Disappointing Update

Well I got the news tonight I've been dreading to hear for the past month. I lost my dispute claim with American Express and we are officially out the money for the first dress. It's been a frustrating and upsetting process to say the least. The most upsetting part is that the store screwed up my dress and did not properly fix it and they get away with giving me defective merchandise and there is nothing I can do about it. Apparently I was told that when you sign a receipt that says no refunds or returns you are limited to this and there is nothing American Express can do to get you your money back. I have a hard time with this as a consumer that you are not protected against negligent action on the part of the merchant and you have no recourse.

I know in the big scheme of life there are WAY worse things that can happen. And yes over the course of our marriage my 2nd wedding dress will be pennies in the bucket. I was really hoping and thought in my head that we'd be getting the money back for the dress. I certainly don't regret buying the new dress that's for sure, because this dress is far more spectacular and it was meant to be my dress and I know have the opportunity to wear an even more amazing dress than my original one, it's just unfortunate that we're left with the price tag of the first dress and for it to never be worn because of poor customer service and workmanship on the part of a rude vendor and I did nothing wrong as the consumer and I have to pay the price for it.

I Do for The Dress

Ok I couldn't resist this one. When I saw this picture I absolutely had to steal this idea. I love the idea of hanging my wedding dress on this fun hanger when it is hung up for pictures. I already ran out to Michael's and found the stickers and got the hanger for it. I can't wait a picture like this of my own!

No More Drama

I realize there have been a lot of posts recently about all the dress drama, so I will hopefully try to make this the last one. I'm quite happy to say that I will never have to return to Bridals by Roma for anything else again. Last Tuesday, Mike's Mom made the trip over to the store with me with the sole intention to retrieve the dress and take possession of it. Our only goal was to get the dress and leave with it. I think we were both pretty anxious about going over there to get it, we weren't sure what we were in store for with our favorite store manager. Thankfully the lovely manager Joanne by some miracle was not at the store on this particular day. We were able to get the dress and leave with little to no altercation. We did tell the seamstress how extremely unhappy we were  and how going to that store had become such a stressful and upsetting process. Although they did tell us they ordered more fabric for the dress there was no way we ere sticking around and waiting it out to see the results.

We immediately took the dress over to the new bridal salon where they agreed to write the letter to American Express on the condition of the dress. As soon as we arrived and they saw the dress I felt better in hearing four people immediately agreeing with the color.  They agreed with the color differences and showed us the alterations on how they changed the dress. We were (somewhat) shocked when the new salon showed us even more changes that we didn't know about and the original store blatantly lied to us about and falsely represented the changes they made to the dress.

In any case I'm so glad it's done and over with now, the dress is now hanging in the closet upstairs while I wait for American Express to explore the claim. I'm feeling more optimistic that they will rule in my favor now that I know the other salon agreed. In the end I know this happened for a reason and I am so happy with my new dress. I am planning to donate my first dress to Brides Against Breast Cancer so I know that some good will come out of this as well. I couldn't think of a better cause for the dress to go to!

A Big Thanks

 Now that we're pretty settled that we'll be ordering caramel apples as our favors part of the project will be wrapping them up and attaching small thank you cards on them. I was originally thinking I might order them from where we got our invitations from but then I asked my future Father-in-Law if he might be up to the task. In no time at all he had whipped up 3 more great designs for us to work with. I absolutely loved his designs and couldn't have picked out anything better. Plus I love the fact that Mike's Dad designed them just for us and it matches all the other elements perfectly. Now I'll have to get them printed at Staples, and then comes all the fun cutting (and maybe gluing if I decide to mount them on brown squares) but it'll be worth it, I'm so happy with the design!

Apple Favors

My original idea for our wedding favors was to give out jars of apple butter. I've been thinking about finding jars of apple part for the better part of a year but I hadn't started looking for pricing information until recently. Unfortunately my search has produced less than stellar results of what I was hoping to find. At our favorite orchard that we go to every year they wanted almost $5 per jar of butter and that would def exceed our budget. While I was telling Andrea about my disappointing search she quickly came up with the idea to give out caramel apples which would be another great fall apple idea. I knew I wanted to do an edible wedding so a  caramel apple would definitely fit the fall theme criteria and my edible criteria. I was quickly sold on this idea, plus it fits in the budget and we could even afford to do one apple per person. I'm really excited about the idea, I think it would make a really good favor, I just hope everyone else thinks so too and enjoys eating them and no teeth are broken eating them!

Good Old Virginia

I spent the entire last weekend at my favorite red headed Jersey girls new pad down in Richmond, Virginia. You can take the girl out of Jersey but you can't take the Jersey out of the girl. My trip down to Virginia was long overdue I miss my Andrea terribly in New Jersey, my wine buddy, so it was time to go down to Virginia and see her new digs. Andrea moved down there last year to be with her Southern Gentleman Husband and boy did they show me some Southern Hospitality! 

I left New Jersey on Thursday night after work, after sitting in traffic on both the highway to get to the airport and then literally traffic on the runway (we were 20th in line for take off) arriving in Virginia was the complete opposite. Andrea was one of about five cars waiting in the arrivals area and was literally able to park her car and get out of it to wait for me, in Jersey you're lucky if you can even pull over long enough to get the person into the car before horns start honking at you to get out of the way. Then we were off to her house where we were greeted by her darling husband.


We spent Friday chilling at her house and working from home. It's get being able to work from home no matter where your home is. After work it was off to the city of Richmond for dinner. It was a quick 20 minute drive to the city with literally no traffic heading into the city on a Friday night, again something you would never find in New Jersey. We went to this really cute part of town, Cary Street, it was adorable and seemed to be filled with people and tons of cute little restaurants. Adam and Andrea took me to one of their favorite restaurants, Europa. It was this great little tapas place that they love and boy it did not disappoint. We had a smorgeous board of tapas that we all shared together, everything from Spanish meat and cheese to start with, and then onto delicious things like chicken and ham croquettes, fried dates, stuffed peppers, even vegetable risotto (which was my favorite). Everything was incredible and so much fun sharing it with such fun friends. 

To say that we had a jam packed day on Saturday would be an understatement. Our tour guide for the day, Adam, showed us all that the state of Virginia had to offer of course highlighting the states rich Revolutionary War History. After taking the scenic route to get there, we began our day in Jamestown Settlement. After this is was a short drive away to Williamburg, my favorite part. Williamsburg was absolutely adorable. Although we didn't spend a great deal of time there we had a beautiful stroll through the town, had lunch at a cute little tavern and explored the city and took some pictures with people dressed up in Revolutionary War period clothes, a fun highlight for me. 

Then it was time for Happy Hour, via the Williamsburg Winery. We took a tour of the winery of course followed by tasting. I was surprised to learn that Virginia is the fourth largest wine producing state in the country and that this particular winery produces 20% of the states output. We needless to say enjoyed our time tasting the wines. And if that wasn't enough we ended our day in historic Yorktown, an adorable little town right on the river. We hit up a very local pub, for some burgers for dinner. After that our lovely chauffeur Adam brought us back home in comfort, Andrea and I chilled out in the back of their new Honda Pilot and enjoyed watching wedding crashers comfortably reclined from the back seat. It was truly a fun filled day of lots of Virginia fun!!! 


Sunday we took it easy, it would be hard to top the day we had on Saturday. After some delicious homemade waffles from Adam we spent the afternoon playing board games where Adam kicked our butt in the game of Life. Finally it was time for Andrea and to have a nice little girls night out dinner while Adam had his friends over. We went to this absolutely fantastic restaurant called, The Boat House, which was right on the water. And although it was a little hot outside we more than enjoyed the view sitting outside for our dinner while we indulged in tons of excellent food. It was the perfect girls date night out dinner. 


I'm so happy I got go to down to Virginia to visit my favorite red head. I miss my Jersey girl up here. I'm sure this is the first of many trips down south!