First of all, thank you for bearing with me in pimping my sister’s contest over the weekend – we woke up Monday morning and she was down to 30% because of the spam voting by Her Arch Nemesis (or, the other lovely competitor) but here’s hoping!

The meeting with the two remaining florists went really well – I ended up going to two on Friday after work. I came armed with pictures and resolve that I wouldn’t be steamrolled and in both cases the plan worked! These were the pictures I brought:

Please be warned that estrogen levels may exceed daily recommended exposure.

The horror….the horror…

I’ve decided to go with the second vendor I met with, who is pulling from the top two images where hydrangia are used as the base, but we’re going to use a lot of unusual and garden flowers to have something that’s organic looking. I’m talking bent curly willow branches for structure and thistles. And I care!! Who would have guessed?

The other wedding progress that has been made has been on the favor front. We’re making blueberry jelly and apple butter, but there are no U-Pick blueberry fields in Manitoba! So my mom, being excited for the wedding in her own very cool way, drummed up the information on an Aboriginal women’s co-op where they actually go out and pick wild blueberries this time of year – and my mom reserved berries for me.

20 lbs of blueberries to be specific.

Just to clarify – we need 8 cups for all of the jelly for the whole wedding!!! We’ll be living on blueberry everything for years, or you all are going to be receiving blueberries in the mail from me. Apparently the berries will be coming in later this week or early next week so I’m going to come on a field trip to see what the co-op is like and what other foods they have! And in the mean time I’ll be looking for dump trucks that we can put all of these blueberries into to get them to my house.

This weekend there will be favour making of some kind (apple or blueberry), we will be finalizing our ceremony and getting the readers locked in. My goal is, officially, to be done all of the prep work before September so I won’t have anything to freak out about last minute

The best news of the week has been hands down that one of my friends will chauffeur us in the above vintage blue pontiac. It fits our blue motif and is the vintage car that I’ve been tearing my hair out to find over the past three months. We got it all locked in over e-mail and I finally relaxed because this one hugely important aspect of the wedding was taken care of.

This morning I got a facebook message from my friend….and he’s backed out of the wedding. He didn’t even check, he’s not even going to be in town.

I’m sick. I feel like I could throw up. This was the one image I had of my wedding day, and now it’s gone. We’re nearly a month out of the wedding, there are only two vintage car rental places in my city and they’re all booked, and all of my other leads have gone cold. We’re going to have to get a stretch limo SUV or something equally as…whatever.

This isn’t the biggest thing in the world, but I’m surprised about how attached to the idea I am and how unhappy I am about having to give it up. I’m going to talk to my friend today and see if he has any other ideas….but I’m thinking I have to wave goodbye to this part of the wedding. I’m just going to have to suck it up and deal. Maybe I can harness the puppies and have them pull us to the church.

Here’s to friends. Anyone own a vintage car?

Update: Okay you know how I said I was just going to deal before? Now I actually mean that and am feeling much better about the situation – Sometimes I just need a little time! And some kind comments = )