Oh, the struggles.

So, I quit my (HORRIBLE) job back in December. I was very confident in the fact that I would be able to find another pretty quickly. I guess all I need to say is it is now February 11th...and I still am unemployed. That would be struggle number one. So far, it has been kind of a blessing in a way. Josh and I have been engaged for an entire year, but because of our work schedules, we had done absolutely no wedding planning. Until now. So, I will be thankful that I am unemployed for a little bit, because in the last two months, I have sealed the deal on a lot of big things.

It all actually started back in November, when suddenly I got up the courage to walk into a bridal shop and put on some dresses. I had been traumatized about 6 months earlier when I made the HUGE mistake of going into a David's Bridal and some frumpy, disheveled sales lady asked what pant size I wore...so I told her I wore a size 7 and she said I would need a size 12 wedding dress!!!! Uhm, hello?! Does this crazy woman not realize that numbers (especially size numbers) are painful to a woman? I kinda had a minor freak out and walked out of the store. I was never going to go back into a David's Bridal again, I knew that much. I did not exactly want to hear that I somehow grew 5 sizes the second I walked into the door. Apart from that, I was completely turned off by the fact that I had to sort through racks and racks of dresses all crammed into bags and stuffed so that they all looked the same. No thank you. The more I looked through catelogs, I came up with a theory, all dresses nowadays looked the same and I was not a fan. Strapless, white, poufy. None of those things struck my fancy. So, it was a long time before I even wanted to confront the wedding gown issue again.

Well, by November I was feeling skinny and confident enough to listen to some advice from one of my mom's co-workers. I set an appointment for a consultation at The Bridal Shop in the Denver Tech Center. From the moment I walked in, it was a dream come true. It is this tiny little boutique with beautiful decor and gorgeous, unique dresses everywhere: not stuffed in bags, but displayed like art around the walls. I worked with the most amazing consultant, Andrea. She never once mentioned my size, but told me to browse around and pick out up to 10 dresses that I could try on to start. So, I did...ironically, I had pulled the same Maggie Sottero gown out of bridal magezines FIVE times so of course, I wanted to try on that gown. I picked that one and some others, all very different in style and we headed into the dressing room. She was so awesome, and decided she wanted to put me in the Maggie gown first. She is definitely smart, I walked out in that gown and my mom and I both cried. It was cheesy just like in the movies :) That is the gown I purchased. The VERY first dress I ever had on. It makes all the difference going to a place where they really care about making you happy, she was so good at her job and the shop was just so accomodating, even bringing my mom tissues. At the very end, she took my measurements and informed me that in a designer dress, not a tacky David's Bridal dress, my size would be a 4. Not a 12....a 4. Take that, David's Bridal!

The next ordeal we dealt with was trying to find a venue. Originally, we wanted a mountain wedding. I truthfully think we drove all over the entire state of Colorado and looked at every possible wedding venue. It was so annoying, so time consuming...and so damn expensive! We quickly decided that was not the route to go with. We finally decided to look a little closer to home and discovered a beautiful wedding chapel at a local university and a hotel that is gorgeous and has extremely awesome prices. We signed contracts and put down deposits on both of those places last month and let me tell you something, having a "home" for your wedding is the biggest relief in the entire world.

That brings me to my last annoyance of the night. I have dealth with some really annoying people during this process and some really awesome people, but truth be told, working in retail has so ruined me to being a customer. I want to kill some people, I swear. I have decided I am going to be very DIY with this wedding, and that means having to do tons and tons of research on basically everything. It gets a little stressful, but I love it. Anyway (sorry, I am a tangent queen tonight)...I went to Wal Mart tonight to print some photos that I am planning on making into Save the Date magnets. So, I needed to stick my SD card into a machine and press print for 8 sheets of photos. Should have taken 2 minutes. Well, someone was using the machine when I got there. So I browsed around for a bit and went back. When I got back, the Wal Mart employee was standing at the machine scanning pages of a textbook one at a time into the machine. Yes, you did read that correctly. The girl who is getting paid to help people, is standing there taking up time doing something which I am pretty sure is illegal...hmm. So, I walked up to her and it took me literally coughing to get her to look at me. I told her I just needed to print 8 sheets of photos. She gave me the blankest look I have ever seen and was like, "well...this is gonna take me awhile". She then informed me that I could use another machine and pick the photos up in about 20 minutes. So, I did just that and then asked her if they would announce it through the store or call my cell phone to let me know when the photos were ready. This time, she rolled her eyes when I interrupted her extremely important copyright infringement activity. haha! wow, really? She informed me painfully, that she could not do either of those things but just "to come back later." She could not tell me exactly how much later, just later. Hmm...needless to say I walked out of Wal Mart and I do not think I will be back for awhile.

I guess I am going to have to learn to be more patient if I am going to survive wedding planning. So far, I have already wanted to murder two people. I guess that makes me a Bridezilla?! :)