Salmon and Souvlaki

Kristen and I had a very successful trip to DC last weekend.  We went to the Aria Dress showroom, tried on a bunch of dresses, and chose the color (fuschia with petal sashes), in silk shatung:

Rachel, Kristen, Meggan and Lisa will each get to choose their own style of dress.  I give all the credit for finding this place to Meggan – she was researching maternity bridesmaid dresses when I was home at Christmas and found the company!

Before going home, we had doughnuts at The Fractured Prune (an awesome doughnut shop that Nik introduced me to) and then went to the Paper Source, a fabulous paper store in Georgetown where I will likely get my paper to make our invitations.  That’s the kind of store where I could easily spend $100 and not even know I was doing it.   Nik – consider yourself fairly warned that paper stores are dangerous places for me!

Our church booked two weddings for 3:00 on June 23rd – ours and one other.  What you might call a HUGE fiasco.  We found out on Monday afternoon.  Basically the other couple didn’t follow the right channels for reserving the church (although it really wasn’t their fault) and then sent their invitations and so initially, the church just told us that we had to change.  This really frustrated me because although I understand that mistakes happen why should we have been the ones to change all of our plans if we’d done the right thing in reserving the church?  But yesterday, the head administrator called me back, acknowledged that the church was in the wrong, told me that our name was in the book first, and that we could have our wedding at the time that we wanted to.

Frankly, just having the church office admit that they made a mistake, apologize for it, and tell me that I could choose made me a lot more willing to change to accommodate this woman’s schedule.  So because of this, we started reconsidering our reception – if we have to get married at noon, then having an outdoor reception in the afternoon of a hot June day doesn’t sound nearly so appealing.  (An outdoor reception at 4:30 in the afternoon is doable – not 1:00.)  And so yesterday morning, one of my co-ESOL teachers offered us her church for the reception.  Nik and I went and looked at it today and we think that it’s perfect.  The room is beautiful (it’s their old sanctuary) and even has a hardwood floor – no need to even rent a dance floor!  In so many ways (parking, bathrooms, air conditioning, kitchen, rentals, and on and on), this place will be much easier and better than our other plan.  (Which was rent a tent and put it up in my co-worker’s backyard.  This also would have been great but just a ton more work, lots more money, and potential problems.)

So all in all, with relatively few tears shed, I think we’ve found a solution that may be superior to what we had in the first place.  None of the details are confirmed yet but I’m confident that they will work out.  The Lord has certainly been faithful to us!

I bought my wedding dress (from Anderson Bridal in Anchorage)!!  It’s actually a really nice bridesmaid dress that I was able to order in white. I love it and the price was really reasonable too (since it was a bridesmaid dress and not a wedding dress).  And that’s about all I can say about the subject because a certain someone also reads my blog and I can’t be spilling too many secrets.  But I’m happy to send pictures to anyone who asks (who’s also approved to see such pictures!).

But, since it’s sad to not have any pictures, here’s a fun one of Nik, Selah, and I crashed on the couch on Thanksgiving Day.  Nik and I were exhausted from our marathon trip to get to Mom’s and I think Selah was faking sleep!