I Propose a Toast...

Excuse the Pun. We received our first non gift-card wedding gift yesterday from my mom's cousin Exa. It's a four slice toaster hurray! While I think this is a cool gift, (we did register for it of course) Justin thinks it is a REALLY cool gift. For some reason the prospect of four pieces of toast at once is very....well...we'll say appealing to him. Anyway, it'll make breakfast (which we don't eat) much quicker.

It's Here!!

My wedding dress came yesterday!!!!! It is just absolutely beautiful and I don't look like the staypuff marshmellow man!!! It only needs a few inches taken in in the bust and I'll look like a bride! I just giggle and laugh and giggle.

Also, I found a book that any bride to be or bride has been should read, it's called "A More Perfect Union, How I Survived the Happiest Day of My Life." I found it at Barnes and Noble yesterday and in reading it finally felt like I had found someone who understands all this insanity that has enveloped my life. Hurray for Hana Schank!

Thank God for White Lies

So, my wedding dress isn't here yet. This is especially disturbing, because to ensure that we would get it a reasonable time before the wedding we told them that I was getting Married on May 1st. Thank God we did too! I called today to find out about it, they told me that it was shipped last Tuesday yesterday, and that I should have it yesterday or today....so it didn't come yesterday. I called today to get the tracking number, and then I called UPS. Their records show that it has not been given to them yet. Great. So, I called back and said "don't you see that your records say that I'm getting married in 4 days?? I don't have a dress and UPS doesn't have a dress and what is going on!?!" so the woman is like, "ohh we made a mistake on the tracking number, we are going to overnight it to you, it will be there Friday, call me tomorrow for a new tracking number." OH MY FREAKING GOD!!! What exactly were they looking at when they said that it had already been shipped? A magic 8 ball?? Thank god we told them the wedding was sooner, or else it would be May 17th and I wouldn't have a dress. Don't they know that we need time for alterations and steaming and pictures?? AUUGHH!! It's not like we didn't give them plenty of time either. We ordered the dress on March 15th. They told us then that they had it in stock and that it would be here in 7-10 working days. It's been phone tag ever since. This is insane. Can I sue for the stress of it all??

Blah de blah blah

We got paid today so we are no longer 700 dollars overdrawn. This is very good news. Justin just now noticed Maybe chewing on something and said "bring that to me," and she did, which is also very good news, and pretty surprising. I guess she's gotten out of the rebellious stage of her puppyhood. Bought some strawberries, carrots and lemons at United tonight and felt like a healthy, good food eater until I came home and dipped said strawberries in Nutella. Very good though, perhaps a food option for the wedding. I created a myspace.com account...I think its a very strange thing, anyway, people from all over the place are contacting Justin on his...nobody from my past cares. *sigh* Oh well...today is a better day than the past few, have a new computer chair too, its very fancy...certainly beats squatting on a footstool.

Wedding Shoes

I have wedding shoes. My aunt found them tonight at Academy. They are PERFECT!!


Also, can somebody tell me how the whole name change thing works? Do I do that when we get the marriage license or what? I'm ready to be Mrs. Susan Brinkley aaah!!!

General Update.

Ok, invitations are enveloped, sealed and going to be mailed on Monday. Watch your mail. I did something to my back yesterday and so now standing up for very long is very painful. I'm not going to work today, I don't think that I can sit for that long at the computer without hurting even more. I need a day off anyway, wedding stress is really getting to me....

We have seven thousand fruit flies in our bathroom, anyone with any idea of how to get rid of them please let me know. It makes bathing really unpleasant and Justin is scared of bugs.

We will be honeymooning in Amarillo...exotic, I know...pttth. Anyway, it's free, and we'll get to eat at Bourbon Street.

ONE MONTH

Exactly one month til the wedding:

Dress is not here. (should be here hopefully by next Wednesday.)
No Undergarments. (waiting on cash)
No Shoes.(waiting on cash)
No wedding band for me (waiting on cash)
No veil (waiting on cash)
No marriage license (gonna do that on Monday)
Invitations not mailed. (waiting on cash for postage)
Reception cards not printed. (waiting on guy at the church to return my call)
Cake not ordered. (again, waiting on cash for deposit)
Music not burned to cd. (waiting on Justin)
No idea who will take pictures. (original girl cancelled on us)
Pre-marital counselling not done. (our schedule change messed us all up)
Not tan. (waiting on cash yet again)
Justin's parents still MIA (even though he called his dad on Tuesday to say Happy Birthday)

And I'm sure there are at least 5 more not done things to add to that list that I can't think of right now. I'm basically exactly where I was at the beginning of this, excpet that now my aunt has a bedroom full of tulle, flowers, serving pieces and bubbles. This is a disaster. I am so stressed out that I could just burst into tears at any moment. This wedding is going to be a disaster....a cake and punch with no real food disaster. *sigh*

Getting Things Done

Yesterday, we had Easter Lunch with my family, and then headed out to the lake to check out the place where the wedding will be, and decide for sure how much stuff we're going to need to decorate with. I also managed to get 88 of the 100 invitations printed Hurray! Now on to postage, and I have to print the reception cards...not everybody gets one of those. Justin's parents still aren't speaking to us, but we've kind of gotten used to it, and I feel like we made a big step closer yesterday. I took some pictures to commemorate the occasion: This is us at the lake all hot and sweaty and windblown.


And this, is us doing biore pore strips so that we have lovely blackhead free skin on the big day:


I think it's a really cute picture, I'll probably print it off and frame it he he he...

Near Death Experience

My dad nearly died today. He's fine, but it was very stressful all the same. First of all, for those of you who don't know, my dad is a fireman so he's out doing scary brave things all the time, but except for the time he fell through a roof, I don't think he's been in this much danger, ever. Here's what happened:

The wind was blowing 51 mph today and a transformer or something blew off of a power pole and fell into a field of dry grass. It of course sparked and started a fire which spread rapidly because of the wind. The fire ended up being 2 miles wide and 4 miles long. Anyway, my dad was driving this big water truck through the field trying to find the best place to start watering the fire, and out of the smoke and dirt came a huge ditch, which he ran into, the truck sort of nosedived into it and then tilted and then jumped out, losing it's front bumper in the process. Firemen can't buckle up when they are in the truck because the bunkers take up too much room, so my dad was sort of flung around in the cab, hitting the windshield and the roof and the doors and basically turned into a pinball.

There were two men riding on the back of the truck, who he thought he threw off and killed, but they as it turns out held on and are fine too...anyway now the scary part... My dad jumped out of the truck to check on the other two men, and they were basically looking into a wall of flames, on all sides. They got back into the truck to drive off, and drove about a yard and then it died, I'm assuming because of the wreck. Their radios stopped working because they only had a portable and it for some reason doesn't work more than a couple of miles out of town...but they didn't have any way to really tell anybody where they were anyway because they couldn't see anything because of the fire, so my dad and his friend Rene crawled on top of the truck and started spraying water all around them to try and keep the fire away and the other guy starts trying to get a signal on the radio. They really thought "this is it, this is how firemen die."

So eventually everybody else starts freaking out (there were like 4 departments there because of the size of the fire) and they start looking for them and they can't see anything through the fire and the smoke, until finally somebody sees a little bit of the top of the truck out there surrounded by smoke and fire, and they drive in and rescue them. My dad is really incredibly sore because of the wreck, and he couldn't walk when they got him down and he was all black with smoke and sweat and somehow his hand is burnt...and he was so scared that he was crying, and everybody was crying and they took him to the hospital and he is fine, except they didn't take any x-rays, and I feel pretty sure that he probably has some serious spinal mal-allignment, if not something worse....anyway, he's very traumatized, like anybody would be, and I'm pretty traumatized because my dad nearly died, and it's just been a rough day.

(This picture is not of the actual fire, but I assume its similar)

My step-mother, who is also a firefighter fell or something and hurt her heel/ankle at this fire too, so it was a trying day for that whole household. Anyway, I'm really glad that he is okay and we went to see him tonight, which made me feel better, to see him all in one piece...so yeah scary day.

AAAAAAH!

I have to send invitations out *this weekend.* I cannot believe I am running so late. I also can't believe that I've been up for over half an hour and it is only 8:34. Not sure if I like this new schedule... My wedding dress has still not shipped...I feel like I'm drowning.

The Undomestic Goddess

So, everyone knows that I'm not exactly Betty Crocker, but after 6 months of living on things that can be microwaved, toasted, or that come in a bag, I'm very proud to announce the arrival of our new stove!!! So happy in fact that I took a picture: Yes indeed our kitchen is now almost complete. It was delivered this morning. Also, look how handsome my dad looks in his fancy dress up clothes:

Ta-Da!!

I retiled the floor in our kitchen yesterday, and finished up today. It looks amazing, and I am very proud that I did this all by myself...to fully comprehend the difference, I would have to show you a picture of the old stuff, but unfortunately I forgot to take one in the excitement of ripping it up yesterday...I'll just describe it: The floor was vinyl flooring that had been rolled out sometime in the early 50's, it was yellow with a weird sort of floral pattern. It had huge holes in it, and some of it had been glued down with liquid nails some 20 or 30 years ago...Anyway it was terrible, and this is what it looks like now:
I have never been so proud of anything in my life, I keep looking for reasons to go into the kitchen. My comfort level in this house has increased by like 100 points.

No Turning Back Now

Picked up the invitations today...every day I feel like a major step is taken closer to the wedding...Ordered my bouquet day before yesterday...almost there. No word from Justin's parents. Lovely.

Mean...but Crafty...

We tied a balloon to Maybe's collar a couple of nights ago and she just flipped out, but it made some really cute pictures. Then we took it off because we don't want to traumatize her...



In wedding news, my aunt and I went shopping yesterday
and we got the bubbles, cake servers and guest sign in book.
I made bows for the servers, and I feel very crafty and proud so I'm posting a pic here.





the top...This is highly significant because on my dad's side of the family, when we see a white butterfly, we takeAnd finally, after looking all day long, we found the exact right bubble blowers. They have little white butterflies at it as a sign that my grandmother is with us...Here is a picture of the bubble blowers, sorry, it's blurry I couldn't get close enough I also did the ribbons on these...wow talent. *grin*

Disaster.

So, in an effort to get Justin's mom to talk to us and try to find a good compromise on this whole wedding thing, I sent a letter. The letter was approved as inoffensive and eloquent by both Justin and my Aunt (who specializes in these delicate situations). We all agreed that if they wouldn't talk to us, then it was the only way to make them understand where we were coming from.

So this morning, his parents called infuriated. His mom called me a bitch (or something that sounded very similar to that), and said that the letter was disrespectful. They are still mad about the Catholic thing, they are still mad about the date, and they still feel like paying 1/3 for the cost of the reception (which will be around $200 for their part) is too much, even though my parents are spending waaaaay more on decor and cake and chairs and invitations...etc. So, after a huge fight on the phone, in which one of them hung up on Justin, he called them back and told them that they are no longer invited and that he hopes he never has to see them again. This is a disaster.

I am so angry!! I feel like they are intentionally trying to ruin something that is important to us. For the past 30 years, all Justin's mom has had to do to get her way is to throw a fit and everyone is scared of her so they cave. I refuse to play that game. It is too late to change the date of the wedding, and quite frankly, we dont want to. Justin is worried about what my family will think of him, and of our relationship, if no one from his family comes to the wedding. I don't want my family to have to absorb the extra money from the cost of the reception since they are already paying so much anyway, and we are certainly not having just a cake and punch reception. There has to be food. I watch "A Wedding Story" I know how it's supposed to be in civilized society. I already feel like we are making too many compromises...the wedding, as it stands, is already a much different affair than what I've been dreaming about...

The only other option is to cancel the wedding. Luckily, the dress hasn't shipped yet, so they will issue a refund on that, and if I call tomorrow we can cancel the invitations and get a refund on those as well. We haven't ordered the cake, and everything else I think we can return. This really sucks.

So, wait for further updates, and I'll let everyone know when we have our small private ceremony in the ministers office. *sigh*

Help Please

Ok I want this posted at the top of my blog like where tiffany has hers for bronte, and I cant figure out how to do it Patrick please help!!!



Wedding Countdown!

AAAH!

It's 48 days til our wedding...The dress is ordered, the invitations are ordered, the restaurant and gazebo are reserved, I've ordered my hair, Justin has been measured for his tux, the minister has been chosen and we have registered.

It's 48 days til our wedding...We still need to: Address the invitations, mail the invitations, buy jewelry, flowers and shoes, buy soap bubbles, get chairs for the gazebo, order the cake and download the music.

It's 48 days til our wedding and Justin's mom is still not speaking to us. Ptth.