Wedding stuff and dismemberment

That's an eyecatching title, huh? May have to remember that for a book... I've explain the dismemberment thing shortly. First, I've been neglecting blogging about the wedding. This is mostly because I've been neglecting the wedding period. Deadlines take priority and get me behind on everything.

Fortunately other people have been on top of doing stuff for my wedding, namely Leslie Hamer of Unless Someone Like You who you may remember from my Women Who Rock Weds feature. I love Leslie's art and we went to high school together. Since she's a talented female artist and I've known her a long time obviously I wanted to support her by having her do my wedding invitations. With the economy the way it is, I feel like it is more important now than ever to support artists like Leslie and locally owned businesses so they can survive this mess. That's why I'm doing everything for the wedding locally from flowers to cake to undergarments to party locations.

I wasn't even planning on doing Save the Dates until I saw a fabulous design that Leslie sells here. Scratch off cards with a record player design? I was all over it. I blogged about those, but never got a chance to show off how they looked personalized for me and Scott. So here there since most of them have gone out by now except for a few stragglers whose addys we are still gathering:

Total adorableness. I didn't think I could be happier. But of course, Leslie continued to amaze us.

We met with her for about half an hour to talk about the wedding invitation. All we knew was that we were thinking something involving classic tattoo art since Scott and are both inked and we bonded over tattoos and Sailor Jerry rum (Sailor Jerry is a classic tattoo artist). Next thing we know, we're all comparing tattoos. Leslie notes my roses, Scott's nautical stars. We discuss a heart with a banner and swallows. Then a couple weeks later, an email from Leslie arrives saying she had a brainstorm. She assures us that she's happy to redesign it if we don't like it, but it is basically perfect. We just change up a couple colors and try to figure out what to put below Scott and Stephanie on the banner. It had said Forest Park, IL, but Scott thinks we should have something catchier, more like a real tattoo. We go back and forth between "True Love" and "Forever" and this is what we settled on:  

I couldn't love it more. Now we just have to decide on the type of card to put it on and figure out all the details to go inside. This involves a couple major decisions on our part. 

1. Do we want a wedding website? I don't know, do we???? And if we do, is there a service to go through for this. Is it worth it? Is that sort of thing mostly for informing out of town guests? Because we don't have a lot of those. I mean we aren't even reserving a block of rooms at a hotel because most people are local or can stay with other locals.  So yeah, is there a purpose for this or will it be a waste of money and my (already quite overcommitted) time?

2. Where are we going to register? Ugh. I'd thought registering was going to be the fun part, but honestly it is taking so much time that I don't have that it is starting to be unpleasant. I got some advice from all my married friends (namely register at Bed, Bath and Beyond because they give cash back on returns and they always send out coupons so guests like to shop there) and we are following that. But we'd also wanted to register at Target, mainly because my dishes are already from Target so I wanted more. Then one of my regulars/friends from the Beacon who is also getting married told me how hard it is to return stuff to Target. I thought store credit from Target would be no big deal, we grocery shop there sometimes, but no. Apparently if you return without a receipt (which I doubt people are going to be giving gift receipts since they think, hey you want this, you registered for it), you get store credit for that particular department only. So yeah, possibly worthless. Plus apparently Target doesn't keep your registry updated well so you get lots of duplicates. Ugh. So right now we are looking at Sears for our second place to register. Scott works at Sears so it makes sense to help keep his place of employment afloat. Plus they give you gift cards when you return and that works since he can get tools there. I don't know. hopefully we'll have an hour or so today to look at websites. Any other suggestions? I know people say Crate and Barrel, but I figured only one of those type of stores (and we chose Bed Bath and Beyond) and one department store (no Macy's. It's too pricy for one and for two, we in Chicago still have some bitterness about Macy's taking over Marshall Fields).

So yeah, that is where we're at with the wedding. We also have to find time to go taste cakes. But I've got my dress, we've got a place, we've got photographers and invites. Oh and for favors we are doing mix CDs and Leslie is designing the cases. I swear that woman is amazing and anyone planning a wedding should take advantage of her artistic skills.

Now what is the dismemberment business you speak of, Stephanie?

Yesterday they found a dismembered body in 4 garbage bags a block a way from the house I grew up in. In fact, my mom says from the news footage, it looks like it was the alley behind our house! Creepy dude! Here is an article about it. It's kinda spooky. I mean I used to walk my dog down that alley all the time and I just imagine her sniffing out that bag... gross. But mostly it's a big WTF seriously??? moment for me. I honestly wish it had happened earlier so I could have put a little mention in BALLADS because the characters collect articles about bizarre happenings around the suburbs and "dismembered body parts found in garbage bags in suburban alley"... I couldn't make that shit up! I'll definitely keep my eye on this story because I don't think the Oak Park cops are making the brightest initial deductions about it. Like "we think it was dumped here from Berwyn or Cicero" ummm why? Because the victim was Hispanic? Also "we think it was gang or drug related"... ummm unless the Mexican drug cartel has taking up residence recently, I kinda doubt that. Last I checked, street gangs around here just shoot people and drive off, they don't go to the effort of chopping bodies into little pieces. And if they did, they would probably deliver said pieces to the victim's family or friends to prove a point. Sorry, but this is clearly a psychopath. Maybe a psychopath in a domestic dispute as opposed to a serial killer type psychopath, but still we need Agent Cooper from Twin Peaks on the case. Can someone phone him?

I'll keep you all updated on this. It's almost better than my soap opera where they have the third serial killer in 10 years (seriously, who knew little towns in PA saw so much violent crime!) and they are totally ripping off Twin Peaks with the whole letters under the fingernails bit. OLTL, as usual I'm on the verge of breaking up with you, but I'm sure I won't.