The Wedding Budget: What It All Cost
Posted: October 1, 2012 Filed under: Updates | Tags: budgets, catering, diy weddings, food, money, receptions, wedding, wedding budget, wedding venues 12 Comments »
Ring Power!
The wedding was amazing, but now that I’ve (almost) finished swooning over my photos I have to look at the numbers. As some of you may remember, my wedding budget was $2,000. Well it’s one thing to say that your budget is $X, but it’s an entirely different matter to stick to that budget. So here’s the big question: how much did it all actually cost in the end? Let me break it down for you.
(In US dollars)
80 Invitations and return address labels: $43.15
100 Save the Dates: $10.38
Dress: $145
Necklace: $32.50
Earrings: $12
Shoes: $96
Photography: $400
Roll of Stamps: $45
Tux: $105
Chuppah Fabric: $30
Chuppah Letters: $18
Faux Flowers: $4
Flower stems: $4
Sheet Music: $2
Bubbles: $11.99
Guest Book: $37.80
PVC: $25
Makeup: $75
Catering: $725
Wine: $150
Beer: $216
Cake: $40
Roses: $75
Baby’s breath: $30
Vases: $5
Napkins: $10
Desert plates: $10
Cups: $8
Champagne: $50
Chairs: $115
Total : $2530.82
So we went over our budget by about $500. That’s a fairly significant sum for people in our financial situation, but it’s far from the end of the world. Also, my parents paid for some things for us in addition to the wedding money they gave us.
As expected, the biggest costs were food, alcohol, and photography. We had a few costs that I didn’t anticipate: flowers, chairs, and champagne. However, the cake ended up costing quite a bit less than I expected since it came from Sam’s instead of the baker we wanted.
Of course, you may notice that many things you expect to see on wedding budgets are missing on ours. There’s no venue, DJ, officiant, hair, etc. That’s the wonderful thing about getting married near your family – you have built in help in the area. Our family and friends really stepped up and helped us immeasurably both in terms of just getting things set up and by saving us lots of money.
How we saved
Venue: We were so lucky to have my aunt and uncle let us use their beautiful farm for our wedding. It’s an amazing venue and it allowed us to have the wedding we wanted. I wanted an outdoor wedding, but most of the venues I looked at before we decided on the farm cost the entire wedding budget for four hours and the ones that had reasonable time periods were about twice as much as we wanted to spend on the entire wedding. The only place that would have been affordable enough for us would have required us to severely limit our guest list to make it so. They only charged a couple hundred dollars to rent the outside area for the ceremony, but the reception cost was per person based on catering (they catered themselves), which started at $26/person for just hors d’oeuvres. Considering the list my mom gave me of people on her side of the family we needed to invite had 40 people on it, we would have had to exclude a lot of people we really wanted to have there. It also couldn’t have been the kind of party we wanted, so my aunt and uncle really saved us with the venue.
Our delicious reception dinner
Catering: If you did the math on the catering, you may have realized that $725 divided by 80 people comes out to just over $9/person – i.e. super cheap in terms of catering a wedding. The secret? Having an amazing cook in the family who does catering. My aunt, Billie, gave us an amazing deal on the catering, and it was absolutely delicious! To go with the British theme, she made shepherd’s pie for the meat eaters. She also made one of the best veggie lasagnas I’ve had for the vegetarians (though a lot of the meat eaters ate it too). When we got home, John’s only complaint was that we didn’t take any shepherd’s pie with us because he really wanted some more. If you’re wondering what to compare that $9/plate to, the only other catering option we found that would have been that little was a very basic taco bar from a Moe’s-style Mexican restaurant. That would have been cool, but that didn’t include any vegetarian options of extras like chips and salsa. Even pork barbeque (which I don’t eat, but beef or chicken would have been even more) was more expensive than that, especially when you added sides. A comparable meal at most of the places I contacted would have started at anywhere from $16/person to $25/person. The best part about using Billie was that we already knew she was a fabulous cook and that anything she made would be amazing!
Alcohol: So we didn’t save as much as we might have on the booze since we bought more than we needed (we expected more people to stay longer). However, we got the wine for $3.99/bottle from Trader Joe’s, and no, it wasn’t Two-Buck Chuck. No, it wasn’t the world’s best wine, but it wasn’t Boone’s Farm either. Some of the wines were better than others (my mom and maid of honor bought a selection of different wines at that price point – there were quite a few to choose from), but they were all comparable to the $6-7/bottle wines at most grocery stores. The beer was standard domestic cans from Ingles for $15.98. People may not have been wowed by our beer and wine selection, but, as far as I know, no one complained. The good thing about doing cans of beer instead of a keg was that the leftovers didn’t go to waste. Oh, and though we thought bottles would be classier, the cans were a bit cheaper and they were easier to recycle.
DJ: My aunt and uncle have a sound system at the farm, so we didn’t need to rent equipment and decided to save money by DIYing it. We asked my cousin, Brent, to MC for us and John’s friend, Danny (Ashtray), came with us to do the music during the ceremony since Brent didn’t think he’d make it in time. We just made playlists for the ceremony, dinner, and dancing. The only thing I think we should have done differently was putting the dancing playlist on random. We tried to put mostly upbeat, danceable songs in the playlist, but interspersed it with some slower songs so that people would be able to take breaks to talk or get more drinks. However, when it was on random we ended up with several very high energy dance songs in a row followed by a bunch of less dance-y songs. So basically, people who were into the high energy songs got tired quickly, then the slower songs that followed kind of killed the dancing. There were bursts of dancing throughout, but it never really took off. My advice: make the playlist in a set order.
Officiant: There aren’t many synagogues in the area, and none of them were willing to marry a Jew to a non-Jew. Basically, if we wanted a rabbi to perform the ceremony we would have had to pay a lot of money (officiant fee plus travel expenses) to “import” one. My mom mentioned htat their friend, Alan, was an officiant and might be willing to do it, so I asked her to find out how much he would charge. He ended up agreeing to do it for free, which was awesome. He was a really cool guy, and, as an added bonus, he looks vaguely like Jon Pertwee (and was just as tall).
Invitations: Groupons for Vistaprint were the secret there. Groupon and Living Social both pretty routinely run $17 for $70 of printing services for Vistaprint. The best part about Vistaprint is that if something is wrong with your order – even if it’s your fault – they’ll let you fix the problem and will resend it to you for free.
Those, of course, aren’t the only things we saved on, but those are the only ones I’m going to go into now. I’ll do another post on DIY chuppahs. If you have any specific questions, please ask in the comments.
We were so happy to find a way to have the wedding we wanted without breaking the bank or slashing the guest list. Of course, there are many ways to save on a wedding, and not everyone is lucky enough to have a free venue, great cooks in the family, or even be married close enough to home for their family and friends to be able to chip in that much. What do you think is the best way to save on weddings (other than the obvious go to the courthouse)?
The Details
Posted: September 26, 2012 Filed under: Uncategorized, Updates | Tags: doctor who, tardis chuppah, updates, wedding, wedding ceremony, wedding detail, wedding photos, wedding vows 21 Comments »
I promised to write a longer post with all of the details today. It was a very bumpy ride, but in the end our wedding was amazing. This is a long post, so feel free to just look at the photos – I sum up the wedding fails and wedding wins at the end.
The night before the wedding, I wasn’t feeling too great and was extremely tired, so I went to bed and we didn’t add the lettering to the chuppah or write our vows like we planned. Instead, we set the alarm for fairly early so we could get up and get everything done before my makeup appointment at 11. The best laid plans….
I woke up at 6 the morning of the wedding vomiting. I should mention at this point that I almost never throw up – I may get horribly nauseous on occasion, but nothing every actually comes up. I have no idea if I had some sort of fleeting stomach bug or if it was nerves, but what I do know is that it was horrendous. I was completely miserable and all I could think was, “I’m not supposed to feel like this on my wedding day!” I couldn’t even keep anything I took for the nausea down for long. I finally took some old Phenergan (by the way Mom, that stuff expired seven years ago) which, while not completely effective, did prevent me from vomiting on the way to get my makeup done.
I thought my mom was going to take me to the makeup appointment, but she went to the farm early to set up there, so John took me and my maid of honor, Marie, to Asheville and dropped us off. Thankfully, one of my other bridesmaids, Allison, met us there and was able to take us to the farm. Even better, she brought non-drowsy Dramamine for me, which did wonders for my stomach.
Thank you Allison!
The makeup didn’t take very long, so we went to the farm afterward where we met my cousin, Ali, who did my hair. Oh, and if you couldn’t tell, my braid hair extensions didn’t get there in time. Luckily, Ali is great with hair and curled and pinned my hair to perfection. My awesome photographer, Paula Roberts, was supposed to come at 2:30 to start photos, so John and I were planning on writing our vows before then. While waiting for photos and John, I started getting a bit hungry finally. I had completely forgotten about the whole food thing, but thankfully Allison brought a cooler of snacks (and champagne!). So we sat down upstairs at my aunt’s house (in my bra – I’d forgotten to bring a button-up shirt so I wouldn’t mess up my hair) and ate baguettes with goat cheese and sundried tomatoes and waited…
My mom called at one point, asking when my aunt was supposed to pick up the cake and cupcakes we ordered. I realized that the baker hadn’t replied to my last email asking when they’d be ready to be picked up, so I called to find out. When I asked the girl who answered the phone, she said, “Maybe you should talk to the owner,” and my heart sank. It turns out, he thought the wedding was in October for some reason, though we had been emailing and I’m quite certain I know what month my wedding is in. He sounded horrified that he’d gotten the month wrong, but he couldn’t do anything at that point.
Luckily, my aunt, Randi, and my cousin, Ali, came to the rescue. They went to Sam’s and got a sheet cake with red, blue, and white flowers for us. It may not have been the Guinness chocolate cake with Bailey’s icing and mini cupcakes we wanted, but it arrived in time and was gone by the end of the night, so I guess it worked out okay.
Meanwhile, John was with the guys, setting up the chuppah. When we set it up the day before, John decided that he should make a lattice of duct tape on the top to prevent the satin from sagging and that perhaps it should be tied to the fence in addition to having the poles shoved in the ground. John also had to put the lettering on, but he didn’t think it would take that long.
Cut to half an hour before the photographer is supposed to come. I’m looking out the window at my aunt’s house, trying to figure out why the guys were still working on the chuppah, which still didn’t have the fabric on it. I finally called John who said that it was too windy and they needed to stake it down and were having issues. They finally got it up and stable, but they didn’t start changing until right before the photographer arrived.
Our Tardis chuppah
Paula and my cousin Briana (also a wonderful photographer) started taking photos of my and the bridesmaids first, then we did the whole wedding party, and then she shot just the guys while I was back at the house drinking champagne. By the time the photos were done, people were arriving, and I didn’t see John again until right before the ceremony, so we didn’t have vows written. We decided to wing it.
The processional was the Throne Room and End Title from Star Wars IV. I walked down the aisle with my dad and my step-dad to Queen’s version of the Wedding March from Flash Gordon. Our officiant read the rather brief ceremony we had written, then my maid of AWESOME read the Jewish ceremony. Marie did a fabulous job with the seven blessings and we are so grateful she was willing to do that for us. I got a bit teary at points, but every time John saw me get that “squinty look” he started making silly faces at me so I wouldn’t cry. I did at one point giggle out loud though, which I felt bad about because it was while Marie was reading the seven blessings.
When we got to the vows, they went something like this:
“I promise to take you to every vineyard in North Carolina at least twice”
“I promise to always go see the glockenspiels with you”
“I promise to always buy the big back of Jack Link beef jerky to share”
“I promise to always split the last piece with you”
“I promise to always make you watch movies from my childhood with bad special effects”
“I promise to always watch those movies no matter how terrible the special effects are.”
We exchanged rings, broke a glass, and then John and I walked back up the aisle as husband and wife to the 2008 Doctor Who theme.
No, we didn’t shove the cake in each other’s face
The reception started immediately afterward since we already had almost all of the photos we needed (and because the reception venue was about 20 yards away), and it was a blast! I changed out of my 5″ glittery Union Jack platform boots into my Converse high-tops to facilitate dancing.
I hope all of our guests had a good time; we certainly did. My only complaint is that people left far too early! That was really the only thing I truly regret about the day – not being able to spend more time with everyone.
Cheers!
The only really bad thing about the reception was that someone brought me a glass of wine and it stung me. Apparently somewhere between the booze table and where I was standing, a yellow jacket dived kamikaze-style into the wine, so when I took a sip it stung me on the lip. That was the only time I really cried at the wedding, because that hurt like hell. Luckily, Susan pulled out the stinger and my friend from high school, Dr. Jason Blatt (really), got a cigarette from someone and put the wet tobacco on my lip. The tobacco tasted disgusting, but it brought the swelling down almost immediately.
Wedding Fails
- Being violently ill the morning of the wedding
- Not getting the chuppah done until the last minute
- Not getting the hair extensions in time
- Not writing vows
- Our cake and cupcakes didn’t come through
- Getting stung by a yellow jacket on my lip
Wedding Wins
- All of our super amazing friends and family who chipped in in SO many ways to make it all come together
- All of John’s immediate family was able to come, and his mom and dad wore awesome hats
- My uber-prepared bridesmaid Allison bringing me medicine for my stomach and delicious snacks for later
- The chuppah getting done eventually and looking badass
- My cousin Ali giving me an awesome wedding updo
- Improvising our vows
- My aunt and cousin saving the day by going to get a cake for us
- My maid of honor reciting the blessings in Hebrew for us (with English translations)
- Getting John to dance with me (only once, but still)
- Getting my dad to dance with me (albeit briefly)
- My friend from high school who couldn’t make it being there via Face Time on another friend’s phone
- Seeing everyone, even though we didn’t get to spend as much time with them as we would have liked
- And the biggest wedding win of all: marrying my best friend
Despite all of the many things that went wrong, I couldn’t imagine a better day.
The wedding party
And now I shall leave you with a few more photos.
Awesome hats
The CDS crew with Caroline on Laura’s phone via Face Time
We’re Married!
Posted: September 24, 2012 Filed under: Updates | Tags: chuppah, doctor who, married, tardis chuppah, updates, wedding, wedding photos 13 Comments »
Chilling in the horse pasture after the ceremony
We’re married! I definitely won’t say everything went off without a hitch – there were quite a few almost-disasters along the way – but we’re finally husband and wife. I’ll try to do a more complete post on Wednesday after my paper has been turned in (yes, I had a paper to write over my wedding weekend; luckily it’s a fairly short one). I had such a great time at the wedding, but John and I have agreed that we’re never planning a wedding again 
We were so grateful for all of our wonderful friends and family who came out to support us, especially all of the magical wedding fairies who prevented the aforementioned almost-disasters from becoming actual disasters. We love you all!
The next post will probably be quite lengthy, because I’m going to go into all of the bumps along the way. Hopefully we’ll have some more photos by then too! I’ve included a couple of the photos we’ve gotten so far in this post, so I’ll give credit where credit is due. The first one is from my cousin, Briana, who was shooting backup for our photographer, Paula. I’m not sure who shot the second photo, but it’s of my cousin, Brent, and his wife, Allyson, who are huge Whovians (who also brought some extra Doctor Who decor for the wedding, which was awesome). They’re standing under our Tardis chuppah, and yes we built it ourselves (which will be another post entirely). The third photo was taken by my friend from high school, Laura.
One final word about the wedding for today is that I am so glad we didn’t schedule the honeymoon for immediately after the wedding. We really scheduled it over fall break so that I wouldn’t miss as much school, but we are still recovering from the lack of sleep and stress of the week leading up the wedding. We were absolutely exhausted yesterday and all we wanted to do was get home and go to bed.
My awesome Whovian cousins under our chuppah
Bubbles are fun 
The Last Post Before the Wedding!
Posted: September 18, 2012 Filed under: Updates | Tags: chuppah, wedding, wedding rain, wedding update 13 Comments »This will (most likely) be my last blog post before my wedding, which is in FOUR days! Next time I write here, I’ll be Ariella Carver. I’m so happy and excited, but I wish I had about 5 of me right now to get everything done.
We still haven’t written our vows, but we’ll come up with something tonight. We do have the ceremony done though and we’re really happy with it.
I’ve almost finished the chuppah fabric (I still have to do a bit of hemming, but it shouldn’t take too long). We were originally going to get the pvc for the frame and make it here, but we realized we just won’t have room in my little Corolla.
Speaking of the car, we’re using a bit of the wedding budget to put two new tires on it and tomorrow John’s going to tune it up before we take it up the mountain again.
I’ve been obsessively checking the forecast for Horse Shoe, NC all week, and, of course, it keeps changing dramatically. First there was 0% chance of rain to 40% chance of thunderstorms to 10% chance of rain. And of course, the weather websites can’t agree so right now accuweather.com says 35% chance of thunderstorms, but weather.com says 10% chance of rain. If it rains, hopefully it will do so early in the day since the ceremony won’t start until 4:30. Of course, even if it does rain on us, no one will melt and we’ll just have to get married under the shelter where we’re having the reception. Rain or shine, we’ll be husband and wife at the end of the day.
The bouquets are pretty much done – I decided to add some red faux flowers from Micheal’s to them to give them a bit of color. The color was supposed to be in the form of ribbon flowers, but the color ribbon I originally got ended up not really working with the other colors and I didn’t want to spend the money on that much more ribbon in the right color. I need to wrap the stems in ribbon to make them pretty and bridal, but I can’t decided between red ribbon to match the flowers or blue ribbon to match the chuppah. Any thoughts on the color?
Edit: Here’s a photo of my bouquet as it currently looks.
The Light at the End of the Tunnel
Posted: September 10, 2012 Filed under: Updates | Tags: reception alcohol, tuxedos, update, wedding, wedding reception, wedding tuxedos 11 Comments »I keep getting “helpful” emails from sites like Wedding Channel and The Knot reminding me that my wedding is only 11 days away. Why thank you, I didn’t realize that.
Fortunately, I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel now. John and I went to the tux place and picked those out last week. We knew he was going to get a tail coat, but we thought we’d get vests in red or blue. However, there’s specific kind of vest that work with tail coats (full-back vests come down too low) and they had a limited selection of those. He ended up deciding on just a black tie and vest, which looks very sharp.
We went to Formal Wear Outlet in Hillsborough (also where I got my wedding dress) to get them, which it turned out was definitely the cheapest way to go. It was actually cheaper to buy them than rent them. They sell used tuxes for $99 for the complete set including cuff links and studs. Shoes were $10 extra. Every place I called about rentals would have been more than that once you factored in the shirt, vest, etc.
The only bad thing is that we’re buying them, but two of the groomsmen don’t live close enough to us to try them on, so we’re going by the measurements they gave us and just hoping they fit. Of course, we’re getting the tux for his fourteen-year-old nephew a bit large so that, hopefully, he won’t grow out of it immediately. So I guess there are two downsides to buying them, but if you don’t have any growing boys in your wedding party, I think it’s a great option. Also, if your beloved owns his tux, you can always have overdressed day, which John and I are great fans of. He wears his tux and I wear an evening dress for no reason whatsoever and wander around town.
I had a minor breakdown while sewing the chuppah yesterday, but John cheered me up again quite quickly. Right now, the only DIY I have to do is finish that and put stems on the flowers and boutonnieres. We also finally wrote the ceremony, so now we just have to write our vows. We still need to get a final count on guests so we can estimate how much alcohol to buy. We’ve decided not to have a champagne toast since champagne is a bit pricey and people can toast with beer and wine just as easily. Does anyone know of a good way to figure out how much beer and wine to buy for a reception?
Only 17 Days to Go!
Posted: September 5, 2012 Filed under: Updates | Tags: rsvp, updates, wedding, wedding cake, wedding cupcakes 11 Comments »I apologize for the lack of posts recently, but the countdown to the wedding has begun in earnest with only 17 days to go. Of course, school started back last week as well, so that has thrown another hurdle my way. I’m glad the wedding is at the beginning of the semester instead of the end, but even with just doing the readings and actually spending the time in class, it still takes up a lot of my time. Between school and Etsy, I haven’t really had time to get much done, especially the chuppah, which is still a bolt of fabric in the bedroom.
The RSVP deadline was yesterday, but there are still a ton of people I haven’t heard from. Thank you to everyone who RSVP-ed, but if you’re one of those who haven’t done so yet, please go to JohnandAriella.com. I’m starting to worry that far more invitations went astray than I realized (I know of two that didn’t reach their destinations). So if you think you probably should have been invited (or are just in the Hendersonville area and want to come to our wedding), please let me know.
We went to South Carolina to see John’s family last weekend, which was a lot of fun. I went shoe shopping with his mom and sister, and I bought some super cute shoes. It’s always fun to go with someone who has similar taste. Best of all, his mother bought us an awesome cake/cupcake stand for the wedding!
We also figured out (mostly) what we’re doing for the deserts. There’s a place called Horse Shoe Cafe that does breakfast and brunch near where we’re getting married. My mom and step-dad went in a couple of weeks ago and had a cupcake, which they said was amazing. I contacted them and they’re going to do 3 flavors of mini cupcakes plus a round 10″ red velvet cake for us to cut for $123! Now we just have to decide on flavors for the cupcakes. I know John wants one to be yellow cake with plain buttercream, but that leaves two more. What’s your favorite cupcake flavor?
The Wedding Bands Are Here!
Posted: August 29, 2012 Filed under: Updates | Tags: etsy, rings, rob and lean, wedding, wedding bands, wedding rings 11 Comments »Our wedding bands arrived today and they’re absolutely perfect! Originally, we were going to get these rings from Rob and Lean on Etsy.
They were the perfect color and looked amazing, but John started having second thoughts about the fact that the inlay is wood. I looked around for some similar, non-wood rings, but we still really liked the style of Rob and Lean’s work. I asked if we could get similar rings with a stone inlay instead and this is the result.
Our wedding bands
They’re titanium rings with a lapis lazuli inlay and they’re gorgeous! We had them engraved with “Allons-y 9/22/12.” We are very impressed with both the beauty and the craftsmanship of our rings, and Rob and Leighanne have been wonderful about answering all of my many, many questions. If you’re looking for unique, beautiful wedding bands, I highly recommend checking out their shop.
My band looks quite nice next to my sapphire engagement ring too!
Pretty, isn’t it?
That was the happy news of the day. We also had some very sad news this morning; John’s father is having serious health problems. Any prayers or good thoughts you can send his way would be greatly appreciated.
The Bridal Shower & The Makeup Trial
Posted: August 22, 2012 Filed under: Updates | Tags: bridal shower, updates, wedding, wedding makeup 17 Comments »We had a very busy weekend back in Hendo and Ashevegas (Hendersonville and Asheville for the uninitiated). My makeup trial was Saturday and my bridal shower was Sunday. First of all, the shower.
My aunt and my mom went over board on the shower of course. It was a beautiful shower and it was really great to see everyone. The highlight of the day was the card from my cousins, Allyson and Brent. Brent, who is a famous artist, designed the card.
It says, “Regarding your human matrimony: Congratulate!.” The inside says, “Matrimate!” Everyone’s gifts were more than generous though and we got a lot of great stuff for our apartment. The one thing I did not enjoy was the fact that I was sitting in the middle of the room with an audience.
That made me very uncomfortable and I didn’t quite know what to do. I also couldn’t hear people very well, which was embarrassing. It was a really great day overall though.
The day before was my makeup trial. I went to a place in Asheville that does airbrush makeup. I told the woman there that I wanted pretty natural eyes with red lips. When I didn’t like the first result, they toned it down from there. This was the result.
The eyes aren’t exactly natural. I’d like just a bit of liquid liner instead of what she did, which was put on the liquid liner then spend 10 minutes putting black powder over it. Hopefully it will turn out well for the wedding since I’ve already paid for it.
Some Exciting New Purchases!
Posted: June 28, 2012 Filed under: Updates | Tags: bass amp, canon pixma pro900 mark ii, cats, flea killer, fleas, kustom charger amp, printers 3 Comments »Sorry I haven’t been posting much lately. It’s a bit odd that now that exams are over and I’m done with school for the moment I feel like I have more to do than ever. I’m going to try to be better about posting though, and I want to get out some more DIY posts, because those are always fun. In the meantime, John and I have made some exciting purchases (well, his wasn’t actually a purchase, but it’s an exciting acquisition).
My new Canon Pixma Pro9000 Mark II
I got a new printer! My old one wasn’t really up to printing the things I would like to print. I had some issues with image quality and there was no way I could make larger prints. I wanted to upgrade but knew I couldn’t afford the kind of printer I really needed. Well, I was browsing Craigslist the other day, seeing what they had when I saw an ad for a Canon Pixma Pro9000 Mark II for $200 (they retail for about $500). Of course, the ad said that it was brand new in the box and that the UPC code had been “carefully removed.” I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt and at least email them and ask 1) why they were selling it and 2) if they’d take $150 for it. I never heard back from them, but the next day I looked and saw that they had four more of the exact same printers for sale. Yeah, probably stolen. When I went back though, I decided to search for the same printer and found someone who seemed to be selling a legit one.
I emailed the people about it and they said that the husband had gotten it for printing photos from his DSLR a few months ago, but that his wife had mostly printed recipes and coupons on it. When it ran out of ink, they decided they couldn’t afford the ink and they’d be better off selling it. I drove out to Cary and got it for $100. I got it home, ordered some ink for it online (much cheaper than going to Staples), and it works perfectly. I can make prints up to 13″ x 19″ on this bad boy. Of course, it’s also a behemoth – it makes my sewing machine and 18″ laptop look quite dainty.
Kustom Charger Amp
The other new acquisition was a Kustom Charger Bass Combo Amp. John had a Fender 215 speaker cabinet without a head that he was trying to sell on Craigslist. He wanted to get a nice combo amp that was a bit smaller (the Fender was HUGE) and that he could actually use in the apartment. The guy who responded offered to trade him the Fender cabinet for a vintage Kustom Charger amp and a Ampeg 212 speaker cabinet. They made the trade today and John is on top of the world! We’ve been playing through practice amps, so this thing kicks the crap out of those. It sounds great, it’s in very good cosmetic condition for a 38 year old amp, and John has always wanted a Kustom amp. It looks great next to his Rickenbacker too.
John playing with his new amp
John is very happy to have an amp with “biscuits” again, and he’s probably going to try to trade the speaker cabinet for a new electric guitar. I get to use it too of course, so I’m pretty happy about it as well. Everyone’s happy but the cats.
The Angriest Cat in the World
We’re still having flea issues, so we bathed them in real flea shampoo. Jude looked particularly pissed off afterward. We also went to the store and got some flea spray for the house THAT DOESN’T SMELL! We haven’t gone through the whole apartment with it yet, so we can’t vouch for it’s effectiveness, but it really doesn’t smell. It’s Harris Flea and Tick Killer. Even though it doesn’t smell, it’s still toxic to cats when it’s wet. We did our bedroom and the bathroom tonight, so we’re going to put the cats in those rooms tomorrow while we spray down the rest of the house. Hopefully it will work!
Updates Galore!
Posted: June 19, 2012 Filed under: Updates | Tags: cat baths, doctor who, dryers, etsy, tardis phone, updates, washers, wedding invitaitons 7 Comments »I haven’t had a chance to post much lately because I’ve been quite busy. The summer semester is almost over, so I’ve had research guides due and exams are on Thursday and Friday. Haus of Ariella also recently had it’s 100th sale!
Update #1 – the first of the wedding invitations have gone out! As you may have read earlier, we had some issues with the invitations, but Vistaprint is an AMAZING company and sent us new ones for free, even though the problem was entirely my fault. They sent them priority too, so we got the new ones in less than a week. We’re printing the envelopes instead of handwriting them because John and I both have atrocious handwriting. I think the font we settled on for them is nice though – it’s pretty and wedding-y, but still quite legible. Printing them is a bit of a pain, so I’m trying to do them in small batches instead of all at once. So far we’ve only sent out the invitations to the living Doctors (yes, we’re geeks), but I might work on the others later today and tomorrow in between studying (there’s really only so much federal income taxation one can take at a time, so I need to have breaks anyway).
By the way, if you’re reading this and want to come to our wedding, but didn’t get a save the date, it probably means we don’t have your address (not that we don’t love you), so please message, text, or call me and let me know where to send the invitation.
Update #2 – the wedding dress is progressing. I’ve actually attached the bodice to the skirt since taking this photo, but I’m not sure how I feel about it. I’ll probably make some adjustments to it after I figure out how to put the invisible zipper in it because I’m not really happy with the fit. It’s been fun making it though, so even if I don’t end up wearing it, it’s okay.
Update #3 – we got a washer and dryer finally! Someone in our apartment complex put up a flyer for them and we got them both for $200! It’s really nice not having to schlep up to the laundry room and pay $3 every time we need to wash something, but we’ve totally messed with the cats’ world. Their litter boxes and food bowls used to reside in that closet, so they’re not too happy about the new arrangement.
Update #4 – John got a new phone. He was up for an upgrade, so he got a Droid 3 (which was free, because the Droid 3s are apparently horrifically old and out of date now). He was jealous of my R2-D2 Droid, so he decided to one-up me and got a Tardis phone skin and cropped his background to fit with the skin. Now I’m the one with phone envy.
Wet Lily
Update OH MY GOD WE GAVE THE CATS BATHS – we’ve had flea problems since Dave came to live with us. We recently broke down and spent the extra money on Frontline to try to combat them, but apparently we now have super fleas. The other night I got sick of it and decided to bathe them all. We were talking about throwing Dave in a bath in particular because he’s allergic to fleas and has horrible scabs all over. Honestly, it wasn’t really that bad. John couldn’t believe I did it by myself because when he gave Dave a bath, Dave tried to kill him. Lily was actually the worst one, but she just kept flipping herself over in the water, which actually made my job a little easier. Darcy made horrible noises, but didn’t really do anything. Jude is a Maine Coon, so he’s cool with water, though he seemed a little confused about the whole thing. Of course, we then had a bunch of pathetically wet cats wandering around the apartment for the rest of the night.
Dave
Judas
Mr. Darcy
Of course Darcy had to immediately go back to his new favorite hangout – the electric blanket in the linen closet. Luckily, we now have a washer and dryer, so we threw it in the wash last night to get the wet cat smell off of it. We still have fleas, but John is planning on putting the cats in the bathroom and spraying down the apartment with some flea stuff this week.
