Hilarious!

A friend of mine forwarded this email to me and I just had to share it with you all! So funny!

Jennifer's wedding day was fast approaching. Nothing could dampen her excitement -- not even her parent's nasty divorce.  Her mother had found the PERFECT dress to wear and would be the best-dressed mother-of-the-bride ever!

A week later, Jennifer was horrified to learn that her father's new, young wife had bought the exact same dress as her mother! Jennifer asked her father's new young wife to exchange it,
but she refused.  'Absolutely not. I look like a million bucks in this dress, and I'm wearing it,' she replied.

Jennifer told her mother who graciously said, 'Never mind sweetheart. I'll get another dress. After all, it's your special day.' A few days later, they went shopping and did find another
gorgeous dress.  When they stopped for lunch, Jennifer asked her mother,  'Aren't you going to return the other dress? You really don't have another occasion where you could wear it.

Her mother just smiled and replied, 'Of course I do, dear.  I'm wearing it to the rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding...

What do you think ladies? I think on some level we can all relate :)

p.s. We had our food tasting at our venue and it went fabulously! Will post about it very very soon!

Three Months To Go!!!

Wow! I don't know where the time has gone! It seems to be going by so fast! We have so much do to and we need to start after our planning hiatus! 

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We need to get:

-Our certificate of freedom to marry

-Marriage license

-Wreaths/crowns (for orthodox ceremony)

-Jordan almonds and red ribbon

-Meet with florist to discuss arrangements

-Order favors

-Find a videographer

I'm sure there's more but this is all I can think of at the moment.

Wedding Planner Rant

Our wedding package includes a wedding coordinator at the InterContinental. Apparently it's company policy. I had initially requested that this be removed, but once it was explained to me what the person does, I realised she would be more of a Day Of Coordinator. Great I thought, at least there will be someone there on the day, whose job it is to worry about all the details, leaving myself and the bridal party with one less thing to worry about.

We had met with the DOC, as I am referring to them, at Christmas when we came back to Cyprus. She was friendly, and seemed knowledgeable enough about weddings here and what not, but something just didn't gel. I'm not sure what it was exactly, but I'm thinking it was more of a personality/chemistry thing. She seemed too forward for my liking, for a first meeting anyway. Well She emailed us a few months ago, maybe back in March, letting us know that she would no longer be working at the InterContinental. Her email was odd. She wrote to us on a Friday, telling her clients that that was her last day and she would only be available until 4.30pm that day! Luckily because of the time difference, we were still up in Vancouver and saw the email when it was sent, and were able to have all our documents emailed to us. Had we not been up or checked our email, we would have completely missed it, and her! Anyway, we were told that once a replacement was hired we would be contacted.

And we were. As soon as the new lady, who I will just call M, came on board, she emailed us to let us know. We informed her of when we would be arriving back in Cyprus, and informed her that we would seek a meeting with her once we were settled.

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Well I have been trying to get a meeting in for the last two weeks. I realize things happen at a much slower pace in Cyprus, and I'm ok with that. What I'm not ok with is when people aren't upfront about things. Last week I asked her to meet on Friday afternoon, when Mr. Milk would be able to make it too. She told me that she had a wedding that night and would try to arrange for someone else to meet with us. I replied and said I would rather wait and meet with her. I think its pointless to meet with someone who won't actually be there that day. I hear nothing back from her. In the meantime, the Food and Beverage Manager at the hotel contacted Mr. Milk so we could go for a  food tasting (which I had requested) and they sorted out the details of that. So I email M again yesterday, and get an auto-response that she is out of the office till the end of the month. Now can you please tell me why she failed to mention this in the original email exchange. At least I would have known and not had any expectations that a meeting was being sorted out. It's not even a huge deal. But at least let me know so I can go about with planning other things.

The reason this bothers me so much is because there seem to be many instances when the DOC is out of the office for a week or two at a time. It happened with the old one and has already happened once before with the new one. Maybe when it isn't wedding season there isn't much for them to do so they are given/take time off. But since they are forcing me to pay for this service I guess I expect it to be available more often than not. Anyway, I think I may turn a little bridezilla on them if the occasion calls for it once we do finally meet. I have heard things here and there about weddings at the hotel (the plus of Cyprus being such a small place) and want to make sure that they are avoided at ours. 

So I await for a meeting with out forced DOC. Hopefully this coming weekend we will go for the food tasting and I will have plenty to report on that. 

What have your experiences with coordinators been like?

Testing Out BlogPress

So I've had this app for a while but haven't really used it. If it works I can hopefully blog from anywhere, any time! Including wedding day!!! As a test, here are some pics of my pups, one of the many reasons we moved back :)



So darn cute. Not that I'm biased or anything :) Now let's see if this works. Fingers crossed... 


Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Updates

Sorry to have been MIA on you guys. There isn't really any particular good reason for this. I think we are just adjusting and getting sucked into everyday life. Mr. Milk is getting along well in his new job. He's realizing how much learning there is to do in a new job, especially one that involves a bit of a career change. I have total faith that he will overcome all these mental hurdles very soon, just as he typically does. I think the fact that we are apart again and don't have our own space is also adding to the stress. But we are making do with frequent visits. We've spent every weekend together so far, and have even gotten a few mid-week visits in. I've also had the flu the last 4 days. I don't remember the last time I felt this bad! Luckily though I am feeling better today, and even have a bit of an appetite!

Anyway, we are finalizing the contracts on the apartment I showed you in the previous post. Some of you thought it might be by the beach and all I have to say to that is "I WISH!!" :) There was so much sand around because its a new neighborhood without many buildings next to it but some construction nearby. I was able to get the interior pics from Mr. Milk, so here they are

The kitchen (it's open plan with dining and living room)

The living room (I have my back to the kitchen when taking the pic)

Dining room (as you can see there is still work going on). The smallish balcony will quite comfortably host Mr. Milk's brand new bbq!

This is the balcony from the 2nd bedroom. It's larger than it looks from this picture. We are planning on using this room as a spare bedroom/office and using this balcony more than the one next to the dining room. 

For some reason, neither of us thought it was important to take a picture of the master bedroom! Go figure. Oh well, you get an idea of what the apartment looks like. I went to a furniture store with my mom the other day to have a first look. I have to say, it was a lot of fun! There are so many options out there and I can't wait to go with Mr. Milk  and pick some things out. 

On the wedding front, there is no news. There is a list of things we need to do (that couldn't be done from Canada) and I am planning on starting on those within the next week. There are just over 3 months left until the wedding, so its definitely turning into crunch time :)

Looking For A Place To Live

So we've been here for about a week now. Mr. Milk started his new job yesterday and it seems to be going well so far. He is excited and impressed with what he has seen thus far. We've both felt that we are here on vacation. It still doesn't quite feel real, but at this point I think it will just take time. 

We took a couple of days to just relax and get over the jet-lag, and last Wednesday we went out searching for apartments to rent. We spent three days looking around Nicosia, the capital city, where Mr. Milk will be working. We found a vast number of places, but what stood out was how small many of the bedrooms were! We saw one apartment that boasted a roof-top garden, but the bedrooms were barely large enough for a baby! What good is a garden when there is hardly any space to move around within the apartment?! The other thing that Mr. Milk was rudely awakened to, is that most apartments don't come with appliances, aside from the stove. Stupid? Yes! Common? Very. I don't know why this is the status quo but it is. 

We've narrowed down our choice to 3 apartments. Unfortunately most of the pictures are on Mr. Milk's iphone so I can only show you one. It's our first choice anyway, but I only have pics of the outside at the moment. It's still under construction and will be available August 1st.

This is the building from the back/side view. The apartment we are interested in faces this way. 

Here's some of my handy, childish photoshop work, to show you which one we are interested in. Its "L" Shaped so isn't as big as it might seem from this picture, although it is one of the largest we have seen. 

Here it is again from the very back. The balcony doors are for the joint kitchen, living room, dining room, and the 2 windows to the left are for the master bedroom which has an en-suite bathroom. It's a 2 bedroom, 2 bathroom apartment, which I think we could be very comfortable living in for several years if we had to.

The other apartment we saw is furnished and belongs to a friend of Mr. Milk's. Basically its a bachelor pad. While Mr. Milk was very excited when he saw this apartment, I was less so. It wasn't as bright, or roomy, or clean (men!), as many of the others, especially compared to the one above. But the catch is, that since he is a friend, he will rent us the apartment for the same price as the unfurnished ones we've seen! This would help us out a ton financially. Problem is, I can't see us staying there for more than a year, at which point he will also likely want the apartment back.

So this is our dilemma thus far. Our stuff should be arriving mid-June and it would be nice to have a place to put it all! Luckily there is space at my parents house to keep it for a while if we decide to take the apartment in the pics.

Airport Drama - Part II

In my previous post, I started to describe our airport drama. Here's what happened next...

I grab my wallet and go on a crazy hunt for a luggage store as Mr. Milk and the lady try to sort things out.

I asked the first person I ran into if they knew if and where there was a luggage store. Sure they said. Downstairs. So we run downstairs (me and one of our friends) only to find the luggage conveyor belts. We look to the left and see a luggage storAGE place. Obviously I needed to be clearer. So we run back upstairs and go into the international terminal. We look around but nothing. We ask someone else, they tell us we passed it on the left. We were clearly looking and would have pounced on the darned store if we had seen it! We start to walk back and finally see an information booth with a lady who knew what she was talking about.  All along the store was right next to us in the domestic terminal! We get to the only luggage store in the whole damn airport and start looking for a suitcase like crazy people. Lifting them up, looking at size and price. I can hear our friend yelling prices out, all ridiculously pricey. I think we found the only suitcase in the store that was less than $100! The salesperson clips off the tag and our friend runs it over to the counter while I pay.

It then became a mad rush of unlocking all the suitcases and unpacking enough items from each to balance out. Mr. Milk was thankfully still allowed 32kg, which we would have to pay $225 for. We were already paying an extra $50 for my second one at only 23 kg. But there was noting else to do. Our friend placed each suitcase on the scale and took out enough items to pass over to me to place in the new suitcase. We came out at exactly the maximum weight for each piece! I can't even explain to you how grateful I was at the time. While I would love to break that damn scale over Mr. Milk's head, I will refrain from doing so, and instead track down the manufacturer and write a very very pissed off letter of complaint! In my fantasy world, they give us back the $225 for the extra weight and $85 for the new suitcase! We knew we had extra weight and that's why we shipped 3 other items a few days before with air freight! If the scale had been accurate, we would have just sent more items that day since it was so much more cheaper than doing it this way. Oh well. What's done is done...

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But I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that i had a suspicion that our bags were too heavy. I've flown enough to have a sense of what 23kg feels like. While I'm no body builder by any means, I can typically lift a 23kg suitcase with one arm with mild - moderate difficulty. I needed both hands to lift these up and that was with considerable effort! I should have said something. We'd sold our regular scale, so I'm not sure what we would have done, but worst case scenario, we would have bought one and returned it. Better safe than sorry right... But alls well that ends well.

We also realized that we had less than an hour to make our connection in calgary. As if this wasn't stressful enough, we were told that it was snowing in Calgary! It's almost June for crying out loud! If there were any kind of delays we would miss our connection for sure. Luckily everything went smoothly after this and not only did we make our connection, but we made it home safe and sound, with all our gazillion pieces of luggage!

Airport Drama - Part I

There is so much to tell you all about the day of our departure that I'm not even sure where to start...

We had our alarm set for 6.30am on Saturday morning. Mr. Milk woke up without the need for an alarm several minutes before it went off. I'm actually surprised he slept at all. By the time he got out of the shower, I too was awake but still lying on our airbed. He came over, said good morning and started to tear up. My heart broke for him. He started to tell me about the memory he'd just had of when he'd first arrived in Canada. He was in a similar situation, lying on an airbed in a place that had very little, and he was eager to get started. He recalled the smells and sounds. The same was happening now, only this time it was goodbye. We cuddled for a bit, both with tears streaming down our face...

We got up, got ready, packed the few things that remained, toiletries, pj's, packed up our bedding, and waited for two friends to come pick us up. We wanted to get an early start even thought our first flight was a domestic one and we definitely needed two cars to fit our things. It was raining outside. Not atypical of Vancouver and quite fitting I think. I remember taking our luggage downstairs to be stuffed in the cars and just taking a moment to look around. People walking their dogs, staff in the supermarket downstairs getting ready to open, the shops and restaurants around that were still closed, and thinking, this is it. We are actually doing this. I felt a little panicky at the thought to be honest.

I tried to take in the short ride to the airport. Looking at the houses, the greenery, the rain. Mr. Milk was in the other car. It was a quiet ride on my end.

We got to the airport and went to check in at the business class counter. Mr. Milk's constant traveling has earned him the perk. And thank god!!! We have never needed it more than we did then! We had been weighing our luggage as we packed, trying to ensure that we were within the allowed weight. We used a piece of crap nifty little tool that Mr. Milk had brought home not too long ago that looked similar to this

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Pretty harmless looking right?

Oh no! That piece of junk had it all wrong!! We put the first suitcase on the scale and the damn thing reads 34.8kg!! I can't be bothered to do the conversion, so let's just say we were only allowed 23kg! So the lady kindly informs us that we need to remove 2kg from this bag and place it in another one.  Obviously the math doesn't add up here. That's because Mr. Milk is actually allowed 3 pieces at 32kg. So I think, ok... We got one wrong. Still have room to play with. That was until he put the next suitcase on the scale. And the next. And the next. And the next! All 5 bags weighed around 32 - 35kg! I felt the pit of my stomach drop. How could a scale be so wrong! It wasn't like we could move a few things around and be ok. We had another suitcase worth of stuff!!

Stay tuned for what happened next...