I am afraid...

It's only three months into planning, and it's hard for anything to go horribly wrong this early in the game. Yet I fear that I may go too far to get what I want the way I want it, when I want it.

I've been trying to work out hotel blocks with a brand new hotel in the brand new National Harbor area. When I first stopped by, I talked to a woman named Sharon and she told me that I could get a fantastic deal at their hotel. "Yes!" I told her. She wasn't able to show me the rooms at that moment, but I could call and make an appointment.

Too bad that after about five attempts, I have yet to see her face for a second time. She doesn't return my calls, rescheduled a meeting at the last minute, she actually stood me up, and she was supposed to send me a contract last week but didn't.

I'm ready to call the hotel manager and tell him exactly how incompetent some of his staff are...

But wait - I've heard of brides who lose control when things don't go their way. And knowing how I get when other plans like movies and dinner outings don't go my way (prime example), I know that I'm a prime candidate for bridezillitis.

So where do I draw the line with this? If they didn't have the best deal in town, I'd pick up my bags and sign with a different hotel. To be that girl or not...?

I wonder how different my life would be if I could rant like this guy...

Fisher

This is a song that Cyrus burned for me (along with the entire album) even before we started dating! I love it and want to incorporate it into our wedding somehow, but it's rather slooowww...and a little sad, no?

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Flu

"What does the flu have anything to do with the wedding?" you ask? Apparently a lot. Three wedding-related meetings have been canceled because of sickness, so I thought I'd dedicate this entry to the beloved flu virus. 

Personally, I think the flu vaccine is just a big hoax. They claim that it'll make you immune to ONE strand of the virus, so you still might get the flu. So how will you ever know that it worked? Well...apparently I don't hold that strongly to this suspicion because I got the flu vaccine last month. :P I don't wanna take my chances!

Here's an interesting website: Google Flu Trends. Google mapped out flu activity by state based on flu-related searches on Google! Isn't that interesting? According to them, there is"low" flu activity in every state except for nine, which are labeled as "moderate." Lucky us--we live in a moderate state. Yay, Maryland.

At least this is one thing that we won't have to worry about for our wedding in August, although it is making it really difficult to book our hotel block...Frustration!!

Down Unda!

Now that The Dress has been boughten, I know more about what kind of bridesmaid dress I'm looking for. Probably something a little whimsical, light and airy. And then I came across this website: Rose & Ruby...and saw these pictures:



Where is this company? How can I get these dresses? I looked more closely at the wedding blog where I found these dresses and saw that Rose & Ruby is based in Australia.

How is it that Australia is the home of so many beautiful things...?

The One

Disregard the last post. No need to fight over wedding dresses because...

I found it.

I found The One.

To go or not to go?

There's a designer bridal gown sale - 75% off!! - a few Sundays from now at the Ritz-Carlton in Tyson's Corner.

It's hard to know exactly where I fall on the urgency scale. Our wedding is in August, and it's mid-November and I have no clue where I'm going to find The Dress and if I can get it for The Right Price.

Some descriptions of the event that scare me:

- "Sale is first come, first serve
- Line starts directly outside of the Plaza Room at Ritz
- No appointments taken
- No merchandise hold policy
- All brides are recommended to wear bras, lingerie, shorts, and underwear to try on gowns as entire ballroom will become a dressing room"

YIKES! It's from 10am to 7pm on a Sunday, and I need to be at church from 11:15 - around 2:30. Is it worth it to go later when a lot of the best stuff will be taken? How crazy will people be here? Do people really get in fights over dresses at these things?

What if I encounter something like this...?

An Endless Summer Night?

As the kids complain about having indoor recess (What, would you rather be outside in the rain? Really?), I can't help but think about what fate the weather will bring us on our special day, especially since the majority of our wedding will be outside.

The Old Farmer's Almanac tells me that in the past two decades, it's rained on Aug. 22 four times ('07, '99, '94, '90). So looking purely at the odds, chances are higher that it won't rain. But the inconvenient truth is that the weather has just been nuts these days - and hurricane season has not been friendly!

Other potential threats are, of course, extreme heat, humidity and just general grossness. But seeing as though most of our ceremony and reception are going to happen as the sun's going down, it could end up being a Richard Marx kind of endless summer night.

Gay. Lord.

To celebrate my day off for election day, I went to meet our wedding planner at our wedding site just to check it out and talk about layout and other details. I had a little time to kill, so I also wanted to check out the hotel situation. There were two areas I'd never seen before: the newly-built National Harbor complex and Old Town Alexandria.

The National Harbor was first on my list (it's like 5 minutes from Oxon Hill Manor), and WOW. This area opened this past April with shops, restaurants, hotels and attractions to suit every taste and need! It's so new that my GPS left breadcrumbs so I could find my way back to the highway. I talked to a few friends and even our wedding planner, and no one I know has ever been to this area, or heard of it!

The crowning jewel of this place is the Gaylord National Hotel. Yes, Gaylord. With rooms for around $500/night, this place is jaw-droppingly jaw-dropping. They've got restaurants, coffeeshops, sports bars, conference rooms, TREES, and what looks like a mini-village in the main lobby. It's nuts. In any case, it's great to know that a place with such a variety of attractions for our guests if they want to hang out nearby during our wedding weekend!

Maybe it's because it was raining, but Old Town Alexandria (about 10 minutes away) wasn't quite as charming to me--It looked more like a dirtier, older Georgetown. But with such great, established restaurants like Hank's Oyster Bar and Restaurant Eve, it's tough to compare to the trendy newbies in the National Harbor.

In any case, it's really exciting that there are tons of things to do near our wedding site, especially when we thought that it was in kind of a dead-end area (ask any Maryland native about PG County...). More details are on their way as we really get the ball rolling. Next on the to-do list: hotel room blocks, finding a caterer!