Bellingham, WA ~ Date for a Wedding

I am notoriously the girl invited to an event (wedding, baby/bridal shower, celebration, birthday) and always go alone. Whether it is in between girlfriends, just after a break-up, or I am dating someone that doesn't want to do these types of things with me. I am the girl that goes "stag". Well, not this time. I have finally met someone that loves to be a part of my life and all that entails as much as I enjoy theirs. Chelsey is that person and she is flying back to WA solely to attend this event with me. Well, amongst other fun adventures as always. Here we go.

First things First

It is Thursday evening. I get to the airport early to pick Chelsey up just in case her flight arrives early. We have a double date tonight with our friends Timm & Christian. They are coming to our city to go see Halloween Kills with us at 8:20p. Her flight is supposed to get in at 7:25p. So much for wishful thinking, her flight is actually delayed! It is now expected to get in at 7:50p. This is going to cut things close as it is about 25-30 minutes to the theater from the airport. Her flight arrives and I finally see her coming up the elevator to baggage claim. As much as I want to ravish her there and then, I can't as we have somewhere to be, that will have to wait. I quickly kiss her and we make our way to the parking garage to get to our movie. We are en route to the theater and calling Timm to go ahead and just grab us food and drinks and meet us in the movie, he knew we were rushed and had offered earlier (he is so sweet like that!). They kindly did and we rushed to get there, making it just in time. The movie was decent, but the company was better! We love Timm and Christian and the time we spend with them and of course sitting next to Chelsey in the movie (rather than our FaceTime movie dates) was perfect! We laughed at how scared Timm was the entire time. He hates scary movies.

The movie ends and we head out to our cars, it is late. Timm says "Come to our truck, I have something for Chelsey". We trudge through the rain and puddles to his truck and there he hands Chels a Snapback hat with a rainbow Hurley emblem on the front. It was so sweet! She loved it. We said thank you for everything and hugged our goodbyes. It was time to head home.

The Planning Begins

We get home and get cozy then discuss our plans for the next couple days. This is a quick trip with A LOT of things to do so planning (my niche') is first on the agenda. Here is what needs to be done:

  • Sex first (duh) we miss each other as always so we need some closeness before anything
  • Morning coffee and a trip to my office so she can see where I work
  • Thrift Stores (My Idea, not hers) to look for a formal dress for this formal wedding. I will probably not wear it again so why not see if I can just get a cheap one to discard after (more to come on this)
  • Bellevue Square (if we can't find what we want at the thrift store)
  • Lunch (light) maybe at the mall
  • Nails (I need my nails done before the wedding) just painted, I don't do fake or lengthy
  • Ramen (we have both wanted to try Ramen at a restaurant)
  • Alone time at home before the busy rest of the weekend

The list has been set. Now to get some intimacy and rest so we can greet the day in a good mood. There is lots to do before Saturday and the wedding.

Friday ~ Dreaded Friday

What started as an exciting idea and day turned dreadful real quick! Let's start with the good first. COFFEE! Always a great start to any day. We drive to the Starbucks by our house and get our favorite coffees and something to eat. We head toward Bellevue, talking, holding hands, and just loving being together. We get closer to my work and I tell her "this is where I work"... We get out with our coffee in hand and head in, up the stairs, and to my office. We sit in there for a little bit just talking. Then as we leave, run into a coworker of mine and talk for a minute before heading back out in the rain. We start driving to where the GPS is telling me a thrift store is, only to find out that is has been closed down. So, enter a new address for another thrift store.... Aha, found it. We go to get out of the car and Chelsey says she has never been in a thrift store! What?!?! I tell her I used to make it a "Thing" to frequent thrift stores to find name brand stuff and then clean it up and sell it online for a profit. She looked at me like I was crazy. We head in and she immediately says, "Um, it smells in here!" mind you, she has a mask on! We venture over to the dresses and I start going through them pulling ones out one by one only to hear her say "nope, nope, nope, nope" to every single one. She says, "babe, let's go. We aren't going to find anything here!" So, off we go. I guess the "Thrifty" idea is now off the table.

Bellevue Square

We arrive at Bellevue Square Mall to try and find outfits that are suitable for this occasion which might I add is the next day. We go into so many stores, and then leave so many stores. In and out... nothing - nothing - nothing! OMGosh .. we are striking out! At this point the conversation has now turned to, "What do we have at home in my closet that will work?". Screw FORMAL... We can't find anything. Maybe we will just go with what we have, save some money, and call it a day.

Chelsey brought a nice new pair of plaid skinny pants that she recently purchased, so we just needed a sweater and some nice "mule sandal loafers" for her. I have a new sleek black Calvin Klein dress, still with the tags on it as have never worn it, hanging in my closet. If worse comes to worse I will pair it with some stiletto dress booties and a long cashmere sweater and call it "Fall Formal" I refuse to pay $149 for a formal dress that I can assure you I will never wear again. So I am over it and I am Hangry now, Chelsey notices and says, "babe, let's get you something to eat". I admit, I was a tad bitchy. I mean, I never see my girlfriend and I am spending an entire day shopping in a mall for clothes I won't wear again and money I don't want to waste. So my mood was definitely tell tale of all those things.

We settle on Auntie Ann's pretzel bites to share to get us by until our Ramen date later. I then took Chels down the escalator to the Frango's kiosk https://www.macys.com/shop/gourmet-food-and-gift-baskets/all-gourmet-food-and-gifts/Brand/Frango (type in Frango Chocolate in the Macy's website) and let her pick the kind she wanted as she has never had them before. She played it safe and got the box of assorted 🙂 Then off we went. I love Frango's at Christmas time and of course Macy's is selling them 2 months before.

We head off toward Zara to buy a sweater for Chels and just browse around to see if there was ANYTHING that I liked which I didn't other than this cute little button down dress (very short) that I hope to get into by spring (it's a little snug and short) but I plan to lose some weight and for $25 why not? Other than that nope, I found nothing. Chels found a sweater so that was a win. We then waited in the extremely long line to pay for our two items and vowed to head out, but first the candy store, Lolli and Pops. https://www.lolliandpops.com. I love this place. I needed to pick up some Butterbeer for my son for his birthday and some candy too, plus we got a couple sweets for our roadtrip to Bellingham tomorrow. All done now and time to go find Chelsey some shoes at Nordstrom Rack near Factoria.

Factoria ~ Nordstrom Rack

Still feeling hopeful that maybe there is a dress that will work for me, I peruse the racks and find nothing. Chels, thankfully, found some cute black mules to wear while I grabbed some Sebastian hair spray and we were off again. Short trip in and out, I was glad because honestly I was burned out from trying to find a dress. I was going to resort to what I already have in the closet and call it good. Now, to get my nails done. I didn't schedule an appointment and it was last minute, but I tried calling them anyway. I said I needed them painted for a wedding tomorrow (they thought it was mine, who am I to correct them) and they made room for me to come in. We looked at the time and decided we had just enough time to go eat Ramen and then get to the Salon by our house to finish the night.

Ramen

Chelsey found this place in Issaquah for us to try, Orenji Sushi & Noodles, https://www.orenjisushinoodles.com/ . We sat down and looked at the huge menu and as tempting as it was for Chels to order her fave, Sushi, we agreed that we came for Ramen since neither of us have eaten ramen out at a restaurant. We picked out the Ramen we wanted (mine with beef, spinach, and an egg *don't do the egg:( yuk) and Chels had beef with a tempura shrimp). We sat and talked about the clothes we thought we were going to wear, what time we should head out, and how much fun we were having together even though I was being Hellstar because I was tired of shopping. Food was great, although like I said, I didn't like the hard boiled egg sitting in it but otherwise it was really good and filling. We would give it a 4 star... The waitress was a little scattered and didn't come back at all.

I am going to fast forward a little at this point to save you the boring nail salon visit, trying on of clothes, and bedtime shenanigans (Chels tooted for the first time.... It's a blog, in all honesty, you know it is bound to happen) and tried to pass it off, but I knew! Anyway, the rest is quite boring so we will fast forward to the trip to Bellingham for the Wedding of my cousin Vanessa.

Bellingham, WA ~ Wedding Bound

Well the morning has come and we are up and all ready in our dressy clothes (not formal and we don't care) and heading out to Bellingham, which is an hour an 40 minutes north of us near the Canadian border. She decided against the sweater from Zara so I will take that back later this week. She chose a blazer and a v-neck sleeveless crossbody tank of mine to wear instead. We decided this looked nicer and also would be a cooler for her in case the venue was hot. I chose the black classic Calvin Klein dress, black tights, short stiletto booties, and a long sage green cashmere sweater to wear. She did her hair straight and I wore mine slightly curled and down. We looked good ~ We did not look formal. However, what does formal look like really? Ball gowns, no thanks.

We get to Bellingham and I have to pee... Bad. I drank liquid all the way up there so of course I would have to go, but with COVID laws, this task can be a challenge. Chels starts looking up restaurants near us as we thought maybe we could stop in for a drink since we had about an hour to kill before we needed to be there. We stopped at a little Mexican Restaurant and ordered a Margarita each and a chicken burrito to share. We weren't sure what the food situation would be like and neither of us had eaten. Good choice of places, it was actually really good!!! I went to the bathroom as did she and we enjoyed some quiet time before the ceremony. We love these little quiet moments at random locations (insert AWWW here). Honestly though, it's the memories we continue to make at a moments notice that we remember more than anything. Spur of the moment memories. Priceless.

Wedding Venue

We have arrived at the venue and have chosen a parking spot where we backed in and were able to people watch. We were most curious to what "Formal" looks like before we got out... as if we had some magic formal wear tucked inside the car to change into. I think we just wanted to ensure a little more confidence in our attire before walking in. We saw everything from long dresses and suits and ties to Boho chic attire and everything in between. We got this. We fit in perfectly. The evening wouldn't be complete without us video recording ourselves doing stupid shit.. boy did we get a good one! Smiling big mouth filter on Snap video of us.... hysterical. We were both crying then used a box of Kleenex in the back seat to dry our tears, but they were Vicks Vapor Kleenex so then our eyes were burning which made us laugh even more! Telltale of our relationship and the fun we have. There truly is never a dull moment.

It is time to get out and head in. We walk in, sign the guest book, see my dad's best friend Bernie and his Wife Jan and make our way over to where they are sitting. My brother and his family showed soon thereafter and sat directly behind us and we waited for the wedding to begin. The wedding was good and then up the stairs to the reception. I cannot tell you how nice it felt to have Chelsey by my side. To have her fly back out to WA to attend a wedding of someone she doesn't know, meet members of my extended family, and just be with me.... I couldn't feel more blessed! We get upstairs to the reception and find our table, grab our drink glass, and head to the alcohol table to grab a drink. The night was great, we drank, ate, she met my extended family, we danced, and we took pictures (the picture at the top of this blog is us at the wedding). All in all, it was a great evening. We decided to leave the wedding venue around 9p as we knew we still had another hour and a half of driving and the sad reality of her leaving back to Missouri in the early morning:( I wanted to spend as much time with her as I could and in the car doesn't count. Although our car trip back was.. hmmm... amazing. I will let your mind wander there as well to keep this PG13.

Home and Leaving

We are finally home and have peeled off our dressy clothes to get cozy. We hop in the shower, slip into our cozies and settle in. We crawl into bed to watch some TV and just be close. I am already in tears. I hate goodbyes so much. We again talk about this all being temporary for now and how eventually we will be able to bridge the gap, but for now it is what it is. The plan was for me to go back to Missouri for Thanksgiving, but airfare was over $1000 and we aren't willing to spend that when I could go the weekend of Dec. 2 for $210 round trip. This also means that we are going to have to go over a month without seeing each other, 41 days to be exact and that doesn't make this goodbye any easier.

The morning has come and it is time to get packing and head to the airport. I lay in bed teary eyed and sad for a bit. I tell her how much I love her and how hard these goodbyes are and that everytime she leaves she takes my heart with her. I hate being away from each other, I want to see her everyday. We discuss making the firm decision for her to move here March 1st. I feel better with a date set and agree to that day then decided to get up and get moving. I grab snacks for her carry on and she gets her other bag packed. We load the car and head out. The plan this time is to just pull up to departures and get out to kiss her goodbye rather than park and walk in. The goodbyes are so hard when I have to leave her at TSA and walk the long walk to the garage alone crying. Wanted to try this instead, perhaps it would be a little easier. I was wrong. Just as hard. I drop her at the airport and hug her one last time. I kiss her goodbye and watch her walk away.... with my heart.

Next time I see her will be in 41 days when I fly into St. Louis to see her and meet her mom and then her family! Stay tuned ... Trust me you won't want to miss this one.. YIKES!! Next chapter is coming soon: My New Journey: To Love. Chapter 9: Missouri ~ Meeting Chelsey's Family. What will her mom say? Will she say anything? Check back soon... and as always....