Luncher

Disclaimer: sorry the photos in this post are so bad.  1, I was hungry 2, I have a fat thumb that has a way of getting into the pictures.  Good thing I have no aspirations to be a professional photographer

This past Saturday Dan and I attended a financial planning workshop thing with our church Pastor and another soon-to-be-wed couple.  It was informative and stressful but Dan and I had a long and productive chat afterwards and we feel confident in our plan.

It was a lot to swallow early on a Saturday morning, so after that we took a break and finished watching the Breaking Bad series and then headed off to a Luncher date.

Dan called it Luncher because it was in between lunch and dinner time.  We went to Buffalo Wild Wings in Brooklyn and used a gift card we got for Valentine's Day from my mom.  It was great!  Dan got to watch basketball, we got an appetizer and fun drinks plus our boneless wings (really just glorified chicken nuggets) and the tip all covered with the gift card.  THANKS MOM!  We decided it was in celebration of our 18 months (dating) anniversary and 4 months (engagement) anniversary which were last week and we didn't really celebrate on the dates.

After luncher we looked for ties for the wedding and eventually got some great ones at Century 21!

I also got a digital antenna so we can finally watch TV again.  This worked out well for March Madness, so this is what most of Sunday looked like.

Other things accomplished this weekend:

We checked off two of our must-see movies by renting Frozen and Hunger Games 2 on Amazon Prime.  Winter has again returned so morale is low and movies are a must.

Stuck in a beaver damn

Two weeks ago when we confirmed our caterer it felt like things on the wedding planning river were going along swimingly.

Dan booked us tickets to fly out to Chicago at the end of April
I made an appointment for us to have a tasting, actually see the reception venue, and nailed down some lingering details about the ceremony venue.
The bridemaids dresses arrived and look so perfect and cute and my dress arrived too.

Awwww, sissies are so pretty!

STOP.  Now the canoe is stuck in a beaver damn.

My dress came and it was darling.  I tried it on and it was too big, which I expected because I was only able to order a large since it was the only size in stock.  I thought, no worries, that's what alterations are for and I looked up a well reviewed tailor in Bayridge.

This past weekend I took the dress and the petticoat that I ordered to the tailor shop and changed really quickly in the makeshift curtained corner. P.S. one surefire way to make yourself feel super ugly is to stand in front of a brightly lit mirror wearing a dress that is too big and socks.  Why do socks on bare legs always look so ugly?

When I went out to stand in front of the mirror the guy (who spoke very little English) said "Way too big. You need small size."  To which I replied, "This was the only size, that's why I'm here.  To get it altered."  He grabbed the fabric in places and shook his head with a look that I interpreted as disgust.  He said "Too much.  Way too big.  In the back, the bust, the length, the sleeve. It cost you $250 for alterations.  Better to order small size."  What am I supposed to say to that?  The dress only cost $50 so the alterations would cost four times more.  So I went back to the curtain, ripped the dress off, shoved the petticoat in my bag and sulked out.  Now what?

I was sad.  A, because I liked the dress.  B, because I didn't want to deal with looking for something else.  C, because I liked the dress.  I doubled checked online to make sure the dress wasn't suddenly in stock in another size.  Nope.  Mandy suggested I try another tailor but I decided not to.  This guy had rave reviews on Yelp and I doubt a good businessman would turn away job that could have potentially made him a lot of money. 

That night I started looking online for another dress.  Nothing was very enticing on Amazon so I went to Google.  The first site I found had great options and great prices and the dresses could be ordered in any color.  The site was JCPenny so I picked, ordered, and felt at peace.  I even ordered a short veil because the price was right and I thought it might be nice to bride-i-fy the dress.  Below is the dress in the color the model had on.  I ordered it in off-white (apparently most people don't look great in pure white dresses).  I almost bought the ivory but the first dress I got was ivory and the color was a little more cream/pit stain-like than I wanted. 

On Monday I got a message on my voice mail from a lady from the dress place.  Here is the message transcribed for your interpretation:

Hi dis is Fiona from JC Dress Penny.  Dis bout your...um..dress and weddin dress veil you ordered on our site.  We send an order confirmation email inbox.  K?  check it and reply us.  The waiting process order time.  Dank you bery much.  Bye.

That was clue #1 that I didn't order the dress from JCPenny.  

So I checked my email and found that whoever this was wanted exact measurements even though I just ordered a standard dress size.  The email included many smiley face emoticons.  That was clue #2 that the website was not the official JCPenny.  I'm crossing my fingers that it will all work out and the dress will still be fine even though it might be from a modern day sweat shop.  Fiona sounded happy in her voicemail and her emoticon email was cheerful. I hope she makes more than .35 cents an hour.  

I looked at the website again and the logo is very similar to JC Penny and the site design is similar.  I got duped but I'm hoping not robbed.  I used my credit card that only has a $2,000 limit so if they steal my information they can't get very far.

To be continued...

Tidi-Bits

I'm trying not to let the wedding planning overwhelm our lives, and by extension this blog.  So, here are some tidi-bits happening in life right now.

Sometimes Dan has impluse buys that thrill me to pieces!

BIG things come in small packages.  This was the wedding dress that I ordered.  It ended up being three sizes too large and can't be altered.  So now I'm looking into plan B.

Easter Candy has been on sale at Rite Aid for the last three weeks.  These jelly beans are epic:

This is what you find when you eat them on the couch-bed.  Those orange ones have a way of getting away, apparently.  

Dan is getting more confident in his cooking skills.  He made chili with Fritos one night all on his own and it was delicious! 

I drew something to frame and hang in our future apartment...I'm thinking the bathroom will be a good place.  Hedgehog love!

A mission group from Kansas came to Brooklyn for a few days this weekend to work with Dan and we went to the Narrows Botanic Gardens in our neighborhood to help them get ready for spring. 

There was a "youth" dodge-ball tournament at church on Sunday.  I put "youth" in quotation marks because there were a lot of adults that participated.  Exhibit A (Dan in the white shirt):

The real mac & cheese

Guys, let's pretend the path from the engagement to the wedding is like a river (cue Pocahontas' just around the river bend).  Sometimes the river is smooth and we're crusin' like when we got the cute to boot Save the Dates.  Then the river turns and our canoe is stuck in a damn mud bank and there is a smelly swamp in front of us...yeah that's the part where we look into caterers.

So at our reception venue we have a list of preferred caterers to choose from.  We looked at all the websites and picked the two that sounded the best.  They had awesome sauce reviews and wedding awards and whatnot.  So we requested quotes.   The first one came back like a bombshell practically flipping our little rinky dink canoe with a $10,000+ price tag.  Gulp.  The second place has yet to get us a proposal.  When I told her we needed the cost to be less than $100 a head she started treating me like that scene from Pretty Woman.  She said she couldn't get me a proposal within 2 weeks because she was so busy. Umm, ok great, message received.

Last weekend we looked at the list again and picked three more places to get quotes from.  I sent the requests on Sunday night and by Monday morning I had one back already.  This lady actually called me and then sent an email with all sorts of questions. I replied and later that afternoon she had a quote of around $7,000 (I didn't tell her anything more than we needed it to be less than $100 a head).  Yay, that was a relief.  She threw us an oar and we were back in the river.   

One place has yet to reply to the quote request at all and the last one gave us a proposal close-ish to budget ($8,000) BUT she said we could only afford deviled eggs and meatballs on a miso spoon for our cocktail hour. 

I realize the food and drinks are the most expensive part of the wedding but that really bugs me because they are the things that don't last.  Like you eat and drink $10,000 in less than an hour! I'm all about tasty food and I don't consider myself a total cheap-wad but for that price our tastebuds don't even match the menu choices!

For example, we both really want mac&cheese at the wedding because everyone loves mac&cheese and it is kinda Dan's love language.  In fact he might be happy if we just served the blue box at the reception.  Surprisingly a lot of the caterers have mac&cheese on their menu but most are all souped-up and gourmet.  Can we please just leave the classics alone?  Mac&cheese doesn't need to be served in a martini glass with a variety of toppings, like lobster, with the price tag of $9 per person.  Do you realize how many bites are in a martini glass? I want seconds!

So there is my gripe.  We picked an affordable caterer who is responsive and the food sounds great and fits our budget and style and it'll be great and you'll all eat it an love it.  Hungry now?

I'll leave you with a picture of the real mac & cheese even more beautiful without the martini glass.  

Postage Disaster Averted

So this week was the week to get the Save the Dates out.  I, being the groom, am trying to be helpful with this wedding stuff for Stephanie.

Anyways, one important job I had this week was to mail the save the dates so I got them all together.  We had decided to not just drop them in the mailbox in case they got wet or whatever.  So on Tuesday I was to take them to the post office near the church office. I remembered to do what I was supposed to and around 1pm went to post office.   

There was a mail box inside that you can drop stuff into but I decided to do something different. I thought, let me just go to the window and make sure there are no problems. So I waited in line for 5 minutes and played candy crush.  Then the postal clerk looked at them and said you are one cent short.   First I was like, really?  Now, I was so glad I went to the window!

On the save the dates there is no return address because it is a postcard.  So if they did go in the mail but did not have enough postage, the post office couldn't return them to us and no one would get them. 

So I bought 125 one cent stamps, stamped the save the dates, and put them in the mail.  I found two save the dates with no postage on them at all (probably my fault there sorry Steph) but got everything else in the mail.  People should be receiving them soon!!

So, if you are wondering why there are two stamps that don't match, that's why.  Small price to pay. 

March, with both feet in

Spring is still nowhere in sight, but the doldrums of February had taken their toll and the first of March provided a perfect restart point to kick back into gear.

Dan and I got to spend the whole weekend together which, for me, is a super treat and makes me excited for when we have an apartment together and we can play house for real!

Without even designating it a blitz weekend we got quite a bit accomplished.

- We rocked the ab dvd
- Spent about an hour doing a devotion and talking about the first chapter in Philippians together
- Made pesto, chicken, sun-dried tomato pizza (twice)

- walked to 86th Street and went to Zales and ordered Dan's wedding band
- got a yoga mat for Dan at TJMaxx
- waited in line at Wendy's for over 10 minutes to get frosties
- went grocery shopping
- dropped off two giant bags of Dan's old clothes at the Salvation Army 
- made homemade chicken noodle soup
- watched a lot of Breaking Bad, Parks & Rec, a documentary about AIDs in San Francisco, a documentary about 9/11, and we rented Gravity on Amazon.
- Church, and all that...
- I did laundry
- I finished my taxes and Dan got a good start on his

- Requested three more quotes from potential caterers
- Filled-out a DJ questionnaire for our skype meeting on Tuesday  

YAY for motivation March.  Now we're just waiting for the sun to join us. 

P.S.  Look how hard Dan is concentrating on washing the dishes!  Makes me smile.