bridesmaid adventures part one

A close friend who is dear to my heart has finally found her groom.  On Yahoo Personals of all places.   Same place I met mine.  :)

Today I completed the first of my bridesmaid's duties by helping her find a dress.  This is my first serious experience as a bridesmaid and I'm kind of getting excited about it. 

I spent the better part of the day in David's Bridal Salon lacing her into layers and layers of silk, tulle, taffeta, and chiffon.  I still don't feel confident I have the lacing job down pat.  You wouldn't think it's so hard getting the ribbons to lie flat.  After a day of working at it, I would only give myself a solid "B-".  Either she hires Holly, her David's consultant, to come lace her up on the big day or I have to put in a bit more practice.

Holly suggested we initially bring 3 dresses into the room with us.  Dress number two was a serious contender but the store only stocked it in white.  Kathy wanted off-white. 

Then as she stepped out of the dressing room in dress number three her eyes popped and her mouth fell open on spying a fellow bride on pedastal in "her" dress.  She knew right away.  She couldn't take her eyes off that dress.  Even to the point she was ignoring her own reflection.

Bridezilla took major offense when Kathy commented that she wanted to try her dress on.  "You can have "MY" dress when I'm done wearing it!!"  She didn't even have the same size that Kathy would need.  Soon after the other bride was gone (without making a purchase) and Kathy stepped into her own dream dress.

It didn't even matter that the dress happened to be marked down because it was discontinued.  She would have taken it at the full price. 

Sticker shock didn't set in until she realized she would be paying the same price for the headpiece and veil that she paid for the dress!   How is it they get $200 for a couple feet of tulle?  I'm in the wrong business.

After taking a break to have a bite to eat and talk things over at Clementine's, we returned to David's once again where she put down a non-refundable deposit on all three pieces.

I came home exhausted to a feverish 12 year old Jacob.  :( 

How did you spend your MLK day?

Online Dating Carnival

Check out the Online Dating Carnival. They have a cool story about how Victoria and I met!

'Til The One Day When This Lady Met This Fellow

(Pink comments added by Victoria.  I love this story of how we met and I'm so thankful to Kevin for taking the time to type it up.)

I thought I would write about the beginning of our family of nine, or how Victoria and I met. I was a divorced dad and had been living on my own with the kids (half time) since the summer of 2001.
I had tried online dating, mostly Yahoo! Personals, but also Match.com and eHarmony. I really thought this was a good idea for me, for several reasons:

• I was older and didn't have many friends or peers that were single.
• I had the kids quite a bit and didn't have alot of time or money for conventional dating.
• I was comfortable with computer technology and able to go online often

So I had personal ads online at several sites. It seemed to me that there were many more guys online than girls so the numbers were not in my favor, but I still tried. I replied to some ads and had numerous online chats. Some of these led to phone conversations and a few of these led to dates.

I did have one date, a trip to Cedar Point, with a girl that I had never even spoken to before our first date, every communication we had up to that point had been online. That was our only date so maybe it wasn't such a good plan.

So anyways, at the time I was also spending lots of time in an online Euchre league, and at the same time chatting online with Yahoo! messenger, where I was known as kev_cleve.

Well one Saturday night in May as I was playing cards, I got a little heart message in my system tray, which meant I had a Yahoo! Personals reply. I was quite surprised since I had only had I think 2 girls contact me first in about a year of having my ad online. (His picture was kind of scary and he had 3 kids under age 6.)

Now I had had several replies from girls that I had contacted, but almost never did someone contact me first.
Anyways, in the reply Victoria introduced herself and mentioned the Alive festival. I replied back to her right away and mentioned that we were having Vacation Bible School the week of Alive. (Alive Festival rocks!)

A few minutes later the little red heart showed me that she had replied back again. This time mentioning that her church had VBS that week also and asking what church I attended.

When she got my reply, Victoria realized that she and I already attended the same (small) church!

"This is SO WEIRD!!!!" she said twice in her response back. (see extended footnote below.)  As I said, it was a Saturday night and after 3 short messages each way, we realized we were destined to meet the next morning in our church service.

So that is the story of how we met. More courtship tales to come when I get the chance to type them.

**Kevin couldn't know HOW weird.  When I prayed about dating again, I had only asked the Lord that He not lead me to anyone from our church.  I didn't want to risk any awkwardness if a relationship didn't work out.  And here I was reaching out online among THOUSANDS and who do I hit on first??  Some random guy who actually already attends my (teeny tiny storefront) church.   Boy did I feel admonished!  Not that that was the first, or the last (unfortunately) time HE had to remind me exactly who was in charge.