I babble about house plans a lot here but I haven't touched much on the wedding plans lately. It's not that we're not doing anything - it's just that the house has been a little prominent in my worry-sites. Heh.

So let's go through all the happy fun and excitement we've been having, shall we?

The Clothes: The seamstress is wonderful - comes with a sharp and wicked sense of humor (she's a gamer so she fits in quite well with our crowd) and a now-four month old baby my mother adores because it gives her lots of grandma-practice during fittings. The outfits themselves are looking marvelous, with the possible exception of my mom's dress, because apparently the burgundy fabric she choose for the main part of the outer skirt has a teensy weensy problem of bleeding dye everywhere - dye which causes allergic reactions like swelling of the eyes, sneezing, and hives on the part of our seamstress. This is not normally considered a good thing.

The Photographer: We found a photographer we both liked (my mom and I) a few months ago. Not only is the price quite reasonable, but the samples we saw were well done, plus this lady was enthusiastic enough about the theme to volunteer to actually wear a Renaissance-style costume to the wedding while she works. We thought all was just fine until my mom got a call from the studio saying that the woman we'd picked couldn't do it and someone else would do it instead. No explanation of why - just that there would be a switch.

My mom started calling, pestering them especially when she couldn't get a straight answer. Seems that the woman we talked to and liked is fairly low on the totem pole and someone with higher seniority saw the package we'd purchased, thought it sounded like fun, and decided she'd rather do it instead. So she simply crossed off the first woman's name and penciled her own in.

Unfortunately for her, they didn't count on dealing with my Mom, who is not the type to just sit back meekly and nod. The happy ending to this story is that we've still got the woman *we* liked, and the studio has hopefully learned a little lesson about screwing with the customer. Or maybe not, but hey, it's a nice thought.

The Invitations: About a month ago we ordered invitations after sitting on the floor of a cramped little print shop going through books and books of styles. My mom, having been through this whole wedding thing twice before (for my sisters) insisted we order early so there'd be time for any mistakes to be rectified. Turns out this was a good thing because the lady from the print shop has called three or four times now in the past few weeks. First the invitations were delayed, and then after she (the print shop lady) kept pestering the printers themselves, she found out that they hadn't even *printed* them yet and they were supposed to be available for us to pick up one week ago!

We're going to tackle the cake and the flowers this weekend. Should be interesting to see what can go wrong with *them*...