[No] Progress

It's been a few days but I had a lot of things to do both with work and with the wedding and I have very little to report.

I went to the local floral distributor, Pennock Floral Distributors... I'm not even linking that up because the website is the most unhelpful thing every conceived. You go to the website and click on "Shop Online" and you get an error page. Whatever, they also said they were open to the public, and I was really excited to check them out because I want to see if wholesale flowers are a possibility. Yeah, I walked in and they asked me to leave before I even saw any flowers because I don't have an account with them. Turns out, you have to go to a florist who orders through Pennock... What's the point of cutting out the middle man if you still have to go through a middle man?!?!

I also set out to take my dress to a dry cleaners this weekend. Again, not sure if this is necessary, but Kyle, don't look, I'm putting up pictures of dress detail below!!

Anywho, as I told you, I was worried about the "grime" along the neckline of the dress, and the general state of the dress. Here's a detail shot of the neckline:

It's harder to see here because my camera flatters things impossibly, but that rim is a tad grimy. I wanted to get that taken care of. So I started calling every. single. drycleaner in Philadelphia and the surrounding area that claimed to do wedding gown tailoring, cleaning, and/or preservation. I got a range of prices and personalities and finally found a really nice drycleaners close by. I went there this evening and met the owner who was a very very nice guy named Jim. Unfortunately, he told me he wouldn't feel comfortable putting my dress through the drycleaning machine thingy because the edges are raw and the machine would fray them. However, he also said it didn't need much, just some spot treatment along the neckline. He also said he does not use an organic solvent, which this dress apparently needs.

After dragging her down and back up the stairs again, and stuffing her into the car another few times, I've taken to calling her the Fat Wh*#e. She's a ridiculous amount of dress.

So I have two options: there is a drycleaner in Alexandria, VA that was recommended by the salon where I got the dress that uses an organic solvent and also costs twice as much as every other place out there, OR I can try to sell it as is, or at least see if anyone's interested. I think I'm going to go ahead and post it on WeddingBee and see if I get any bites and then next time I'm in Baltimore visiting Mia and Dan I'll bring the dress and make the trek to Alexandria, which has to be closer to Baltimore than Philly.

On the other topic, I guess I'll have to do some more searching for floral wholesalers in Philly... somewhere that I'll actually be able to get into.

Lastly, Kyle asked me to do a little more research on honeymoon stuff because we are both still a little apprehensive about the trek that it's going to take to get to Oxygen Jungle Villas. I looked at a few other places, but the best prices are still in Costa Rica, and luckily, Costa Rica also seems to be the only place on earth where almost every hotel has private villas, bungalows, cabins, etc... I was amazed when I started looking all over Costa Rica how many places had separate villas just like Oxygen. I have yet to find any that are as sleek as Oxygen, but I am still looking. Here are a couple pictures for viewing pleasure!

Arenal Nayara Hotel, Spa and Gardens:

Spectacular, and voted one of the top five most romantic hotels in the world by someone or some list, but a tad on the expensive-er side.

I plan on showing some more tomorrow, but with the PC that I'm working on right now, I can't take screenshots... well, I can, but on a Mac, they turn into pictures that I can post. On a PC, they go to my clipboard... I love PCs, but they can be slightly user-unfriendly when it comes to media.

Point is, I will post more pictures of other potential honeymoon spots tomorrow (instead of working hard :)) and please, anyone who has any thoughts on the dress stuff, I'm all eyes. Let me know what you think, and if you want a Vera Wang Diana, hey, I got one!