Bridezilla

I am ashamed to admit that I think I have had my first (and hopefully last!) bridezilla freak out. Now that we are getting close (3 months today!) I think I'm just starting to get nervous about having everything done on time. So, what was my bridezilla moment? I fired one of my vendors! Seriously, who am I?

Here's the story. Back in October I found a lady out of California that I contracted to do our invitations. I found her on a wedding website and figured she must be reputable. She did custom designs and her prices were unbeatable. I was really excited to work with her. In January, I contacted her for a timeline so I knew when I could expect to see some designs. She let me know that she would have 4 designs for us to choose from by mid May. Well, mid may came and went and I hadn't received anything. I am a very literal person. If you tell me mid May, then I fully expect mid May. I gave her another week and still nothing. So I emailed her asking when I could expect to see something. She apologized explaining that it's busy season and they were a couple weeks behind and she'd send my designs that week. Ok, fine. I finally got the 4 design concepts at the very end of the week, the end of May.

I was happy with the 4 concepts she designed and we chose one, but wanted her to make a couple of revisions. According to the timeline she had given me this process of finalizing a concept should take no longer than a week. A week came and went and I didn't hear from her. At this point I was really frustrated. It is one of my biggest pet peeves when people do not respond to emails. Especially with something like this! I didn't even know if she received my revisions. Finally she emailed me back and said sorry again for the delay, but she'd been out of the office due to moving. Alright, lady. Enough with the excuses. I know it's busy season and you obviously have too much on your plate, but in my opinion it's very unproffesional to miss deadlines that you have set and just kind of blow it off. I felt like this was not a priority to her. She swore she would have the final revision to me that night or the next morning. Which would have been this past Monday morning at the latest. Guess what? 2 days later still nothing!

So call me crazy, call me bridezilla, but I just had enough and was getting worried that I wouldn't have enough time to get the invitations to our caligrapher and then sent out on time. So I fired her. I let her know that I was dissapointed in her customer service, lack of responsiveness, and failure to meet deadlines. She responded saying we were still ahead of the game and they had a fast print turnaround. That's all good and great, but doesn't change the fact that she was not meeting the deadlines that she set for my particular project. She refunded part of the deposit and that was that.

I do feel bad about it and maybe I overreacted a bit. But I just found her service unacceptable. Luckily, Jason's co-worker and friend, Courtney, is going to take over designing and printing our invitaions. She did our Save the Dates so I know she will do a great job and I'm excited to work with her. I'm a lot more comfortable and confident in her and it helps that she's here in St. Louis. We are meeting Monday to go over things. She is awesome for taking this on last minute!

So, lesson learned. Don't hire a vendor off the internet that you really know nothing about and lives across the country. My dad tried to warn me about this, but of course I didn't listen and now I'm hearing the "I told you so." You were right, Dad. I admit it ;)

100 days...

...til we finally get married! I'm so ready for the big day to be here!

Flowers

My mom and I met with Susie, our florist, on Sunday to sit down and decide on a floral scheme. Susie is actually the Aunt of my friend and bridesmaid, Emily, and she works for a florist here in St. Louis. We have known Susie for a long time and she did the flowers for my sisters wedding. She is very creative and does beautiful work so I know working with her will be great! Unlike some of the other details of the wedding, I actually had a pretty good idea of what I wanted to it was a really easy, fun process. We decided on hot pink roses, green cymbidium orchids, and lime green hydrangeas! My bouquet will be all hot pink roses with green hypericum berries around the edge and wrapped in ivory satin ribbon. My mom is letting me borrow the rosary that she got for her confirmation and it will be wrapped into the bouquet and hang down the front. It's beautiful and I'm so glad we thought of using it! So it will look something like this.

The girls' bouquets will have lime green hydrangeas, the orchids and hot pink roses. Something similar to this only with roses instead of peonies.

I think the pink and green will really pop against the girls' darker dresses.

Speaking of the bridesmaids dresses, they came in yesterday! They were deliverd to my mom's house and everything looks great. One of my BM's, Emily came over and tried hers on and she looked beautiful. I can't wait to see all the girls in their dresses! Just over 3 months to go!

How Sweet is My Fiance?!

Jason sent me the cutest e-card at work today:

"We've been so busy lately that it feels like we haven't had much quality time together. And with another busy weekend ahead of us I think we could use some time for just us. I'd like to take you on a date tonight."

I pretty much melted :) It's things like this that remind me how happy and excited I am to be marrying Jason in 3 1/2 months! No matter how busy and crazy our lives get he always makes time for just us. I can't wait for our sushi date tonight!

Special Delivery

The past two days I've come home from work to find a package waiting for me. Don't you love coming home to find something you've been waiting for? I do! Especially when it happens to be wedding related stuff. Yesterday the box contained the customized cocktail napkins I ordered for the reception. I think they turned out really cute! Jason was not as impressed "Oh, napkins." He just doesn't understand that it's the little details that I get excited about ;)
Today I came home to another box waiting on the doorstep. It was one of the gifts I ordered for my bridesmaids! I can't reveal what is though since some of them read this! But I am very happy with them and was even more excited to find out that the box contained an extra surprise. I ordered 6 gifts and the supplier that I ordered from included a special one for me. I thought that was so nice! If you have never checked out Etsy, you must! It's a site where people can sell and buy all things homemade. People set up online "stores" to sell their homemade creations from jewelry to clothes to stationary. It's a great place to find unique gifts! I bought mine from Etsy seller nocarnations and she was so great to work with. She even wrapped the gifts to save me the extra step.

I am anticipating yet another arrival tomorrow...my wedding shoes! Can't wait to see them and make sure they fit!


Jason and I have been very busy lately. We have some big things going on but have been hesitant to blog about them in case things don't work out. Maybe a little bit superstitious but we don't want to jinx ouselves! Update coming soon though!

"Say hi to your motha' for me"

So Lauren and I have another busy weekend ahead of us so I thought I would wish all of the moms out there an early Happy Mother's Day. And if your mom has a sense of humor she might enjoy this...

We've Been Busy!

The past week has been very busy for Jason and I! On top of work, school for Jason, the start of our pre-marriage counseling and the wedding fast approaching, Jason and I have decided to look for a house and attempt to move before the wedding! We feel like we are in a good place to buy and with the first time homeowner tax credit we feel like there will never be a better time to purchase our first home. Our lease is up at the end of July so it would be the ideal time to make the move. This past Saturday we started our house hunt bright and early. Jason's Aunt Cathy is a real estate agent and has agreed to work with us. She has been great! We looked at about 10 houses on Saturday and found one in a great part of Webster Groves that we both really love. It has everything we are looking for: 3 bedrooms, 2 full baths, a 2 car garage and the whole house has been updated within the last 5 years including the addition of a gorgeous front porch that I am absolutely in love with! Isn't it so cute?!

It seemed to good to be true that this house was everything we wanted and in our price range. Well, of course there is a catch. There is always a catch. The one and only bad thing about this house is that it is right next to the train tracks. I mean right next to them. So even though the house itself is perfect, the location is less than ideal. The location of the tracks presents a couple of issues.
1.) Noise. We aren't sure how frequently trains go by, but you can be sure when they do we will hear them. The current owner says she doesn't even notice it anymore and I really don't think this would bother me. I think we could learn to tune it out.
2.) Safety. The backyard is not fenced and it would be dangerous if we eventually had kids. This one is pretty easily remedied with the addition of a fence.
3.) Resale Value of the house. This is the big one. Jason and I do not want to make a bad investment. We realize that because of the location of the house, it will likely never sell for what the house itself is worth. The train tracks are likely a deal breaker for many people. So we have to decide if it's worth the risk of losing money. Hopefully if we stayed there long enough we would make our money back, but you just never know.
So we are going to keep looking. So far we haven't found anything that compares or even comes close. We are going to look again this weekend. If we don't find anything we are going to discuss our options and decide if we want to put an offer on this house. What do you think? Would you buy a house so close to the train tracks?

After our house hunting adventure last Saturday we drove up to Springfield, IL to visit my Aunt Donna and Uncle Bruce. Bruce is a jeweler and he designed my engagement ring. Jason and I went to his store when we got into town and picked out our wedding bands! Mine will match my engagement ring with diamonds across the top and cutouts on the sides of the band. Jason chose something simple made of a lightweight metal - either titanium or tungsten. I can't wait to see them!

Saturday night we enjoyed a great dinner with Donna and Bruce. We had such a good time telling stories, drinking wine (beer for the boys) and laughing. Thanks for everything Donna and Bruce!

Sunday morning it was back in the car for the two hour ride home. The house that we like was having an open house so we invited both of our parents to meet us there and take a look. It was good to get their perspective and opinions. Everyone loved the house, but of course the tracks were a concern. I really wish I could just pick the house up and move in down the street!

It was a crazy weekend and Jason and I both came down with a cold. This week has been spent trying to recover before another busy weekend! Jason is currently at class - his LAST class ever! Woo hoo! Only 8 weeks to go til he has his MBA! Coming up this weekend: more house hunting on Saturday and Mother's Day on Sunday!