It's about time!

Well, Hurricane Gustav and Hurricane MoveHome have hit. And now it's time for me to take this whole planning a wedding thing seriously. I guess for all my harping Justin about an invitation list I could go out and at least find a dress, right?? Well, let's see. where to start..

I finished my finals and everything August 12 and we started driving from Provo to Austin the next morning. The drive wasn't as bad as I remembered it being; I guess being with your best friend doesn't hurt either. Either way, we arrived at the lake house the 14th at 3 p.m. We were proud of ourselves considering we hadn't left until 9 the prior morning. After spending a few days at the lake house we headed to the main house in Houston and spent a few days there. The day I left to fly back to NOLA we had time so we drove to Brenham to enjoy the Blue Bell factory- I highly recommend it. It's small, but you get Blue Bell ice cream at the end- who could refuse that?? After barely making my flight that evening and then sitting on the runway for about an hour or so, I headed home to my lovely, humid New Orleans.

The following day was exciting. My mom celebrated her 53 birthday and that evening was a tasting for the catering company we're using at the reception. I guess this shows my awkwardness with formal or elegant things, but I was blown away with everything. It was put on by City Park, which is where we're having the reception, and their vendors, so it was neat seeing all of the different things they had to taste and such. My mom and maid of honor came as well as my dad. He decided since he was the one paying for the whole wedding he was going to go and make sure the food was up to HIS liking first. And so began my wedding preparations. since we had gotten engaged I had dabbled with ideas here and there but not too seriously. Now I was faced with the reality that I had little more than three months to plan a wedding.

So off we went that Friday, my mom, my sister-in-law, my maid of honor and a bridesmaid in search of everything- invitations, photographers, dresses, centerpiece ideas. I guess I'm not very girly because I never really imagined or dreamed about my dream wedding growing up. I suppose I did for the Young Women's activities where you wrote a note to your future husband and planned out your kids and stuff, but I won't lie, I never really took those seriously. Now I had to. Well, I started with colors. Luckily I had seen a color combination I had really liked on a shirt a girl was wearing so I stuck with it. I was tired of the whole red, white and black trend and the black and hot pink was very much NOT me, so I decided to go with dark teal, copper and white. Okay, easy enough. My dress searches in Utah had not gone very well. While they were pretty, they seemed very cookie-cutter and I didn't want to look like every other bride, so I put off on the dresses there. I had one that I really liked, but I thought I would wait and see later on whether or not I liked it since there was a bridal dress shop near Baton Rouge which said they carried that particular line of dresses. So I thought we'd either go there or we would sew my dress. I was really liking some dress patterns from the 50s and 60s I had found.

Well, when I went around to the different stores I didn't find anything I liked. When we tried the store up in Baton Rouge it didn't have ANY of the dresses from that line and the fabric store my mom was thinking of getting fabric from had closed due to Hurricane Katrina. Okay, a moderate setback but not killer. While everyone else was getting ancy about my dress I decided to focus on other details. We found my bridesmaid dresses within an hour at David's Bridal and they were pretty inexpensive, so we snatched them up for the two bridesmaids there and told the other ones to try them on in their respective cities and give their opinions. Luckily Justin, being the sweetheart he is, had already taken care of the tuxedos for everyone so that wasn't a worry of mine either. The search for a photography was also very easy, to my surprise. While she couldn't do our engagement pictures Labor Day weekend, she would do the pictures the wedding day at a reduced price. NICE!

Labor Day weekend came and Justin drove in from San Antonio. It's amazing how much you can miss someone after a week! So we took the engagement pictures (despite the fact I went without glasses or contacts and Justin was feeling sick) and surprisingly they came out well. In addition, the locations where we took our pictures (downtown New Orleans and Audubon Park) were empty because of the mass evacuation of residents due to Hurricane Gustav. The next morning everyone, Justin included made the long trek from New Orleans to Baker, Louisiana (while my parents continued up to Clinton, Mississippi). We were stuck there for 3 days, and while it wasn't miserable it was quite frustrating to not have reception! ANYWAY, on Tuesday morning, due to the cramped conditions for 9 people in a small home and limited food, Justin left to drive back to San Antonio and the rest of us from New Orleans headed up to Clinton, where my parents were staying.

The nest day, due to boredom at the chapel, my mom, Ashley (my sister-in-law), Andrew and I drove down to Jackson to get my eyes checked and spend the day wasting time at the mall. When Ashley spotted a David's Bridal, she decided it was time we took my dress hunt seriously, and so leaving Andrew at Barnes and Noble we went in. To my surprise, less than an hour later we found the dress- on sale from 750 to 200! Yep! And with the on sale shoes I found, it doesn't even need to be hemmed! So I'm excited. We bought everything excluding the veil for only a little more than half of the dress's original cost.

Fast forward 2 weeks and I'm sitting here on the floor stamping the paper for my wedding invitations and response cards. Instead of ordering them, like any sane person would, we decided at the last minute we would make them. While I don't mind it, stamping and gluing together 350 invitations is a bit daunting for one person to do. But luckily a loving fiance is willing to sit talk on the phone with me until heinously late hours while I stamp fleurs des lis on every piece of paper in sight.

Well, this is me signing off. Hopefully one of these days I'll be better at posting. Ciao!