was the one song all evening that caused Becky’s sisters to come RUNNING to the dance floor.

We had planned to leave before the end and have a send off with bubbles. My mom had painstakingly tied personalized ribbons around them for us, even. But it just didn’t really fit into the evening. Casualty of the dance, I suppose.

The next morning we re-grouped at my parents’ house for quiche and the best chocolate cheesecake ever (plus some other food, including birthday cake in honor of Becky’s sister Jenny). We opened gifts and generally enjoyed the afterglow. And then finally, later than expected, we jetted down to Hastings for two much needed decompression days. That’ll probably be another post too, just what you always wanted!

The new Mrs.(s)

This blogging thing is more complicated than it looks! Somehow time keeps getting away from me…

We had a wedding! And a rehearsal dinner and a brunch and minimoon and all the fuss and festivities that surround all of those things. I can hardly believe it’s actually over. Even afterwards I kept waking up in the night thinking it was still coming and thinking of things that I needed to make sure to do or bring or make sure happened. And then I would remember, oh yeah, it’s over. There’s nothing more that can be changed, it is over.

And it really was amazing and lovely and beautiful and all of that, but it went by so incredibly fast. Everyone said it would, but I guess I didn’t really believe it. Going in to Friday the only major project left was the childhood picture slideshow, plus a lot of general organizing and finishing touches for other projects. We went to a local nail salon with our mothers and my sister and Merry to have some spa time, and somehow a quick mani/pedi appointment turned into over three hours. Intense anxiety over the time crunch pretty much started there and didn’t end until after the reception was over.

Becky and I were almost half an hour late to the rehearsal, and then afterwards still needed to spend time in the car frantically finishing up thank you notes for all of our amazing attendants and other participants, which we gave out at the dinner. I felt sad at the time to miss out on the beginning of the dinner, but in retrospect we still had plenty of time at the restaurant. Because, of course, nothing starts without the brides!
After dinner Becky headed to the hotel with her family and I toted Becky’s computer back to my family’s home to work on our still unfinished slideshow. Jen and I stayed up as late as we could manage selecting and ordering pictures, and then resolved to finish in the morning.

The morning… was just a whirlwind. The hair stylist came a few minutes early, while Merry was a few minutes late, and we were more than a few minutes late in getting Sean and the babies out of the house. My family was our typical chaotic selves and we all ran around frantically while Matthew and Thomas threw porridge from their high chairs. I packed while I waited for Becky’s dad to come over with the computer power cord we neglected to trade the night before, and then once it arrived worked on the slideshow while Merry and Jen got their hair done. The two of them then took over the project while I got mine done. My one regret is that we didn’t get more pictures in all of this chaos, particularly of Jen and Merry’s hair being done. I think I checked and double checked that I had everything in my getting ready/overnight bag at least a dozen times.

We headed to the mansion a bit late, of course, only to arrive at exactly the same time as Becky and her family. The staff had started setting up the tables, the cake had been delivered, and everything looked so incredibly beautiful. And of course, as Becky already noted, the weather was absolutely the best November in Minnesota weather we possibly could have hoped to have.

Getting dressed and make-up’ed proceeded to take much longer than expected, interrupted only by a small snafu in which the florist misunderstood our order of “trailing ribbons” for the bouquets. (She had the ribbon sticking out from the bouquets, but only about 8 stubby inches!) Unfortunately she didn’t have the ribbons with her, but she took off as quickly as she could and drove home and made it back in time to vastly improve them before we needed to start pictures. We resumed trying to decode the mysteries of over-priced make-up and corset-backed wedding dresses until we were finally ready for pictures.

We sort of frantically packed what Becky and I had envisioned as an hour and a half of pictures into about fourty five minutes. During a round of the pictures Jen and Merry took over finishing the slideshow. And then the limo showed up and whisked us away to the ceremony!

And this post is getting ridiculously long, so we'll end with a To Be Continued!

Phew!

Well, after months and months of planning, followed by a few weeks of crazy planning, followed by a couple of days that I can only call sheer madness, our wedding came and went. And it was lovely. So many of our wonderful friends and family members pitched in to help make everything happen. Even the weather smiled on us--57 degrees and sunny is better than we could have reasonably hoped for on a November day in Minnesota!

The timing worked out, the ceremony was beautiful, the decorations and details all got finished and were gorgeous, the food was delicious, the cake and flowers were pretty, and we danced the night away. In short: it was incredible. But it went by so fast, and I still can't quite believe it's over, much less digest everything in a way that I can write about it. So for now, I'll leave you with a few pictures that we've seen so far. Since Carrie and I didn't have our cameras that day, we're left to rely on the pictures of our friends and families (hint: if you have pictures from our wedding, please please please email them to me!) while we wait for the full set from the photographers. Here's my favorite picture from our first dance (snagged by my sister):

For more fantastic photography, check out pictures from our dear friend Jen and a preview from Becca Dilley, our amazing photographer.

Legal Wedding Photos

Here we are at the town hall applying for the license!


And here are the beautiful red and purple flowers my mom sent us!


This is the minister signing off on us!


Us with our certificate!


Becky's fear factor battle scars!


And lastly, me with our guests! Sadly Becky took the picture so she's not featured.


There are other pictures with Becky and I during the ceremony, but they are on Jen's camera and therefore I still don't have them. After almost exactly a month, this is what you're getting. :)

The legal ceremony

NOTE: I wrote this last Friday before we left for MN. I wanted to at least finally get it up, even if I can't add anything else right now. I was going to throw some pictures in here, but unfortunately I've realized they're not on my computer. So for now at least, words it is.

Wow, it’s been way too long since either of us last blogged. The unfortunate thing about blogging is that it takes time, and therefore when less is going on in your life you’re more likely to blog, and when things are happening you’re too busy to blog. Or maybe that’s just us.

The wedding is coming at us fast and furious now. I can’t believe we never posted about the legal ceremony. In fact, we’ve hardly even provided pictures of it to our families (let alone the video!). Overall the farther we get from it the more unreal it seems. We’ve jokingly referred to each other as “wif-ancée” since none of the other terms seem to apply to technically married people who are frantically planning a wedding. We also contemplated changing our relationship status on facebook to “it’s complicated” which seemed appropriate, but also, well, complicated.

We had a nice little ceremony at a UU church near my sister’s house in Massachusetts. It was just the two of us, the minister, my sister and brother-in-law, my nephews, and the wild turkeys. It was unexpectedly sunny and in the 80’s and we did the ceremony outside in a stone labyrinth in the woods beside the church.

And I’m apparently already seeing it with rose-colored glasses because I nearly forgot to tell you about the killer mosquitoes and the hand-food-mouth disease. Thursday afternoon and evening I was absolutely freezing at work and then sitting in class. I thought it was just that the weather was changing, until I got home at about 11pm (we were supposed to leave at midnight to drive to MA) and decided to take my temperature. It was 102 degrees. I popped some Advil, deliriously finished packing, and then we decided to instead sleep and head out early in the morning. I never want to hear “It’s 4:44, make a wish!” again. By Saturday I had all kinds of weird little bumps on my fingers and the inside of my mouth. Just what everybody wants while they’re getting married!

As for the mosquitoes… well, suffice it to say that I do not react to mosquitoes, whereas Becky practically gets hives. Apparently that type of reactivity does not mesh with a strapless dress in the woods. Becky described it as “marriage ceremony meets Fear Factor.” She did amazingly well at not flinching too much and at the end we all marveled at her spotted arms and legs and back. Jen was happy that she went forward with the long pants and long sleeves on her sons, despite the 80+ degree weather.

Afterwards we dropped the babies off with a babysitter and the four of us headed in to Boston for an absolutely amazingly delicious steak dinner. I got to try Kobe beef for the first time, and it was ssooo smooth and delicious. I approve highly of eating cows that lived better than I do. Steak tartar, pesto risotto, hashbrowns, champagne, and specialty desserts were also enjoyed. Our first reception dinner is a lot for the second one to compete with!

This weekend we’re gearing up for the last of the grand planning trips to Minnesota. This time Jen and Matthew and Becky’s aunt will be joining us, in addition to both of our moms. They’re coming along to help but also because we’re having a shower!

I am resolving to get back to blogging before the shower is ancient history too, but I don’t really anticipate things will calm down in the next few weeks so we’ll see how that goes. I will try!

Alterations

Well, I think it's official. Alterations is (so far, by far) the most stressful part of our wedding planning.

I went to my first fitting appointment tonight. I blindly trusted the recommendation of strangers on the internet, and scheduled an appointment at a random bridal shop in a random New Jersey town somewhat southwest of Newark. You, being rational people, may already be wondering what in hell I was thinking when I made this decision (or not have any clue what I'm talking about, depending on your knowledge of New Jersey geography). Well, what I was thinking was that I was scared to pick any shop, I was overwhelmed about the idea of searching for one, I was scared of any New York shop (not to mention having to drive into the city to drop the dress off), and just generally wanted to make a decision and move on.

Of course tonight as I was rushing to leave work on time the plan suddenly didn't seem so good. I left my last home visit 15 minutes late, waited forever for a train, waited an even longer forever for a bus, and arrived home with about 40 minutes before my appointment. I rushed frantically around the house collecting the things I needed and made it out the door with 30 minutes on the clock. By the time I and all of my stuff were settled in the car, the phone was set to navigate me there, and I was ready to go... I was at 20 minutes. The friendly people at Google used their massive privacy-invading database of personal information to tell me that in current traffic conditions it would take me 47 minutes to arrive at my destination. And, let's be honest, in the NYC metro area, you pretty much always need more time than any electronic prediction. Great.

I won't bore you with details of the stressful drive in stop-and-go traffic, or scare you with the fact that I had to find the bridal shop phone number while driving to call and let them know I was running late and see if I should even bother coming (oops, guess I just did.)

After some debate they graciously allowed me to still be fitted, on the condition that I accepted a fitting in the bridesmaid area. No problem. The seamstress seemed flustered and a bit annoyed by being in the wrong area and having to do several things at once. More troubling though, what had somehow seemed obvious about altering my dress to the friendly Minnesota shopkeeper and her trusty seamstress sidekick apparently did not seem at all obvious or easy to my new seamstress friend. She wanted to shorten it in a way that made the dress look stupid, and she made disapproving tsk-tsk noises when I told her what friendly Minnesota shopkeeper told me about several things (i.e. how to shorten it, the importance of a bra, etc.). The pins kept popping out, and I'm fairly convinced that a some important pins were not in place when I put my dress back into the bag. Insert much stress here.

On the plus side, she did give me a price estimate that was lower than I had prepared myself to hear. But, overall, I have one piece of advice for anyone planning a wedding involving an expensive white dress: get your dress altered at the same shop you buy it at. Seriously. Just do it. (This public servie message was also approved by one Miss Becky, aka the other bride.)

P.S. Thank you Becky for having dinner ready when I got home.

Gettin' Dressed, Part Three

Well, as you may have heard, my dress came. And this weekend, our lovely friend Kara (of original Gettin' Dressed fame) came over again and helped me try it on. This girl's a pro now. And fortunately, this time we timed dinner a little better so there was slightly less insanity. Also, dinner was wild rice soup with homemade rolls. Delicious!

Anyway, back to the dress...fortunately, I still love it. And although it looked a little funny on the hanger, it does not look funny on me. Unfortunately, it needs a bit more altering than I had anticipated. I had somehow deluded myself into thinking that maybe since I'm tall-ish and wearing heels, I might not need it shortened. (The fact that neither of my sisters needs ANY alterations on their bridesmaid dresses may have aided in my delusions.) Newsflash: I am not that tall, despite any "giant" claims that Carrie might throw at me. Anyway, there are bunches of little things that need to be altered, which means I need to find a seamstress. Now the logical among you would point out that since I was obviously going to need a bustle, I was going to need a seamstress. But like I said, I was delusional...and in denial.

So here I am, less than 8 weeks (yikes!) from the wedding, and desperately in need of someone to make my dress fit right. Tonight I grudgingly sat down with a list of 3 places to call:

Shop #1: Had good reviews that mentioned prices are more reasonable than others in the area. This is where Carrie's getting her alterations done. They, unfortunately, are not taking any more outside alterations for that date because they can't guarantee they could get it done.

Shop #2: Left voicemail. Carrie had talked to someone at this store the other day and they seemed nice. Good reviews. Hopefully they'll call back tomorrow?

Shop #3: Mostly good reviews but a couple that were iffy. Shop owner on phone would not give any price information, though she was happy to give me a 5-minute spiel on why she couldn't give price information over the phone without seeing the dress. She then informed me that I need to come in ASAP

Her: You must come in now. After tomorrow.
Me: Okay, when?
Her: Thursday, or Saturday
Me: Okay, what time on Thursday?
Her: Morning or evening. Okay, I'm very busy, I must go now.
Me: Okay, evening...
Her: Okay, I see you on Thursday evening timeslot. What is your  name?
Me: Uh...what *time* in the evening...
etc.

Anyway, I wouldn't say she was rude, but she was definitely pushy, and definitely not interested in what I had to say. I mean, I get that she can't just say "dress alterations cost x" but given that I have a good idea of what's needed, I feel like she could give me some idea if she would have let. me. talk.

Basically, after that phone call, I did what any rational person would do: I burst into tears and sobbed uncontrollably. I think I might need to sleep more...

Bottom line: I hope Shop #2 calls me back and is a little friendlier. And isn't obscenely priced.

To sum up, here are two big things I miss about the Midwest:
1. Friendly people
2. Reasonable prices (while I still don't know what it's going to cost to alter my dress, I've read enough online to be very, very afraid.)

If anyone reading this happens to know of a reasonably-priced seamstress in the NYC or northern NJ areas, please share! We're both lacking in personal recommendations for vendors in the area, so we've pretty much had to rely on online reviews. And if you have any suggestions for not stressing out so much, please share those too. :)

Gettin' Dressed, Part Two

I stayed home from work sick today (nothing too serious, just woke up with a migraine this morning and needed to sleep it off; I'm feeling mostly better now) and was planning to spend the day lying in bed and maybe watching some reruns of The Golden Girls this afternoon if my head felt up to it. But then mid-morning I got an automated call from an 800 number, which of course I ignored. Who wants to talk to a telemarketer when you're sick? An hour or so later, I got another call and answered this time, to find out it was an automated call from UPS that a package requiring my signature would be delivered today.

Have I mentioned that my dress hasn't come yet? Have I mentioned that this is a source of much anxiety for me?

So here's my thought process right then: OMG IT MUST BE MY DRESS. WHY DIDN'T THE STORE SEND ME A TRACKING EMAIL? IT WORKS OUT WELL I'M HOME TODAY ANYWAY! CRAP, WHAT IF THE UPS DRIVER DOESN'T BOTHER TO RING THE BELL?! OMG OMG OMG.

So, needless to say, I was not going to be getting back to sleep. Here's pretty much what the rest of my day looked like:

Ran downstairs (two flights) to make sure UPS hadn't already been here and left one of those "sorry we missed you" notes.

Ran back upstairs and wrote a note to the UPS driver so he'd know which bell to ring (yeah, it's labeled, but it has still caused problems for people) and included my cell phone number just in case. I was not messing around with any possibility of the driver trying to claim no one was home because it's not like I was going to be home for any redelivery attempts and I sure don't want to drive to some depot in who-knows-where to pick it up.

Grabbed tape. Ran downstairs to tape note to door. Got halfway down second flight when I realized I didn't know if I'd locked the apartment door behind me. Panicked that I would be locked out in my pajamas. Ran back up. Checked door: unlocked. Phew! Ran back downstairs. UPS truck was parked across the street. Waited in entryway awkwardly to see if he was coming my way. He was putzy. Taped note to door and ran back upstairs. Watched UPS guy out the window as he delivered a package across the street and left. Put house keys in my pocket and swore to keep them there all day so that I wouldn't risk another lockout scare.

Putzed on the internet and lazed around for awhile. Turned on the TV to look for reruns of The Golden Girls, which have always been on somewhere in the noon-2:00 time range on other sick days. Looked on tvguide.com and learned that The Golden Girls have now been relegated to midnight and mornings, which meant I had missed my chance.

Called the store I ordered the dress from, which has been mildly annoying this whole time. I'm sure they're probably lovely people if you're ordering in person and picking up your dress at the shop, but they're not so good over the phone and with shipping, which is a little surprising since they run a huge online business too. (For example, I was told when I was at the shop that shipping would be free, but it was $30 when I called to place the order. I was also told in store that my dress would arrive mid-August but then when I called in early August to check on an exact date, they told me mid-September.) Anyway, I called them to confirm that the package coming today really was my dress and found out that yes, it was my dress, and I should have received a tracking number but apparently they got my email address wrong back when I ordered and then didn't bother to fix it when I asked them to a couple months ago. Oh well.

Went back downstairs just to make sure UPS hadn't been by. Picked up a box from Amazon for Carrie that was down there. Yes, it was delivered by UPS. Yes, that means UPS had already been on my street twice today. Went back upstairs.

Putzed around some more. Suddenly....DOORBELL RINGS! I jumped and ran so fast that I almost threw my laptop on the floor. Ran downstairs. UPS guy was there with not one, but TWO boxes for us! My dress came!!! And we got a wedding present! Oh happy day! UPS guy was very nice. In retrospect, this may be because he was holding a box that said "Wedding Shoppe" all over it, and I grabbed it out of his hands like a crazed hyena, so I think he knew what it was. I decided not to ask UPS guy about why his company thought it was logical or efficient for them to stop on our street at least three times in one day.

Came back upstairs. Stared at box for awhile debating whether or not to open it. Yeah, after all that, I was scared to touch it. Finally concluded that I should at least make sure they sent the right dress. And it is the right one. Woo-hoo! It looks a little funny on the hanger, but I hope I'll still love it when I try it on. With any luck, Kara is going to come over this weekend and help me too, though maybe we'll try to skip the BBQ ribs drama this time around.

Like I said before, we're not going to see each other's dresses before the wedding. But we have limited space, so they still have to share a closet. Pretty much right now it looks like we have two oversized cocoons hanging in the closet in our office:

(the Christmas wrapping paper in the corner is a nice touch, no?) Anyway, you'll all have to wait until after November 6 to see if they produce two byoootiful butterflies.

Note: all those who have any respect for grammar in the English language, I apologize for the nearly total absence of subjects in this post. On the plus side, I guess you can't yell at me for subject-verb agreement problems if I just leave one out altogether! Also, the whole running up/downstairs bit is a more accurate depiction if you read it in your head in a very fast, frantic voice. :)