Ch-ch-ch-changes!

Things are moving right along with the house, the wedding, life.

I had a little bit of a panic attack last week.  On Tuesday, ShipRocked sent out an email that our itinerary for the cruise has changed.  We’re going to be in Key West on a completely different day than originally planned.  Considering I’ve already booked and paid for our non-refundable wedding with Chapel by the Sea, this could end up costing me a pretty penny.  I emailed the reverend immediately, but I’m still waiting on a return call confirming our new wedding date and time.  Rob tells me not to worry about not having heard back.  He lived in Key West for many, many years, and that laid back, I’ll-get-to-it-when-I-can attitude is pretty typical for the locals.  At this point, I’m just banking on the fact that there probably aren’t very many people lined up to get married at 10 o’clock on a Wednesday morning in November.  Here’s hoping.

In addition to it being a different day, we’re going to be there two hours less to boot.  To accommodate all of the bands’ set lists, we have to be back on the boat by 1pm that day.  As a result, everyone that’s not going on the cruise with us — my parents, Chris’s parents, etc. — have decided not to come to the wedding at all.  Which, in all honesty, is fine with me.  We were only going to be on the island for a few hours anyway, and the thought of trying to rally everyone together and entertain them was turning my supposed-to-be-stress-free wedding into a little ball of anxiety.  Now, it’ll just be me and Chris, Rob and Evelyn, Christy, and possibly Tam and Jeremy.  Us and our closest friends, my brother giving me away, private, intimate and perfect.

In light of these changes, though, and the void that it left for our parents and local friends missing out, we’ve decided to have a reception after we get back.  My mom has offered to pay for and help plan it.  I’ll wear my dress again, we’ll be presented as the Mr. and Mrs., we’ll stuff our faces with cake, all that good stuff.  It will still be a small party, probably around 30-35 people, and it will not likely be a full sit down dinner.  We’ll instead do a cocktail reception with hors d’oeuvres and a beer and wine package.  I’ll probably get beachy, starfish themed favors in peach and blue to tie in with my dress and shoes and destination, and we want to do a sand pouring unity ceremony.  The hard part is figuring out where to do it.  We’re considering several places in Old Town and National Harbor, but right now I’m leaning toward either the elegant, yet dog-friendly Hotel Monaco (I would totally get a tux for Bruce); the PX Lounge, an old world speakeasy nestled in the heart of Old Town; or the Odyssey III, an all glass cruise vessel that sails up and down the Potomac nightly.

In other news, we met with the wiring company and the foreman at our soon-to-be new home last Thursday.  The foreman went over all the rough-ins with us to make sure everything that we were expecting was being done, and I took the opportunity to talk with him a little about the schedule.  All the electrical was run that day, and the network, surround sound and security system wiring was being run the next day.  They should have done our electrical and plumbing inspections this past Tuesday, insulation yesterday, and final inspection today.  Which means drywall should be going in tomorrow!  The sales office told us that we can expect to close 45 from drywall being complete, so it looks like we’re actually slightly ahead of schedule.  Chris and I are going to do our usual pop in on Sunday to check the progress, so cross your fingers we have walls!

This past week, I put the deposit in with our moving company, and tentatively scheduled them for October 27th.  It’s a one day move since our new house is only about 4 miles from our old one.  Our lease on our current place ends on the 29th, so this gives me the 28th to go back and clean before handing over the keys.  I just hoping there are no unexpected delays, because once we give our 60-day move out notice, we’re done.  There’s a waiting list on apartments in our community, so I doubt I’d be able to extend an extra month if something goes wrong.  We’ll be stuck with three cats and a dog in a hotel room… and that would just suck.

Was hoping to upload pictures from this past weekend’s We Are Woman march that Christy and I attended on the Capital lawn.  But that’ll have to wait until next time…  the metro home and a glass of wine are calling my name.

Cheers!
Felina