Last Splash

The gene pool could use a little Chlorine.

I'm back, and no longer single. That's right, I left my fiance at the alter and ran off to Siberia where I fell in love with and immediately married an Eskimo. After all, I already had the dress.

Kidding. My wedding was perfect, beautiful, and we were not nervous at all, just excited. Everyone has been telling us that we were the happiest couple they had seen at a wedding in a while! We had an enjoyable, but too-short honeymoon, and are back in the daily grind now.

Best present ever: my sister came over while we were in CA and cleaned our entire home. It was a wreck before and we got to come home to a clean and serene living space. What could be better?

Oh yes, coming home to a fully staffed management team and good reports of their performance all around!

posted by: Cannonball14 at 17:47 | link | comments (8) |
bridezilla

Well, I truly hope that this is my last post before I am a married woman. God knows I can't take anything else at this point without breaking down and crying, and then taking a really long nap. So, the last little bit of drama to share with you: my best friend, who is very responsible and normally calm and even-keel, called me from Harlem 12 hours before she was supposed to board a plane to NC to let me know that her boyfriend had disappeared. Her very straight laced, quiet, Muslim boyfriend. It's not like he was going to go out on a drinking binge or anything, and she was very concerned. So, I was freaking out, she was calling hospitals, and we were both wondering how to find a missing person in the biggest city in the country. Luckily for all of us, it turned out he was arrested in an undercover sting operation on his store. Yeah, for selling knock-offs in Queens...like that's a rarity. It's amazing that you can't get arrested for selling a fake Prada handbag, but you can get arrested for claiming that it's a real Prada handbag. How does that work, really? Freaking drama. From the one person I would have counted on to not have any drama in her life, too!

posted by: Cannonball14 at 21:12 | link | comments (1) |
bridezilla

The highest point to a pre-wedding, low-carb, no bread and pasta but whatever else you want diet? A tasty, monster size, thick as my freaking hand 10 oz. filet mignon grilled perfectly medium-rare that I had the pleasure of consuming (in it's entirety) tonight.

posted by: Cannonball14 at 03:40 | link | comments (1) |
meow, bridezilla

Contrary to what you may be thinking, I have not actually fallen off the face of the earth, I'm just planning a wedding, opening a brand new store in the middle of retail 4th Quarter, and trying desperately not to put anything else on my credit card. There is so much that you don't budget for when you plan a wedding, no matter how careful you think you're being. Do you have any idea what guest books, cake servers, and champagne glasses cost? I feel like I've cheated, because I registered for a beautiful runner that matches my wedding theme more than my place settings, and prayed for it to come early so that I could use it at the "grand bridal table". And I got lucky...thank goodness for out of town friends that can't attend the wedding and send gifts early. And of course, I've fallen behind on shower Thank You's...which I really did want to get done as early as I could. Of course, I really didn't want two bridal showers anyway, but I guess people (inexplicably) love me. In good news, we have a marriage license, wedding bands, and my best friend is coming a day early to help me make all of the corsages. That is, IF my flowers arrive on time and undamaged.

posted by: Cannonball14 at 17:14 | link | comments (1) |
bridezilla

I'm soooo sorry that all of my posts are about wedding craps and being overweight, but I just have to vent somewhere. Plus, with my Red Sox more and more out of the playoffs and football and hockey not happening yet, I really have nothing else to talk about!

Why is it that the smaller your boobs are the more bras you can fit? And the more support you need (ie: beautiful, full, luscious DD's like mine), the less slection there is when you go bra shopping? I mean, really...I have to order mine online and pay for shipping just because I am blessed with what some consider to be perfect breasts? Am I being punished by the jealousy of all you lesser women out there, who have somehow banded together behind the backs of us "fuller figured" women and slipped into the focus group meetings and called up the lingerie companies  to say things like "I find that my feelings are hurt when I go bra shopping and see the big cups all poking out at me...I would love it if the bra stores would remove those big, hurtful images that only remind me of all the advantages of the breasts I don't have"? Seriously? Because if I can't find a freaking size 38DD strapless, backless bustier in the color "nude" or "bare" I might just have to hoist my babies up with duct tape like the models do. Is that really how you want me to spend my wedding day? Or my wedding night, for that matter? Can you picture the grimace on my face as, on our wedding night, my new husband has to rip duct tape off my flesh? Would that make you feel better, you skinny little women with your "perky little apple boobies" as my friend used to call them...

Okay, rant over. I hope no one is offended and everyone read that as tongue-in-cheek!

posted by: Cannonball14 at 15:07 | link | comments (2) |
meow, bridezilla

I spoke too soon: Momzilla strikes.

My mom is a very dear person to me...she's strong and gentle and sensitive and very sweet, and the last person on earth I'd ever want to hurt or disappoint. So, when she asked me if she could invite some people she works with to the wedding today, I hit my breaking point. (Notice how it is now the wedding, instead of my wedding.) I've been so stressed lately with marriage and money and work, and I'm not eating well, barely sleeping well (although I never really sleep well anyway) and I just felt cornered. Then I felt even worse because when I was silent and said I'd really rather her not, she brough up the "well, I figure the only place it'll add cost is the reception food, and that's what we're paying for anyway". But my thought is, if I've cut down my list as much as possible, and we're not inviting some of John's extended family or the women I work with, is it really fair for people I don't even know to be invited?

posted by: Cannonball14 at 18:20 | link | comments (1) |
bridezilla

Rule number 1 for planning a wedding: it's okay to change your mind. About everything. I hope anyone that reads this blog (all 6 of you...) will remember this if you ever find yourself in love and trying to manifest the personalities of two very different individuals (and your mom) into a vision. Case in point: the wedding cake. I was adamant from pre-engagement that my wedding cake would be a sparse, square, modern confection with icing barely smoothed out, kind of the "rustic" look. Yes, it was a vision of sophistication, and something as far from "fairy princess frou-frou crap" as you can get. And my fiance' hated it. Long story short, I've come around. You simply cannot have a stark cake in the midst of what has become a beatiful, elegant fall wedding full of antique, vintage touches, and music only from the 40's to motown. It just doesn't make sense. So I am now enchanted with round cakes with stenciled vines and fall leaves made of icing adorning my cake. Pile on the embellishment, baby!

By the way, I can't remember if I ever posted about my actual dress, but another word of warning. Unless you are very hard to fit (like, 5'2") or loaded and able to spend what you want, go to a discount place, or a website. The full service bridal salons I visited while shopping had the highest prices and the smallest selection of dresses (unless you happen to be a size 6, 8, or 10) and were very un-sympathetic when I complained about the size selection. I ordered my dress from a website online (netbride.com) that is connected to a bridal shop in Minneapolis. I payed $200 less for my dress than any bridal salon quoted me, measured my own damn self, and took a chance on ordering a dress I had not seen. (And I would have done that even at a bridal salon b/c no one carried the dress I wanted, so I wouldn't have been able to see it in person anyway.) You know what? It's perfect. I'm so excited that it's here and it fits (mostly...about 5 pounds away) and it just gives this sense of 1940's lightweight lace and glamour. No pouffy ballgown for this princess, right?

Also, the unthinkable has happened. My stomach hurts. All these bridal shows that my girlfriend watches (I mean, she watches EVERY one of them...DVR is her best friend...all those extravagent weddings on WE and the TLC weddings and that other one about wedding planners...ALL of them) have these brides that get all stressed out and don't eat for like, two months before their wedding. Well, just the other night I was saying how I was unfortunately not blessed with that gene because when I stress, I want to eat for comfort, so I'll really have to fight to lose weight to look great on my wedding day (two words: Tennis Tuesday). The next day, I awoke with a stomachache. And for three days now, every time I eat, I feel stuffed for three hours afterwards, so although I haven't lost all apetite, I am eating less. Thank you, wedding jitters. I really don't feel stressed, so I'm getting the best of both worlds: unstressful wedding planning with a stomach bug. Yeah for me, queen of shallow happiness.

For those interested in the actual relationship, I think J is starting to feel like he's missed out on all the planning. So cute. So, he's been very helpful lately! Took charge of the registry, is working on the address list, and has visited two fabric stores, Party City, and Michael's to help me pick fabric, stamps, and practice paper since he's printing the programs. I love him for it!

posted by: Cannonball14 at 18:10 | link | comments (3) |
bridezilla

All right, kids. I am back in full swing. My store is in hiatus. Latest news is that I might open on Black Friday, which is crazy and unheard of in the retail world, but hey...it's be a guaranteed success. Wedding plans are ripening quickly. We're still searching for a cake. Meeting a DJ today. Freaking out about doing my flowers myself. Freaking out about how expensive flowers are, even if you do them yourself. Bought the bachelorette airplane tickets. Picked out flower girl dresses for my mom to sew. Just realized I have to address 100 invites in the next 3 weeks. Holy Crap.

posted by: Cannonball14 at 18:11 | link | comments (8) |
the retail beast, bridezilla

Okay. July was an off the wagon month for wedding planning. But I'm back on, now, as you will all be happy to know. Back to deposits and vendors and flowers and place settings and all of that crap. Yay. Seriously, it is fun and exciting, and expensive. But I'm happy to spend the money to make it what I want it to be.

Speaking of, the lady that runs the venue of our ceremony is touched with the crazy. And maybe not just slightly. She's flightly and kind of "crazy Aunt Sally" esque. Like, she talks to you as if you're a family member, says you can fill in contract times at your leisure, and just kind of says whatever comes to mind when you call to ask when you can rehearse (since your wedding is on a Sunday) and when you and your mom can come by to see what the garden looks like in the fall. Sigh. Fear...I live in fear. Why did we not elope?

I got the worst sunburn of my life this weekend. I read a short story on the front of the boat without flipping or re-applying sunscreen (which I am usually very careful about). I figured it would be short, right? Not so much. I couldn't wear a bra for the trip home yesterday. And these DD's rarely go out in public without proper support. Good news: the fiance told me he couldn't tell I wasn't wearing a bra all day, so I am still young and nubile.

posted by: Cannonball14 at 19:19 | link | comments (3) |
meow, bridezilla

So, I've discovered what my new favorite thing in the world it...registering for a wedding. Come one, it's like shopping except I don't have to spend any money. It sounds totally obnoxious of me, but I'm getting sucked into it like it's some kind of underground world that only "brides and grooms to be" get invited to party at. And I HATE being a bride to be on most days. Any time another newly engaged bride meets me, I want to run away to keep from getting sucked into all the fake "are you getting married here in town" questions that are really just meant to be like "oh, Caffe' Luna, that's a nice place for a reception, we're having ours at the Fearrington House...ha ha ha...mine is a FOUR star restaurant" bullshit. They act like we're supposed to be all bonded for life now because we're in that "special time" in our lives. I've gotten about, um, 3 1/2 things done, bought a new car, had a few breakdowns about buying a wedding dress, started a diet, and besides that and finding bridesmaids dresses for incredibly cheap, my wedding planning is at exactly the same place it was 2 1/2 months ago. I don't have a DJ or a cake or invitations or flowers...and I really don't know where the money is going to come from to pay for those things other than credit cards...I start most conversations with my fiance' or bridesmaids with "because I'm cheap, we're going to just do this..." and then explain about ordering flowers online to make bouquets, only having candles for centerpieces, and buying ourselves a nice shiny new video camera to record the wedding ceremony, because we'll be making a future investment and be able to take it on our honeymoon and have it when babies come out, etc...instead of paying the same amount for some guy in a tux to eat my reception food and set our wedding DVD to some cheesy Celine Dion music.

But I digress so...back to the registry...I feel like I could decorate the new house we won't be buying for a year with my registry...dishes, table linens (but not tablecloths because we don't know what size...) centepiece bowls, towels, patio furniture, rugs...the list is endless. It's so exciting. Dishes and barware especially. Our entire collection of glassware consists of NCSU plastic cups we stole from games and the free wine glasses you get when you go to a tasting. I have one nice set of traditional pint glasses that will stay, and I might keep my multi colored plastic IKEA glasses because sometimes you just need that, but the rest of that shit is gone! And, you know that one pattern of Pfaltzgraff that EVERYBODY YOU'VE EVER KNOWN has owned? You know the one, kind of dark-cream-oatmeal colored with the brown fleur-de-lis like thingy in the middle? Well, we have a hodgepodge of 2 sets of those...his parents before the divorce and my grandmothers (that belonged to an older cousin before me). Can I tell you how glad I will be to see those go? Whew...I cannot wait! So far, we've totally agreed on everything except flatware. Oh well, you can't win them all! I'm starting to wish we could register for interior paint and curtains and faucet fixtures, but that's going a little overboard. And all of this from a girl that didn't know if she wanted to register at all because we already had enough cookware!

posted by: Cannonball14 at 16:23 | link | comments (7) |
bridezilla

Self-confidance is a crazy beast. I've been feeling unattractive lately, and I can't really point out why...I haven't gained weight, but I'm not losing any either. And when I try to 'diet' the stress of dieting gets to me, and then I eat an asiago cheese bagel for breakfast and it snowballs from there. I've learned something very frustrating about shopping for wedding dresses...although 62% of women in the US are a size 14 or larger, most "full-service" bridal salons only carry sample dresses in sizes 8-14. So, if I want to see how a dress might fit on me, I have to endure fake sympathy from a size 6 bridal consultant as she brings me size 12 and 14 dresses to try on, most of which don't zip, some of which I can't even get over my lucious birthing hips, and then I have to step outside the comfort of the fitting room into the mirror room, where 3 or 4 people smaller than me watch as my mom and I look at the dress in the mirror, with her pulling it closed in the back so we can get a reasonable sense of what it will look like "in the right size" as the consultant so tactfully puts it. And then I'm expected to order a dress that I haven't even tried on for $800, for the most important day of my life.

On the outside, I'm probably seen as a very self-confidant person. I walk with my head up, take long strides, make eye contact if I see someone looking directly at me, don't fidget with my hair or self-conciously pull at my clothing. When I am in said bridal dressing room, I make jokes about my size, I make my mom laugh when I say things like "let's see how much of me we're gonna fit into this one". But after a day of this I do break down. I cry in the car, feeling frustrated and like I shouldn't even attempt this until I lose 20 pounds.

The most annoying part of being overweight comes from other people. People who are already a great, healthy, beautiful size and complain about all these "fat areas" they have that no one else can see. Men who are my height and weight 180 and complain that they're too heavy. Skinny girls who say "I know how you feel...trust me, it sucks being this thin...I would kill to have boobs like yours." I think that one hurts the worst, because until my freshman year in college I was one of them. I was 5'8" by eighth grade and weighed 115 from then pretty much until my senior year of high school. My nickname was "flatty". Boys seemed to like girls with bodies back then (when did that change?). I broke up with every boyfriend I had in high school because we progressed to the "second base" stage and I was embarrassed for him to touch my non-existent breasts. However, I know these girls are lying because I never wanted to be one of the fat chicks: I wanted to be one of the girls who had skinny waists with a little bit of a booty and some C-cup boobs. I didn't want to be the amazon girl that was already wearing a size 16 and had DD's. Nobody wanted to be that girl. And now I am.

And as hard as it is to admit that you don't have to be fat to be disgusted by your body, that is the way I feel sometimes. I hate hearing people who look good to me complain about their weight, their stomach, their flabby arms, whatever. I feel in a way like I've earned my right to complain. I know what it's like to be a girl that guys check out, I know how it feels to get whistled at and have doors held by strangers and see two guys looking at you while talking to each other across the room, and it hurts to know I am not that girl anymore. I am the observer now...the one watching the perky blond get the door held for her, and watching the same guy walk past me without acknowledging that I exist. (I am the girl who is beautiful in the face, but...)I watch men come into my store to shop for their wives and know that if they're a fairly young, attractive man, 90% of the time when I ask what size they need they are going to say "xs" or "4". I hated browsing the match or yahoo personal ads years ago and noticing that maybe 1 in 10 men used the words "slightly overweight" or "a little extra" when they chose what kind of body type they were looking for. (And "curvy" doesn't count when the other options you picked were slim, slender, thin, athletic, etc...you're just looking for a skinny girl with big boobs.)

None of these things are really important to me anymore, because I know I've found the man that loves everything about me, but it hurts just the same.

posted by: Cannonball14 at 16:00 | link | comments (1) |
meow, the retail beast, bridezilla

Hidden fees and charges are the bane of my existence. A simple outdoor wedding shouldn't cost $1000 (for the ceremony), right? I mean, if you find a public park or lake the facility fees are nominal compared to an already set-up site, right? Right, until you call the chair rental people and they come up with a ream you quote of 2.50 per white wooden padded chair. Nice. Not bad, pretty good compared to what I've seen. What about set-up, and if we only need them for three hours? Oh, yes, we can set them up for an extra .50 per chair (yes, that amount of labor is worth $70). And we can "negotiate" the delivery fee for the drop off and pick up times you need. What?! So, my options are to ask two or three of my cousins to pick them up, set them up (even though they'll be all dressed and ready for the wedding), and then rush to get them back in the truck and dropped off before getting to the reception site, or I can pay you twice as much to drop them off, set them up, and clean up after us...yikes...I am finding a wedding planner today.

I know they're expensive, ladies, and you may think you don't need one because you're creative and all, but trust me, it's not fun to haggle with people, and she can do it much easier than I can. I still get to pick everything out, but maybe she'll get me a better price on it, and I won't be stuck worrying that Uncle So and So will get lost and the chairs won't make it to the reception.

posted by: Cannonball14 at 15:06 | link | comments (3) |
bridezilla

Wedding Shows

A thought occured to me this morning. I am going to my first wedding show on Sunday and the admission is $10 per person (the bride and groom can each get in for $8 if they pre-register, but moms, maid of honors, etc. have to pay full price). Now, how does this make sense when they aren't offering free meals or anything, just a bunch of contests that you have to be put on some mailing list crap to win, and I know all of the 200 exhibitors there probably have to pay some exhorbitant $500-1000 fee to rent the space they're set up in. So this company that produces bridal shows is making a SHITLOAD of money. I mean think about it: they make minimum $100 Grand from all the exhibitors, and the thing is in a state-owned building and you KNOW they don't get charged more than $10,000 to rent the building for the weekend (because the state has my taxes to pay for that building, so they only charge what is considered a 'nominal' fee) and then they make $8-10 off each person that even walks in. I mean, if only 1000 people showed up that's enough to cover the cost of the building. So where does the rest of that money go?

And why are weddings so freaking expensive? If I was just throwing a party for 100 people and got it catered do you really think it would cost $3000? (This is just for food, people.) I have a BIG family. And I've cut out a lot of the people I thought I would want to invite, (like my best friends from high school, that I talk to like once a year) mostly because they have long-term boyfriends/husbands, and I can't afford to invite them both. And I read in a survey that having a cash bar is tacky and guests think you're cheap, but really: how do you guys honestly feel about that? Because if we are going to have anything but barbecue, it's pretty much going to cost $3000 and up, and I cannot afford the extra $1500-2500 that beer and wine tacks on.

Thoughts, opinions, anyone want to try to convince my fiance' that eloping to Hawaii is really not a bad idea anymore, we can have a fabulous vacation and start saving for a house immediately instead of paying off the loan we have to get to pay for our wedding, and my mom and his grandmother will be disappointed, yes, but in the long run they'll understand, or at least they'll understand once we have a baby [AG, keep your karma away: I know you couldn't be happier (and your baby is beautiful and we all love her), but I don't want to get pregnant in the first year]. Anyone?

posted by: Cannonball14 at 13:45 | link | comments (5) |
bridezilla