The Torrani - Dixon Wedding 5/28/11

This past weekend I watched one of my best friends marry the love of her life in an absolutely beautiful ceremony in a gorgeous church followed by one of the most amazing wedding receptions I have ever attended.  Here is a picture tour of the perfect day :)

Bridesmaids on the way to the church :)

After the ceremony: me, dee, kristy, lauren and jamie

Brandon with his eyes closed.. typical :)

with the MOH, dee :)

Husband & Wife: Danielle & Justin Dixon :)

Brandon & me at the cocktail hour... isn't he handsome :)

During Dee's fabulous MOH speech

the garter toss... and Danielle's pink shoes :)

Best Man and MOH

Dee & Danielle

Cheers to Danielle & Justin!  May they have a long, happy, healthy and wonderful marriage. Love you guys :)

My older sister is better than yours...

Six weeks ago I ordered my wedding dress. I was so excited. I counted down the days until the dress would arrive. I emailed the company at least three times to check on the status of the dress and to double check that I would get my dress on the twentieth of May. I day dreamed about the dress and at night I had wonderful dreams about wearing the perfect dress in the perfect wedding to the perfect man. Then May twenty-third rolled around and I had to wake up and smell the roses.

I was sitting at work when I got a text from Brandon. The package had arrived. My wedding dress had arrived. My dress was here. It was at my house. I could go home and see it and hug it and try it on and be the happiest girl in the world. Eek! I raced home, threw the door open, by-passed the pooches, skipped the smooches and picked up my package. I opened it ever so gently and pulled out my beautiful, perfect, gorgeous… wrong wedding dress. The company sent me the wrong wedding dress. I tried to remain calm. It was similar to my dress, except it wasn’t the right material. It had good intentions. I tried the dress on. It didn’t fit. It was too small. I ordered a ten. I sit here writing this post wearing a pair of size six capri parents. Clearly a ten should have been more than big enough. How was this happening? Cue tears…. Now.

It has been a little over eighteen hours since the horrible event occurred. I am beginning to calm down. I am determined to get the right dress. I have made a list of seven different stores that carry the designer and plan to speak to each and every one of them today. I told Brandon that I am not above taking out a small loan in order to make this happen. In walks Michelle. Little, angry Michelle. Fixer of all problems. Creator of all solutions. She is willing to play let’s make a deal and at this point, I am willing to make a deal with the devil, so making a deal with Michelle doesn’t seem so bad. She will loan me the money to get my dress on several conditions. Hmmm… go on. I must pay her back before her wedding (4/14/12) – I can do that. I have to stop wearing heels when walking across the hard wood floors and out the front door in the morning on the days that she works evenings – I can do that. And her last request – that she gets to beat Hank whenever she wants. Hmm… dream dress – animal control taking Hank away – dream dress – animal control…. Deal!

The moral of the story: She might be little and tiny and a little tiny bit bitchy, but behind that tough "I can and will taze you exterior", Michelle has a heart of gold.  And really, if not for Michelle my dream dress would be just that.  So thank you, Michelle, for making this whole thing possible, keeping me seemingly sane and being the best big sister ever :)

victoria and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad plus one issue.

As Brandon and I get closer and closer to the day that we’re supposed to send out wedding invitations (three weeks!), we have the issue of addressing them and making that horrible decision – who gets a plus one? Do we let so-and-so bring that skanky whats-her-face girl he keeps hooking up with by denies adamantly instead of inviting your friend, joe schmoe? Do we address a family member’s invite to him, his on again off again girlfriend (whom we have never met) who just kicked him out last weekend and his daughter or do we keep it at just family and save ourselves the headache? Do we insist that FP bring Nora the Explorer because it’s funny – but who do we have to kick off the list to make that happen? Do we really want to miss out on them being there so we can laugh the next morning at FP and his date?

A reading from the gospel according to theknot.com says:

This is an age-old debate. It is gracious to allow single guests to bring a date so they won't feel awkward or left out, but if you can't afford the extra guests, it may be even worse to cut people from your guest list just because you can't let them bring a friend. Deal with this problem on a case-by-case basis. If you have unmarried friends and relatives in long-term relationships, you might want to consider inviting their partners. (Even though they're not married, they're committed.) Then, invite your more single friends and relatives without dates rather than crossing them off your wedding guest list altogether. If anyone complains, simply explain your dilemma -- it was important that they be there, but that you couldn't afford to invite dates.

The reason this topic is heavy on my mind is because last night we had what I can only assume is the first of several, “but why don’t I have a plus one?” conversations. I was addressing wedding invites and I got down the list to one of my cousins who has an ever changing relationship status.  I asked him if he was still with his girlfriend (reasonable question, considering I had heard that she had given him the boot the previous weekend) and his response was “as of right now”.  This did not sound very promising. I told him that given the circumstances (i.e. his lack of a firm answer and the fact that neither Brandon nor myself has met this girl), I wanted him to be aware that he would not have a “plus one” for the wedding. For this particular member of the family, having a plus one is seemingly a life or death situation. He said that all weddings allow “single” guests to have a plus one. Wrong - see above response. He said that family should always be able to have a plus one. In my opinion, this is double wrong. If you’re family, then chances are you already know a very good portion of the people in attendance, so you don’t need to have that security blanket of a plus one. To make matters more annoying for me, I know that this particular family member told Brandon, not two weeks ago, that he planned to bring a “slut” to my wedding. I did not address this issue last night.  In response to not being able to bring a plus one, my cousin said “then consider me a plus zero”. Really? Sadly, this response is really not all that surprising from this particular family member. You’re not going to come to the wedding because you can’t bring a date? Sounds like this is a situation where I shouldn’t want this person there at all… even if he is family.  Maybe I should send him the link to this article from theknot.com entitled How to be a Great Wedding Guest and suggest he read the section called "Getting an Invitation"!

Three Dates. One week.

I don’t know how I pulled this off. The stars must have aligned in just the right way. I am going on THREE dates in one week. THREE!! Brandon and I have not gone on three dates in the last three months, but somehow we are going on three dates in one week. Yay!

Last night to close out one of the worst weekends in the history in my life, Brandon took me out for ice cream which we proceeded to take to the park and eat on the bed of his truck :) I got low calorie mint chocolate chip (obviously the green kind). It was absolutely delicious. Brandon got a shake or something with Reese’s and Snickers. It had just rained so it was nice and cool, a little breezy and all kinds of perfect. Oh simply country love, how I have missed you. Thank God summer is just round the corner, so dates like that can be more frequent.

Tomorrow we are going to the movies to see Bridesmaids. RCPD gets free tickets so Michelle is picking them up for us :) I have heard really great things about the movie, so I am really looking forward to it. I plan to take Brandon to a nice dinner beforehand (you know, a little thank you for agreeing to a chick flick) – perhaps a little Gordon Beirsch action. Mmm yum. Then I have two AMC movie tickets that I got from work for my birthday (seven months ago…). So later this week we are going to go see Something Borrowed. I read the book, so I am excited to see it. Nervous too though after what happened with the freaking Lovely Bones. So not only am I going on three dates – two of them are to see chick flicks. Yep, not only is Brandon going to see two movies in theatres, but they are both CHICK FLICKS. Uh huh, yep, I heard it too -- hell is freezing over.

I have absolutely no doubt that this is a fluke and we will go back to spontaneous dates or planned large scale events like concerts, but for now, I will absolutely just relish the idea of three dates in one week while secretly hoping that nicer weather means more date nights with my soon-to-be hubby.
 

Wedding Nightmares

I have had several in the past, but lately they are way out of control.  Wedding Nightmares, woof.  I decided that with only 125 days standing between me and the wedding, this isn't all the crazy.  Somehow Danielle made it until now, less than 30 days to go, to start having hers.  This just goes to show, that I am crazier than people think I am.  This post is dedicated to some of the most frequent wedding related nightmares that I have.

1. Everyone RSVPs no.  Not just obscure family members, everyone -- like even my parents.  Not one person can find time to make it to the wedding.  It's like come on people, we sent the Save the Dates out well in advance, you couldn't make any time for this?   A variation of this is that people RSVP yes and then they just decide not to come, so my mother is pulling strangers off the metro and the street to make the church look full so that maybe, just maybe, I don't realize that my friends and family forgot about my wedding.  Thanks mom :)

2. I forget I am getting married.  Somehow I forget that I am getting married on 9-10-11 and I am not tan (which is some very important to me -- I refuse to be a pasty ghost at my wedding), I don't get my hair or makeup done and my dress never gets alterations done so I am wearing something other than my wedding dress.  Brandon is wearing the horrible camo shorts from junior year of college and chuck taylors.  And very similarly to another wedding nightmare, people also forgot about my wedding.

3.  The night before my wedding, my parents decide that they are in-fact going to go to the Delaware Samboree.  I ask them why they have to go and they tell me that they just cannot miss Barry and Sandy's last Samboree as the Del. state directors.

4. We're at the reception, we've eaten dinner, we've cut cake and we've danced.  I have, for some reason, changed dresses and my bridesmaids have also changed dresses (and for some reason they are wearing floor length brown ones) and all of the groomsmen are drunk and I realize -- we haven't taken a single group picture.  After the ceremony we never took pictures.  I start freaking out.  I ask Michelle if we can walk over to the church and take pictures.  She refuses to change and to help me back into my wedding dress.  I ask Cory (the wonderful photog) and he says no, that the lighting is all wrong now. So we close out the wedding day without any wedding party pictures.

I know as the day approaches, the dreams will get even more ridiculous and absurd and I am ok with that.  I know this is just me letting the countdown get to me.  I know there is no way I am going to forget about my wedding.  I know that there will be people at my wedding.  I know my parents, even though they kid about it, would never miss my wedding (especially since they are paying for it!) and I know, most of all, that Cory, much to Brandon's dismay, would never ever let us get away without taking group pictures. I just need to breathe and take things one day at a time.  Obviously, that is much easier said than done :)