Tina & Jeff's Blog
A warning to all potential future wedding couples:
DO NOT USE BELK DEPARTMENT STORE (HUDSON'S, HUDSON BELK, etc)!
I'm SOOOOOOOO angry (and so is Tina's mom).
When Tina and I registered at Belks, we did so because it's simply one of the only (if not THE) department stores near Tina's home town. We realized that not everyone is using a computer to buy as much stuff (especially wedding-type gifts) as we do, and we wanted to make things as easy as possible.
Actually registering at Belks was pretty simple. They enter in your personal data into their system, hand you a pricing gun and let you loose in the store to zap everything you want. After an hour or so, you can pretty much scan everything you could possibly desire and then it's a part of your registry for folks to
access.
During this process, we found really nice purple towels. They're the exact shade we want and they're really soft, too. But the description of the sizes and pricing was REALLY confusing. They have washcloths, hand towels, bath towels, shower towels, bath sheets and bath mats. With the exception of the bath mat, each of the towels got progressively larger.
We obviously didn't need all the sizes, but we registered for washcloths, handtowels and the shower towels. The problem is that the UPC barcode for the shower towel wasn't properly entered in the Belk computer system. So while the UPC barcode was the right number for the shower towel, the DESCRIPTION of the towel was listed as the bath sheet.
This problem confused more than one person who have already tried to buy us gifts (and was even more confounded when someone wanted to do ME a nice favor and get me the bath sheet because there's "more" of me than Tina). We went to Belks and exchanged the towels. Then we went to the Wedding Registry folks and asked them to change the description in their computers to avoid this problem in the future. As you can probably guess, they don't have the ability to do this and gave us a little comment card so we could tell the folks at Belk HQ to make the appropriate changes.
We left that Belk that day, at least confident that if someone bought us the wrong towels, we could simply exchange them for the right ones.
But no-ooooo. That was not to be. Tina's mom discovered yesterday that the purple towels are no longer in stock at Belks. They've been deemed a "winter" color and have been recalled by the manufacturer to make way for the spring colors. So now NOBODY can buy our purple towels because they've all be returned to the manufacturer.
This didn't go over very with with Tina's mother. She called Tina, who in turn called me (while I was in Detroit yesterday). Since I was driving and had nothing else taking up my time, *I* decided to call Belks to see what was what. I even spoke with the same person we met with face-to-face when we had the initial towel problem. Three guesses as to what she was able to do for us.
Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero.
I asked why we weren't notified that they were going back so that WE could have the opportunity to purchase them prior to their return shipment. She informed me that it was just too late. There was nothing she could do - that I should choose another color. And then she passed me to a manager over that department (who, of course, wasn't in and didn't return my call).
So that's the towel issue with Belk.
Next comes the "things that we registered for aren't at the Belks near Tina's hometown" issue.
Tina and I already knew that this might be an issue. So we specifically drove out to THAT Belk and had a face-to-face discussion with their wedding registry people to make sure that at least a few place settings of our china and flatware (and some crystal) would be in that store. They promised us that they'd order a few settings and get them in just for us (apparently they have a bin in the back with our names on it just for this type of situation).
As of yesterday (two weeks or so since our visit), the wrong pattern was ordered and sitting in our bin. Not only that, but discussions between Tina's mom and Belks centered on the fact that they refused to get any more stuff in stock for purchase. Tina's mom explained that there is even a shower or two coming up that people are shopping for... and only then did Belks begrudgingly agree to hold *5* place settings of the right pattern... but only until the end of February. I can only imagine the rest of the conversation as Tina's mother tried desperately to explain that the wedding wasn't until May.
Phew. I hate Belks now. But not to leave you all hanging, we found all the towels at the manufacturers website and all is well for the moment. :)
"A lot happened today," said Tina exhaustedly. (oohh, can you tell I used to play Mad Libs?)
Tina went to go have her wedding gown fitted today. What she discovered is that it needs NO alterations. Let me repeat, as it appears to be relatively important that Tina, our resident "short girl", has had clothing purchased which requires NO further modification to fit her body. I can't even start to tell you how excited she was when she called to tell me. (Now, at the time, I was trying to cut Allie's fur... and the clippers were jamming up... and I wasn't really interested in whether her clothing fit - which was a HUGE mistake on my part to not even APPEAR interested. Note to other potential grooms - when your bride-to-be calls you to tell you that she had a wedding gown fitting... regardless of the outcome, ACT INTERESTED.)
She also picked out a veil, found out that one of the four pairs of shoes she purchased work perfectly with the dress... and saw her folks, all in her lunch hour. Phew.
Her cousin also e-mailed to let her know that she's got her second wedding shower scheduled for April. Tina's excited. :) Then when she got home, she discovered that the printer had delivered the wedding envelopes (which means that *I* now get to work doing the caligraphy). All in all, a hugely eventful wedding-planning day.
Now if I could only find a way to get the computer to do the addressing instead of me doing it by hand...
We added three or four addresses to the wedding invitation database today.
What more do you expect from us stuck in an icestorm?
We did absolutely NOTHING wedding related today.
No, that's not quite true. We got one more invitation address from a relative. But that didn't really mean we DID anything to get that address other than check e-mail.
I had another house showing today, too. Supposedly someone else might put an offer on the house, too. But who knows. I'm not holding my breath - but my new realtor is pretty good - so if she thinks one's coming, I'll believe her (at least for a little while).
Seriously though, that's all that happened today. Pretty uneventful, actually. Maybe something exciting will happen tomorrow. I'm going to go find out...
Tina and I had a REALLY productive wedding-related day today (she even took the day off to do it all, too)!
We started the morning off by adding in data into our wedding database (where we're tracking all of you, your names for the invitations, etc). From there, we visited with our realtor for selling our homes (in case you're interested, go to
our agent's webpage . We happen to be her two listings at the moment (lest you think she's inexperienced because we're the only two listed, she has more than just us as clients, she was just on a break until recently). Anyways, go buy our homes.
Then we went to Chair & Equipment Rentals where we arranged for our tables, chairs and linens for the reception. It's going to be really nice - and yet again, each place we go tells us that we're the most efficient clients they've ever had (I think it's just 'cuz we're probably the most organized AND opinionated clients they've ever had, too). In any event, we were in and out in under and hour!
So we had plenty of time to go to the tux shop to arrange for the guys' clothing. Sorry, I'm not going to spoil the surprise and tell you the style and all that jazz. It looks good, however. ;)
After that was an ice cream break! We got so much accomplished, we felt we deserved it!
Squeezing in time for exercise and a grocery trip, we're now one day closer to the actual event (1 day shy of 4 months and counting, actually).
Oh, and thanks to everyone visiting the website... we're getting a LOT of visitors and we appreciate your time! If you have already viewed the site, check the Attendants page again... we now have a photo of Chris (and Allie). Only my father has yet to get himself on here. Sigh...
The website is up, more than just Tina and immediate family are starting to look at it. Besides not having my dad's photo on line, if you spot an error, please let me know!
So now we're doing detail work on the wedding planning. Next up: Wedding Invitations. If you know you're getting one, please let me know how you want your invite addressed. Yep, I'm doing them myself, by hand, in caligraphy. Impressed? Yeah, me too! We even ordered them with a "rush" so that I have extra time to work on them.
Tina's excited today because she ordered her shoes and then found out that her dress arrived a few weeks ahead of schedule! Woo hoo! Now we just have to keep the dress folks holding long enough for the shoes to arrive. Oh, and Tina's got to realize that if the dress store burns to the ground, there's just nothing we can do about it as we're not buying a really large safe-deposit box to store the dress in until the big day.
Honeymoon plans continue as expected. We know where we want to go, we're just trying to figure out how long we can afford to stay there. Contributions to the fund can be made via paypal by clicking the button below. ;)
OK. Time for bed. Talk to you soon!
ps. Clicking the Make A Donation button REALLY WILL work... but we are in no way suggesting that you actually do it!
Wedding planning is going as well as it can with work, family and other issues always imposing their will on our time and attention.
We have a place for the wedding and the reception. We have an officiant and we're now working on finding a honeymoon spot. Any
thoughts?
