Our Christmas Shopping Traditions

I remember the fall of 2002 very well. At the time, my husband and I were preparing for November 16, 2002, our wedding day. Because I was fresh out of graduate school and looking for a job and we were scrimping to save for our wedding, we were pretty broke. Since our wedding was right before the holidays, we were also a little nervous about trimming our Christmas tree, both with gifts and decorations.

One of our wedding gifts was a $100 gift card to Neiman Marcus, a well known department store known for selling beautiful things at high prices. Anyone who has ever shopped at Neiman's knows that $100 doesn't get most shoppers very far. We went to the Tyson's Galleria Neiman Marcuslocation that fall. It was my first time in the store and we werewandering around, our eyes wide and mouths agape at the prices. We were trying to decide on something to spend my sister's gift money on and coming up decidedly short.