A Wedding in St. Louis

This weekend I was in St. Louis for the wedding of our good friends Mike and Erin. Remember them? They came to visit us a couple months ago and brought their tiny dog? Anyway, aside from the HORRIBLE road construction (entire highways! closed!) and resulting traffic, we had a lovely time. It didn’t rain for the outdoor ceremony and Andrew and I rocked it out at the karaoke reception. (What did you say? Oh, “I’ve Had the Time of My Life,” from Dirty Dancing, thanks for asking.) Plus, it was really fun hanging out with all our old college friends that we don’t see too often.

Erika and I were given the job of arranging the cupcakes on the cupcake table. In the few days leading up to the wedding, Erin, the bride, repeated over and over that this was the most important job. Then she would say that she was just kidding. But she totally was not kidding. She had typed up, detailed instructions and a diagram to follow. And since I was a bride not all that long ago, I took her instructions seriously, because I wouldn’t have wanted someone to screw up my wedding (even though some of you are thinking, “But they’re just cupcakes.” Oh no, my friend, in a wedding, nothing is just cupcakes). And the bride loved the display. She told me three times at the reception how great it looked and how it was just what she wanted. So I just want to put it out there, that next time I arrange the bridal dessert, I’m charging for it. $1 per cupcake.

While we were in St. Louis, we visited a fun, contemporary, affordable furniture store that Mike and Erin recommended. And we bought a couch and two chairs for our living room. They will arrive in 6-8 weeks. Crazy. We are never that impulsive. But now that we bought some pretty new furniture, we have a deadline for getting the following completed: remove decorative beams, scrape and paint entire first floor ceiling, remove old baseboards and trim, paint and install new trim, sand textured walls and paint, remove old mantel and build new one, remove ceiling fan, add more recessed lighting, and relocate my sanity. Fortunately, we have Mark and Stan. If you don’t have your own Mark and Stan, I recommend you get them. They’re good at housey stuff.

Speaking of houses, I would rather stay home than go to the St. Louis Comfort Inn & Conference Center. Yes, bad transition. But I want to give them a scathing review, because they were terrible. When we checked in, we were told we were lucky to get a room, despite having reserved one ahead of time, because they overbook the hotel. Then, we couldn’t get our door open. Assuming it was deadbolted, we went back to the front desk to make sure no one was in that room. The front desk person came up to the room, and shoved into the door until it opened. The entire weekend I never was able to get the door open. Andrew had to do it every time. Their parking lot didn’t have enough spaces, so we had to park in the grass way in the back. They didn’t change the empty toilet paper roll or replace the empty tissue box. They took dirty towels but didn’t give us clean ones. Overall, that hotel was a mess and I do not recommend it.

I didn’t really take any pictures the entire weekend because Erika was there. Erika is a talented photographer with a much better camera. To see all the fun we had, check out her photo blog. If the wedding pics aren’t up yet, check back. She’ll get them up soon, I’m sure.