What a week

For the most part, this wedding has been drama-free. There was the ordeal with certain folks thinking they didn't have to RSVP ... but with the help of my sister, it got done. Then there was the delay of my wedding dress ... but it still came six weeks prior to the wedding date. And from the horror stories I've heard from friends, all of this really isn't that bad.
And then there was this week.
It first started off with one of my vendors and I kind of getting into it. Well, it was more like she was not responding to my emails or calls and I was freaking out because on April 1st, I realized I had less than 16 days to finalize everything. Although I asked for everything in March, I still didn't have a cake estimate, overall final budget or a date set to meet prior to the wedding. I was getting fed up and seriously considered figuring out a way to throw together a reception using the hotel instead of the restaurant. But I also knew that I was getting too emotional (aka pissed) about the whole situation so I asked my sister to step in and be the contact person moving forward. It was the best decision I could have made. Sister swooped in, comforted me, comforted the vendor (we won't even go into how much I thought it was crap that the vendor needed reassuring on how great she truly is) and it seemed like everything was resolved and back on track.
And then there was Thursday.
I got out of my early morning yoga class and had 8 missed calls. What the heck happened?!

Oh yes. I knew that Aloha Airlines had filed for bankruptcy last week. Nooo problem. We weren't using them to fly from the Bay Area to Oahu. We booked ATA flights. We had booked Aloha to fly from Oahu to Kauai but no biggie. We were told that ATA would be taking over all the flights.

That's right. The crap done hit the fan, girl. Both my mom and aunt had been trying to get a hold of me. They wanted to know if I knew that ATA filed for bankruptcy that morning and all flights have been cancelled. The two of them were searching furiously online to see if there were any flights left. They found an 11-hour flight with a layover in Arizona for $600.
Up until this past week, I thought I was a fairly calm bride. People have asked me throughout the eight months how the wedding plans were going and I didn't have much to say. But this was something else. And imagine that my mom and other family members were all riled up, rightfully so because they don't want to spend double what they had originally spent on airfare, and whipping up a nice batch of crazy all around me yet I had no way to even begin fixing the issue because I wasn't anywhere near a computer.
I didn't doubt for a moment that the wedding will happen. I just wasn't sure how we were going to pull off everything smoothly. We have to fly out on Sunday because all our appointments with the vendors and venues are on Monday. I may have been able to reschedule them for Tuesday but that is the day of our welcome breakfast for our guests, wedding rehearsal and the day we have to go back to Honolulu for our wedding license. And whatever else we forgot that will make us run around to do last minute things.
I debated if I should call The Man. I mean, what could he do at work? He no longer worked in an office and wouldn't have access to a computer. But he's also my best friend and I needed to share the crazy that had been all whipped up for me because I hoped he would make me feel better. So I called him. I asked him if he had heard the news about ATA. The Man said his boss asked him about it first thing in the morning. When The Man told him we were using ATA, his boss let him use his computer and phone to try to rebook our flights (to the wedding and the honeymoon.) The Man couldn’t get through to the contact numbers given by ATA so he asked his boss if he could take the rest of the day off to fix all of this from home.
I was nowhere near tears until I heard him say he was trying to take care of it. I was so happy to hear that that I almost started crying! Maybe it was relief that this wasn't something that I would have to try and fix like so many of the other things that have to do with the wedding. But no, the man swooped in and took it all on himself. He went all all the travel websites and after an hour, found a flight for$395 which was a steal compared to the Arizona layover flight and the $1,000 flights from United and American. Unfortunately, it has a lay over in LA but it’s only 35 minutes. (We have a straight flight on the way back.) We can live with that! We will be arriving on Sunday at 9:30pm so that means instead of getting to our hotel at 11:30am like our original plan, we get to our hotel sometime between 11:30pm and 12:00am! But considering our options, this was by far the best one.
We no longer have a straight flight from Kauai (our honeymoon) to Oakland like we did before. Instead, we have to fly back to Oahu and then leave for home from there.This also extended our trip from April 26th, when we were supposed to go home, to April 28th. We still need to find a hotel to stay at for those two days extra days. While I love vacationing in Hawaii, staying for over two weeks is a long time from home. And yes, laugh if you will, but we will truly miss our puppies, too! It's a long time to be away from both. We are homebodies! But if we have to get stuck with two extra days anywhere, Hawaii is probably my #1 choice. And, because the times we would be arriving and leaving have changed for both our wedding and honeymoon, The Man also had to make sure he changed everything with our car rentals. Because how much would it suck if the car rental place wasn't open when we come in at 10:30pm (we are anticipating getting our luggage and shlepping it to the car rental place may take a bit of time.) I hope we remembered everything that is affected by our change in flight plans.
Anyhow, everything is back on track and we are only spending $200 more on airfare rather than than the $1,200 we might have had to spend. The airlines fiasco hasn't hurt our attendance too much either. So far, only one couple has dropped from our list, making our party 38 now. I'm bummed that my aunt and uncle can't make it but completely understand. They were not able to find the same deal as we did and would have to spend double than their orginal airfare. We were happy to hear that most of our relatives booked on either Hawaiian Airlines, United or American. Phewwww.
So that was our week. What a pain in the ass. Today we found out that The Man's barong wasn't sent out like it was promised. The lady had told him that they had only one more barong in the style and size that The Man wanted and that she would send it out. Today she left a what she said was a "courtesy call" that they didn't have any in stock but if they get a shipment in, it may arrive on April 11th. The Man was not a happy man today. He has special ordered one from another vendor that is supposed to arrive this Wednesday. Cross your fingers for us. We did, however, take care of the rest of his outfit! We went to Banana Republic and bought some dark brown trousers and dark brown belt. Then we went to Macy's (bless the kind soul who gave us a $50 gift certificate for the bridal shower) and put the gift card towards a pair of dark brown dress shoes and socks. If you're wondering, yes, he was definitely making me sweat by waiting until the weekend before to buy his clothes for our wedding. But I was beginning to think that he was going to wait until we got to Waikiki so I am quite pleased that all of those purchases are now checked off of his list.
Send us good wedding thoughts from now until April 16th! Although my sister assured me that these crazy incidents guarantee a wonderful marriage, I think we're all stocked up on craziness. And wasn't that message along the same lines of when Carrie was trying to comfor Charlotte when she was having a crappy 2nd wedding? I'm hoping that the actual event ends up nice!