Lexington Trip Lots done this morning in Lex! Jerusha came withe Mom and I this morning, and I'm very grateful! Our first stop was the flower place, which we had to pretend that we were simply pick out what we wanted Karen's florist to put together for us so that Karen can order them for us at her wholesale price. So, so many flowers to choose from so it was definitely helpful having Jerusha and Mom both there to ask me questions... "Do you like these or these?" "Do you want these in the bridesmaid bouquets?" "Do you want any white in your bouquet?" The good news is, with what I was going for, I picked out all cheap flowers.! Not really a rose kind of wedding and lilies are too springy. I'm going with white daisies for the bridesmaids and hopefully purple dahlias with purple stock for my bouquet but if the dahlias have already died out for the season I'll go with purple spider mums. Then we picked out some other things for a few other arrangements. In the end I'm not too worried about it. To me, flowers are pretty so whatever the combination...it will be pretty!
Then it was to Macy's at Fayette Mall to hit up the MAC counter. Rachel met us there. We couldn't get a girl to do the makeup application before 11 a.m. So in our 45 minute wait we found this kiosk with these dress/wrap/skirts. They were pretty simple but the 2 layers of patterned material at different lengths cut in such a way and put together so that it could be wrapped and tied in multiple ways to be dresses or skirts. Very, very cool. So, of course, Rachel and Jerusha talked me into getting one. It'll be a perfect carry-on item for the honeymoon, because even if they lose my other luggage at least I'll have something that poses well as multiple dresses, right?
Make up went well minus the fact I had to spend a ton of money on it in order to get the stuff I'll need. Part of me hates it but the other part is just trying to just remind myself I can use it for years to come and it'll be worth it for keeping a nice look all day long, which I definitely want. I will still need to find blush and lip stuff similar to what they used but Rachel said buying their top of the line stuff wasn't critical for those two elements.
Last thing we did was Mom had been looking for something for herself to wear. She found a nice black chiffon skirt and satin-like purple top to go with it. She's still not 100% convinced it's what she wants, so we'll see. But while she was checking out for that we sorted through all of the clearance swim suits and found one that was a black- white-aqua that I went ahead and got since I never even got one this summer.
Oh and I also stopped in Men's Warehouse to turn in our code card for the $40 discount on all of the tuxes. I am pretty sure Jon is just going to switch them all to the cheaper tux which I am completely okay with. I don't think anyone will notice or care, minus all of the guys renting them. They'll care and be glad they are saving $50!
Kudos to BookIt.com's customer service! We're up to 87 RSVPs (not counting any Mom got in the mail today) and only 12 of those are No's....Deutsch better get that closed-circuit thing worked out is all I've got to say!
I have to give props to BookIt.com's customer service. Being that I somewhat work in customer service, I shouldn't continue to be so skeptical. However, so many places that you contact for help either:
(a) put you through loop after loop of automated selections that never really lead you to your answers and there is no way to get to an actual human
(b) the person who answers doesn't really seem to care what your question is and doesn't even seem to know much about the business or product your inquiring about but has a canned set of responses they spat back. This was not my experience with BookIt.com. I called and yes I did have the automated service and selection options, and was then put on hold; however, one of the immediate hold options was to request a call back when someone was available rather than being stuck on the phone waiting. Still being skeptical I stayed on the phone, thinking I'd never get a call back. However, after about 5 or 10 minutes I'd lost my patience and didn't want to listen to their music and messages anymore so I punched in the numbers to request a call back. It wasn't 5 minutes when my phone rang. The lady I spoke with was extremely nice and it was like working with a human so all I could imagine was one of us at Try It Localon the other end of the phone with one of our customers and what they imagine with us. She answered my questions and took some extra notes about our stay and put them into the reservation for the hotel--including the fact we are coming on a honeymoon so we get the free honeymoon package! Woo woo!I feel much better, not only to have spoken with someone, but feeling that if I have other questions or concerns, someone will be able to hear them and help me out.
Honeymoon: BOOKED!!! Yikes! We did it! We just booked our HONEYMOON! Going to Mexico! Yep we went with the one I was just posting about. Jon also researched more options on BookIt.com today and we both decided we liked that place more than anything else we found within the same price range. Here was the one problem... it said on the site that the prices were ending at midnight! HOWEVER, we also had to drive to Tipp City, Ohio right after work tonight...which meant we couldn't research and call and ask questions. Instead we had to jump in the car and drive, drive, drive... The trip usually takes about an hour and a half, but our luck, it took us 5 HOURS. So by the time we got to the hotel room, not only was it 11:30, but the price had gone up by $200 ($100 per person). So that made me more hesitant to have to rush through the payments. It's a lot of money! At the same time... considering we could go and not spend a penny more (if we really didn't want to) that's a pretty good package. We have options to do some other things down there. I think our top choices are to visit the ruins (Chitzen Itza) and do the ATV/Zip package. At the same time, there seems to be a lot to do at the resort so we want to get down there and figure it out first. I hope we made the right call in going ahead and booking, but that is my thought process anytime I spend a decent amount of money, even if it is at a good price. I think the increase of $200 just threw me off in the rush :-). I know Jon is more comfortable going somewhere on LAND than doing a cruise on a boat in the middle of the ocean.
My other accomplishment tonight was getting here and trying a PURPLE PINGUS. Rachel had a drink her friend had made before that she thought was purple, called a Pixie Stick. Turns out this mix was more of a blue-green. It is very potent! If it's not purple, though, I'm not sure I'll want to use it over any other drink. I guess I'll be discussing more with Rachel tomorrow.
I did a little further digging on BookIt.com and man-oh-man do they have some nice packages! All Inclusive as well! I'm hoping there aren't all of these extra fees and things they hit us up for in the end, because right now it appears to be too good to be true!
Here's the one I was looking at: Grand Sunset Princess Resort (I won't lie...It drew me in with the name "Princess"...) in Cancun. We can get there just afternoon on Monday, Oct. 10 (Giving us that Sunday to relax, finish packing, visit, etc.) and come back Friday afternoon...flights and the restaurants included it totals $684 a person! Throw in taxes and transportation to the resort (which we may swap that out for a rental car so we have an easy way to get to the other places we need to go) and you're at $1,647! If we can pay that much and have food, airfare and room covered that is pretty awesome! I'm so glad Jo showed me this site. I am definitely going to call and try to speak with someone before putting money towards it because I want to know we're getting all we think. It appears as though the restaurants are included but I'd hate to bank on that and then it all costs a ton! Then again, we'll be in Mexico so it should all be cheaper anyway.
The other cool part is that there are so many neat things to do near by like ziplining or visiting the Mayan ruins. Now, included in the package is a $90 charge for the roundtrip from the airport to the resort, so we don't have to worry about it ourselves. We could remove that and do a rental car for $18 a day which comes out about the same price. My thought is, if we have the car we can do any traveling we want to; however, are we going to regret trying to get around ourselves as opposed to just riding with people/services who do it everyday? Another cost we might end up with the rental car is parking it in whatever garage they have. It might be less of a headache to just spend the money to take the bus or whatever to the different activities, because you know they'll have that readily available. Maybe the travel to and from those main places is fairly cheap or even a service of the resort.
Jon and I aren't hung up on doing anything overly exotic. We mainly just want time to get away together. In my opinion, whatever is cheap and requires the least work on our behalf is great. So far this is looking like the winner, but I think we'll need to decide soon if we want to get this price!
