Two narrow misses and a hit

Ah the wedding crap. It's never ending it seems, just like my posts about it seem to be. Invites and thank-yous are being received, though my thank-yous are arriving a week and a half after they were mailed which makes me look like a jerk. Thanks, Canada Post! Tuxes? Also done.


When it came to shopping for my dress, being the indecisive fashion moron that I am, picking a dress was, well, hard. I have friends who tried on THE dress the first time they put one on. Yeah, not me. My sorry butt is indecisive and it took a crowd of 5 people saying "that's it" to convince me. I still think I may have picked the wrong one, but? Too bad! Too late now!

So, when picking out a dress, I went with an entourage of mum, sister and two friends, and hit a bunch of bridal salons in the area. I almost ordered the dress at a place I'll call Bridal Store S. I'd heard good things about Bridal Store S. I tried the dress on it on at Bridal Store F, liked it there, but it was a wee bit cheaper because alterations were included at Bridal Store S.

Then, I freaked out at the money it would cost - it seemed stupid to spend $1000 on a dress I'd only ever wear once. So, I ordered it on eBay, for half the price. Yay eBay.

When it came to BM dresses, I ordered them from Bridal Store F, only because it was closer than Bridal Store S when I went looking with my sister.

I called to check on the BM dresses Saturday because they said they'd be in sometime in early July. But, bridal Store F said "oh no, they won't be in until early August, despite what we told you when you ordered them." Yeah, not gonna work. Wedding in late August, early August is NOT ENOUGH TIME.

Cue calm, but deliberately firm Hairy Canary from Bridezilla. Bridal Store F says they'd "look into it" for me.

Luckily, four days later the dresses are contentedly hanging in our living room. Phew. Narrow Miss Number One. (luckily my bridesmaids don't look anywhere near as dorky as these two lovely ladies modeling them. They're tea length if you're the curious type)

Narrow Miss Number Two was something I witnessed at Bridal Store F. While the clerk tried figuring out how to ring the BM dresses through (a process which, in and of itself took 20 minutes and took a few "what was that? what button do I press next?" questions of fellow employees), a frantic couple rushes up to the desk, out of breath.

I shamelessly eavesdrop and hear that they're in a wedding on Saturday (this being Wednesday!), and had ordered and paid for dresses at Bridal Store S, but because Store S isn't paying its bills to dress manufacturer, they won't ship the dresses out to them. They were being told for weeks at Bridal Store S that the dresses would be in "next week" and they never came! Apparently these people were the tenth panicked people who were wedding dress-less for a wedding in a matter of days. So glad I was too lazy to drive to Bridal Store S.

The one hit? The bridesmaid dresses! They're cute! They actually match the tux vests we picked out for the guys so closely it's like I knew all along! Yay blind luck! (Enough exclamation points Heather, it's getting annoying!)

So, anyone have any wedding horror stories to share? I'm getting my dress altered tomorrow, and there's nothing like a few great horror stories to quicken the pulse and strike fear in the mind of a bride-to-be.

They're heeerrrreee!

Hah after pestering the jewellers today wondering if the rings are in, they both were ready just after 6:00 today, so I rushed over and picked them up. So, without further delay: taa daaa!


You know I just HAD to try it on (and it feels like this is a pretty snug... I think they made it a half size too small, either that or my fingers are uber porky today, though my engagement ring isn't too tight. I like the ring Dave picked out even more than I remembered.

(Yes, my engagement ring looks like it's been bathed lovingly in crud. I'll clean it tomorrow, I promise. The crud in my nails may have to wait until Sunday. One thing at a time.)

It's been a head-smashingly fun week in the 'shwa

Has it ever been a loooonnnnnng week. I have no idea how I'll survive until Friday. Oh well. I'm supposed to be at a bachelorette party which should be lots of fun and games. That's of course if I'm still standing!

Anyway, moving on, I've done lots of learning this week. I've learned my parents have decided to do some work to their already gorgeous home. I've also learned that my mum probably should have become a highly paid accountant for some big nameless corporation because her tax-refund-getting skills are impeccable and I'm now expecting a fairly fat cheque from the man. These two forces have combined to make it virtually irresistible NOT to do some work on the house.

We moved in at the end of last summer and, beyond a few tiny things, we haven't done much work to the place. I have a long list of things I want to do to this place. It's an older house which definitely has lots of quirks, both good quirks and bad.

I'm hoping to slowly start to rid the house of the non cute quirks. The beige in the living room is making me a little cabin feverish. The original kitchen (or an early successor to it) in our 1940s house is getting more and more annoying especially when you view all the glorious cabinet options and choices there are out there. The original hard wood floors are still gorgeous but badly in need of re-finishing. Most of all the wallpaper in the front hall and upstairs hall is making me nutso.

In a bid to rid the place of its quirks, I think I've found a pretty good score. A neighbour down the street works re-finishing floors for a living (SCORE!) and has given us a wicked price to re-do them. So, that will happen once we get the walls un-beiged, and the ceilings touched up with plaster and painted, the floors are next.

But, in the meantime, the wallpaper in the halls is the bee doing the most stinging in my bonnet. Actually I have a bonnet full of bees right now, but I'm directing it all at the wallpaper.

I'm sure at some point this wallpaper was pretty to some person. I can't think of either a time when that would have been, or a person who would have found it pretty but I'm sure it was, just as I am sure that it is not pretty to me.

I'm curious as to what I'll find behind the wallpaper. The walls are lathe and plaster and we already know of one spot that will need work (we call it the rollercoaster wall because it dips up and down), but the rest is a mystery. My fingers are crossed that it isn't too bad and the wallpaper removal itself isn't as dreadful as I'm imagining it will be.

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Finally, should you randomly happen to be a caterer who happens to stumble onto my blog, I have some completely unsolicited advice for you. Aren't you lucky!

If, as a caterer, you're being asked to price catering an event such as a wedding, and one of the MAIN parties identifies herself as a vegetarian right from the beginning, it would probably not be a great idea to note how big a "pain in the ass" some vegetarians are at catered events at length. You would probably also be best not to tell said vegetarian about how she should realize that most of the people attending the event will eat meat so she really should focus on ordering food that will please them (meaning all meat, all the time) instead of the "few vegetarians." This type of comment will make said vegetarians consider hiring one of your competitors instead.

Just moments before the steam started to come out from my ears and my head started spinning rapidly in counter-clockwise fashion, I told her that as a vegetarian I had more often ran into caterers who were a pain in the ass that treat vegetarian guests who were paying a great deal for their services as the pains in the ass. I'm also not a fan of cocktail receptions where all the hors d'oeuvres are meat. Moreover I didn't want my veggie friends to end up with a dish of the standard cold penne primavera, or, as I served one time, a vegetarian dinner that consisted of two potatoes (one still covered in sauce from the chicken that had until moments before occupied the plate) and veggies. I don't want my own freaking wedding to be like that!

Beyond that, when we said pork was out as an entree option because we have friends who are devout muslims who can't eat pork she implied that was completely unreasonable and said that "some people are so unreasonable as to not want to be in the same room." Uh yeah! And they're our friends, so we're happy to accommodate that. You should be too! Frig!

So now, after the fun this week has been so far, my sweetie has prepared a hot water bottle for my aching back (no, I'm not 90 years old and yes I use water bottles regularly) and I'm off to bed. You may have guessed I didn't get much sleep last night, which has made the tone of this post somewhat cranky. Hopefully I'll be able to sleep tonight and wake up tomorrow fresh and ready to tackle the wallpaper sans cranky pants tomorrow night after work.

Weekend Recap

• Frankencouch's days are officially numbered. Next Saturday the new couch is being delivered, probably some time between when the sun comes up and it goes down. I'm guessing the likelihood that they'll narrow the delivery time down any more than that is slim, but I'm still excited.
  

• With the new couch coming I'd really like to un-beige our living room walls but I'm at a loss for what colour to paint them, and I'm a bit of a "have a complete vision" kid before I get started (at least when it comes to decorating; nothing else, oddly enough). So, we did what broke people do when they wanna re-decorate and spent Friday wandering through Chapters looking for ideas in books. Still haven't made any decisions though. I'm not sure if I'm bold enough to paint the walls a warm bluey greeney colour when the couch is chocolate brown... or go with a more neutral tan colour on the walls with red accents... any suggestions? All I decided is that I want to have Debbie Travis come and re-do our whole freaking house cause it's hard to decorate tiny spaces on a tiny budget. The living room's small and we spend most waking hours in it so it's gotta be calming and not too crazy. I'd like to do some feng shui but I have no idea where to start. If there are any budding designers out there send ideas our way!
  

• Is there anything better for a cold than tom yum soup from a Thai restaurant? There's something about the sweet-salty-hot-sour combination that's perfect for sick people.
  

• After Friday's excitement I almost entirely slept through April Fool's Day, but when I saw the score for the Leafs game on the CBC Saturday night I thought it was a late April Fool's joke. The Leafs, who have stunk (pretty much) the whole season and blew a playoff berth last weekend won 7-0, now that a playoff berth is way out of reach.
  

• Saturday I tortured Dave by bringing him curtain shopping. To TWO places. I think he only went along with it because he was afraid I'd either get too whacky and the curtains would look like something out of an acid trip or I'd pass out in a coughing fit in a fabric aisle, never to be heard from again. What we found were curtains that were either hideous thick floral prints or not anything we (read I) liked so we're (I'm) still looking. It wasn't a total loss, though, I did manage to find a nice camel coloured chenille throw for the new couch that's so soft it makes silk feel like sandpaper. I'm looking forward to curling up on the new chair with a book and the new throw on a rainy day.
  

• We have a wedding photographer! Another thing to check off our wedding list is done (and less than 5 months before the day!)
  

• We went for a walk with the dogs and my parents at a park in Cobourg and the dogs loved the chance to run in a big open space and seemed to have a blast. They panted the whole ride home and we've hardly heard a peep from them the rest of the night.
  

• Finally all my whining that the neighbours have bulbs peeking through the soil and we don't has paid off! I planted a ton of bulbs late last fall and finally I'm starting to see leaves peeking from the soil that I swear weren't there when I (neurotically) checked Thursday. I can't wait to see blooms! The pussy willows in the park are bursting, the birds are back, the days are getting longer and the sun is definitely stronger, I just love spring!