Dave 'n' Jenny

I took some vacation time from B&N this past week, so Dave and I went to Omaha for a couple days. We plan on moving to Omaha around the time of our wedding (no final official decision as to when, and I haven't talked to my managers yet), so we wanted to look at the brand new apartment complexes that are being built in central Omaha, and we needed to do some wedding planning stuff. So we drove up early Thursday morning. My best friend/maid of honor, Kaitlin, came to town from Wisconsin, so I was able to see her (yay!) and she lent us moral support in our endeavors, hehe.

I don't know that we really accomplished all that much actual wedding planning while we were in Omaha. We went to Cornhusker Beverage, which is well-known through pretty much the whole Midwest, really, to find out more information about libations for our reception. We met with the manager, who'd been working there since 1971. If he's been there since before Dave and I were born, I figure he knows what he's talking about! The place had a very family-business sort of feel, and the price he quoted for us, although high, seemed reasonable, and better than we'd be able to get elsewhere (it's only high because of my mom's side of the family and Dave's parents' DSH group - they all like their alcohol, hehe). We don't actually need to book them for several months; it won't take them long to pull it all together, so we'll go back in the late fall or winter to finalize things.

We went to Enchanted Honeymoons to talk about going to Walt Disney World. OMG - I would seriously skip everything and just go there now! :P Okay, not really. But the honeymoon is definitely the part I'm looking forward to most! Since Dave and I have been living together for over 3 years and already have most things we need to furnish our home, we don't want to have a traditional wedding registry. Working with a travel agency, we'll be able to register for our honeymoon! All of our guests can chip in however much they want for our trip; we'll pay the difference, if any. I'm very excited about this. Sure, a new couch/bed/KitchenAid mixer/etc. would be nice to receive as a wedding gift, but really, we don't need anything. And I'm sure we'll have some guests (i.e., grandparents) who will prefer to give us something instead of what will essentially be like cash.

Also on Thursday, we had an appointment with a hotel in central Omaha. Our biggest struggle with the wedding right now is nailing down a date. I have my heart set on March 20, 2010, but unfortunately, the @#%$%$ NCAA wrestling tournament is that same weekend at the Quest Center in downtown Omaha, making it virtually impossible to find any hotel vacancies in town. And we need to have a block of hotel rooms available for our out-of-town guests, which will be basically Dave's entire side of the family. The hotel we visited still had plenty of vacancies, and it wasn't terribly expensive per night ($109), but it wasn't very kid/family friendly (small pool, no continental breakfast), and they won't let us reserve more than 10 rooms at a time. Once those 10 rooms are filled, if we don't get back to them soon enough, they could let all the rest of their rooms to other people, and then we'd be screwed. It's incredibly frustrating not having a set date yet. We haven't been able to sign our contract with The Western Heritage Museum (where the ceremony and reception will be), and we can't be specific with any other vendors we talk to. Argh! Dave still has to contact the casinos in Council Bluffs; we're hoping that the wrestling people will want to stay in traditional hotels within Omaha city limits, so they might have vacancies. And Council Bluffs is just across the river from downtown Omaha. Plus, the DSH group should appreciate staying in Casinos! :) We'll see. If we absolutely have to, we can move the date from 3/20/10, but I really really really want to get married on the first day of spring.

That doesn't sound like all that much for Thursday (we saw two apartment complexes, too), but we were exhausted! We stayed the night at my parents' house, and then on Friday, Kaitlin, my mom, my sister (Kate), and my 2nd cousin Rylee, who my mom babysits, and I all went wedding dress shopping. We only went to one place, but I tried on 10 dresses there. And did not find "the one." I found lots of parts of dresses I liked! A bodice here, a skirt there, embroidery here, beading there...again, frustrating. Luckily, it still feels pretty early to be buying a wedding dress. I've done well with my weight loss over the past year, and I hope to be smaller still before the wedding; I don't want to buy my dress too soon and have to have it altered too much. But I feel like there are lots of things we can't do until I get my dress. I can't pick bridesmaid or flower girl dresses, flowers, the cake... And I hear so many stories of brides who try on two dresses and immediately find "the one." I was glad to hear that the sales girl at the wedding dress store tried on over 60 dresses before she found hers. The one she ended up getting was one her mom found, that she thought was ugly on the hanger, too. So I'm trying to remain positive.

The two dresses I liked best during this round of shopping:

The future flower girl, Rylee:

So, yeah. What did we really accomplish? :P Oh, well. We're going back to Omaha on Wednesday to meet with a caterer. Hopefully Dave will have found some good news regarding hotels before then so we can sign our contract with the museum next week, too!

In non-wedding related news, both Dave and I have been busy with our own projects. He has three programming jobs right now, actually (YAY!), one of which he blogged about in http://blog.davereid.net/content/dave-growing-venture-solutions-yay, and I'm on the One Book, One Lincoln committee, so I've been reading reading reading like a madwoman. We're down to the top 12 selections now (top secret!), and I have until Wednesday the 29th to read as many of them as I can. Whew! OH - and we're getting a kitten soon!!! My coworker/friend, Faith, has a brother who lives in Norfolk; his cat had kittens, and they'll be able to leave their mother the weekend of 5/8. Roadtrip! We're so excited, even though we have pretty severe allergies, haha.

Well, now that wedding planning is really getting underway, hopefully we'll be inclined to blog more often. So please check back, and create an account if you haven't already! :)