It's here!

After much much much anxious anticipation, my wedding gown has finally arrived! The bridal store in China gave me the tracking number on March 20th, my package landed in the U.S. on the 22nd, was released from customs on the 23rd, and dropped by my house at 9:50 am on the 24th. Unfortunately, no one was home to receive it, so it got taken back to the post office. That's where a bit of trouble began. The P.O. is only open from 8:30 to 5:00, which are the same working hours I have. I talked to my boss and she said it would be ok if I came in a little bit late Wednesday so that I could get my dress that morning. However, when I went home and looked at my delivery notice, I realized that the dress wasn't at the Shawnee P.O. but at one in Kansas City, KS. I really did not want to drive all the way over there and then drive back home to drop off my dress, and then drive back to work, and I didn't want to take the dress to work with me, so I enlisted the aid of wonderful Andy to go pick it up for me.

This is the text I got at 3:25 PM yesterday:

It wasnt at the kc, ks office. the stupid govt operated and nearly bankrupt u.s.
postal system screwed up. idiots. heading to shawnee. hope its there.

Yep, that's my baby.

Happily, it was at the Shawnee P.O. I had originally thought it should be, and Andy dropped the envelope - yes, no lie, it came in a not-so-padded envelope - off at my house. Eventually I arrived home, ripped into the package, and stepped into the dress. Ah, a sigh of relief. It is the perfect color. It is the correct size. The style is very close to what I asked for, the beading is pretty, and it doesn't look like it is falling apart! All those nerve-wracking moments paid off, because I got my wedding dress and it looked great! What a fabulous moment. Best of all, four months from now I get to wear it on the day that I marry my love.

We both have had a lot of financial worries the past few months, what with the depressing economy, Andy's tenuous job situation, and the added burden of the wedding, but God had provided us with a lot of wonderful options and I know our day is going to be very special.

And now I get to go buy some sweet, sweet shoes. Nothing wrong with that :)

Roses Are Red, Violets Are Blue, Sugar Is Sweet, And So Are You!

There are a surprising number of people in this world who bake cakes for a living. This is a good thing, since it gives us lots of choices, but it can also make it overwhelming to sort through 50 portfolios to find the best one, especially when small town bakers rarely have websites with their pictures on them. Speaking of which, there is a lady named Rebecca Sutterby who lives in a VERY small town in SEK, and has a fabulous website with lots of pictures. Unfortunately, cakes that are that stupendous cost about $6.50 a slice. Not bad if you're only buying a slice or two, but a little ridiculous if you're serving 100 people or more.

I am hoping to meet sometime with another decorator named Jan Beltram, who came highly recommended and has much more reasonable prices, but we are having difficulties matching up our schedules. I don't really know what exactly I want the cake to look like anyway, so it's probably good that I have a bit of time to figure out some details.

I did manage to meet with a florist in Ft. Scott on Friday afternoon. The name of the place is Designer's Florist by Sekan, and under the more general name of Sekan's Occasion Shops they actually run quite an impressive operation, selling flowers, furniture, home decorating items, invitations, and what-have-you. We talked over a few of my ideas and discussed prices, but essentially she said I would need to come back at the beginning of June to finalize exactly what I wanted and what the cost would be. I am fairly certain I would like to have them do our flowers, but I also need to do a little more shopping around to be sure we are getting a good deal.

My friend Cortney and I have also been doing a lot of brainstorming over invitation designs, and I think we've finally come up with something that will be close to the finished product. I have found some pretty paper on the internet that I will probably order so that we can get started on those soon.

Summer will be here before I know it! I can't wait :)

"step by step, ooh baby, gonna get to you gi-i-i-irl!"

Please tell me you know where this entry title came from! Hint: one of my favorite songs at age 5.

Andy is still totally perplexed about how all these details are going to come together, but I love the feeling of fitting each piece of the puzzle in exactly where it belongs. I actually think it all is starting to flow quite nicely!

Andy did a great job finding a DJ and negotiating a good price for us, which is the one task I gave him to accomplish all by himself. We are going to be using Platinum Soundworks. The difficult part with vendors is that most of the time you can't exactly give them a trial run before the big day ("Hey Mr. d.j., why don't you just drop by the house Tuesday night and spin us some records?" seems like a bit of an odd request), but we were both impressed by his website and his sound system, and Andy said he was very professional on the phone. Most impressive of all, he is a bona fide acoustic engineer.

After quite a bit of waffling over all the options, we have also settled on a caterer. If you know anything at all about Pittsburg, KS, which is located about 30 miles south of Ft. Scott, you probably know that fried chicken is practically a historical institution there. Much as I would have loved to have had Fabio from Top Chef come with his delectable Italian accent and serve us a delectable Italian entree, super fancy food is a bit outside of our budget. Also, I'm not really sure that anyone I know would be impressed with anything gourmet anyway - the portions are always so small! The chicken and sides that we order should be hot, tasty, and filling, so I think we made the right choice.

Oh, and I also purchased (on sale, of course) some envelopes that I liked for the invitations. This is probably moving a bit backwards since I don't have any of the invitations yet, but I've got a solid idea of what I want, so it made sense to me at the time.

Next up: a florist and a baker.

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