Photo of the Day — Day 237

One month from today, S. and I will be married, and I couldn’t be happier that she has agreed to be my wife, my life partner, until death do us part.  I believe with every fiber of my being that we will have a great marriage, and am looking forward to starting that journey with her.  But before the marriage can begin, there must be a wedding, and as anyone who has ever been married or known anyone who has gotten married or even walked by the magazine aisle of their local bookstore or grocery store knows, weddings are a big deal, a huge deal, and immense investment in time and money. 

From the first moment we began discussing our nuptials, S. and I agreed that we wanted to keep it simple, to avoid spending a ton of money on an event that was only the beginning — not the central event — of our lives together.  And we’ve done a pretty good job of making our wedding-planning decisions with that in mind.  At this point, there are only a few loose ends left to be tied: the wine, my suit, and perhaps most importantly, her shoes.  She has a lovely dress, or so I’m told, since I haven’t been allowed to see it, but she has yet to find the right shoes.

Today S. and her mother went on the Great Shoe Hunt, part II (or maybe part III or IV, depending on how you count); meanwhile, in classic groom-to-be form, I found the closest Barnes & Noble and set up base camp, ready to offer support if needed, but well out of the way of the professionals.  In the end, they failed to bag a pair of acceptable shoes.  As is so often the case on hunting expeditions, they caught a couple of glimpses of the prey, but the perfect shoes evaded them, and they came back empty-handed.

I was a bit more lucky: I managed to stumble across the photo of the day, an exterior shot of one of the stores at the shopping center that was their hunting grounds.  And so the hunt goes on.

Short Pump Town Center in Richmond, VA