Happy Birthday Baby!

Johnny is 35 today!! :) Let's Party!!

Prayers for Jen and Brad....

Wow...I just heard that one of my best friend's future mother-in-law died this morning. She is getting married the weekend after we are. Such devestating news and such horrible timing!! My heart is breaking for them. I didn't know her that well, but she has been a friend of my parents for a long time. If you are reading this please say an extra prayer for Jen and Brad and their family.

Shower the people you love with love....

Yay!! This weekend has so much fun in store!! Bridal shower is tomorrow with so many of my fabulous friends and family - some who I have not seen in years!! My sister and niece will be attending via webcam (isn't technology fabulous?) I can't wait!! After the party I probably will hang with the fam. John is on call so I don't know if he will be able to venture over to Plano or not. Sunday morning he found someone to fill in for him and we are venturing out to the Arboretum to do our engagement pictures. I know the wedding is 22 days away. Why are we just doing them now? Well - because we hadn't had time to and we wanted to do them before the wedding. :) We also are going to do a little video montage thing. I think some people play those at the reception or whatever but I think I'll just treasure it as a keepsake for us. I'm making a slideshow for before the wedding. So this weekend is all about our wedding!! How fun!! The excitement is building!! Yay!!

A proud auntie brags....

Check out those dimples!!

This is my FAVORITE!! Such a beautie!!

This expression makes me giggle!!

Sleeping Beauty

I found my feet!!


This proud auntie has to brag on her beautiful niece!!

25 days!!

Days are just counting down!! :) I think I have almost everything purchased now!! Maybe a new outfit or two - we'll have to see. Need to get our rings appraised and see if John's ring is engraveable. 3rd fitting tomorrow and hair trial on Thursday!!

A Win!

They won a game!! John's team finally won a game!! Way to go guys!! John got several really great hits and did a great job pitching. He picks up softball again in a few weeks with a different group of guys ... so this has been great practice!

26 days

2 big checks this weekend and both happened at the same time. I was going to go veil shopping this weekend. I mentioned this to one of my besties and she suggested Craigs list. What could it hurt - I started poking around on there Friday before John got home and found a lady who had exactly what I was looking for - the same one I had been eyeing on David's Bridal. To make it even better - she was selling a headpiece that was mostly pearls with some Swarovski crystals - which is also exactly what I was looking for. We got both for what we probably wouldn't have even been able to get the veil for. What a deal!!

After that, Mom and I went shopping at a local mall looking for the right jewelry. I already had in my head what I wanted it to be. I guess I'll just have to get the ones I wanted online. We did have another exciting find though. Well - exciting for us anyway because we saved a lot of $. Carlton Cards is going out of business at the end of the month in this mall. Everything was 75% off!! I was able to get 200 Thank You cards for $13.00!! Wow!! Amazing!!

I love good deals!! :)

Happy Valentines Day!!

John had roses delivered to the apartment yesterday! They are beautiful and came with a very sweet note that earned him a few brownie points! 29 days until we are married!! Less than a month now!! 4 weeks from tomorrow!! Yikes and Yea!! Yikes because there is still sooo much to do and Yea!! for obvious reasons! I wish that it weren't to some extent a numbers game. I wish that anyone who wanted to would be able to come. We invited too many people and now are having to hope that the count comes in lower. Kinda stressful but we did it to ourselves! This weekend Mom and I are going to find a veil, headpiece/pins and jewelry for me. I have another fitting on Wednesday and a hair trial on Thursday that I need the hair accessories for. Pray I can find something beautiful and relatively inexpensive. I wish my sister's veil wasn't preserved with her dress because it would be great to be able to borrow hers. Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend celebrating the joy of loving and being loved.

One room down

We spent a lot of yesterday unpacking (well - I did - John was building me the cabinet to put a lot of the kitchen stuff in. So the kitchen is done. Yay!! Now on to finding a home for the other boxes piled in the dining room. Hopefully we can knock through some of that tonight (and maybe tomorrow night if John's softball game is rained out as it sounds like it might be). It would be so nice not to live in an obstacle course anymore. Of course the fur babies will probably miss sitting on top of the boxes in the middle of everything - but se la ve. :)

Angriest Bride in the Metroplex

Isn't that funny? I didn't even seem mad in the interview.... It ran at 4, 6, and even headlined at 10!! At 4 it was funny because the story was tucked behind an exclusive on the rise in sales of granny panties. Hee hee hee!!

I'm on TV!!

Well - I reported the reception venue to ABC and NBC news - NBC contacted me and wanted to come out and interview me! Yikes - I thought he was just going to get an audio of my voice - but he videotaped me. Yuk! Hopefully this will help us getting our $ back. It will air today at 4pm.

TGIF!!!

I don't know that I have been more ready for a weekend than I am today. This week was a doozy!! I have a second dress fitting tomorrow and then we go to our new venue to add our signatures to the contract and take a tour of the property. Because we were working, we weren't able to see it before we had my parents sign - just the online pictures. The excitement is back! I can't wait for March 14th!! :)

YAY!!! SUCCESS!! WE HAVE A VENUE!!

It's perfect! It's official! It's even more beautiful than what the evil Summit would have been. They even include the chair covers and bows which I wanted initially but unfortunately weren't in the budget. It's all included. Now if we could only get our $ back from the thieves, we would be all set.

If anyone knows anyone who was affected by Summit Ballrooms untimely departure or is planning a wedding in the DFW area, I now have a list of vendors that I would recommend in a heartbeat based on their incredible willingness to help out those of us fielding this curveball. Leave me a comment if you would like me to email their information out to you.

A few other lessons learned: 1) If you pay vendors with your credit card, you can have recourse through your credit company if the company does not honor it's contract. (Dave Ramsey would not approve though ;-) ) 2) Wedding insurance may not be such a bad investment - though it may not allow you to recoup all of your monies(some is better than none, though right?) 3) Listen to what other brides have to say about vendors/venues. (Though everything I heard about the Summit was great at the time) 3) Ask questions - LOTS of questions....

One step closer...

Well we have 2 beautiful options with 2 wonderful facilities that are willing to work with us. Drawing up final numbers will help determine which one it is. It seems that people in this whole industry are as sickened (well - maybe not to the same degree) by this horrid company as we are and have bent over backwards helping brides affected by it to network for replacements. Some have even helped to make phone calls along with us. Our wonderful friends and family and even online friends have offered wonderful suggestions. I've heard of some brides who were left with only a week or two before their weddings. I'll feel much better once we have a signed contract, but until then.....it looks promising...keep praying it through!! :)

a small glimmer....

Ok - so we have a meeting tonight at 6 to check on this one venue that could be a possibility. Say a prayer or two or three!

No answer yet...

I feel like I'm losing my mind. I've realized in the last 24 hours though -that there are still compassionate people out there and that I have the absolute best friends in the world!! Not that I didn't realize that previously but it's like everyone is networking trying to help us figure out how to get this all resolved. No answers yet....working on it still. 38 days and counting...Yikes!!

WTH?? No Reception??

I'm so frustrated and sad right now. I took off the afternoon to go get fitted for my wedding undergarments. On the way back home, I stopped by the post office to get my mail. A letter from my reception venue - oh they must be wanting to confirm our final meeting seeing as the wedding is in 39 days....but NOOOOOO this letter was a half-assed apology saying that they had gone out of business. No signature - no real promise to repay our money - just kind of a we "hope to" but don't know when non committal crap. What do we do now? We have 39 days to find a venue that will hold our reception. The dj and catering were booked with this as well. When mom called the dj tonight, he didn't even have us on the books!!! He was very accomodating though and worked something out. So now we have music back - just no where to hold it and find out tomorrow about the food. After we finished moving on Sunday I was finally starting to get excited and be a little less stressed. Why? I know in the grand scheme of things - it's not that big a deal - but it's our wedding - and we had it planned so nicely. It was such a pretty venue. Now - what do we do? Will we get our $ back? What are our options? I'm still kind of in shock. John is more mad than sad because of all the money and because of how upset I am. I guess it doesn't help that it's that time of the month where my hormones are running crazy. I'm not even to the point of being mad yet (I'm sure that will come) I'm just flustered at how this can possibly turn around. I feel bad too because it's not fair that my parents or us have to put out any more money!! Well I guess I'm going to go try to lay down and fall asleep. Pray we find out some good news tomorrow.