Flower Girl Auditions

**Attention All Guests with Cute Little Girls in the Family**

With so many adorable children on the guest list, Este and I are having a very hard time figuring out who the flower girls should be. So, we have decided to put the pressure back on the families and have them work for the honor by competing against each other. Interested contestants should be under 10 years of age, no more than 4.5 feet tall, ringlets and big, pouty eyes are a plus. Must be able to walk in a straight line and distribute rose petals in an even manner.

We will NOT tolerate: cry babies, talking machines or tattle tales.

For the talent portion of the competition, we are looking for a girl who can wow us. Este and I watch American Idol, So You Think You Can Dance, America's Got Talent, Britain's Got Talent, and America's Funniest Home Videos, so we have seen just about everything and are not impressed easily. I've included the video below so you have a better idea of what we are looking for. I repeat, this is not a competition for sissies.


Wonder Baby !! - Click here for the funniest movie of the week

Would You Like Fries With That?

For lunch today I had a taco bowl complete with beans, corn, salsa, sour cream, guacamole, pulled chipotle chicken, lettuce, and tomato all stuffed into a delicious, greasy taco shell/bowl.

This was not at all my intention. With a beach wedding coming up, I have been trying to be good about going to the gym and eating healthy meals. Every day for lunch, I go down to the Random House cafeteria and avoid the pizza/pasta station, the BBQ chicken, the grill and fried food section and make a beeline for the salad bar or sandwich station. It is so hard to settle for a cold, tasteless cold cut sandwich when my stomach is growling for something substantive, like a hot dog with chili cheese fries. But, I tell myself, it will all pay off when I look damn good for my wedding.

I get home around 6 starved half to death and raid the fridge for a healthy snack to hold me until dinner. Hummus and carrots it is. I put the snacks in front of Este, and he holds his taut belly and says that he can't even look at the food, he's so full. Really? What did you have for lunch today?

I really wish I hadn't asked that question. Because the answer was Popeye's. A 9-piece mixed chicken meal with two biscuits and mashed potatoes. Do you know what he had for lunch yesterday? Chicken and rice with beans at the Dominican restaurant around the corner. The day before? McDonald's. The day before that? A Philly cheese steak with potato wedges.

Some people get married quickly because the bride is already pregnant. In our case, we need to get married before the groom starts to show. At the rate he's going, Este will be about 8 months pregnant by the time we get married. Lovely.

So I decided to skip the salad today and go ahead and treat myself to the taco bowl. Call it sympathy cravings.

Hallelujah!

We've found a cheaper hotel! I emailed my travel agent today to tell her that guests were concerned about the prices to stay at the Iberostar Bavaro, and she has offered another option at a lower price point. If the Bavaro is too costly for you, please consider staying at the Iberostar Punta Cana (a sister hotel to the Bavaro). See, you couldn't get out of coming that easily!

The only downside is that you can only come to the Bavaro for the wedding. On the other hand, Bavaro guests can join you any time at the Punta Cana. There are shuttles that run between all the Iberostar resorts. We'll just have to coordinate where we're meeting and when. I've pasted rates below, and we'll get this up on the site asap.

For a double:
3nights $384pp
4nights $504pp
5nights $624pp
6nights $744pp
7nights $864pp

Animal House

Meshky, Phantom, Oso, Muffin, Mateo, Keeshmeesh, Lemu, Barfie, Coda, Rocky, Oscar. What's going to happen to all these pets when everyone is vacationing away in the Dominican Republic?? Maybe we should reserve some rooms in a pet hotel just for our animals. They know howto party just as well as we do, so I'm sure they would all either kill each other or get kicked out in a matter of hours.

Another option would be to bring our pets with us. I heard about a new pet airline on NPR this morning. You can listen to the segment here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=10403814. The seats have been designed to serve as pet carriers, so pets can fly in style in the plane, rather than in the cargo. Dogs are walked before the flight, and each pet has its own 'pet' attendant during the trip to feed it and make sure it's comfortable. Hilarious!

It's a good thing that Keeshmeesh is not spoiled, or she would expect such royal treatment from us. Her toys consist of balled up wads of paper, Ginger Ale boxes, and milk caps. We will just leave several bowls of water and food for her and hope that she doesn't die of heat exhaustion while we are away...

Let me know what you are doing with your little monster. Maybe we can get a package deal with Keesh? She is very sweet and loves to give massages!

Recession Special?

Our travel agent released January 2010 resort rates today, and I was disappointed to see how expensive resorts are charging for a weekend stay. In deciding to have a destination wedding, Este and I were well aware that it was going to be very difficult for all our friends and family to attend. The least we could do was pick a place that was reasonably priced. Now we know for a fact that not only is it going to be difficult getting there, but the finances might be too much for some guests to manage.

Unfortunately, January is peak season, and as much as I tried negotiating with various travel agents, this is the best deal we are going to get. I have no hard feelings against anyone who has to opt out of the wedding festivities because of the cost. In the end, this is our dream and when you only get one chance to make it happen, why not go for it? Our friends and family will be dearly missed, but there will be many more occasions to celebrate and get together. And we always have Deep Creek!

Magic Guest List

Things are finally back on track! We’ve set a date and booked the wedding. The resort is picked. Save the Date cards have been designed and are being printed. The website is up. All I need to do is finish collecting mailing addresses.

An efficient bride isn’t afraid to delegate the work, and one thing I have been more than happy to make someone else’s problem is getting all the guest mailing addresses. The family friends have been divided among the five sisters and Este’s family is in charge of the Perla clan. For the most part, everyone has ignored my inquiries, so if you expect an invite and are especially close to the Yeganeh family, for example, chances are Lili did not do her homework in getting your address to me. Sorry!

Then there’s the other extreme... The other day I emailed my mom with a list of the families I still need information for. She promptly emailed me back a couple days later with a long, single spaced list of addresses. The names all blended together, but I spaced out the text and added each address into the database one at a time. I guess my mom was hoping I would just copy and paste, because as I added the information, I noticed new names I had never seen before. Strange... I don’t remember having Mr. and Mrs. So and So on the original list....Interesting.... I thought Ms. This and That moved.

I decided to call my mom and see what the deal was with the new names. Not surprisingly, she pretended she had no idea what I was talking about. We know about 5 different Faribas, 10 different Mozhgons, 7 different Mehrans, 20 different Mitras, 3 different Shirins, 5 different Nooshins, 4 Saras, etc. etc. So you can imagine how many times I had one person in mind, and my mom was thinking of someone completely different. Oh well... the bottom line is the more, the merrier and people with popular names get invited to more parties! I am changing my name to Bob.