Another thing off The List

Miraculously enough after that last story, the invitations were not only finished, but mailed. I was so happy just to have them gone.

So, on to other things. I ordered a pair of shoes, not sure if they'd be quite what I wanted. But once they arrived and I tried them on, I was in love.  I was ready to try on hundreds of shoes to find the perfect ones (oh okay, it's not that much of a sacrifice - I love shoes!), but it only took one.

Behold the shoes! (Er, shoe, I guess.
There are two of them though, I promise.)

And as a bonus, they're actually comfortable! I didn't wear them around for hours or anything, but you can certainly tell right away when a pair of heels is uncomfortable. Now that I have shoes, I can start figuring out where I'm getting alterations to the dress done, and that'll pretty much take care of me. We'll be focusing on getting Morgan ready this week - he has an appointment to try on his suit and see what color combination we want to go with.

Dear Lord, these invitations are killing me

Some of you who are attending our wedding may have noticed that you have not actually received a formal invitation in the mail just yet.  Well, we are working on that, and we will get them out soon if we both don't die trying.  We decided to design and make them ourselves; it didn't seem like it would be too herculean a task.  Ursula does plenty of paper crafts and is very creative; we both know how to do layouts in Illustrator; it should be a piece of cake, right?  Unfortunately, there was another element that we failed to consider.  The people we would need to print our project for us.

So we have these invitations designed and ready to go.  Taking them to the printer should be easy, they print it on card stock and cut it to size, then we're out the door.  So we take our flash drive down to Office Max.  And then Darryl happens.  Fucking Darryl.  Our encounter started bad;  there was a woman behind the counter when we arrived helping someone else, and a guy who was on the phone.  After standing there for a minute the girl asks if we've been helped, and when we say "no" tells Darryl to get on it.  So he ends his phone call and comes over.  Darryl was a mess; he talked too fast, and had question after question.  But he didn't seem to really listen to our answers.  He didn't understand how our booklets were supposed to be laid out.  Dude, they're a card.  I'm sure you've seen them before.  A page on front, two inside, piece of cake.  But he didn't get it.  Finally we drew him a picture, which he decided to keep in with the order in case he forgot.  Around this time, Ursula had to walk away, but for some reason I stuck with it.  I don't know, I figured I could get through to him somehow.  So the next thing is he decides he can print it on larger paper, to get more on a sheet and save us some money.  Sure, sounds good.  Then he asks again about how the cards are going to be laid out.  Look at the picture, Darryl!  I don't know how long this went on.  I asked him how long it would take, and he would tell me prices.  Finally I got a manager to come over.  He says the order form looks right, and it should be 24 hours.  Then comes the kicker: Darryl asks if the other stores would have the larger paper size to print it on.  They don't actually have it in stock.  Now to be clear, I didn't ask him for the larger paper size; he suggested it.  And now I realize I should have walked away when Ursula did.

Anyway, we took our print job to another shop.  The guy seemed to know what he was doing, but his printer was broken.  He told us to make sure our images were pdfs, submit them online, and he would call us to let us know if they could be printed Friday.  Well, I submitted them, received an automated "your job was submitted" email, and never heard a thing.  They are closed all weekend (I'm not sure about Monday).

So long story short, you will see the invitations soon.  If this process doesn't kill the two of us.

Pictures!

It's not all that easy to have many pictures of yourselves as a couple when it's just the two of you. Your choices are really tripods and timers, cameras held at arm's length, strangers in public places, or mirrors. None of those options make for really great pictures.

If only we could teach Penny to use the camera.

While we were in California over the holidays, Morgan and I asked my daughter Emily if she'd be willing to take some pictures of us together, sort of informal engagement pictures. She was game, so we headed down to Santa Cruz on a gray day. Surprisingly, an offer of going letterboxing and having lunch were enough to bribe her. (But lunch was really, really good. Definitely bribe-worthy, I'd have to say. If you're ever in Santa Cruz, stop by Hula's Island Grill and Tiki Room.)

She did a great job, don't you think? I have more, but you'll have to wait a couple of days until I put them up on Flickr.

It's (almost) Official

The wedding is getting close; we now have an official copy of our marriage license in hand.  So, while we are not actually married yet, it is really just a few signatures on a piece of paper before it's done.  I mean, we are still going to put on a party, but it's exciting to know that we are practically there.

Getting the license was a bit of an adventure in itself.  We had to drive out to Martinez; we took a scenic route through the hills and then headed down to the bay.  The weather kind of stunk, but it was still gorgeous.  At the county clerk's, there was a party getting married in an adjoining room.  It was very cool to see a couple getting married while we were there getting our license.  Definitely fun to see.  While filling out the paperwork for the license, I realized I did not know my mom's original middle name, or what state my dad was born in.  I had to call my grandma to ask, which was a bit embarrassing.  Also, we marked that we would be married by a judge, so they kept asking "Do you actually know a judge?"  We didn't really know what to say except "Of course we know a judge, why else would we mark that?" Apparently people frequently mark that by mistake, so they felt like they had to check.

It feels really good to be getting this close to being married.  I think we had started to get a little exhausted by all of the wedding planning, especially with it colliding with Christmas and other responsibilities, but with this step, I feel like I sort of have a second wind.  I'm really looking forward to celebrating with everyone in March; see you then!