Special K and Coffee
I don't really know why you'd be here. I mean, I know I'm the single most interesting person, but don't you people have lives? Really, it's quite sad.
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Wednesday, September 21, 2005
I am the worst fan ever
Not only have I still not watched the last part of the last season of Gilmore Girls....but I haven't even taped the past two weeks' new episodes. Is there any way that I can be forgiven?
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
A Summary: by Paul Hester
As of today 9/14 we have the hall reserved for the reception which includes staff, linens, china, bar, dance floor... we have a cake, we have hotel reservations for us and the group (Baymont in Ames), we have a DJ, we have a wedding dress, we have a date 12/31, time 1800 hours, and location Memorial lutheran, a pastor, and best of all we have each other.
{In case ya'll didn't read that comment he left several posts down. :-)}
Friday, September 09, 2005
"Apparently, you're supposed to order your wedding dress the first day of junior high, and if you haven't, it's off the rack for you missy."
Not long after we got engaged, I started looking at wedding dresses on TheKnot.com. One dress I liked was this one partly because it was one of the few non-strapless and even non-sleeveless dresses I'd found and it wasn't hideous. So I decided to see what else that particular designer had, which led me to Victoria's Collection. I was excited to find she had an entire line of "Modesty" dresses that are specifically designed for women of any size who want a simple but beautiful dress and they have a good selection of them. I found one that I just fell in love with and my coworkers kept laughing at me every time they'd walk by my desk and see me looking at it again. I had already gotten a pretty good idea of features and styles that I like because Beth and I had gone dress shopping in both Boone and Des Moines (there aren't any shops in Ames anymore--how crazy is that??), and this dress fit all but one of those features, but I--like any sane bride--wanted to try the dress on before just ordering it and finding out it looked terrible on me.
On Victoria's website, I found a whopping total of zero stores in Iowa that carry Victoria's Collection dresses, but I got some good advice that the stores probably pay to be listed on the website so I should try to find out if there were a store in Iowa some other way. Aaah, yes, Google is a wonderful thing. Hope's Bridal Boutique in Atkins, IA, (near Cedar Rapids and what everyone knows as "the pink barn on Highway 30") is the only store in Iowa that I found that carries Victoria's Collection. So I called Hope's inquiring if they by any miracle had that dress in stock for me to try on--nope. OK, back to Victoria's site to write down stores in Illinois to try. Springfield--Nope. Bloomington--Nope. Rockford--Nope. None of them had even a single dress from the Modesty collection. In a final moment of desperation, I called the company directly through the number I found on The Knot. After explaining that I was a bride interested in a dress I'd found on their website, I asked if they might be able to help me locate a store near me that might have the dress so that I could try it on. The woman I spoke with asked me where I lived then asked me if I would be willing to drive to Atkins, IA, to Hope's Bridal. I said I would, but that I called them and they didn't have it. Well, she could send it there--like send it there for me just to try on? No committment to order it? Nope, just try it on. Heck yes, I can do that! So she took my name and the product number and said she'd call Hope's to set it up. Within an hour I got a call from Hope's Bridal saying they'd gotten a call from Victoria's about a dress they were going to send there for me to try on for a mere $20 shipping fee, but when she said the dress number it wasn't even close to the same as what I'd seen on the website and given to the company. I mentioned that to the girl that called me and she said they probably have two different numbers for it, which seemed kinda dumb to me, but I decided to just wait and see and refuse to pay the shipping if they sent the wrong dress.
A couple of weeks later, I got a message from Hope's saying my dress was in to be tried on and they couldn't keep it for very long. Well, it just so happened that that was the weekend of Paul's family reunion in Bloomington--which we were going to. So I called Hope's back and said we could stop by on Friday night on the way to Illinois, but that, depending on when we each got off of work, we might not be able to make it there until after their closing time. But that was okay because if I could keep them posted on our estimated time of arrival, they would make sure someone was there. That off my "worry list," I started worrying about them sending the wrong dress. And Paul, who was going to hang out in the car while I tried it on, said that if they gave me too much trouble over not wanting to pay if they sent the wrong dress, to "call in the big dogs"--him. :-)
We pulled into Hope's with plenty of time to spare before they closed and Paul--seeing it for the first time--had some hilarious reactions: "Oh my goodness, the whole farm is pink! There can't possibly be a guy involved in this, can there?" I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I saw the dress and it was the right one--even in my size. [Aside: They apparently do have two different numbers for that dress, which just seems like a confusing waste to me.] I tried it on and it looked just as great as I thought it would, and as everyone who looked at the picture online said it looked like "me". Then I asked the next question I was dreading: how much? The girl helping me wasn't sure, but she went to find out as I stood there admiring the dress some more. When she came back over to me she quoted me a price that was a little higher than I was hoping, but not so much that I would just walk away from it. Then she said that Diane, the owner, was on her way over from her house next door and she'd said that she would give me $150 off if I ordered it that day, which they never do for ordered dresses. And they could order it as a "petite" so that we might not have to take in the bottom hem at all because, in case none of you ever noticed, I'm short. :-) I thought about it while I changed back into my clothes and decided to go for it. They also waived the shipping fee normally charged for an ordered dress because I paid the shipping to try it on in the first place. We did all the paper work to get it ordered and fitted as best as possible and set up a payment plan and everything. And I officially had a wedding dress! :-D
Now comes the really fun part. After I woke Paul up from his nap in the car, he needed to use the restroom before we hit the road again, so I took him in and introduced him to everyone, then Diane and I started talking more while I waited for him. That was when we found out that she and her husband met at Iowa State--and that they went to Memorial Lutheran Church--and that he was in the Beta Sigma Psi [Lutheran] fraternity which, for those who don't know, Paul is a member of, too. So we started talking about that and about Pastor Mark and....it was just really neat and made the whole fact that I'd bought my dress from this random pink barn and hour and a half away on Highway 30 that I had cringed at so many times over the years (I am distinctively not a fan of pink) that much more fun. We also like the fact that I bought my dress from a barn when we both love barns and plan to live in one someday. :-)
Wednesday, September 07, 2005
It took me a while, but I've finally gotten here.
I need help. For the past 24 hours I have asked just about everyone I see and perused Amazon.com whenever possible for help with this, and it didn't occur to me until just now that I have wonderful resources in the people that read my blog.
I have no idea what to walk down the aisle to. All I know is that I don't want something that's been used to death in weddings (i.e. "Canon in D," "The Wedding/Bridal March," "Trumpet Voluntary," "Ode to Joy," etc.), and beyond that I'm stumped even after listening the hundreds of song samples. Suggestions are needed--preferrably serious ones. :-)
Thursday, September 01, 2005
There was a madness to our method of picking a date
Strictly date-wise:
January 2006: Paul is on ICU rotation, which isn't all that bad, but has crazy-hour shifts.
February and March 2006: Paul has to do at least 4 weeks of Active Duty training during this time when he has 6-7 weeks off (and we'd prefer to be married longer than a couple weeks before he leaves for 4-5 weeks). March and April are also bad times for Paul's father to try to get away from his CPA office.
May 2006: Paul graduates, Paul's sister graduates, my sister graduates, Paul's cousin may be ordained, and Paul may have to start Officer's Basic Course (OBC) as early as late May.
June 2006: Paul will probably start OBC sometime in the month of June, and we won't know until March.
July and August 2006: OBC
September 2006: Probably OBC and, again, we won't know until March.
October 2006: Paul will be done with OBC by sometime in this month, but we won't know for a while. We also won't know for a while how much time he'll get off before having to report for his first assignment or where that assignment will be. There is also already a wedding in his family scheduled at the beginning of October, which is the more likely time he'd have off and be able to have his own wedding if we were to wait until then.
After OBC: We don't know when he'd be able to take time off for his own wedding.
Non-date-wise:
We, personally, don't want to wait over a year and, probably, over a year and a half to get married. Once you've figured out you want to be with each other forever and share everything with each other, you don't want to wait any longer than you have to. Also, and I have gotten this advice from some good friends who are spouses of military personnel, "wife" means something to the military--"fiancee" does not. I can be on his health insurance (of which I have none of my own right now :-P), and it just makes things like buying a house and moving and everything so much easier.
The madness:
The United States Army. Welcome to military life. Anyway, that's just a tiny summary of the 2-month-long process of figuring out a wedding date. Does December 31, 2005, make a little more sense now? It's right before ICU starts.
