We were blessed to receive many gifts over the course of our engagement and wedding. This blessing posed a problem.
How to get everything back to Vancouver?
We didn't have our address when we registered, and later, Bed, Bath & Beyond wouldn't let us put in a Canadian address. This meant all gifts, big and small, went to my parents' house in Texas.
We didn't even have enough luggage, much less enough money to pay for the checked bags, to get everything home with us when we flew.
Max's mom suggested a plan: Return everything in Dallas and repurchase in Vancouver.
This seemed like a great idea!
I, however, wanted to double check with BBB up in Vancouver to make sure this plan would work. Max insisted that it would be fine but courteously agreed to make the 30 minute trek with me to the store in North Vancouver just to ask them if they thought this was the way to go. After wrong turns and tons of traffic, we finally made it. The fabulously friendly folks at the registry counter assured us that everything would run smoothly within the first two minutes of our being there. It was nuts. I could feel the "I told you so" burning into my skull. Oh well. At least we know it will work and now we have a plan in place.
Lots of place settings and guest towels later, we were back in Vancouver with our merchandise return cards (essentially cash for BBB) and gift cards. We arrived at the store around 1 pm. We went straight back to the wedding registry section to get a printed copy of our registry so we would know what they had in the store.
Now, I wouldn't say that I've ever had a negative interaction with BBB employees, but the folks at the North Vancouver location were above and beyond in the friendliness and helpfulness departments. It was overwhelming at times. They also had what I found to be a remarkably high number of employees working at 1 pm on a regular old Wednesday afternoon...
We were surrounded. Two nice ladies helped us print the registry and get us started. They then made a store-wide radio announcement that we were in the building, so all the employees would be on the lookout for us to offer their utmost assistance.
This was getting really real.
We found all 6 of our red place settings, but they didn't have enough of our green so we ordered all 6 of those. Since we chose all of our serving pieces in the gorgeous chocolate color, but this location wasn't carrying any of the chocolate, all of them were ordered. They also didn't have our silverware, so that's ordered. They had a different brand of serving utensils, but they were still excellent quality, so we grabbed those instead of the ones we had registered for. We found towels and sheets and KitchenAid Stand Mixer accessories galore. The actual mixer had to be ordered since they didn't have the yellow we wanted.
We sprung for a new counter top grill! It has removable grill platters that are dishwasher safe (YES!!!!!!) and they reverse to be a griddle. It also opens flat so both the top and bottom panels can be used for cooking. That's one of our favorite new buys.
We couldn't go home without getting something for the kittens, so we got them a cool new toy. It required 3 C batteries. What?! What needs C batteries? And 3?! That's such an awkward number of batteries. They only come in even packaging!! Why would you ruin everything and request that I provide you with an odd number of batteries?!!?!! WHY?!?!! We also don't currently have any C batteries... We're working on it...
We filled a couple of carts. Every time we were just starting to think that we should find a new one, a helpful employee was there with a brand new cart, offering to take our full one up to the front for when we check out. Unbelievable! It was a great adventure!
We wound up with some things off of my "As Seen On TV" list!! XD We got a sticky buddy and a scrub daddy! They're both pretty great, and Max is an incredible guy who loves all the quirky parts about me.
Nicole was the gal on the wedding registry end who was helping us throughout the day. She was looking up items to see if they had them in a local warehouse. She suggested cool items she thought we might like. She was the best. Then she brought us to Elise to check out. She brought us to Elise because she was also the best. These are just the facts.
The thing you need to know now is that two of my best girls are named Nicole and Elise. They're sisters who I've known since we were in preschool!! I found it just absolutely hilarious that we wound up with a Nicole and Elise to walk us through the checkout process.
One of our amazing guests gifted us a 20% off your entire purchase coupon. This blew Elise away. Lots of things, that day, blew Elise away. She had this adorable gasp that we heard again and again as we went through the check out process.
The first thing that happened was the order purchase of the items they didn't have in the store. Nicole had compiled the list and printed a sheet with all the bar-codes listed on it. Elise appreciated this, but still gasped at the sight of it. She scanned all of them in and we used the first merchandise credit card on that order. Then I brought up the 20% off coupon (I was under the incorrect assumption that the order from the warehouse and the checkout of items in the store were two different purchases, meaning we could only use the coupon on one of them). Elise gasped her adorable gasp and Nicole excitedly informed her that it's a new coupon BBB is offering. They quickly decided that it would apply to everything we ordered/bought that day. Poor Elise now had to re-scan all the items to do a return, apply the discount, and then scan all of them once more! There were many gasps.
Then we started in on the items we had in our three carts. The four of us now worked as an assembly team! Max removed items from the carts and handed them to me, I found the bar code on each item and presented them to Elise, Elise scanned them and handed them to Nicole, Nicole bagged all the items and put them back in the carts. We were very well oiled!
As we moved through our merchandise credit and our gift cards, Elise began to tell us she was really going to miss the time we spent together. We said our goodbyes as we hauled the carts over to the elevator. After we got it all into the back of the car, we remembered the car-elevator-hallway-apartment process through which all things must enter our home...
It only took us 5 trips. Not bad.
