Door-to-door service

We woke up this late this morning (ahhh, the joy of vacation!), had some breakfast... and then I randomly asked Michael if maybe he wanted to take a ride out to look at some limousines for the wedding. I figured we might as well take the opportunity and get something else checked off of the list.

I started my research for limos a couple of months ago, and had called a number of companies. The best prices with the best product, I found, were seemingly through Excel Limousine Service. I actually know one of the drivers (Dave) that works for them, so I called him to ask what he could get us for pricing. He came back with $1,084 for an 18-passenger limo coach, with a five-hour wedding package--and that price includes the tip for the driver and any taxes.

It's expensive (I mean, really... holy shit!), but it was the best price I found from a company I felt was reputable. The only thing was that we didn't want to book it without actually looking at the limo in person. We just wanted to make sure it was as good as it looked on the website. So Michael agreed and we drove the 20-25 minutes to the place to check it out.

And it looked great. Very comfortable, roomy, and "plush" looking. Cushy leather seats, it was very clean, etc. Here are a few photos from the company's website:



Nice, huh? Looks like it'll be very easy to get into and out of, even while wearing a huge dress. I hate getting into and out of regular limos in normal clothes, I can't imagine doing it with a wedding dress.

The people at Excel were helpful and friendly. Oh, and Dave gets to be our driver.

So that was that. We signed a contract. We were required to put down a $250 deposit, which is refundable if we decide we want to cancel (as long as it is more than 60 days from our wedding date). I thought that was nice--if we run into some trouble with budgeting, we can always cut out the limo as a last resort. I don't anticipate such troubles, but it's nice to know that cushion is there since it's not with so many other vendors (understandably so).

This was a very low-priority item for us. We actually could have done without it if we needed to, but we decided it would be a nice way to have the bridal party travel to/from the church, around for photos, and to the reception. It'll keep everyone together and will give us some time to enjoy some champagne and beer with our closest friends right after the ceremony.

I'm not sure we really have too many more things to book--we're almost done. Now if I could just make some more progress on my DIY projects...

7 months to go

Seven months. Exactly seven months from now and we'll be married. We'll probably be living it up at the reception, dancing and drinking with family and friends. At that point, the stress of it all will be over. We'll be leaving for Hawaii the day after tomorrow. Ahhh, what a fabulous feeling that will be!

I'd be lying if I said I'm not starting to feel just a tinge of panic. It's probably irrational, but I just worry about all that is still left to be done. I know I can do it, but it seems like time is, all of a sudden, passing at an amazingly fast rate. I'm afraid I'll blink and all of a sudden it'll be June. Eeeek.

We're currently working on booking a bunch of things: limo, rehearsal dinner, and cake. We need to make an appointment at our reception venue to taste our menu selections. And I'm looking to get a start on making the invitations. That's probably a two-month project in itself, just because they're time consuming and I want to do them little by little so I don't drive myself crazy.

The corner in our dining room that houses our wedding stuff is starting to overflow. The shipment of paper (for invitations) we received last week really sent it over the edge. So now, I'm just trying to get stuff done just to get it out of the house and stored over at my mom's. *sigh* I wish I had an extra room to just throw wedding stuff in and call it "the wedding room." Haha. Seriously, though. It's such a pain in the ass to be working on a project and have it overtake the dining room/kitchen (which is one and the same) table. And it's inconvenient to have to put a project away, take it out again, put it away, etc. so as a result, the dining room table just looks like a constant mess. It's really starting to wear on me! But I don't know what else to do, we just don't have any other place for me to do it, and I don't have any other solution.

So... seven more months of our house looking like a disaster. It'll undoubtedly get worse before it gets better. I hope I can make it through.

Wedding Nightmares

Alright, so I'm a little less than 8 months out... and it's happened.

I've started having wedding nightmares.

I don't wake up in cold sweats with my heart pounding or anything, but they are still NOT fun! I wake up in a panic, thinking... OK, well, that dream was reminding me of something I need to make SURE to do so the nightmare doesn't become a reality.

During the week last week sometime, I had a dream that our photographer didn't take any posed wedding photos of us together, or with our bridal party, with our parents/families, nothing. We hired "photojournalistic" photographers, so yeah, we want to keep that stuff to a minimum, but not to have ANY posed photos was surely not a good thing. So I woke up and thought to myself, "OK, we have to make sure to fill out that 'shot list' the Krackes gave to us!"

Then, on Saturday night, I had a dream about the wedding where all SORTS of things went wrong. First, it was like 20 minutes before the wedding was to start, and Michael came in the room and said to me, "OK, where are our clothes?" (meaning the guys' tuxes). I said, "I don't know, you were responsible for that." Turned out that he had never even ORDERED tuxes, let alone picked them up. Around that same time, I realized that we didn't have any wedding flowers. I had forgotten to arrange for someone to go pick them up for us. So I'm looking at the clock, and the wedding starts in like 5 minutes, and in my dream, I'm thinking... Michael and the guys don't have tuxes, we don't have flowers. AND, I'm not dressed. I didn't even have my stinkin' dress on. What chaos that whole dream was.

So I woke up on Sunday morning, and I had learned the following things from my "nightmare":

1) Make sure to be involved with the tux ordering/pick-up process.
2) Make sure to figure out who will go pick up the flowers since we're not having them delivered.
3) Plan to get dressed at LEAST an hour before the ceremony is to begin. And as a side to that, why was I still at the house 5 minutes before the wedding? Where was the LIMO in this dream? So there's a fourth lesson...
4) Make sure the limo is booked and on time, too.

I'm still 7+ months out. It's scary to think where the dreams can go from here.