Friday, May 30, 2008

Gift Registry Revisited

This weekend, I brought the dog to Houston so we could visit my parents. "We" (yes - the dog and I) had a free weekend, as my fiance is off to Las Vegas for his bachelor party (which I won't even begin to discuss in this post - mostly because I will not find out about the ridiculousness until he calls tonight after he's been drinking).


Since my mother has been diligently working on addressing the invitations this week, I told her that the least I could do while I was home was stuff the invitations. While I was stuffing them, I realized that once they were sent out, people might feel the urge to send us gifts (not a huge realization I know), so I started thinking about the registry.

I really think that stores need to encourage you to come back to review your registry. I was lucky enough to get the chance when I went to the store in preparation for a party we were throwing. We needed some more bowls, so we thought we should just get the ones off the registry. All well and good, but when I got them home, we realized they don't hold that much, certainly not a serving of soup, or more importantly cereal, or anything liquidy that might slosh out.


I was in the store the other day (because all of our spoons had disappeared) and I saw the place mats that my fiance and I had picked out. Ummm, I really don't know what we were thinking. They are REALLY ugly. The pattern looks like a blue and brown couch from the late 1970's. I don't really know what we were thinking - maybe that it would match the bedroom suite. Really, just kind of gross though.

Only problem is, I mentioned it to my mom, so now she wants to make it a group trip to Bed Bath & Beyond - and by group I mean, my mom, my sister, and me (not my fiance, since he's in Vegas). How fun.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Ring Shopping - Round 1

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.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Honeymoon Flight

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.

Friday, May 16, 2008

The First Wedding Present

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.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Why They Need a MOB Handbook. . .

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.

Monday, May 12, 2008

Guest List

Oh my. My fiance and I made the trek to Houston, where we had "the meeting." The meeting I refer to is the one in which the guest list is finalized. The guest list was at 328 a month ago. Of course, my fiance and I had to add a few groups to that list, so it went up to 334.

So we went into the meeting thinking that my parents had recently reviewed the list and knew who they wanted to add or remove. Of course not. While my father perused the list, I sat at the table with him (note that fiance and mom are not there - they're across the room watching baseball with everyone else). The "review" consisted of my dad scrolling through the list, stopping occasionally (usually on one of my fiance's friends) and saying "Who's this?". I would say, "they're on the groom's side." "Oh, OK." And on and on it went.

Basically no one got cut, which is good that all of our friends stayed on the list, but unfortunately there are still more "business associates" to add.

I know it sounds whiny, especially since my parent's are paying for the wedding, but I really don't want to spend the reception running around and talking to 300 strangers. My fiance assures me that that won't happen and I'll be able to run around and talk to our friends all night, and seeing everyone won't take more than 15 minutes. Right. I wish I could live in oblivion land, sometimes.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Procrastination Central

Despite having promised my self that I would not post until after finals had ended, but I can't do it, I just can't leave the blog unattended. Luckily, I have a topic for a post that is related to this sort of procrastination.



Our vendor list is due to Chateau Polonez in a couple of weeks, as they ask that they be able to screen out any "undesirable vendors," I guess. So as to avoid any issues with the timing of my submission (as we did with the caterer), we asked our contact at the Chateau what criteria the vendors needed to meet. Luckily, the venue just wanted to make sure that they haven't had any bad experiences with the vendor before.

Unfortunately, I am beginning to feel a bit nagged. We have everything arranged. Really, we do. We got the original form a couple of months before it was due, because it was sent with one of the bills for the deposit. Then, I got an email saying that I could fill out the form online. Then, a few weeks later, I got an email reminding me, again, that we could fill out the form.

AHHH. Do they not understand that I have finals, and if I am going to procrastinate, I am not going to procrastinate by doing something else that I could be procrastinating on?