PolarGrrlPurls

Pictures From the Wedding Prep

We were on a pretty tight budget for the wedding what with Marikal out of work and so it was a pretty DIY event (rather like the rest of my life). I saved on expenses by buying the flowers wholesale and my friend Stariel did an excellent job of spearheading the floral arranging in the hours before the wedding. Naturally, I was not quite mentally prepared when 280 stems showed up in a huge cardboard box jam packed with newspaper and single-use ice packs. Weren't they pretty? (They were even nicer once Stariel was done arranging them into bouquets and vases.)

The week before the wedding, Marikal left the house early on morning for an appointment and what did she find as she was walking out the door? A wedding cake! A wedding cake pinata, to be more specific. It was positively stuffed with treats and goodies and fun little things to open, as well as several gift cards! My mom, had apparently dropped it off in the middle of the night as a little pre-wedding gift suprise. I must admit that it was the best packaging of all the gifts we received! :)

As some of you may remember, my first salon trial for hair for the wedding was an unmitigated disaster. Putting aside the fact that the woman who provided the terrible up-do had also first given me what seems to be the most mediocre haircut of my life, she also charged me a lot of money for the "pleasure". A few weeks after that I tracked down another salon with a new stylist (a very nice gentleman from Naples, Italy) amd did a second trial run on the "wedding hair". This time went much better, don't you think?

That is all for now! More wedding pictures later! ;)

Next up: Actual Knitting Content^TM

I'm Back! And I'm Married!

June was extremely busy! Between my birthday and the wedding, I think I barely slept the whole month. Today marks Marikal and I's 1-month anniversary. We have been officially (legally!) married for 1 month today.

Seeing as how I've been in post-n-run mode for well over 6 months now, I thought I'd start regular blogging again (Can you believe it?! Me, neither.) I figured I'd start with my birthday and the wedding preparations and catch up semi-chronologically.

My mom sent me a beautiful edible arrangement for my birthday. It was so cool! I've heard about them and even suggested that my clients send them as gifts, but I've never received one myself before. Isn't it beautiful? Hard to believe they did that all with fresh cut fruit.

On the evening of my birthday Marikal and me and a few friends went out for dinner in Davis Square at Redbone's. I had forgotten how much I liked the catfish appetizers! And the fried okra was excellent in a cornmeal batter. (This coming from a woman who never touches okra.) After dinner we stopped at JP Licks where I was delighted to find that they offer ice cream for us lactose-intolerant people. (Not yogurt, ice cream! Icecream made from lactose free milk!) How cool is that? Bonus that it was in my favorite flavor: Limoncello.

Tomorrow: Wedding preparations, gifts, oddities, and such.

A Price Gauging Tale of Hair Raising Proportions

First, please allow this picture to illustrate the ends to which I had to go to retrieve what is left of my day:

Today, I went to the salon to test run a hair style for the wedding. To begin with, the stylist was 15 minutes late. Yes, when I arrived at the salon (10 minutes early, I might add), she wasn't even on the premises. The stylist I was supposed to see walked in as another stylist was washing my hair and then I sat for another 10 minutes after that waiting for my stylist (I'll call her Eva) to get her shit together. Then she cut my hair and blow dried it and told me that she had to put my (naturally curly) hair into rollers and set it before she could do the up-do. So...20 minutes later I sit down and get red in the face waiting for the hair dryer to do it's thing...for 30 minutes.

I had shown her two pictures that I kind of liked and wanted to combine in some way...I am ultimately looking for a fancy chignon or french twist with lots of loose curls just kinda pinned into and around it and a few finger waves and curls near my temples. A little like this, but with curly hair and the finger waves. Think: 1930's Holloywood glamour. What she gave looked more like I was the long lost member of the Angels or Supremes. And just to strike the proper chord of horror in your hearts, I have included photos of the crime scene.

See the spots I circled? Those are colored rubber bands (not hair elastics, rubber bands) that she used to gather the hair into little mini pony tails underneath the pin curls. And you see that bit on the back at the right? That's a pin curl that fell down within less than 30 minutes of leaving the salon. FABulous!

To add insult to injury this whole hair debacle cost a ridiculous and insulting $150.00. And let's not talk about how she made me 45 minutes late to see my crazy-head doctor (NOT a good thing when you are crazy in the head, as I am), who was astoundingly amiable about the whole thing. (I think he sensed that I was about to go off the deep end and didn't feel like fishing me out today.) Naturally, in my rush to get the heck outta the salon I left my earrings sitting on her counter. I'm sure that she will be good about giving them back, but ugh. This sucks.

The end result of all this is that I still do not have a hair stylist to do my hair for the wedding. My friends are not well equipped to do my hair, I have only about 1.25 hands (hard to do hair without the full 2.0 that most people have), and there are precious few other salons in the area. I already spoke to one of them and they did not understand enough English to get the idea that I wanted a test run before the wedding...they just wanted to schedule an appointment for the morning of the Big Day. Yeah. There are a few others, but I'm hesitant to have another day as expensive and frustrating as this one.

Remember I Said I Was Planning a Wedding?

Yeah. That's where I've been. But we finally got the rings in!! SQUEE! They are very pretty. I'm wearing the engagement ring, so that's what y'all are getting a picture of. The wedding ring must wait for the Big Event.

Yeah, Okay, So I've Been MIA for a Month...

But I have a really good reason! I've been planning my wedding! Today when I was downtown for the first dress fitting, I stopped in at the MAC counter and had them do my make up. I took pictures to get y'alls opinion but also so that I know what it looked like if I decide to do something similar for the wedding. I'm not sure that I love the colors, but I don't hate them, either.

Dress Dilemma

I have no idea how to choose girly crap like this! Aaaahhhhhh! I'm having an existential girly crisis! O.k., no real crisis, but I really am lost when it comes to this stuff. The event is an outdoor afternoon wedding in a garden in late June. It is a relatively casual affair. So, I am enlisting your help in choosing. I hate having my arms show but have resigned myself to knitting a little shurg thing to cover up, since short sleeved dresses seem to be nonexistent.

Pick one. Assume that they are numbered 1-4 (the link is dress option #1, which I cannot seem to copy the picture of):

Option 1 (probably the white or light pink)

Options 2-4: