One Week To Go!

Last night, I had another bad wedding nightmare.

In this one, somehow I was getting married on a pier, which was confusing because it wasn't the venue I had planned. I get there and I see the bridesmaids and I freaked out because all but one (Julianna, still wearing her planned dress) was wearing a red bridesmaid dress. I demand to know “What the heck are you all wearing!? These aren’t the Disney dresses we planned for you to wear!” Someone says that “The Network gave us these and we thought you wanted us to wear them…” and I’m like “Noooo!” Julianna is like “See, I told you guys she would want us in the dresses she made.”

Somehow, the dream proceeds and I’m at the point where I’m supposed to walk down the aisle, but my dad is in the audience instead of beside me, thinking that he’s not supposed to walk me down the aisle at all, and to my left, is a small boom box. Apparently, I was supposed to press play to play the music I was supposed to walk down the aisle to. I press play, and something comes on that is NOT the music I had planned to perform down the aisle to. Someone’s like “You should just go anyway. You can sing your song to this song!” So I start to perform down the aisle, singing, and halfway down, I freak out and I’m like “I can’t do this. I know I said I wasn’t going to do this when the real wedding happened, but everyone just go home and await further instructions. We will reconvene when it is finally correct.”

Everyone starts to mill about slightly confused. Someone finds me and convinces me that the whole purpose of this whole thing is that I can marry Josh, and that I should just do it. So I find Josh and we just get married.

Later, I’m biking around the neighborhood I grew up in going to see my grandparents, and my friend Diana, who couldn’t make it to my wedding, and I’m giving them a copy of the dvd from the wedding so that they could watch the whole thing. It’s actually all on two disks. I end up sitting down to watch a copy with my friend Diana, and as it starts, it has Meryl Streep playing me, in a different dress, and all the bridesmaids in red, and it’s at a church, and the whole thing runs very smoothly. Apparently, the network (who, in the dream, wanted to make a TV production of my wedding) took some creative licensing with my wedding. I really wanted Diana to see the actual wedding, the true mess that it was, and I remember that I had my friends Ben and Lynae live streaming it on Facebook and Instagram, and Facebook saves their live streams, so I go to hunt down those copies for her, and my grandparents to see.

First wedding nightmare that I actually go through with it in spite of everything that went wrong. I can only attribute this to my cousin Nadia repeatedly giving me “The Talk” about how I’m going to handle it at my wedding when things go wrong—smile and keep going. She has done this so much at this point, no wonder it’s made it into my dreams.

I knew, when I took the half pill of the Tylenol PM, that I was asking for a nightmare, but I was so desperate for sleep that I did it. I had taken several Melatonin’s with no results yet and that was the thing that did it. I’m one of those people that, every time I take the typical sleep aid (not Melatonin), I get nightmares. I don’t know why, but it’s a sure way to get them for me.

Real Problems:
1. Lost our Photographer & Videographer

Speaking of wedding nightmares—last weekend, we discovered that we had somehow managed to not properly book our photographer and videographer that we thought we had. Our wedding coordinator sent me an e-mail with the wedding day agenda and advised that I forward it to our vendors, so I did. The guy got back to me and told me they didn’t have us down on their calendar. He said he never received the reservation form!

So I frantically go looking through my e-mails and discover that it appears what happened was that, even though I had spoken to him on the phone and confirmed everything, and even though we had multiple e-mail’s, he had told me he was going to send me a reservation form that I needed to fill out and get back to him. After the phone call, I had sent him two e-mails waiting on this reservation form, and then he finally sent it, but I somehow never got it back to him!

I quickly filled it out and e-mailed it back, but at this point, it was too late—he was already going on vacation that weekend, and his partner had another booking.

So I proceeded to quickly freak out about not having a photographer and videographer, but my cousin Mary was actually able to find someone for us, and Josh’s brother Kyle’s friend does videography, and we were able to book both for our wedding, thankfully.

2. Sent only two 13 in cake pillars

Wednesday, I drove down to Vegas to drop off decorations and stuff at the venue. When I got there, I asked the venue if they had received the cake supplies I had ordered and requested be sent there. They showed me the box and I discovered that Wilton.com had only sent me TWO 13 inch cake pillars! It doesn’t say how many pillars they are selling on the listing, I had to look in the comments below to see how many people said were in the listing. People said it was four pillars, so I had only bought one order of them.

It took several weeks for the wedding venue to get this order, so I had to have Josh quickly purchase a rush order of another order of the cake pillars, which is more expensive than regular shipping. I’m very not happy about this and plan on writing an unhappy letter to Wilton.com about this—Who can do anything with only two cake pillars anyway!? That’s not going to hold anything up! Ug!

3. Still haven’t received our Unity Ceremony…

 I specifically asked the Etsy vendor if she could get it to us by the 25^th, so that we could have it when we leave in the order message, but she just got it shipped yesterday, so I’m not sure that’s going to happen. Ug.

Things that have fallen into place:

The favors are done! They are so cool, I can’t wait for everyone to get them—they are a surprise though.

The programs are done! Also super cool!

I finally got the shoes I ordered from a site called milanoo.com, even though it took so long, we ordered another pair of shoes, but these shoes came in the next day, so we canceled that order. Also, I’m pretty sure the site deleted my account, so I would not recommend using this site…

My friend Gage helped me choreograph the ceremony dances for the bridal party! That’s pretty cool.

Only one week to go! This time next week, I will be freaking out about my wedding that will be happening in a few hours! I can’t believe it!

Graduation, Now What?

Graduation

Two weekends ago, I graduated from NAU with my Bachelors Degree in Education. It was a very exciting day--my family all came out for it, for which I am very grateful! The part where the people on stage tell you to turn and look at the people who helped you make it this far and acknowledge them, I looked at Josh and cried. I also cried later when I hugged him--he supported me these past four years and I never would have made it without him. He's amazing.

And What About A Job? 

Everyone keeps asking me if I've gotten a job yet, or where I'm going to be teaching next semester. I'm not exactly a fan of interviews, in fact, I find them quite stressful, although I have been going to a fair share of them. 

I went to a job fair at NAU over a month ago and got three job offers from rural school districts--pretty far places. I've had to turn them down due to the distance unfortunately.

I finally got a job offer at the school I did my service learning at last semester--a really nice charter school I would have LOVED to work at. 

Here's the catch though--when we planned my wedding, I thought I was doing good getting married at the end of July. In CA, schools start towards the middle/end of August to mid September. With this, I would have been set, but apparently, schools start as early as mid/late July out here. I only found this out after we had booked our wedding venue and set up everything.

When I explained this to the school, I also explained that I still believed it could work--I could write lesson plans for a sub, and just have my salary pro-rated. Still, I believe this kind of killed it. 

I keep being told by friends and family to just postpone my honeymoon till December or something. 

This is something I have been waiting my whole life for--my wedding and honeymoon. There are so many reasons why I don't want to do that: 

• It's already paid for and would cost money to postpone.
• Josh already has time off. Employers are more understanding when you're actually getting married and need time off than when you want to take a random vacation and call it a honeymoon. 
• It won't feel like a honeymoon if we don't do it right after the wedding. I'm only doing this once and I want to do it right. 
• It might not happen if we postpone it. It won't feel as special anyway, so why bother? 

I've already accepted that I might be a sub next year, which is fine! I've talked to multiple subs, and they seem to love it: no lesson planning, no grading papers. I'll still be teaching, so that's fine. Also, this would allow me to have the wedding and honeymoon I've always wanted, which is exceedingly important to me. 

So Now What?

I was debating several job ideas during the summer--babysitting, waitressing, and working at a call center. The prospect of people yelling at me is exceedingly daunting though. I signed up for Care.com, which wants you to get a background check and First Aid & CPR certification for a fee, which I don't presently have, so I wasn't getting any jobs on there--only scam offers. 

Then, amazingly, a really great, part time babysitting job kind of fell into my lap, watching the two children of a friend. I get to pick them up from school and do fun stuff with them; it's great! It also allows me to continue to sew and work on my other two business ventures. 

Business Venture #1: Etsy

Not only do I enjoy making costumes, but as you may have seen, this wedding has allowed me many opportunities to DIY: bouquets/corsages/boutonnieres, flower girl basket, ring bearer pillow... probably more things I haven't even thought of yet! I've been told I should sell this stuff on Etsy, so I've started an Etsy selling shop. I know I shouldn't be showing you this, but check out this amazing flower girl basket I made--I could make more of these in other colors and sell them! 

I went to Goodwill the other day and bought eight more eligible baskets for bedazzeling. You can check out my Etsy site here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/PrincessWeddingLove 

Not much there yet, but I plan to add more. 

Business Venture #2: Princessing

I have so many princess dresses anyway, I figured why not start my own princess party business? I've tried to get in on some local princess party businesses, but that hasn't worked out. I finally just figured why not do it on my own? I already have two friends who are interested in princessing with me! Sure, I need to make a few more dresses, buy a few wigs and some face paint, but I've seen several of my friends create businesses like this, so why can't I? 

I just need to get some parties! I have a plan for this: I'll get my friends to go with me to several promotional events dressed up as princesses, and we'll hand out business cards there! (Of course, first I need to get some business cards...) We'll do some free promotional events and spread the word, then hopefully get more business. 

Here's the facebook site: https://www.facebook.com/TinasPrincesses/?notif_t=page_fan&notif_id=1495673471326472 

In any case, we'll see where it all goes. I'm excited for what this summer holds! Josh took me out for a really nice date for my graduation and told me he would support me, whatever I wanted to do, whether that's teach, or just stay home and sew princess dresses. I love him--he's amazing. <3