A Morning of Getting Beautified

So after the fun filled morning of running down tuxedos it was time for us girls to go get some beautifying done. What can I say, we are girls and we love that stuff. Who doesn't?

I had two things that I needed to get done that morning. I needed to get my nails did and my eyebrows waxed. Good thing on the latter one because I was starting to look like Bert from Sesame Street. Okay, it wasn't that bad, but it seemed like it.

So Lou, Veronica and I decided to go to a place called Beauty Brands. We were told by one of my other Bridesmaids that you don't need an appointment and you can usually walk right in and that they have pretty reasonable prices. So we headed over there and they got us in the system but couldn't get us in for like an hour. It was no biggie though because we were all starving.

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So we went ahead and went to Chick-Fil-A so that we could chow down. Again, do you see how I was eating the day before my wedding? I really did not care, haha! Thank the lord for a corset back once again! We ate and talked for a good 30-45 minutes and then headed back to Beauty Brands for our nail appointments.

Our nail tech ladies called us back and sat us all down by each other which was a lot of fun. The stories that transpired in those 20-30 minutes while we were getting our nails done had our nail techs cracking up at us. At one point the lady that was doing my nails said that I must be nervous about getting married because I was so quiet compared to Lou and Veronica. We all kind of laughed and then Lou and Veronica just looked at them and said, "No, this is how she usually is!" This made me laugh.

I ended up not getting fake nails because I hate how crappy my real nails look after I have had those, so I just had my nail tech do a french manicure on me. Lou and Veronica both just got a coat of polish to match with the wedding colors. Once I was done with that, it was time to wax those eyebrows. This didn't take long. Maybe five minutes. Once we were done with this, we were out the door and heading towards my apartment where we were meeting up with Rochelle, one of my other Bridesmaids so that we could head up to the Denver area for the weekend.

Minus the whole tuxedo thing that happened earlier that morning, it had been a great day so far. I had a blast getting pampered and having a girls days with my two best friends. I can't tell you guys how lucky I am to have such great friends who love and care about me. This day would have been pretty boring without them and I am glad that was not the case. It really made me feel so relaxed. I wasn't even nervous about the wedding. I have them to thank for that.

Thanks for stopping by again today guys and I will be back next Monday with another recap. I promise the actual pictures will start popping up soon. I completely forgot to take pictures of all of this stuff that was going on in the days before the wedding. Epic fail on my part. Sorry! I hope that you all have a great weekend!



Need to catch up on the Wedding Recaps?

Arrivals
Hunting Down Tuxedos

Hunting Down Tuxedos

Continuing on with our Wedding Recaps today, I originally had a different post planned for today. However I realized as I was trying to remember all the events that occurred this day that there was something that was kind of a pain in the ass that I left out. So, I wanted to share this story with you so that hopefully you can learn from what happened with my situation.

So it all started when my then Fiance', Aran, decided that he was going to go on a diet before our wedding. I didn't understand this because he was already a bean pole, but he did and somehow lost almost 20 lbs, which I am very proud of him for. Well because of this, we had to have him refitted for his tux when we went in to have my brother fitted for his. Long story short, he needed a different size shirt. So they went ahead and put in the change.

While we were there I was verifying with Men's Wearhouse where all of the tuxes were going to be sent. I had them change the location of Aran's pickup to the one that we were currently at because we didn't know if we were going to have time to get to the other store that was located near where we were getting married. And I wanted to make sure that my Step-Dad's tux was coming to the correct store as well since he was fitted in Minnesota. I heard the guy on the phone changing the pick up locations. And I even verified again before we left the store where the tuxes were supposed to be going and again they told me everything that I had asked for and told us that they would let us know when the tuxes arrived.

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So the Thursday before the wedding rolls around and a few of our guys and the groom were starting to wonder where there tuxes were. We hadn't been notified that they were there and we were starting to get worried. So I called Men's Wearhouse and found out that they had been there since Tuesday. The person on the phone had no idea who's tuxes were there though so I had him go check so that I knew who I needed to contact so that they could go in and pick theirs up. I also asked why we hadn't been notified and they said that they don't personally notify you and that an email is generated when the tuxes are checked in to the store or some stupid crap like that. Okay, well if we don't ever receive the email then how are we supposed to know? Just a thought!

Anywho, the guy came back on the phone and told me which tuxes were there. Most of them were there except for Aran's and my Step-Dad's. But, Aran's new shirt was there. Huh? How did his shirt end up in one place and his tux in the other? And where was my Step-Dad's? So again the guy puts me on hold for a few minutes and then comes back on the phone and tells me that Aran's tux is at the store where we originally had him fitted and that my Step-Dad's is at a different store on the other side of town. I was about to lose it at this point. I had specifically checked on all of these because of this very reason, but somehow all of it had been screwed up.

So the Friday morning before the wedding, Lou, Veronica and I spent a good portion of the morning running around to different Men's Wearhouse's in our town to pick up everything that I could. I had to go to one to pick up my Step-Dad's and then I had to go all the way across town to pick up my grooms shirt and my Brother and my Dad's tuxes. And then Aran had to go pick up the rest of his suite later that day in a town that was an hour away, which wasn't a huge deal because that is where we were getting married, but at the same time this left no time for us to have something fixed if something was wrong. Luckily everything was okay, but I did not appreciate having to run all over town and track down these dang tuxedos.

In the end everything worked out, but it really was just a pain in the ass and not something that I wanted to deal with the day before our wedding. But hey at least we didn't end up with our tuxedos looking like this...

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So my advice for all of you future Brides out there is to double and even triple check that your tuxedos are going to the correct location. Especially if you have people coming in from out of town or if you have to have someone refitted. It may make your couple days before the wedding less stressful. 

Thanks for stopping by again today everyone! I will be back on Friday with another recap of what else went on the day before our wedding. Have a great day everyone!

If you need to catch up on our wedding recaps, you can find them here;

Arrivals

Arrivals

Okay everyone! Here it is! The very first recap from our wedding. Well, kinda. This first recap is about two days before the wedding. But, it was an amazing day and I felt that it needed to be shared.

So the Thursday before the wedding, Lou and I headed to the Denver Airport to pick up our other bestie, Veronica. This was the only person that we had to pick up from the airport so this was kind of a big deal to me. To some of you it may not seem like a big deal, but since she flew all the way from Alaska to be a part of my wedding, it was a huge deal for me.

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So we made our way to the airport. Upon pulling up to the arrivals part of the airport, we found this beautiful face waiting for us;

We could tell that she was exhausted from her flight, especially since she was almost three months prego at this time. So we scooped her up and were off to get a few things done before we left Denver. Our first stop was to pick up our wedding bands from the jeweler. So we stopped off at the mall to pick these up and decided to have lunch and do some shopping while we were there.

We had such a great time hanging out and catching up. It really felt like we were never apart. That is what I love about our friendship. No matter how long we have been apart, we can always pick up right where we left off.

After picking up the rings and doing some shopping, we headed to Aran's parents house to drop off a few last minute things that needed to be taken to the reception venue the next day. From there we tried to do some more shopping to try and find Lacey a pair of shoes to match her dress. Long story short on this one, we ended up finding them at Wal-Mart of all places, haha!

After this we finally headed back down to where Lou and I live. Which is like an hour drive from Denver. I still hadn't found a garter at this point so we decided to try and go to one of the adult stores to see if they had any. Well, they didn't and we ended up spending like an hour in this store. Weird, yes, but it was mostly us walking around and making fun of everything that we saw. It was hilarious. I ended up finding a pretty generic garter at Hobby Lobby. At this point, I didn't care anymore what it looked like. No one was going to see it.

After these two little trips we headed back to pick up my soon to be hubby and Lou's already hubby so that we could go out to dinner. Our choice for food that night, was Buffalo Wild Wings. I found this really hilarious because a lot of people really watch what they eat before their wedding and I didn't care. I probably gained three lbs in those days before the wedding. Thank goodness for a corset, haha!

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After dinner, the soon to be hubby and I headed back to our apartment and Lou and Veronica headed back to Lou's place. It had been a long day, but we were so excited to all be back in each other's company that we didn't care how long of a day that it had been.

Thinking back on this day makes me realize how lucky I am and how blessed I am to have the friends in my life that I do. The fact that I had a friend fly here all the way from Alaska just to be in my wedding is amazing. She didn't have to, but she wanted too! I am so thankful for her and all of my other friends who had to make a trip just to come to our wedding. It really shows you how much they care about you.

Thanks for stopping in today everyone. I will be back on Wednesday with another recap. Have a great day everyone!

A Zillion Phone Calls & Emails Later

Remember all of the problems we were having with our wedding photographers? And how they weren't wanting to work with us at all? I don't even know how many emails and phone calls were swapped, but they didn't want to help us or even budge on the price at all. Even though they screwed up, they wouldn't admit it and fix the problem.

I finally got to a point where I said screw it and I just want my damn pictures. I sent them their money and I was ready to be done with the whole damn thing. Two days after I had sent off a check, we received a phone call from Aran's dad, my now father-in-law. He told us that he had called and talked to the lady that we had been talking with for the past month or so. He told us that he told her all of the reasons why we were upset with the services that we received and that they weren't going to stay in business very long if they couldn't provide their customers with some type of customer service.

She apparently admitted that the two photographers that we used finally admitted that no one had talked to them about the flash and that they figured that the pictures would be fine and that they thought that they didn't have enough time to put a flash unit on their camera. Uhh, are you kidding me, that takes all of what, 20 seconds to do? So she did apologize for that and for the printer not working very well at the photo booth. She then told my father-in-law that she would be contacting me so that we could figure something out to make things right.

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Why did it take my father-in-law calling and talking to them and telling them all of the problems that we had for her to come around? I am pretty sure that we had already told her all of those things! Ugh!! It is so frustrating, but we did finally get an apology from them and an offer for a free 100 page hard cover album. So we took them up on it. We were going to make some albums ourselves for our parents and one for us, but now they are making the one that we will be keeping. And apparently they usually charge their customers $350 for this album, so I don't think it is too bad of a deal.

**If you would like to check out what this album looks like, here is the link to the video that they sent us;**

http://video214.com/play/Sd1YQI3yzFgcaQRE7g4zkw/s/dark

I am just glad that this whole thing is over and that we finally have our pictures. So like I said on Friday, I am working on trying to get the first round of recaps done this weekend so that they can begin on Monday. Wish me luck everyone! Have a great weekend and I hope that you have amazing weather where you are!

My Excuse For Being A Bad Blogger

So here is my excuse for being a bad blogger the last couple of weeks! You can take it or leave it cause it's my excuse and I'm sticking to it :)

So last week I started having some serious pains in my mouth. For anyone who knows me, you know that I seem to have a lot of issues with my teeth. I personally think they hate me and just try to punish me as much as possible. Anywho, I started getting this huge bump on the outside of my bottom left side of my gums. It hurt like a biatch! I could barely chew. I was in a lot of pain. So I called the Dentist and they told me to come in right away.

So I went in and they took some x-rays and just as I expected, I had a really bad infection in that area which was causing the swelling in my gums and all of my pain. And apparently there was a large crack in my tooth because of some previous work that I had done by this whack job dentist I used to go to. So their solution was not something I was ready for or expecting.

They told me that they needed to extract(pull) my tooth. And this would help the infection to go away and that tooth would of course give me no more problems. I was a little freaked at first. I mean, I am only 24 and to have to have a tooth pulled and be missing a tooth just didn't sit well with me.

Well eventually I came around and decided that it had to be done. So the next day I went in and had that stupid sucker pulled. It didn't hurt at the time because I was so numb that I couldn't feel anything, but once that numbness wore off, my pain level went from 0 to like 8.

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This is seriously what it felt like when they
were pulling my tooth. 

I had this done on a Thursday and thought that I would be fine to go to work on Friday. Haha! Yeah, that wasn't happening. Between the antibiotics and the pain meds that they gave me and not to mention the pain, I was not feeling very well. So my butt stayed on the couch for pretty much three whole days because of how much pain I was in. I tried sleeping most of those days away, but that didn't always work. And I was also reduced to a liquid/mush diet for the first 24 hours. And I couldn't have anything that was hot because it could increase the swelling. Thank god for Jamba Juice, which I had to eat with a spoon, or I may have starved.

But, I am happy to say that I am feeling much better and I hope to get back to blogging again this next week.  I am going to try and work on Wedding Recaps this weekend because we did finally get the disc with all of our pictures on it, so now I just need to sit down and figure out what I want to recap exactly. And the photographers did finally come around and work with us, but I will save that story for another day. It's a fun one, haha!

I hope that you are all doing very well and I can't wait to start doing recaps for you. Have a great weekend!

Firm Friday

Again, I suck at life and have had almost no time to blog. Sorry again guys!  But I decided it was time to get back on the blogging band wagon and what better way to do that than with Firm Friday!!!! So once again I am linking up with K Law from First Name Smith.

I think I am just going to go straight to the good stuff today. As of today I am down 10 lbs!!!!!!!! This is kind of a big deal for me. I have finally gone under the dreaded 220 that I have been trying to get under for the past year or so. For some reason that certain number on the scale has been my cryptonite. But, I have now gone under it so I am pretty proud of myself. I can't wait to keep going and eventually be in Onederland. It might take me a little while, but I am going to do it!

For those of you who don't know, I am Catholic so I had to give something up for Lent. I decided to give up bread, so I think that is helping with the weight loss. Also, I am doing really well with not drinking diet soda. I have been walking the stairs a lot more at work and I have actually been standing at work while doing stuff instead of sitting. I think all of this is helping. 

I think the only thing I really want to focus on this week is going to the gym. I haven't been very good about it, but I do have a good excuse. I had a tooth pulled last week so I was in a lot of pain. So, this next week I really need to get my butt in gear and go to the gym. The nice thing about this upcoming week is that Daylight Savings Time is on Sunday so I will be walking with my awesome friend Kristen on Tuesdays and Thursdays so I will be active at least two days of the week without even going to the gym. But I need to try and go to the gym on the off days. 

Wish me luck everyone and I hope that all of you are doing well on your own journeys! Have a great weekend everyone!

A Scentsy Giveaway from What Makes Savanah Smile

Hey guys! I know I have been MIA this week but this week has been kind of a weird one. More on that later though!

I am here to tell you guys about a giveaway that is going on over at What Makes Savanah Smile. Her friend Celia is doing a Scentsy giveaway for her readers! And for those of you who don't know, I am obsessed with Scentsy. Like absolutely in love with/obsessed with Scentsy. I mean how could you not be? And as of yesterday, their new Spring/Summer Catalog just came out so they have tons of new stuff!




If you are interested in finding out more about this giveaway, make sure to head on over to Savanah's blog for all of the details!! Have a great day everyone!!