I'm a bridesmaid down... And I think I'm okay with that.

This past Saturday, I went with Melanie to get her measured and order her dress since I got a call letting me know the my MOH dress was in. I thought it would be a nice idea to invite Amelia to come along since she does live in town and it would be nice to go ahead and get her dress ordered. I hadn't heard much from Amelia in the past couple of months, but we had been talking about having a girl's night soon. I figured this quick little outing would give us time to plan something.

Apparently I was wrong. Amelia told me that she was no longer interested in being part of the wedding party.

I wont go into too much detail, but there is a bit of a back story... We had gone over to her apartment a couple of months ago and had proceeded to get absolutely shit faced drunk. Something was said at some point in the night and Austin and I got into a drunk fight. We were yelling at each other about something probably inconsequential, but it happened. Because of the copious amounts of alcohol consumed, everything was blown waaaay out of proportion.The next morning, we're all sober and Austin and I head home. We both felt pretty dumb about fighting over pretty much nothing and making such a scene. Amelia didn't call or anything and we didn't hear from here for about two months. I figured it was because she was trying to start a find a new job and was going to move into a bigger apartment in the complex she lives in. No worries, I know I don't have to be the center of anyone's life.

Well, last Saturday rolls around and I hadn't heard much from Amelia and I thought things were fine. Instead of just a simple "Yes, I can go" or "No, I have other plans" she decides to go into this long rant about how she doesn't feel comfortable around Austin and would therefore not be a part of the wedding. I was extremely hurt by this and didn't know the proper way to respond, so I thought about it all day and tried to figure out how to respond. I tried calling her to talk it over like adults, but she never would answer.So I decide to text her since that is obviously the only way to communicate with this girl.

As the night wears on, she begins to drunkenly inform me how little she thinks of my fiance and of me since I"m choosing to stay with some sooo awful.Really? You saw us have one drunken fight and you feel you have all of the authority to judge our relationship? I don't think so. And so she continues. Not just texting me at this point, but texting Austin telling him how awful he is, texting Dan telling him he's a horrible person... It was just ridiculous. After a point, I decided to turn off my phone because I was tired of reading texts that were paragraphs long about how my fiance is a horrible person and I'm an idiot for staying with him. I was tired of reading them and tired of trying to talk to her because at this point she was actign so self righteous and it was pissing me off.

The next morning when I woke up, I had quite a few texts that continued to berate me and tear Austin down. After about six messages, I finally got to one where she said she wasn't going to talk about it any more and she really wanted to get some sleep. (I still don't understand why she felt the need to tell me that since she had been texting me for about an hour and I had my phone off and was therefor not responding...) When Austin woke up, he had another series of texts that continued to harass him. He repsonded with (what I feel was a totally reasonable) "Fuck you" and left it at that. So she continues on her rampage and he isn't responding to anything she's saying at this point because it is THE NEXT DAY! He wanted to leave it be and not deal with it but apparently some people don't like to step away from a situation when things are spiraling out of control and everyone is mad.

I try to call her a couple times throughout the day, but she is constantly ignoring my calls. I wanted to be able to have an actual conversation and not send out text messages trying to work through this issue. I was still trying to work things out with her.

Finally, Monday rolls around and I can finally get her on the phone. She wouldn't let me even try to talk. Every time I would try to say anything, she would talk over me and finally started yelling and screaming at me. Apparently she felt that I was weak, stupid, insecure, etc for staying with a guy that treats me extremely well and loves me. Right. That makes sense.... Finally, after about ten minutes of her refusing to let me talk and her yelling, she starts screaming. There were no words, just unintelligible screaming. So I hung up on her.

I then went to my desk (because she decided to do this in the middle of the day while I was at work) and defriended her on facebook and twitter and blocked her on both. About five minutes after this happened, she decided to leave me a voicemail telling me not to contact her ever again.

Yes, things were said on all sides that should not have been said. I wont pretend like everyone acted like adults. But for someone to spend a good three days trying to convince me how awful my fiance is and try to get me to break things off with him is unforgivable. And then to have her act like she did absolutely nothing wrong the entire time makes it worse. I was trying to let her know that yes, we all had acted rashly. But she wouldn't have me telling her that she did anything wrong. She would continually complain about how she was "sexually harassed" at work, but she would never do anything about it. And apparently she's a better person than I am when I'm being "abused". Right...

So all of this boils down to the fact that Amelia will no longer be one of my bridesmaids. And I really couldn't be happier about that.

Engagement Pictures!

Austin and I got our engagment pictures recently and wanted to share a couple of our favourites! Amber with Lifestyle Portraits worked with us for about three hours at the Dallas Arboretum and we think they came out great! We didn't want to post all of them thinking that it would make this one post insanely long, but here are our favourites:

We're in wedding overdrive!

The past couple of weeks have been a very busy time for both Austin and I. Not only have we been spending more time than usual with his family after the recent passing of his grandfather, but we've also been working on all of the little details for the wedding as well as putting in as many extra hours at work.

That's right, Austin is finally starting to get more interested in the wedding and is actually starting to help out. I guess once we passed the seven month mark, he realised that things were getting closer. I'm glad he's starting to take some interest in the wedding, because (unlike most brides) its OUR wedding, not just mine.

Austin looked over the only proposal that we've gotten from the four florists I've met with and we weren't too excited over what she had outlined. And since it has taken the other florists more than three weeks to even get us a proposal, I kindly let them know that we had decided to use another company's services. After all, if they can't get us a proposal in a decent time frame, do we really want to trust them with our wedding? I think not. Our wonderful photographer has gotten us in touch with a florist that she has worked with in the past and highly recommends, so we will be meeting with her this weekend. We think the meeting we have set up on Saturday will go very well... Fingers crossed!!

Last Saturday I went with one of my bridesmaids, Melanie, to order her dress and to pick up my Maid of Honour's dress. Two more things checked off the list! We also heard from another bridesmaid, Amelia, and she informed me that she was no longer interested in being in the wedding party (more on that later). Now all we need is for Callie to order her dress and all of the ladies will be set, dress wise that is.

Austin has really started to think about who he wants to stand next to him (finally). He had already picked out one groomsman, Dan, and his Best Man, but was still working on the final guys. I thinks he's got it narrowed down and he should be able to give me names by Monday. Yay! He has also started to look into what they will wear and, yes with my input, decided this week. The guys will all be wearing a basic black tux with a cobalt tie and vest. Now the hard part will be to find a vest and tie that are the right shade of cobalt.

I have been able to finalize all of the information for the hotel blocks recently. I was happy to get all of that finished, now we have to figure out where we would like to stay for the wedding night... Decisions, decisions... Since that was all finalized, I did get all of the accommodation cards printed and put together, another thing checked off of our to-do list!

I have been talking with a friend of Austin's mom who is a top notch designer and has graciously offered to help us with the decor for the ceremony and reception. Its been a bit of a hassle, but hopefully we'll be able to get a time nailed down when she can come down to the Infomart and take a look around and give us her professional opinion on how things should look.

Well, that seems to be all of the wedding planning we've been working on lately. It might not seem like much, but we can finally see things coming together!

He will be missed

Austin's grandfather passed away this past Saturday. Since his family has been so wonderful and welcomed me into their family with open arms, it has been a very hard thing for us to deal with. He had been in the hospital for about a week due to a heart attack and we were fortunate enough to be able to visit him and see him before he passed.

His Grandad has been a huge part of his life and he will be greatly missed. I leaves behind a loving family and his wonderful wife of 72 years.

The Dallas Morning News had a lovely piece in the paper yesterday, you can read it here.

Pictures and a bit of agrivation with the florist

As I blogged earlier this week, Austin and I are set up to have our Engagement pictures taken tomorrow. We're both really excited to work with Amber. We also don't have a lot of pictures together, so now we'll (hopefully) get a couple really cute ones of us. We're planning on going to the Dallas Arboretum tomorrow. I think it will ba a lot of fun and we'll be able to really play around with the fun background.

Now, onto my aggrivation...

I have spent the past two weekends meeting with florists. Five of them. Every single one has primised to get me quotes within a couple days. Do you know how many I've gotten? None.

That's right, none. Nada. Zip. Zero. Zilch.

I want to give these people money, why wont they get me my information?! I understand that it might take a couple extra days to get a proper quote, but we've been communicating through email prior to me meeting with you. Why not just shoot me an email that says you need more time? I don't get it...