I spent the last weekend in a lot of pain and did a fair amount of sleeping. Needless to say, the Save the Dates didn’t go out. I’m going to get them done and out this weekend. I did manage to go try on my dress and pick a bridesmaid dress that all the bridesmaids actually like. I consider that a major accomplishment.

On the downside of things, my rings came back from the shop and we tried to pick them up last night. While the wedding band looked good, my engagement ring was flattened on one side and very thin where the split had been. Dixie, who helped us last night and every other time we’ve been in, was just as bothered as I was and made arrangements for the ring to be fixed at another shop. She commented that she would be talking to the Kay Jewelers District Manager and the District Repair Manager. I hope she does. It’s sad that we’ve had these problems and it really shouldn’t have happened. If it weren’t for her being genuinely helpful and concerned, I’m sure I’d be pretty irritated at this point. Good customer service carries a lot of weight.

So, all told, things are good despite my back and carrying a large bottle of Tylenol everywhere I go. I’ll feel better when the Save the Dates and the move are done this weekend. I think I’ll take an afternoon off later this month just to recuperate from the craziness and enjoy our additional 300 square feet.

Let’s talk about the ring, shall we? My fiancé bought the ring in Michigan but the warranty includes resizing, etc through the Kay Jewelers family of stores. So, that’s where we went. We took the rings in to be sized in early January and two and half weeks later, they were ready. When we picked them up, the engagement ring looked fine, but the wedding band had a nick in it that looked like someone had hit it with a screwdriver blade. When I pointed it out, they took it back to be “buffed out,” but when that didn’t fix it, they swapped it out. No problem, seemingly, and no issues. Less than a week later, I’m fiddling with my ring and my nail catches on the back of the band. I look and the band is split all the way through. My nail had caught on the split. When I took off the ring, the band didn’t even look circular anymore. Back to the store.

The woman who assisted us before seemed genuinely horrified at the band splitting. The gentleman who helped us suggested that the soldering had split. The ring, obviously, is back in for repairs and reshaping. I asked how they would fix it and he said they could fix it via soldering. Hopefully, that’s true. I’ll definitely be checking it carefully. It bothers me that we’ve already had to take advantage of the warranty twice and I’ve been able to wear my ring for less than a week. Blah.

So, enter the iPad. It’s shiny, right? It’s a giant shiny gadget calling out to me and my insatiable geekery. But y’know what? Not seeing it. If I were a college/grad student and all my text books could go on the thing complete with graphics, maybe. But even then, the inability to multi-task is really capping my enthusiasm at lukewarm. No multi-tasking, no Flash, no HDMI, no widescreen movies, no webcam, no cam at all, and an additional $30/mo bill for me to have access to the web on the fly? No.

I can get on-the-go multimedia on my iPhone, which is also, shockingly, a phone. I’m already paying for it and adding a dataplan for the added functionality makes sense. My Kindle offers me instant gratification but doesn’t make me pay for it. Granted, it’s black and white at the moment, but that covers 99.9% of the books I read. My Kindle, which isn’t the DX, fits in my purse nicely – a not large purse. It is similar in size to a paperback. I’m not going to start carrying a bigger bag just to fit an iPad, which I can only use periodically whilst out and overlaps the functionality of my iPhone which I purchased from you previously. Carrying and paying for both monthly seems silly. And it certainly isn’t like the iPad can replace my MacBook Pro. I can’t very well play WoW on the iPad, can I?

Unless there are some developments between now and release, I won’t be in line and I won’t be buying one in the near future. I’m an Apple fan, don’t get me wrong, but either I’m not the target audience for this particular product (while I am for the vast majority of their products) or they missed the boat a tad on this one. Bummer, that.

Oh also, my wedding dress came in! This is unrelated, but more exciting for me than the tepid iPad news.

For now, I’m simply happy to have survived. I’ll worry about things I still need to do tomorrow. In the meantime, I’m playing around with Bing’s recipe niftiness. Type in an ingredient and get a recipe. Clever and definitely a cool search enhancement. Bing is definitely making a play. They’re additions are clever and really showcase the power of intelligent search.

And in unrelated news, I really want one of these.

Let’s see, I’ve…

- Chosen an invitation vendor and finalized the Save the Dates,
- Mostly finalized booking music,
- Still haven’t wrangled the bridesmaid dress issue.
- Bought wedding shoes (and a back-up, more comfortable pair for the reception – <$50 combined cost. Hooray)
- Met the entirety of his family
- Continued my trend of sleep deprivation

Today, I’m going to actually finish the book I stared nearly a month ago. We’ll see how that goes.

So, I was still hunting and finding all the recommendations I could for print shops and presses and whatever else. Then, I saw a blog post talking about stationary from Minted.com. I browsed through all their invitations, looking longingly, as always, at the letterpress and found…

The Mod Victorian Frame invite

I have, once again, ordered a sample and have all my toes and fingers crossed that it will prove to be significantly closer to what I want. I also ordered a sample of the La Fete Save the Date (in chartreuse). They aren’t what I want for an invite, but they’d make a fun Save the Date. I’d love to use one of our engagement photos but I don’t think the timing will work out since I’d really like to send the Save the Dates before the end of the year.

Hopefully, I’ll get the samples this week and they’ll be exactly what I really want! Hopefully.

And they’re all ridiculously expensive.

*sigh*

According to the wedding planner at the restaurant, there’s only one company/person she’s found that can successfully cancel out the noise and do sound for the ceremony. In the midst of all the life stuff, I hadn’t had a chance to call so I turfed the responsibility to my Dad. He called and found out the cost for handling the sound for just the ceremony. It was higher than I expected, I suppose, especially since I’m planning on keeping the ceremony very short and sweet, but it just isn’t something where we can’t skimp.

I’m not sure why the price of this one thing is catching me. It isn’t more expensive the anything else. Perhaps it’s because it’s the one place where I don’t have a choice. It doesn’t mean we’ll have to skimp somewhere else; it just bugs me a little. I suppose I could have the ceremony up on the lawn, but there’s just something extra special about having it next to a creek in the Colorado mountains. I think the extra bit of cost is worth it.

I went with three friends. When we walked in, the samples/sales rack was out and two of them pointed out a two piece dress that I rather liked, but was four thousand sizes too small. Besides, it was slightly poofy and I thought I wanted a simple, as not poofy as you can get dress. I also thought I wanted sleeves. The problem was when I those dresses on, none of them did it for me. So, our salesperson began just bringing in random dresses. She managed to find one quite similar to the one my friends had pointed out in the beginning.

As you can see, it met my need for simple – no decoration, no lace. It was just dress and I adored it. It even had a train which I swore I didn’t want because of the wedding being outdoors but the salesperson showed me how we could bustle it up. Suddenly, it also met my interest in having a neo-victorian feel to the wedding attire. Plus, it went nicely with the fabulous apple green wrap I’d found (and already purchased). The pic is a relatively close approximation of the dress, minus the sash. Focus on the dress part because it really is kind of an awful picture.

Needless to say, my Mom was pleased that I wasn’t wearing something bizarre. She’s still pretty hesitant about the apple green wrap, but I’m hoping to win her over at the first fitting. In the meantime, I need to re-lose ten pounds that I’ve gained since I bought the dress. My bustline was one size (the smaller size). My waist was a middle size. My behind was a bigger size. I went with the middle size; so, I need to actually fit into the dress. That’d be helpful. I should have gotten the bigger size, but oh well, water under the bridge.

As for the price tag, it was surprisingly reasonable. I went into the whole process imagining the worst and not wanting to spend a ridiculous amount of money on a dress. By the time I’m done with alterations, the price tag should be right around $600. I think I did pretty well.

In the myriad of wedding blogs that I’m reading, I see so often that people have someone in the wedding party who is a florist or decorator or wedding planner or just downright craftastic. I am not craftastic. My wedding is in another state so even if I happened to be craftastic, the notion of hauling a ton of anything to Colorado is daunting. My wedding party, also not local to the wedding venue, is not craftastic. My Mom and sister-in-law, who are local, are both scrapbooking sorts but after looking at the cost to make invitations vs. buying them… buying.

Seeing all the amazing and lovely DIY wedding bits and pieces certainly makes me want to be crafty, but alas, I am not. Well, I made a scarf last winter, but rather than trying to be magically and suddenly crafty, I’m investing my energies (and injuries which I typed instead of typing energies and I find amusing) in finding unique and wonderful creations by others. I’m also quite intentionally seeking extra creative license enabled input from those who are creating the variety of crafty things that a wedding entails. Granted, that means I’ve been extremely thoughtful when selecting vendors; I’m placing a lot of trust in their judgement.

So, while I won’t have the wonderful homey creative air that DIY can bring. I will have fostered creative inspiration and given myself room to breathe (and not worry about getting various projects done at the last minute). I think the breathing room is more important to me right now.