Well, shopping today was a bit of a bust. The ladies formalwear market is pretty pitiful these days. There's plenty of stuff for 20-somethings, and then there's twenty five iterations of the same sequined nightmare dress for anyone over 40. Poor ladies. They did so much walking and looking and rooting and digging today, and for nothing! Oh well, at least we had a nice time chatting and complaining and gawking at the ugly dresses together :)
So.... the tasting at Turf Valley was great :) We didn't get to taste one of the seafood dishes we wanted to offer, but when we spoke with the chef about it he REALLY advised against serving it anyway. It was a buffet option that we thought we could adapt to a plated meal, and apparently the sauce is runny and it just would've looked kinda gross on a plate. They prepared three full plates for us, and we tried sicilian chicken (lightly breaded chicken breast in a delightfully sweet marinara sauce with red, green and yellow peppers and mushrooms served with pasta), chicken and salmon teriyaki, and chicken marsala. It was all DELICIOUS of course. It was a tough decision, but I think we're going to offer the choice of sicilian chicken or a petite filet mignon with chicken marsala. The teriyaki was AWESOME, but we decided that people would go for filet mignon before they'd go for teriyaki, and some people are wary of fish, and we're going to be serving some seafood in the hors d'ouevres anyway. We're not actually MADE of money, and we can't afford to serve the kind of seafood we'd like to serve (stuffed shrimp or crab imperial or something) so we might as well go for the filet mignon option - at least that lends a bit of sophistication without adding any cost. The sicilian chicken was AWESOME too - the chef said it's very popular and he always gets compliments on it from weddings and banquets. It's a good option for anyone who likes the good old italian classics and doesn't want to have to be brave in their menu choices. We'll decide on the sides later, but for now at least I can order my response cards and start assembling my invitations!
We also booked our rehearsal dinner at the Crab Shanty. It's our favorite restaurant, and it happens to be in Ellicott City about 5 minutes from Turf Valley where we'll be rehearsing! We had a bit of a scare, because their prices had gone up since we first spoke with them casually in August, and they added a fee that we thought was going to put us over budget but it turns out that it doesn't really apply to us anyway. Luckily, my loving future in-laws were fine with the price increase in the food itself, so we're still able to go forward as planned. I was really upset when I first found all this out (when I called to book it and found out that their policies and prices on banquets had changed!). It's more than just a restaurant that we picked out, there's history there for us - it's kinda special to us. We've eaten there for proms and homecoming dances, we ate there the night that he proposed, and it's always been our favorite place to just go on a whim when we've had a bad day. And they have the BEST crab dip on the planet. We try it everywhere we go, and I'm telling you, we haven't found anything better. So anyway, that's all very good and we're very excited about that :) We get three meal options for that, which will be garlic shrimp with a petite crab cake, sage stuffed chicken, or pan seared pork tenderloin. Yummm :) I'm checking into how much it'll cost to serve the crab dip...
The bridesmaids' dresses came in also, and they're GORGEOUS!!! I'm SOOOOOOO happy with them! I looked long and hard for the perfect dress, and I really think I did a good job :) The color is just beautiful - it's a dark, rich red in a nice satin fabric. And the chiffon hanging from the back just lends such elegance to it... I just love them! So far I've gotten VERY positive feedback from the girls who have picked them up from me. Not that I think anyone would tell me if they didn't like them, but I don't think they'd be quite so enthusiastic if the dress was just "ok". At least I'm going to let myself continue thinking that :)
I'm starting to order the last few details, like the paper for the program covers and a few little decorations for the place card table - things like that. We're definitely coming down the home stretch. We're meeting with our pastor to go over the ceremony details in two weeks, and we'll be meeting with my lady at Turf Valley to go over the day-of details soon, and then it'll be time to walk the grounds with the photographer and have our last meeting with the DJ to go over our specific requests and the timing for the evening... it's so exciting to be getting down to these last final details! We're 89 days out as of today, but it's starting to feel like it's coming up REALLY fast, which is a great feeling :) We'll be going out to look at apartments within the next few weekends also - a whole other aspect to all of this! YAY! But for now, I think I'll go snuggle :) Go ahead, gag.
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