Cheryl & Chris's Wedding Blog
Friday, June 04, 2004
Chris found a great site for bridesmaids dresses! Ladies, feel free to choose any dress at all on this site!
Thursday, June 03, 2004
FINALLY! Got a hold of the lady at Kauffman's and I have an appointment to register for wedding gifts there on Wed at 6:30 PM. Hopefully this will be easier in person than it is on-line. Talk about decision anxiety! With luck it will resemble the washing machine shopping experience...30 minutes in and out. (Stop laughing everyone)
Ok so today's first bit of good news is that Mike Shaddock agreed to be an usher. So yea! It'll be good to have him in the wedding! He's also trying to sell me his Bianchi, which I'm sort of interested in. So we were both happy when we hung up the phone last night. He leaves for France on Monday, so hopefully he has a great trip!
I talked to the Holiday Inn South County Center in St Louis yesterday. They'll hold 10 rooms at $79/night until Nov 11. If more rooms are needed, they'll honor that price for the additional rooms as well. That's pretty cool, it's a really nice place. It started life as a Sheraton and has niceties like an indoor pool, workout room and business center for those who will need to work that weekend. So they're sending me some paperwork, and after I get that back to them, people can just call and say that they're with our wedding party to reserve the rooms. I'm also going to look into the Oak Grove Inn which is across the street. It's a budget motel, but still reasonably decent. It runs $50/night. Both of them are near restaurants and about 15 min from the Church, 20 from the reception, so hopefully this works out for everyone!
This past weekend Chris and I were talking about his coaching company, Cycle-Smart. They had worked up a schedule for me last year when I was preparing for the tri. I was telling him that I felt like I needed some of that external push to really get into a good exercise routine, and that I want to do tris again next year, so I'd probably get Cycle-Smart to do another level 4 plan then. I've been frustrated with the lack of workouts I've gotten in the last 6 weeks due to the general chaos and just not feeling well. Anyway, last night I get a call from Kurt at Cycle-Smart. First of all, I thought that it was someone else, whom Chris had bumped heads with. Secondly, I thought John at Cycle-Smart had flaked out and sent him my stuff from last year on accident. So after a few minutes, I sluffed him off, and when I hung up the phone, told Chris "Guess who I just talked to?" At first he thought it was the same person that I was thinking of. Then I said something about John must have sent him my paperwork from last year because he was asking about a level 4. At which point it came out that he had set up the coaching as a surprise for me. :) We called Kurt back, and after I finished giggling, discussed timing on this year's exercise plan. He's putting together a schedule with a core of 3-4 days a week with options depending on how I'm doing with time. So if I'm road tripping on a weekend (who...me?) or bogged down by either work or wedding, it gives me some flexibility. I'm psyched, I should get the plan next week. Turns out Kurt has just gotten married 2 years ago, and his wife did her first tri last year, so it's cool that he's personally been in the same situations. That makes me feel really comfortable with him as a coach!
Hope all is well!!
cb
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
Ok, so I've not quite taken the plunge, but I have slipped my toe into the water. I know there's been some consternation about my not having registered yet, and I've been a bit frustrated at the "speed" of Kauffman's. So I went ahead and started setting up the JC Penney's online gift registry. I'm not sure yet if this is accessible in the stores, I'm still trying to figure this crazy thing out. There's not much on there yet - 13 items as of right this instant. Ah, it feels good to get this task started! It also feels weird to me to put this list together. I cringe every time I add something over $10, which would be, um, 10 times out of 13. But I know I'll love getting this stuff, so hey, I'm willing to be tough. :)
Oh PS - Fr Tom has gotten the official okee dokee to officiate at the wedding. Yippeeeeee! Chris wants to pay him $10 to quote from the Princess Bride at the wedding.
Well there may be 50 ways to leave your lover according to Paul Simon, but that's NOTHING compared to the number of ways to say "We're getting hitched...y'all come". Yesterday went through the invite stuff trying to start getting my act together so that I can consider ordering them. After much sorting, I'm down to 19 different possible options. And that's just wording options, that doesn't include whether I want lined envelopes, and if so what color should the lining be, or what color and font the writing should be, or the wording on the reception cards. I suspect this is the point at which brides start to become separated from their sanity. It's easy to say "That big beautiful church over there...I want to get married there!" But having to choose between colors of writing and fonts on the invitation??? Argggghhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
Woohoo! I just got an email from my friend Christina and it turns out she can give us a really good discount on the wedding invitation that Chris and I liked. Suh-weet!
cb
Howdy gang! We're back from Bowling Green, a very nice trip. We had a chance to celebrate Mother's Day belatedly with Chris' Mom, I went to Fr Tom's ordination (he's safely a priest now!), had dinner with both sides of the family & Ralph (well he's pretty much family anyway), got a short bike ride in, and watched the dogs play until they couldn't lift their heads any more. So it was a really super weekend, very relaxing.
The Moms had a chance to talk mother-of-the dresses at dinner Sunday night. Normally this is a good thing, but apparently, in Becky's words, they've decided there's no reason that they can't be fashionable. So they'll be baring midriffs for the wedding. Chris and I have decided that they're not allowed to sit next to each other at dinner EVER AGAIN.
Another nice result from the weekend is Mom brought her choral book, so Becky looked through and found some songs that overlap between the Baptist & the Catholic traditions. When it comes time to plan the service, I plan on leaning on that list quite a bit!
And the other big check on the task list is Becky has Favazza's Rose on the Hill reserved for the Rehearsal dinner and a list of what's going to be on the menu. I'm really looking forward to that meal. For those of you non-St Louisans, the Hill is the Italian area of St Louis, and you can get some really fine meals there. Favazzas has a fabulous reputation, so bring it on! I plan to be a fat bride after Friday night! I know it's been a lot of work for Becky to put this all together so....Thank you! In case I didn't say it this weekend!
Registering for gifts is turning out to be a pain in the neck. Tried to call the woman from Kauffman's again this AM, and she won't be in until Thursday at 11AM. This week would have been bad for registering gifts anyway, but if I don't have an appointment there by the time we leave for Philly on Friday, I'll check some other store out. 2 weeks is plenty of time for this.
Hope everyone had a fabulous and safe weekend!
cb
