Cutting a rug

In other furnishing news, we have a rug!  It's zebra print.  Yep, zebra print.  It will go great with the red couch, black reading chairs, and Army of Darkness poster. 

Sofa away!

Couch acquired!  We bought a couch from someone at the church--a red cotton twill couch.  It only cost us $100!  Not too shabby, when you figure that new furniture often costs into four figures.  We moved it Sunday in my little car, with half the sofa sticking out the back.  Luckily, it's only like a mile from the place we got the couch to our new place, so it worked out fine.  So excited!!!

On the shelf

Today we bought bookshelves.  Four bookshelves, to be exact.  Two tall ones and two shorter ones.  Total cost: $116.  See, there's this national bookstore and they declared bankruptcy a few months back and are closing a bunch of area stores.  Which means the stores are selling everything. Including their solid wood bookshelves.  Bingo!  Now we just have to pick them up . . .

Suit yourself

We got his suit!  It's a dark grey windowpane plaid!  It was a bit of a challenge, since the places we looked either wanted $500-$700 for a suit (Men's Wearhouse) or didn't carry his size (Macy's).  Finally, on a recommendation from the salesman at Macy's, we headed to Jos. A. Banks. We have a winner!  They had a couple suits in his size, and some on sale!  We got a suit for a great price and he got fitted for alterations real quick and we even ordered a tux jacket rental for his dad (to go with his black jeans and black cowboy boots, obvi).

Now we just have to find shirts, ties, and pocket squares.  Grr.

You're invited!

We ordered our invitations today!  201 postcard invitations that will be printed, address, stamped, and mailed by one company!  And another 100 to be sent to us for us to hand-deliver/stamp and mail as we hear back from others.  And it actually ended up being CHEAPER than we'd budgeted.  Praise the LORD. 

Oh, AND they are actually kind of fun--superhero cartoons.  Good times.

Tick tick tick tick

My ring:  engraved and acquired.
Used books for favors:  acquired.
China pattern: selected.
Fancy china: being donated by a friend.
Fancy crystal: acquired.
Invitation re-design: nearly complete.
Head: exploded.

Stairway to heaven?

Newly discovered awesome thing about our apartment:  The front hall closet is really stairs.  They don't go anywhere--the doorway between the first and second floors was closed off long ago, and now there's even flooring laid down above.  But the stairs themselves remain.  They go right up to the ceiling.  Technically, it makes the closet smaller, but it also makes the closet more awesome.

Ring-a-ding ding

I almost forgot--I ordered my ring!  It's just a plain white gold half-round band, 3mm wide, polished finish.  My engagement ring has a very low setting, so the diamond bands are too tall to fit under it comfortably (in addition to being either too expensive or too cheap looking), and even the comfort bands are a little thick.  The half round lies nice and flat against my finger, and lies almost flush with the engagement ring.

Anyway, it should arrive March 24.  At which point we will have it engraved.  Yee haw!

I finally said YES to the dress

The Nordstrom dress is the winner.  I still have to buy the tulle or whatever so they can add a petticoat and have a bit of something peeking out of the bottom to add some length.  But that's the dress I'm going with.  The search is over.  Thank God.

 (It's cuter in person.)

Wrong-a-ding

This past weekend, we took his ring in to get engraved.  Last night, we went to pick it up (and also to order my ring, since I finally decided what I want).  Except that instead of engraving what we'd asked for--I John 4:19--they'd engraved it with I John 4-19.  A dash instead of a colon.  What?  And then the engraving was upside down!  See, his ring has a cross on the outside.  An actual cross with a top and a bottom--not one of those that looks the same from any direction.  If you set the ring down on a flat surface, so that the cross is right side up, the engraving is upside down.  Here, maybe this will help.

Make sense?  Anyway, I told them it was wrong and they agreed to fix it, but then they called this morning and said they can't fix it and that they don't usually engrave titanium rings and shouldn't have accepted it in the first place.  The assistant manager said they would reimburse me for the cost of a new ring and would refund the money we paid for the engraving.  I asked if I could have that in writing (you know, before I went and bought a new one), and she decided to call the manager.  Now they're trying to see if they can fix it.  But if it doesn't look right, I will ask them to reimburse us for a new one.

[UPDATE:  They say they fixed it.  We shall see.  We'll pick it up this weekend, but if it's not right, they're gonna be reimbursing us for the cost of the ring AND the engraving.]

April Showers

The time has come to talk wedding showers.  My roommate has generously agreed to plan the menu, and my small group leader is going to find us a location and plan the shower itself.  We were talking this weekend about possible dates, and they asked me if my mom was coming.  Which never even occurred to me, since, you know, she lives like 4 states away.  But it was a good question, so I asked her if she wanted to come . . . and she does!  Which is really exciting!  She hasn't been able to be here for any of the other wedding stuff--dress shopping, venue hunting, etc.--so it would be really nice if she could come for the shower.  Especially since the shower might end up being the same weekend as my hair and makeup consultations, in which case she could come to that, too!

I'm trying not to get my hopes up, because, well, it's not settled yet.  But it would be so nice to have her involved!  It's been hard, since she and my maid of honor (and my honorary bridesmaid) are far away and thus can only offer limited help.  It would be great to have some traditional mother-daughter moments in this process.

Order out of chaos

Last night we (sort of) figured out our Order of Service.  Check it:

Prelude:  "Blest Be the Tie that Binds" (instrumental--piano)
Seating of the Family: "How Great Thou Art" (instrumental--piano or guitar)
Entrance of the Bridal Party: "Come Thou Fount" (instrumental--piano)
Processional:  "Old 100th" (Doxology) (instrumental--piano)
Call to Worship:  Psalm 118:1
Welcome
Prayer
Declaration of Purpose
Question of Intent
Giving away of the Bride
Hymn: "Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy"
Scripture:  Ephesians 5:21-33
Prayer: Lutheran Prayer
Hymn:  "Rock of Ages"
Hymn:  "How Firm a Foundation"
Scripture:  Hosea 2:16-20
Hymn:  "Jesus Paid It All"
Scripture:  I John 4:7-19
Sermon
Exchange of Vows
Exchange of Rings
Prayer: Puritan Marriage Prayer
Pronouncement
Recessional Hymn:  "To God Be the Glory"
Benediction:  "The Lord's Prayer" (acapella men's quartet)
Postlude:  "Here Is Love"

I still need to figure out the various instrumental pieces for the prep music and after the postlude.  But, yeah, that's what we have so far. 

Hymn and her

I think we've picked some of the songs for our wedding.  The processional will likely be Wagner's Bridal Chorus (the HTB is a big fan) or Old 100th (best known as the melody for the Doxology).  I think the other hymns we'll use are:  Come Ye Sinners Poor and Needy, Rock of Ages, How Firm a Foundation, and Jesus Paid It All.  I think To God Be the Glory will be the the recessional.  We're still figuring out how to work other hymns in--lots will likely be instrumentals during the prelude or postlude, like Blest Be the Tie That Binds, How Great Thou Art, Come Thou Fount, Here Is Love, O the Deep Deep Love of Jesus, etc.  I really like the acapella men's quartet arrangement of The Lord's Prayer, but the HTB really doesn't like special music, so we might have it as a benediction.  And he really wants an instrumental version of White Wedding (yes, the Billy Idol song), so I've commissioned the Bruh-thair to create a church-appropriate arrangement.  The sermon text will be I John 4:7-19, and we'll read Ephesians 5:21-33, of course.  Not sure what the other passage will be.

Progress has definitely been made (miraculously, since we started with a list of like 100 hymns, then narrowed it 50, and now we're just steps away from a final Order of Service).

The Keymaster

Yesterday, the HTB picked up the keys to our new place.  So exciting!  The landlord is having the floors touched up and is repainting the kitchen and fixing the garbage disposal, so we won't really start moving stuff until next week, but still, so exciting!!!

Freebie

I almost got a free dress.

See, a friend of mine was engaged a while back ago (like, a while), but ended up calling off the wedding.  However, by the time she broke things off, she'd already bought a marked-down dress at a going-out-of-business sale, so there was no way for her to return it.  So it's just been sitting in her closet for several years.  Because she is awesome, she offered to give it to me for free, and last night I trekked over to her place to try it on.  Sadly, it was a little too small and wasn't really my style anyway.  But still, it was very cool of her.  We ended up chatting for like 2 hours and it was totally fun.  So it's looking like the Nordstrom dress will be the winner.  And I found out yesterday that the dress came in, so I'll need to go in and meet with the alterations people.  Getting close!