The weather on Friday morning. Damp, dewy, cool.

Still adjusting to the manicure. (Even today, I'm still adjusting to texting with it.)

Trader Joe's for flowers. My plan: buy a bunch of bouquets that were roughly in my color scheme. At Trader Joe's, they are about $3.99 a bouquet. Divide them up. Start anew. My budget: $150. The price we were looking at when we were going to go to a florist: $400-500. Ah, but I worked in a florist shop for years as a teenager. I figured I knew how to arrange some flowers. Despite the best efforts of half of my other vendors, I was not intimidated. (If you're wondering, the final tally was $70. You'll see the results shortly.)

We went to a second Trader Joe's for for variety, and then Meijer for good measure.

The flowers waited in the car while we stopped for breakfast at Hardee's/

My assistant florist had a lot of input about what flowers worked together.

My bouquet, in progress.

Ta-daaa!

My other florist assistant was also helpful.

I made bridesmaid bouquets special for each one. Left to right: my sister's MOH bouquet, Nikki's, Granny's, Renee's.

Nikki's.

Mine.

Katie's.

Granny's.

Katie's.

Nikki's.

Katie's.

They ended up safe and sound in my mom's fridge overnight.

And on to the rehearsal. It was interesting. Rebecca (Julie Andrews) led it, and it was weird and kind of pointless because the room that it was in was nothing like the actual ceremony room, and we went through the beginning, middle, beginning again, end, middle, beginning again...I spent the rest of the night and the next day fielding questions from people that the rehearsal had created. Even I was clearer before it. Everyone left with questions. It was weird, stressful, and confusing. It was supposed to last half an hour. It lasted an hour and a half. Eric's mom was at the community center that we'd rented for the rehearsal dinner setting up and getting very lonely.

Rehearsal dinner.

And back to Granny's after the rehearsal dinner. Stay tuned fooorrrr...wedding day!

Birthday Pt. 2

Eric likes low-key birthdays, he's not a center of attention kinda guy. We had a little get-together at my grandparents' apartment with my family and his mom. I asked my mother (who lives next door to the grandparents) if she could do a little decorating for the shindig, and not even 15 minutes later she texted me a picture of a balloon being inflated. Sheesh. She said "What does he like?" and I said "Well, lions." He has a lion tattoo, he wants another. He's a Leo. He wants to name our kid Leo (so do I). He's kind of obsessed with lions. Here is what we arrived to.