bride-foo

Today is the big day!

We're looking forward to seeing everyone, and we can't wait to be married! Hooray!

We've been in Austin since Sunday night. And it's been a hectic week, to say the least. Lots of spending lots of money. Lots of errand to run, people to meet, tasks to finish. But I can comfortably say we're ready to get this show on the road.

Thursday night, Amanda, Melissa and I went out to have a little bachelorette shindig. We had dinner at Jazz, a Cajun restaurant on 6th Street, then headed up and down the street stopping in just about every place that had no cover charge. Melissa recorded a short video of me being serenaded at a piano bar (after being brought to the stage with "She's no lady, she's my wife") that I'll eventually post. I took snapshots of the two of them dancing on the bar at Coyote Ugly (I would have joined them, but I was wearing a skirt). We also hit a couple gay dance clubs (one of them more than once after we made the mistake of picking up a guy who wouldn't leave Amanda alone and had to be ditched), and in my semi-drunken stupor I was hit on by a bisexual blad man named Slash who said I had "dangerous curves." Melissa sat down next to me at one point, snapped a couple pictures and left to dance some more. "Slash" asked me if he had cramped my style with my girlfriend; I told him she was my sister-in-law. He laughed the funniest embarrassed laugh I've ever heard, then told me he had three words of advice for me: "Don't do it." I had a blast, and no hangover to speak of.

The rehearsal and dinner went swimmingly last night. The rehearsal only took about 30 minutes because everyone had a pretty good idea of where they were going and how to stand. Denise said it was her fastest rehearsal ever. Afterward, the bridal party and Jason's parents hung out and wander around the museum until 5 p.m., when we headed back to the hotel to get ready for dinner.

The dinner was much better than I expected. The serving staff was extremely helpful, everything tasted wonderful, the room looked great... several guests said it was the best rehearsal dinner they had ever been to. My mom was the only member of my family able to make it, so I was worried she might be overwhelmed by Jason's family, which took up half of the dinner guest list. But she settled in nicely, and they made her feel completely welcome. She was in the hospital a week ago recovering from various ailments, and it was good to see her out and about.

So now, it's all over but the partying! I have breakfast with the girls -- I think the guys have something similar planned -- and I'd like to fit in a pedicure. Other than that, everything is done. I just have to show up back at the hotel by 1 p.m. for my hair and makeup. And in about 12 hours, I'll officially be Mrs. Jason Johnston. A whole new chapter of our life is beginning, and I can't wait for it to start.

Speaking of pressure...

I'm needing to work up a timeline for the day of the wedding for all the various family members who will be around.

Some examples can be found here, here, and some incredibly detailed/anal retentive stuff is here.

Let me know if you guys find anything else.

Crisis Averted, Take Two

The dress was found. UPS had gotten both the name *and* the address on the shipping label wrong, and it ended up at the building next door to Melissa's. It has been found, and it is now being altered by one of Melissa's friends in the wardrobe department at Blue Man Group, because apparently there were a few extra inches in the bust she didn't need.

If all our problems arose and resolved themselves before the wedding, I would be much appreciative.

UPS = Lucifer

Everything was going so well. Invitations were arriving. People were replying. Tiny details were falling into place. Then I disovered two very good friends had not received invitations. I panicked, wondering who else's invite might be struggling its way through the mail at a snail's pace. But I tried not to let it bother me. I enjoyed a shower my coworkers threw for me and Jason. I wandered around the mall looking for a rehearsal dinner dress. I casually asked Melissa if her bridesmaid's dress had arrived.

It had not. I shipped it 2nd Day last Monday. Trying to remain calm, I gathered the tracking info and sat down to see where it was. Maybe it was just waiting to be picked up, or signed for. Maybe the address was wrong and it was on its way back to me.

Tracking info says the package was signed for and delivered on Wednesday.

Melissa has checked with everyone in her building, and no one has signed for it. She even checked with the cheese shop across the street from her. Nothing. All we know is that at 6:10 p.m. Wednesday, someone who was not in Melissa's apartment (UPS error #1) signed for a package with the name "JOSNSS", obviously not Melissa's name (UPS error #2). Now, with two weeks left, we have to either wait for the package to miraculously get to Melissa from this mystery signer, or see if Aria will possibly super-rush an order to us, which will no doubt triple the cost and make this the most expensive bridesmaid's dress ever. Except, perhaps, for a Vera Wang bought on clearance.

I'm trying not to get too upset, because there's very little I can do. I had my hair done yesterday at Toni & Guy, and that was definitely a pick-me-up. If it wasn't so expensive - $135 for my color and cut, plus a nice tip - I'd be there every week. Instead of going with muted red highlights, I went for something more bold, similar to the color I had it fresh out of college. There's an abundance of blonde. People will be surprised. I look sassy, Jason loves it, and at least my hair will look fabulous in the photos, if not my flabby arms and excessive boobs,

The invitations finally went in the mail. Yes, they were horribly late. But when you decide to make them yourselves and then one of you suddenly has surgery, it can delay your already cramped schedule. If you know you're getting one and you don't see it Tuesday or Wednesday, let me know; the postal scale said we only needed 37-cent stamps, but I'm paranoid that they're all going to come back to us.

So, that's one thing off our painfully long list of things to do. We leave for Austin in less than three weeks, and I'm nervous that everything won't get done. We have a conference call with our cake baker this evening to go over the design, and we're slowly but surely finishing the favors and flowers. Every night, my body ends up wound too tight, so around 9:15 I prepare a scalding hot bath to loosen up. So far, it's working.

Vicodin Doesn't Like Me

Our breakneck wedding-planning pace was slowed last week when I was rushed into surgery to remove a troublesome ovarian cyst. Everything is fine -- I started back to work Monday, one week after surgery, and would consider myself at 95% now -- and I'm in much less pain than I was prior to surgery. That's the good news.

The bad news is everything got a little delayed. I'm currently finishing up the invitations, and I expect them to go in the mail Monday, which still fits in to an acceptable 4-6 week window. My first fitting is this evening -- the woman at the bridal salon was shocked when I told her how soon the wedding is -- and hopefully there will be very few alterations. The flowers are almost done, which will let me move on to completing the favors. And most everything else is taken care of, with the exception of final payments to vendors and finishing our vows.

And at least I can be thankful the pain and surgery happened now rather than the weeks of our wedding and honeymoon!

The short version

I never post as often as I should. It's sad, really.

Our whirlwind trip to Texas finalized all the big details of the wedding. We chose a caterer -- and added a mashed potato bar to the menu -- we picked a DJ, we reserved our tables and linens and decorations and such from the rental place... whoosh. Just like that, in less than a week, the wedding went from a mass of jiggly, watery Jell-o to a solid structure.

We also got to meet Denise, and after the initial nervousness of our first encounter, I became comfortable enough to joke around and be sarcastic like usual. She's a really good fit for Jason and I, and meeting her finally confirmed it.

Save-the-date notices went out this week, very tardily. At some point during our holiday, Jason and I will have to update the wedding site to include the hotel info, since that was the main reason for the save-the-dates in the first place. As soon as we get back from our trip to California, we have to hit the ground running on the invitations. And I'll be spending Christmas week making beaded petals.

And I took the cheaper Hamilton Beach stand mixer off our Target registry and replaced it with the will-last-forever-and-ever KitchenAid artisan stand mixer of legend on our Crate and Barrel registry. You only get married once, right?

Essentials?

Wedding Day Essentials Kit has everything the bride could need for her big day. "Kit includes all of the items the bride needs to feel secure, relaxed and confident on her wedding day."

Funny, I didn't see Xanax anywhere on the included items list...

why we're not eloping

The first thing I asked Bryan when we started talking about getting married was, "Can we have Charles and Denise's wedding?" Or Vegas - whoever wants to show up is invited. I really never had much interest in a wedding, and I don't love public speaking.

But what it all boils down to is that my grandparents are very ill. My grandfather's had cancer for several years; my grandmother was diagnosed in August and didn't tell anyone until just before she had surgery in September, because B & I had just announced our engagement and she didn't want to bum us out.

It's been a crappy time in my family. These are the only grandparents I have left, my mother's been running herself ragged taking care of them. They all really want to be there when I get married, and I would like to do that for them.

So I'm having a nice party, at which we will get married. I'm comfortable with that, and I'm not paying any more than I would for a nice party at which nobody gets married. I think it'll be pretty cool, too, and I'm happy about that.

I absolutely agree that it's a hell of a lot easier to elope, but some people's personal definition of "getting married" includes having other people there. I didn't think mine would, until it was an actual decision to make and not just hypothesizing.

Merrell Plantation is a bust. We were negotiating the contract, and Denise discovered several problems with it. She got them to change everything except one item -- a clause saying that if either party sued, regardless of who was at fault, Jason and I would be responsible for legal fees. Maybe it's overly conservative to let that clause ruin our impression of the venue, but it did. Denise tried to get them to take it out. She had her lawyer write up wording saying the party at fault would pay. But no dice. And the more we looked at the contract, the more we saw flaws. Merrell is very clear that if we cancel at any time, we lose all the money we've paid (and we have to pay in full a month in advance). But they don't address at all what happens ifthey cancel on us. The list of seemingly minor/potentially major problems goes on. And now the coordinator from Merrell isn't returning Denise's calls. So we're back to square one on a venue, and we're quickly discovering that places of the caliber we are looking for are a bit out of our budget. I know there's a place for us out there; we just have to find it.