Thank Goodness

Well, the flooding is slowly receding here in Iowa City and Coralville, although it will still be a long time before the roads are all reopened and things get back to "normal". It seems that the hotel portion of the Marriott at least did NOT flood, although I am not sure about the conference center. For our purposes at least that doesn't matter. Obviously from the last post you can see that the parking structure flooded, but that is mostly concrete and should turn out just fine. They may have to do some cleanup on that glass-enclosed stairway, though!

We have actually been luckier with regard to weddings and flooding than several other people. Last Saturday I was at Hobby Lobby (a local craft store) and overheard a woman telling an employee that her daughter was getting married that afternoon. Their original location, the Iowa Memorial Union, had flooded and so they were moved to the Marriott, which then also closed in case of flooding. They were at Hobby Lobby trying to rent things for a ceremony that would now be held in their backyard. I also have two coworkers who were scheduled to have their receptions at the IMU (one in October and one in November) who just found out today that all events at the IMU scheduled through December are being cancelled. Now they are scrambling to find alternate locations. One had already ordered her invitations and now will have to either order new ones or have them create an insert indicating the location change. As much as I have been trying to be low-key and stress-free in my planning process I am happy that I am not having to deal with that, although I certainly feel bad for them.

About the worst I may have to deal with is that our bakery is flooded (Yummy's, second from the left):



They have a second location in Fairfield, IA which is still up and running. We hadn't done a tasting yet and now we probably won't be able to unless we want to drive down to Fairfield. I doubt we will--we've had Yummy's cake before and I had already looked at some of their photos of cake designs and found one I liked, so I'll probably be able to do the rest of that over the phone. If that's the worst that happens, that's not bad!