The Wedding Dress Saga- Part 1

Today begins part 1 of The Wedding Dress Saga. Why a saga, you ask? Oh...you will see.

Just a note before I begin- If you get nothing else out of this post, I hope to at least persuade you of 1 thing- do not buy your wedding dress from Walker's Eternity Bridal and Prom.

I will try to keep this as brief as possible, but I make no promises.

Basically, I ordered my wedding dress back in March. They told me that since it was being made in China, the earliest time they could ship it in would be 9 weeks. It was due to arrive last Tuesday. That was cutting it close as it is, because my bridal pictures were scheduled for 8 days after the dress was due to arrive, and I still probably needed alterations to be done. I called Tuesday to verify that it had arrived. No answer. I left a message. Called again Wednesday, no answer, left a message. I did this for 4 days. I went by the store, where the lights were out, door locked, with a sign posted on the door that the store would no longer be staffed during it's regular hours. This is a direct quote from the sign- "To better serve you more personally, we will be here by appointment only. Call today to make an appointment!"

...ok, explain again HOW exactly this BETTER serves me?!?!?

Well, I did call...AGAIN, and guess what? Their inbox was full. Bad sign. Very bad sign.

Well, I did what any bride suddenly without a wedding dress would do- I panicked. I called the Better Business Bureau, who didn't have any information on the company other than its address and store phone number. My grandma made my grandpa call all the James Walkers (name of the owner) in the phone book. Still, nothing.

Several days later, sitting at dinner, it finally occurred to Mitch and I to mention this dilemma in our prayers over the food. Not five seconds after we said "amen", we get a call from the dress company. No, my dress has not yet arrived. Yes, my dress is still in China. Yes we have been having communication problems with China...for two months now. No, we don't know exactly when your dress will be done....in fact, we're not even sure if it's even been started...

Wow. So explain to me again why you couldn't have notified me of this TWO MONTHS AGO when it actually became a PROBLEM!??! And just think of the 30 other girls that you've screwed over in the process!! Really, what were you THINKING??

Well luckily the guy had enough sense to offer me "an appointment" the next day, when I could come in and pick out a "Plan B" dress. I will admit that after this phone call, I lost some sleep over the whole thing. I was convinced I wouldn't find a dress in time that I actually liked...I didn't want to just have to settle on any old dress because I didn't have a choice.

Well miracles do happen. At my "appointment", I found a dress in stock that I had almost picked over the first one. It's a beautiful ivory lacy dress, and I like some things about it better than the one I ordered. It does need some very drastic alterations, and parts of it almost need to be rebuilt, and as luck would have it, the seamstress that they called in to deal with the catastrophe is very experienced...to say the least. She is French, and earlier in her career sewed for Chanel in Paris...yeah. Why she is in Provo, UT of all places...I have no idea, but am I ever grateful!! At least someone around this establishment is competent!! If anyone can have this dress rebuilt in two weeks for my bridals, it's her!!

Stay tuned to hear if my original dress even makes it here before the wedding. And if these idiots are going to make me pay for this second dress. And if they go out of business...(if they do...I won't feel bad).

Life

Turns out wedding planning isn't very fun. At least, it's not MY personal cup of tea. It doesn't help that my job only gave me 10 hours of work a week this semester, so some days, I get feelin pretty low. These are some things that have considerably brightened my day recently:

Mitch graduated from the Weber State Police Academy!! He is now SFO, BCO, and LEO certified! Also he got an Outstanding Fitness award for being the best of the best at their physical training requirements! What a stud :D I am so proud of him for enduring to the end, even though it was really hard with him living in Ogden 5 days a week for 4 months. I have nothing against Ogden, I'm sure it's a great place, but it has been so, so nice having him in Provo, where we get to see each other every day!!


Unfortunately, the police academy hasn't been the best job solution we thought it would be. Mitch has applied to a LOT of police departments across the valley (I lost count it's been so many), and unfortunately with all the funding cuts, no one is hiring. Luckily he is able to keep his certification for 4 years as long as he keeps up with minimal training requirements, so hopefully when the economy turns around, he will be able to start working for a police department while finishing school. In the meantime, he has been job hunting like crazy for months. Our prayers were finally answered this week when Nuskin hired him on as a security guard. It's not his ideal job, but we are grateful for anything at this point, being poor and almost newlyweds. We are so grateful to our families and friends for their prayers and encouragement :)


Yesterday I was able to go to the 'flower lady' as I call her (I'm so bad I can't remember her name), and get a quote for the bridal bouquet that I want. This is THE ONE that I found online that I want. This is the first thing that I have found for the wedding that I absolutely LOVE. Luckily, she is a very talented woman and said she could replicate it no problem. Being very much a flower person, I cannot wait to have this bouquet and take picture after picture with it!! Now I just need to figure out what I am doing for flowers for my bridals...


Lastly, my day also was brightened yesterday when my grandma found this little guy hiding in the bushes of her front yard. It is clear that he is, or was, somebody's pet, because he eats lettuce out of my hand and loves to be held. Mitch and I went and put up signs with his picture on the mailboxes around the neighborhood, hoping that someone will call to claim him before my his welcome wears out. My grandpa was ready to kick him out of the house last night, but luckily my grandma and I prevailed, and 'Bunny' was able to stay the night in the garage. Aw he looks so sad in that picture hahaa. I call him a boy, but really we are still unsure of his/her gender, hahaa.

When Pigs Flew

I hate hiking the Y. Hate hate hate. I might add that in general I really enjoy hiking, just not when I feel like I am actually scaling a mountain. I feel like switchbacks were invented for a reason, and it doesn't seem that difficult of a concept to use them judiciously in designing a hiking trail. The people who designed the Y did not have me in mind when they constructed its path. The path is so, so steep, which not only tires me out in less than 3 minutes, but also renders me completely unable to breathe in about the same amount of time (I was never officially diagnosed with cold-induced asthma, but I know I have it haha. I swear. It runs in the family.)

For all of the above reasons, I have hiked this trail exactly one and a half times, and I never thought I'd see the day when I would willingly hike the Y again, much less suggest it as an activity. This in and of itself should testify of how Mitch helps me achieve things I never thought possible! Cheesy, but whatever :D

After working at 8 am on a Saturday, I was feeling very lethargic and wanted an outdoorsy, active, pick-me-up activity, and I suddenly found myself suggesting to Mitch that we hike the Y. So we packed up some water and headed off to the mountain.

Spoiler alert: I survived.

I had my fair share of struggles, and I'm sure I slowed Mitch down a lot, BUT with him holding my hand every step of the way, I made it, and without falling down the slippery gravel trail too!!! I even surprised myself :D

the foreboding trailhead...dun dun dun


just starting out. so stylish, sportin the jacket tied around the waist...


probably only about 1/4 of the way up the mountain. notice how red my face is in every picture hahaha.


success!!


oh provo.


a little tuckered out :D


what a stud.


yesssss

Here Comes Peter Cottontail...

Mitch and I celebrated our first Easter together this year! We had a lot of fun creating our own new traditions; nothing super fancy...but he had never decorated Easter eggs before, so I insisted that we do that this year haha. Here are some of the highlights:

Mitch putting the final touches on his egg. I found this cool new foil method at walmart that makes the eggs turn out all shiny...


...like this!


We hid each other's eggs in different rooms of my apt Saturday night, which we weren't allowed to go into until he got there Sunday morning. Then we took turns looking for our eggs hahaa. Mitch likes taking pictures of me...


ooh there was a tricky one hiding in the food cupboard!


He was especially proud of this one. I made him get it down ahaha.


My eggs were pink and purple, and his were blue and yellow. We got all our decorations at the dollar store, bet you wouldn't have guessed! Look how cute our baskets are!!

Artsy Fartsy

Here are some of my artistic endeavors from my elementary art class. I've decided I really like drawing!

rose watercolor


rose drawing.


Mitch's profile.


my face. it is SO much harder to draw your own face than somebody else's.


my hand.


hockey goal/stick. I framed this and gave it to Mitch :)

My First Encounter with the BYU Police

Mitch would be so proud of me- today I called in a suspicious-looking guy to the police. You might think that is a bit presumptuous of me to label someone as suspicious and then report them to the police. Well listen up and judge for yourself.

As I was opening up the computer lab in the Wilkinson center today at 7 am, a weird, and I do emphasize weird, old man in his late sixties appears around the corner, talking loudly to himself, staring at me with a freaky gleam in his eye, and actually scheming with his hands. When I say "scheming with his hands" I mean, that motion that you do with your hands when you're scheming, not twiddling your thumbs, but similar. Hopefully you get what I mean.

Anyway when I made eye contact with this old man, my heart went up into my chest. I have never felt so terrified in my life. Maybe you can relate better if I tell you that his whole demeanor was very Gollum-esque. In case you can't remember how extremely creepy Gollum is, let me refresh your memory.



It is scary how much he reminded me of Gollum. His very thin face, thin hair, and freaky gleam in his eye, not to mention, the fact that he was staring at me and TALKING TO HIMSELF, quite loudly and unashamedly while scheming with his very thin and bony hands, was enough to send me bolting into the lab and slamming the door behind me. I have never been so scared in my life. This sounds ridiculous, but the sheer terror I felt after making eye contact with him really convinced me that the man was deranged, even quite possibly possessed. Knowing that a lot of very strange homeless people hang out around the WILK because it's a main bus stop, I figured it wasn't unreasonable to think that he was a crazy homeless man out wandering around. I called the police right after. (I left out the possessed part in my report.) A police officer came down not three minutes later to talk to me about it. He asked me if the man I was referring to was in fact sitting on the bench outside the lab. I said yes, that's the one. The police officer nods his head understandingly, and said, "Oh that's so-and-so. He hangs around here a lot because he catches the bus to get to work at DI. I know him pretty well. He does talk to himself pretty loudly. I'm glad you called it in, he can definitely make people nervous."

hahahhaa he works at DI? Well that explains a lot...have you seen the people that work there? Anyway I did feel a little dumb. But there ya go. I don't know if I'll ever be able to explain that horribly scary feeling that I had when he looked at me, but that's what I did and I'm glad I did it.

The end.

I'm gettin hitched!

Here's how it went. Mitch told me Friday night that he had gone to Zales and they hadn't finished resizing the ring yet, so unfortunately he didn't have it yet. But he wanted to do something fun, so he persuaded me to go up to the canyon Friday night to our spot where we first held hands. It had snowed ALL day the day before, and some of Friday. You can't tell from the picture, but we trudged through 3 feet of snow to get to this campsite. Somehow, we managed to make a fire in a snowy fire pit.


There we were, roasting marshmallows and talking, he said, "I have a question." I immediately got nervous, who wouldn't when you phrase something like that? Then he got down on one knee and did that whole thing, but I admit I was a little confused because he didn't have a ring. I think I gave him a quizzical look, and that's the look he was waiting for. He said, "aha!" and pulled the ring out of his pocket. Then I said yes :)


We got back to my apartment, and my roommates insisted on documenting this memorable night. This is a really weird angle, but I think my face is funny.



My roommates weren't the only ones who wanted to document the occasion...my grandma of course joined in on the fun! Aren't we so cute? We always match on accident.