Missions Accomplished

Jess checks some major things off the to-do list.

By Jessica Solloway

I just got back from 5 days in Cleveland and I feel like I never stopped running from one place to the next! I went home for my oldest friend Steph's wedding. It was so gorgeous and after such an exciting, fun weekend, it's beyond depressing to be back to work and the real world. I got to see so many friends from high school and college, and it was just a blast! After a dreary month of rain, she totally lucked out and got a nice, sunny, not too hot, summer day. We were all so relieved since the ceremony was outside. It was also cool for me because I am using a few of her vendors. So it was great to see them in action! The photographers are awesome and I am really excited to have them do our wedding.


Aside from the wedding, our days leading up to it were action packed and filled with appointments because we tried to get a lot done for our wedding while we were home. We drove (which Seth is still annoyed at me about because he always gets stuck driving). I offer, but he says it's more stressful for him to be a passenger with me behind the wheel, than to drive the treacherous Pennsylvania Turnpike himself. I'd have to agree.

First, we met with the band leader who is a super nice guy. We told him about the kind of music we like, we discussed potential wedding songs (still searching so let me know if you have any good ones!), discussed my love of all Beyonce songs, and Seth requested that there be no "dancing circles just around him". I have never seen a wedding where that happened to a groom, but at least we got that off the table.

We also went to meet with Arne the florist again. By we, I mean my mom and I. We gave Seth a break and let him take a pass on this one. We went through the original proposal and firmed up our plan. I ended up going with a dark purple bridesmaid dress, so this sort of changed our original colors for flowers. I am so excited by what we are going with. It sounds like a beautiful combination and I can't wait to see it brought to life.

Next we met with a woman named Amy Finkenthal who sells invitations. She's actually a high school friend of my aunt Marla's, so it was nice to go to someone we knew. I had an exact idea of what I wanted. Initially I looked at a store in DC and of course fell in love with something way out of my budget. So, when we got to Amy's, I was really hoping to find something I loved for a better price. When we got there, she plopped down some massive books right in front of me. The first page I opened of the very first book, I saw the exact same invitation that I had been eying in DC. But this one fit my budget. I couldn't believe it. Of course I had to look through about 10 more books just to be certain I covered all the bases. An hour later, we placed an order for the invitation we saw first. Obviously. I am so relieved not to have to worry about invitations anymore. That was kind of stressing me out.

The next day, Seth and I went downtown to scope out a place for our Rehearsal Dinner. Now, we have close to 200 out-of-towners. So we have been desperately searching for a place that isn't going to make anyone have to take out a second mortgage on their home to pay for. We found a place that's fun, casual, big enough for our massive group, and actually pretty reasonable. Fingers crossed! They also said we can create a playlist on iTunes to play on the speakers throughout the party. So we spent about 4 hours in the car home yesterday discussing potential songs.

While we certainly got a lot of big things accomplished, we now have about one million little things to take care of. We made a huge to-do list and decided to try and get something done everyday from now until the wedding. It's starting to feel like crunch time!