Okay, so I know I vaguely mentioned how my mom and I did a major shopping haul the other day. But I wanted to document the experience, because let me tell you. It was a DAY!
Once upon a time....
My parents came up on Sunday to help with some wedding things, and my dad began working on my super special piano project. Mom and I decided to go to Party City and Michael's and begin the process of looking for items. We began with Party City in the hopes of finding everything for the rehearsal dinner and a few odds and ends for the reception.
Now. We walk in and suddenly I am greeted with ALL the things. I think my mind neglected to put the words "party" and "city" together in relation to each other until I walked in this store. I mean there was just floor to ceiling of...everything. And purple everywhere. I suddenly became the most indecisive person on the planet. By the time I gathered my senses mom was half-way down Aisle 6 with a cart full of items. Things that weren't even on our list to begin with we suddenly had to have. Damn you marketing gurus who sit in your offices on bean bags and play ping pong until you're inspired.
The main items we wanted were dinnerware for the rehearsal dinner. I have decided to do a very, very low-key rehearsal dinner. We are having it in the back of the tiny church we're getting married in and all the little old church ladies are preparing it for us. Spaghetti, garlic bread, salad, and homemade pies, topped off with Sweet Tea. So I didn't want china plates and anything fancy for this laid back atmosphere, and so we began looking for paper and plastic type items. Well, wouldn't you know they had about 75 choices of purple things. And we couldn't tell how sturdy they were unless we "made a plate" now could we? So I nibbled into a package of plates and pulled one out, only to discovered that in reality it was paper thing and likely would collapse under the weight of fairy dust. We finally settled on some very over-priced purple plates, dessert plates, napkins, and cups and called it a day. But then as we were leaving, I looked over and saw these lovely purple flower plates that were 40% off an already cheap price on the clearance aisle. But they were on the very top shelf and we couldn't reach.
Well, before I could even say the words my little southern momma took off through that store like a banshee and flagged down the first employee she could find. She returns with this high school aged looking girl who looked like she had better places to be, but the threat of my mother's nose holes flaring seemed to make her willing to help us. She looked up and was like, "Those? WAY up there? *sigh* MmmK."
Customer service really is top notch these days. Lovely.
She returned about 10 minutes later holding a pack of the plates and my mom was like "Oooo how did you get those?!" and the girl pointed to a rack that was, oh about 4 feet away from us, full of all the things. We just hadn't seen it. And she says, "There. Anything else?" Nope. That'll do donkey.
SO we put allllll our stuff back and switch to these things and suddenly we are paying 1/3 of what we were going to and everything is just as pretty. Done.
On the way out, over to our left was a Wedding Wonderland store, but we both thought it would be best that we didn't enter this store considering A) how much we just spent at the party store and B) it was raining and a bitch had a fro already, okay?
We left and went to Michael's with the sole purpose of looking for fake flowers and ribbon. I am using some real flowers in the ceremony, and boutonnieres and corsages and stuff, but I really wanted a ton of flowers for the reception. One of my bestest friends, Matty, has a wonderfully talented mom, Momma Jane, who has SO graciously offered to help make my wedding beautiful. She is making the majority of the decorations for me including centerpieces and some stuff for the church. I am SOOO grateful! But we need her to have things to work with. I mean, prior to our Michael's trip we pretty much had some mason jars, one sad strip of burlap, and a hug to give her.
So. We go into Michael's. Again, wedding planning on crack people. We at first made the (rookie) mistake of going straight to the main flower aisle, whereupon we discovered every individual stem was $9.99. So at that rate, this was going to be a $2,000 haul. And I am PICKY about fake flowers. I refuse to use ones that actually look fake. I refuse to have leaves be of a non-believable nature. I refuse to have petals not look real. I am willing to have no flowers rather than cheap trailer park flowers that somebody done put on they front porch with a welcome sign.
We decided to take a restroom break and re-group. Then we start finding little deals here and there, but nothing too exciting. What we needed where burlap flowers, purple flowers, cream flowers, and some brown accents. And what we REALLY needed were dark, dark purple roses. My mom is making my cake (she used to be a wedding cake maker for those of you who don't know. She is ridiculously talented.) She is using these small purple roses on the cake, cascading down. I found it on the internet (Pinterest WIN) and fell in love. But alas, I am aware that real roses do not come in purple. And honestly, I did not expect to find a fake version of something real that was actually fake. See what I did there? But I saw it on the internet, so it MUST be real!
As we are walking down an aisle, all of the sudden my mother stops and grabs a stray employee and blurts out, "We need purple roses! We are desperate! Where are purple roses? Do you sell purple roses?" I think the woman gathered we were probably looking for purple roses. She proceeds to tell us that is not a "real" thing and that they probably don't have any, and takes us to the fake rose aisle. Pinks, yellows, reds, and some odd colors for sure, but no purple. We are sad. We hang our heads. Then the woman goes, "Wait!" and we went "WHAT?!" and she says, "Follow me!" and we followed. She takes us to an end cap that had the teeeeeeeny little bouquets of roses tied together. And one section of them were...purple! So we were excited, but only just a little, because really these were way too small, and they were lavender, not dark purple. But they were pretty, really pretty, and so we settled. The woman left us to lick our wounds and pull all the bouquets down, and then from across the store she goes, "Ladies!!! I FOUND THEM!!!!!!" and we perked up like prairie dogs and took of running - yes, running - through the store like crazy people. We were so excited and breathless we couldn't find her or the roses. Just the sound of her voice. And a maze of flowers. Then there they were. We rounded a corner and *cue Angels* there, in a big container, was an entire thing of DARK PURPLE ROSES. They. Were. Gorgeous. Stunning. They looked completely real! I would never have known they were fake. And then, it got better. The woman says, "Oh look! They're on sale. 40% off today! And I can get you an additional 20% off your overall purchase." At least that's what I think she said. As soon as the words 40% off came out, my mom was clawing her way through the flower maze and pulled out every single flower. All the things. All the flowers. We bought them all. And then, next to them were more dark purple large flowers. We bought them. All. And then, one row over there were Burlap roses trimmed with shine. We bought them. ALL. And then, it just didn't stop. We discovered we were in their last season Fall clearance aisle, and dark purple was all the rage. So we bought them. All.
Our cart was so wide we couldn't fit down normal aisles. But we walked proudly through that store, and many woman stopped to "oo" and "ah" over our flowers. And when we were in the ribbon aisle, and mom was pretending to walk down the aisle so I could see how the ribbon flowed, people didn't judge. They smiled. And when mom pretended to be a bridesmaid and held her bouquet and three different levels as she walked down the aisle, one woman told us she was excited for us. And when we checked out, which took 20 minutes to do, the cashier all but high-fived us on our amazing haul. I won't say what we spent that day, but I will say this - our savings amount was over $400. We were extreme couponers. We were Budweiser champion horses. We were all the things.
That day with my momma was one of the best I've had yet in planning this wedding. We had SO much fun, and laughed so hard we had to take more then one potty break. I told her that night the best part of the day was spending it with her. I'm saving a few of these roses after the wedding is all said and done. I'm going to tuck them away with my memories. :)
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