More fuel for my Wedding Nightmares

"The restaurant was left with a hole in the wall, broken glass on the floor and bloodstains on the carpet following the reception for more than 50 people."

And People Think Cory is Tall...

... he didn't even have trouble finding a tuxedo that would fit. I suspect Bao Xishun probably can't buy off-the-rack, though.

Turns out while the world's tallest man was out rescuing sick dolphins, his "people" were trying to find him a bride. She's half his age-- but at least she's more than half his height.

All Dressed Up...

Monday was a big day for wedding planning in the O&O household. Not only did we get a wedding band for Cory (see below), but I got to try on my wedding dress!

That's right, I've had the dress in my posession for about ten months (It arrived here on May 1st) , and I had no idea if it fit.

Okay-- I take that back. I kind of tried it on back in May. But because it has a corset-style back, it's pretty hard to put on without a little help. So, basically, I just stepped inside it, held up the front, saw that the length looked about right, and then put it away in a giant rubbermaid container. Seriously.

I finally took it to a local seamstress yesterday, and officially got to try it on. It fits perfectly (and after all, it should, since it was custom made for my measurements)! The shoes I bought were even the right height, which makes me even happier.

The best news? They'll hang onto the dress until the day before my wedding-- so that's one less thing that I need to worry about for the next 2 1/2 weeks! Hooray!

Kismet From Above

There's a new post on my blog about how we picked out my wedding band....check it out:

Kismet From Above

A waste of postage

I'll admit-- I haven't always been the most concientious person when it comes to sending response cards for a wedding. Oh, I always respond if I'm going. But if I'm not going, well... you're probably not ever going to see that card again. And forget about the stamp. I'm using it for something else.

Now I've now discovered how nice it is to get those "we're not coming" notes.

To date, we've received 18 response cards back. That's out of 90 invitations. And I'm no math whiz... but that sounds like 20%. And tomorrow is the "please respond by" date.

Now, we have received two phone calls-- one a "yes" and one a "no." And I got an email from another friend who says she's booked her flight, so I'm assuming she'll be here. So 21 out of 90. That's 23 percent.

Even worse, most of the people who have responded are people we already knew were coming-- like our parents, for example.

My dream? That I open our mailbox tomorrow and it's positively overflowing with response cards. The reality? We're averaging a little less than three responses a day, and I'm guessing that's just about the number that will arrive tomorrow.

Shamrock Shower

One of my very sweet coworkers, Janet, threw me a shower last night. Even better, a St. Pats day bridal shower at a Chinese/Japanese restaurant. Seriously.

It was very small-- just eight of us, all coworkers, but we had a lot of fun. They assured me that I'm not as far behind on my wedding planning as I think I am. I heard a few horror stories, ate some Spicy Chicken and Broccoli, drank a couple of Tsingtaos, and opened presents. A few of the girls there work the overnight weekday shift, so I rarely get to see them, but they were sweet enough to bring gifts. In fact, one of them, I'd never met until Thursday.

Oh-- and they made me wear a cardboard leprechaun hat with a veil attached to it. Good times.

Please, Mr. Postman

When I got home today, the first thing I did was look at the mail to see if there were any response cards. Much to my chagrin, there was only bills and sales fliers.

I jokingly said to Cory, "Maybe nobody's coming to our wedding."

He smiled and showed me two response cards that he'd been hiding from me. Sneaky bastard.

By the way, the first two response cards were from my aunts. Apparently, they're very conscientious and prompt responders. Hooray!

Sign #4,192

That your wedding is getting you a little stressed out:

You dream that police find your caterer handcuffed-- and dead-- in the trunk of your car.

That might also be sign #4,192 that I watch waaaayyy too much Law & Order.

Finally!

The invitations went in the mail yesterday morning.

Whew.

The Silver Lining

At least now, we have nice envelopes for our Thank-You cards.

They Come In Threes, You Know

Last night, I started addressing envelopes. Since we don't have the actual invitations yet (see below), we really can't assemble the invitations yet, but at some point the curiosity got to me, and I had to look at all of our invitation stuff.

I've always been like that. When I was a teenager, If I bought a record at the store, I'd open it the second we got in the car. Jan would always look at me like I was retarded. After all, you couldn't play the album in the car. But I had to look inside-- see if there were any liner notes, or song lyrics, or fun pictures on the record liner. I just couldn't wait.

So, I'm digging through the stuff... and Snag #3 appears.

You know those cute little envelopes that come with the response cards? The ones that (when you get an invitation), you stick the response card into the pre-addressed envelope, and drop it into a mailbox? The phenomenally convenient little envelopes?

Instead of printing our address on the front of the envelopes, so that people can conveniently mail them back to us... the printers put the address on the back flap of the envelope, as though it were a return address.

So, another call was made. And once again, the customer service was fantastic. We had it resolved within about 30 seconds, and she said they're going to be shipped out today.

While I was on the phone with her, I asked about the problem invitations and whether the replacements had been shipped yet. She looked it up, and sure enough, they were shipped out yesterday-- less than 24 hours after we had called to complain.

I don't know how I feel about this company. On the one hand, they screwed up our invitations twice... and that's pretty bad. But on the other hand, the customer service has been outstanding-- both times, we've been ready for a fight... and both times, they surprised us by taking care of it immediately.

So anyway, that's snag #3. The wedding is six weeks and a day away-- and the stress level is slowly rising.

Bridal Confession

On Tuesday, I went shopping for wedding stuff... nothing major... just some ribbon, little accessories, things of that nature.

And I also started looking for a headpiece.

If you know me well, you know that I very rarely wear my hair up. A combination of a long neck and bad posture leaves me looking (as I put it) "Lurchy" without hair covering my neck.

So, wearing my hair up really isn't an option in my world. And that means I need to do something with my hair to make it "fancy" for the wedding.

Over the last several months, I've been buying little sparkly hair accessories, hoping that I like one (or a few) enough to incorporate them into the bridal ensemble. And I think I hit the jackpot.

Ok, there are actually two confessions coming up. The first, is that I'll be wearing a hair accessory purchased at (gasp!) Claire's. Yep... the same place where I used to buy neon pink plastic hoop earrings when I was a teenager. The same place where I bought my "happy bunny" bumper sticker. That Claires.

Wait... it gets better. The second confession I have to make-- is that I wear my little headpiece every time I do something "Bridal." Like addressing envelopes. Or blogging about my wedding. Yeah, that's right. I'm wearing it right now.

I'm such a dork.

Snag Number Two

It only took a day for our number of pre-wedding snags to double. Hopefully, this exponential growth won't continue.

At just a teensy bit over six weeks before the wedding, we still haven't sent our invitations. Not a huge deal-- when I was doing wedding invitation orders at Foland's, we were told that it was proper etiquette to send invitations six weeks before the date. That and to always spell "honor" "honour" with a "U."

Our invitations arrived yesterday! Hooray!! We had them delivered to Cory's office, because we didn't want the UPS guy to just plop them outside our front door if we weren't home (a good call, since it rained a bit yesterday). Around 2 pm, I called Cory to see if they'd arrived yet, and he went up to the front desk, and there they were.

The right invitation, the right color, the right accessories... everything except they screwed up on the invitations. And since I was at the ballpark waiting to interview Terry Francona, I couldn't exactly call the place and pitch a fit. So Cory had to do it.

Supposedly, we're going to get corrected invitations by Saturday. Yeah, I know.... we're supposed to have them mailed out by Saturday. Well, the good news is that they didn't mess up the envelopes... so I've already started addressing.