A Month as a Mrs.

A month has passed since I walked down that aisle and lived out my fairytale dream wedding of perfect bliss and beauty. An entire month. The past month is not what I’ll reflect on though. I’d like to share what I typed up while on our honeymoon in Europe, after having only been married a week. May it hold some valuable insight to expand your mind…

—

As I sit looking out the windows at the hills of the Italian countryside, I ponder the past week…my first week as a wife. No longer am I a bride or a fiancée. It seemed so brief, those 500 days. This week has felt like a transient state between worlds. Not just because I traveled to another country, but because I became another person. I am a person with a new last name (according to Facebook), two rings on my left hand, and a new perspective. This has brought about several revelations.

(The hills of the Italian countryside)

This whole blog and my whole life revolved around my wedding for a year and a half. The meticulous planning, the stress, the color schemes, the dreaming….it was all for that wedding. The one big day where you are the center of the universe and everything is beautiful and perfect. You get the pretty dress, the eyes on you, the thousands of photographs, the dancing and smiling. But at the end of it all, what is it for?

To quote My Best Friend’s Wedding (yet again) “you commit to this wedding….and then you forget you chose it”. It is easy to lose sight of the purpose behind it all when caught up in the planning. After months of organization and meetings, you can find yourself wishing and hoping and thinking of this wedding (another MBFW reference.  darn it). But the wedding is only a moment in the grand scheme of life; it is only the start of a chapter. So before you start planning, think about what it is you really want. Your wedding will be beautiful, but besides the gifts, memories, and photographs what will you be left with? A marriage.

That is the point of a wedding, after all. I had to remind myself that several times over the course of my planning. I reveled in the details and the trivial things that would bore or annoy others. I found great joy in every step and every process. But I often had to pause and remember that what I was going to take away from it all was a marriage. Weddings in the modern age have turned into lavish productions and hefty investments with grandiose elements. But everyone gets the exact same prize at the end. The people whose wedding was in a palace and cost a million dollars are just as married as the people who had a simple and humble wedding in their mother’s backyard. The end goal is the same.

When you get engaged, you spend a day thinking about the love you have for the other person and how you get to spend the rest of your lives together, and how wonderful that is. And suddenly a week later the other person is driving you crazy because he/she does not have an opinion on the cake flavors or the color of the cloth napkins. It is worth it to take a moment and realize that the only reason you are making these choices is to throw a celebration to honor your commitment and love for this person.

I can say all of this because I am guilty of it. I am guilty of obsessing about my perfect wedding (which, don’t get me wrong, WAS flawless in every way) and forgetting it’s true meaning. But at the end of it all, I’m glad I chose it. I’m glad I chose this marriage. I’m glad that I can confidently say I am a happy wife and it was all worth it. Am I sad that the wedding is over? Yes. I’m very sad. I might need therapy after this honeymoon is over and the reality of my wedding-less life sets in. But I am so glad it happened and that it was a dream come true. And I am even happier that my reward for it all is the man laying beside me reading a book.

So before you beg your boyfriend to get you that pretty diamond ring…ask yourself: “Do I want a marriage or just a wedding?” Because honey, you will definitely get a marriage. And if you lose sight of that, it will probably be an unhappy one. A wedding is one day. A marriage is a lifetime. Make sure yours is happy ever after.

Thank you for following me in my journey to marriage!  Future wedding-related blogs are in the works!
❤

29 More Days

I can honestly say it’s starting to really hit me that we are now (less than) a month away.  I got a day behind on the blog post because of work, but it’s here now!  And good thing, because there’s only going to be one more blog post before the wedding!!

I’m going to calmly take in the fact that I’m getting married in 29 days.  That’s only 29 more days of being Ms. Stafford.  Wow.  I should probably start practicing Mrs. Inganamort now.  That one is going to take a while to get used to.

So for my second-to-last blog post topic, I’m going to focus on one of my all-time favorite subjects…

MUSIC!

Steve and I are both musicians and music therapists, so we know a bit about this topic.  But what you might not know is that music can make or break a wedding experience!  SCIENCE: Your brain creates permanent associations to different music.  For example, you may hear a song and recall a specific moment, person, smell, or time associated with that song.  Since a wedding is a major life event, the brain develops many of these musical associations throughout the experience.  This explains why people have wedding flashbacks when they hear their first dance song.  Needless to say, Steve and I understand how important it is to have just the right musical selections to make our big day memorable in a good way!

If you think about the demographic of people who get married in the United States, many people these days get married in their 20s and 30s.  The music that people in their 20s and 30s listen to today ranges from the late 1980s to modern Top 40 music, with a few random things thrown in there.  The average age of weddings guests (typically relatives of the bride and groom) is over the age of 40, which sets them in an entirely different era of music.  So how can you make everyone happy?  Short answer….you CAN’T.  In real life you can never make everyone happy.  But you CAN take this into consideration when planning your musical wedding selections.

This guy might be at your wedding!!!

So what do you do?

You start with the music you enjoy.  Are you having music at your ceremony?  Maybe choose some of your favorite love themes or classical pieces.  Maybe you choose a song that reminds you of your first date or the first time you danced together.  You can make it extra personal like I did by having your groom compose the wedding march.  🙂  Or you can keep it traditional and go with some standard songs from Mendelsshon and Pachelbel.

Seriously though, maybe don’t use Pachelbel.

Then maybe your cocktail hour kicks it up a notch!  Bring in the guitarist, the string quartet, the live band, the two best friend singers who agreed to do you a favor.  You probably won’t even be there because you’ll be off taking millions of photographs, so pick something that can be background noise but still hold people’s interest.  Typically old romantic songs work well in the cocktail hour setting.  In our case, that is our opportunity to musically set the tone for the rest of the evening and capture the entire theme in a musical set.

The reception is the grand musical finale.  For this experience most people nowadays hire a DJ to make all of their musical dreams come true.  I sat our DJ down and explained the demographic of our wedding guests, which range from age 0-90 and vary in musical taste and interest in dancing.  Through a combination of specific musical selections on our end based on our preferences and our DJ’s professional wealth of knowledge, we created a program for the evening that incorporate different genres from different areas, and music that will appeal to all ages.

I know that if we requested that he put on some hip hop songs that we are used to dancing to in da club for a straight hour at the reception, we would have a lot of people sitting at their tables falling asleep or leaving early.  On the flip side, if we are jamming to the oldies all night long, our friends are going to think our wedding is the worst thing ever.  It’s up to the incredible minds of you and your DJ to make sure everyone has a great time and wants to dance the night away.  That’s when those musical memories will form and people will never forget your wedding.  After all, it is a party!!!!  Make it a good time!

(From my favorite movie of all time)

❤

61 More Days

I have spent all day letting the fact that our wedding is 2 months from today slowly sink into my brain.  I have accepted it as truth and am learning to cope with it.  As I sit here writing, I am faced with the reality that there are so many potential wedding-related topics to blog about and yet so little time to cover them all.  Sixty-one days is merely a passing instant in the grand scheme of life, and one cannot cover all of the remaining, uncovered aspects of wedding planning in a passing instant.

So today I shall speak about bridal showers.

Ahhh, yes.  The bridal showers.  Full of fun, smiles, and a bunch of girls.  It’s such a sweet and magical tradition.  And it is one which is all too fresh in my mind, being I have just experienced my second bridal shower (yes, I had two…and no, that’s not “normal”).

Going to pick up a copy of this later.

So how does this whole bridal shower thing come to be?  Who throws it?  Do you have to have one?  Does it have to be all girly?

Here are the answers (if you think I know what I’m talking about at all) respectively.  Firstly, The bridal shower is basically an opportunity for women in your life to gather together and support you, make you feel special, and prepare you for your life as a wife. Secondly, this is typically arranged by the Maid of Honor, but today’s brides are showered by their mothers, grandmothers, aunts, co-workers, friends…anyone really!  Thirdly, no it is absolutely not a requirement at all.  And not only that, but there are oodles of substitutes for these showers!  It is an undefined and unpredictable event, although it most often involves food and gifts.  The sky is truly the limit with different themes like a barbecue, a movie-themed event, a picnic, a tea party, a pool party….it’s endless.  And the craziest part is that it doesn’t have to just be for the women!  There is a huge trend right now towards the “co-ed shower” concept.  Now the men can be just as involved and also feel “showered” too!  It totally depends on your taste (and your fiance’s desire to be “showered”).  🙂

Her: “I got a bowl thing!”
Him: “I got a box.”

Personally, I had two very girly, sparkly, magic-filled showers that were only slightly on the more conventional and traditional side.  The first was an enchanted Cinderella-themed lunch shower with family in Florida, arranged by my great aunt.  The second was a lavender and gold champagne brunch with “champagne” being the operative word when it came to design.  This was arranged by my sister/MOH and hosted at my mother’s home.  Both were all women and were as girly as they come.  But that’s because that’s my personality.  I was completely unaware of the details of both showers.  My only stipulation was that of all the possible fun games in the world, we would not play the “toilet paper wedding dress” thing.  That is not my personality.  But I won’t even step up on that soapbox.

 I will never, ever in my life be ok with this.

The point is, it’s about honoring you and who you are in honor of this special time in your life.  If you are on the planning end of someone else’s shower, keep that in mind!  But if you’re dealing with a bride who could do without a bridal shower, you should respect that too!  There is nothing that says you have to have a bridal shower if you are engaged.  Some people skip that whole thing and just have a bachelorette party…or none of that at all!  Because let’s be honest, it’s a lot of events.  The engagement party, the bridal shower, the bachelor/bachelorette parties, the rehearsal dinner…it’s a lot of planning and money and time.  It’s not for everyone, so don’t sweat it!

However, if you are about to attend your own bridal shower, here are some tips for you:
1. Make sure your nails look nice, because even though you have been engaged for some time by this point, people will still want to see your ring.
2. Buy your thank you cards early (or have your hostess do this) and have guests address envelopes at the party!  It sure does save you a big step.  Send those out within two weeks after the event!!
3. Don’t be afraid to stand out!  Wear white, wear glitter, be over dressed even if it’s casual, wear a crown.  It’s your time and your day and no one can tell you otherwise.  You deserve to shine!
4. Give a hostess gift.  Lord knows that whoever put this together for you put more time, effort, money, and sanity into it than they ever thought they would.  Getting them a little something in return is always a nice gesture.
5. If you have control at all, make sure that only people who are invited to the wedding are invited to the shower.  It would be pretty awkward otherwise.

Go forth and celebrate YOU!

❤

91 More Days

Are we seriously at the 3 month mark??!!  What the heck is happening.  It’s getting insane.  Let’s just take a deep breath and talk about invitations.

Most brides hear the word “invitations” and probably start exhibit flu-like symptoms.  (Stomach pains, sweaty palms, shaking, etc.)  Or some brides might think “this is going to be super easy!”  And maybe it is.  But if you’re like me and you’re having an enormous wedding, invitations probably make you tremble just a tiny bit.

I began working on invitations from the first week I got engaged.  I started, of course, with the guest list.  (See previous blog post for tips on creating your guest list).  That took me several months just to create and solidify before sending out save-the dates (which is basically training for invitation time).  And at that point you are so proud of yourself for having everyone’s name and address and feeling so prepared.  And then you think about all that has to happen to get those invitations out.

This is you freaking out when you look at your guest list of over 250 people that you only had about 60% control over.

Here are the phases of what I like to refer to as “Invitation Madness“:
1. You realize you must create an invitation.  You must take the entire theme of your wedding and create a physical, paper representation of that…..in bulk.  We will get more into that in a bit.
2. You must receive and then assemble these beautiful masterpieces.  If you’re like me, one invitation = 5 different pieces of paper, one piece of tape, two envelopes, and a whole lot of time.
3. You must ADDRESS these freaking envelopes stacked all over your house.  Keeping in mind the rules of etiquette when addressing invitations, the amount of time you’re willing to dedicate to learning calligraphy (unless you want to hire a calligrapher), how many kids Uncle Joe currently has, if your cousin’s actual name is Robert instead of Bob or if he was born Bob, and if your friends from college are still living in the same place they were a year ago.  It’s A LOT OF RESEARCH.
4. You have to go spend a paycheck on stamps…and then spend time putting all of these stamps on the envelopes.  And yes, you should put a stamp on the RSVP envelope!
5. You place over a hundred envelopes in the mailbox and say a little prayer that they all reach their destinations…and that the people you mailed these to will actually respond, for the love of God.

So let’s revisit that whole “creating an invitation” thing.  There are a fews ways you can go about this.  The first is you can go 1980s and go pick an invitation out of a giant book of invitations that are often classic and floral.  You could also make your own invitations.  With Pinterest and all of the resources that are out there these days, it’s quite possible for you to make totally legit invites of your own.  This is probably a good option for those having smaller weddings, unless you have oodles of free time.  The final option is creating an invitation through a website and ordering them online.  Minted.com and WeddingPaperDivas.com are becoming increasingly popular for the typical bride.  They have an array of options for any style and color scheme and are not outrageously unaffordable.

My stationery vendor was a site called beautifulweddingannouncements.com, and they were fantastic!  I found them by attending a bridal expo and ended up winning 200 free thank you cards from them!  (Note: attend at least one bridal expo.  See previous blog posts.)  Not only was I able to design my invitations from scratch so that they would be unlike anyone else’s, but I had an entire team of design professionals helping me until they were perfect.  I ended up designing an invitation that represented my wedding color scheme, complemented my save-the-dates, and adhered to my level of formality for the wedding.  They were also ridiculously affordable.  BONUS.  And it only took me three months to get them exactly how I wanted them!  (I have high standards.)

My final tip is to give yourself a decent timeline for completing the task that is “Invitation Madness”.  Whether you have 20 invitations or 200 invitations, it’s going to take you longer than you think.  Enlisting the help of fiances, family, and your bridesmaids always makes it more enjoyable and speeds it up!  Follow up this entire process with a glass of wine.

❤

115 More Days

Wow, I have been the biggest slacker on this.  I am a whole week past our “4 month mark” and am just now getting around to releasing a blog post.  Needless to say, life has been crazy.  We moved into a rental house so everything is new and there has just been a lot going on.  So to stick with the “moving into a house” idea, what better way to celebrate this special time than to talk about…

REGISTRIES!

I know you’re excited!  🙂

Ahhhh the registry.  One of the most selfish and yet necessary (according to your guests) parts of wedding planning; the virtual list of stuff that we want you to buy us because we are fairly certain we need it.  The wedding registry at its core has remained consistent for several decades (depending on what culture you’re discussing).  The method of creating and dispersing registry information has changed drastically over the past several years!  Your modern-day bride may never even visit a store to set up her registry.  With the magic of technology and the internet, she can create her registry entirely online and send links to family and friends or add it to shower invitations, etc.  Although, the little scanny guns are still pretty exciting tools in creating a registry in stores.

Anyway, many stores make it very easy to create a registry from the comfort of your couch.  Some of the most popular stores for registering are Target, Williams and Sonoma, Kohls, Pottery Barn, Macy’s, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Best Buy.  We selected three of these: Target, Bed Bath and Beyond, and Best Buy.  Why?  Because…
1. There is a wide range of prices.  Your best friend who just got out of college and is dirt poor can shop for you at the same store that your rich grandmother can.  And that has value!
2. They are common throughout the US.  Since we have family spread all across the country, we wanted to choose places that exist across several states.
3. There is enough of a variety of items between the three stores that all departments of home living are covered.

Side note: Registering at Best Buy involved downloading an app (if you choose to visit the store) and scanning items with your phone.  It was insane.

Now purchasing from the registry is easy as ever.  Guests can follow links from our wedding website and not only see all of the items we added but also what has already been purchased, all from their iPhones!  No need to print out the list at the registry counters.  It’s very convenient.

We also added a Honeyfund account to our registry options!  This is a website dedicated to collecting money that will be put towards the honeymoon.  You can set it up to where guests can give you any amount of money or they can specify what part of your honeymoon they would like to fund.  (i.e. food, airfare, hotel, etc.)  Often out of town guests don’t want to bother with purchase large gifts and would rather give money, but want to know what their money is being used for.  Honeyfund is one of the best ways to let them know!

So apart from the Honeyfund, what do you ask for?  What do you put on these mysterious registries?  Anything under the freaking sun???

Not really.

It is true, you can ask for whatever you want.  Whether you get it or not is a different story.  You want to keep in mind the variety of wedding guests you’ll have in attendance and be sure to register for things in different price categories.  It is best to have several items in the $15 and under category all the way up to over $150 category.  Work through different sections of your home and consider things that you can see using long-term, maybe even the house you decide to buy someday, in each section.  It could be as small as a set of measuring spoons to as large as an entertainment center!  There are countless lists and tips on websites like Pinterest to ensure that you don’t overlook any possibility when making registry decisions.  Although, everyone is different, and the registry of a couple who has been living together for years will look very different from that of the couple who just moved out of their parents’ house to get a place together for the first time.  So take all recommendations with a grain of salt.  Do what makes sense to you.

This couple obviously has a lot to register for.  But look how happy they are!

NOTE: This is not typically a “bride only” task.  This takes the works of both partners collaborating and making these decisions together.  As long as he gets his exotic knife set on there he will probably enjoy the process.  But you can also use his opinion on what color bath towels, what brand of toaster oven, and what antique looking lamp will fit best in your new life together.

Whether we want to accept it or not, a life together kind of automatically includes twice as much crap and things that you might not need.  So choose wisely.  And go use the scanny guns!  They are fun.

❤

152 More Days

I am a total slacker and missed the 5-more-months-to-go blog post yesterday,  Fail.  But it’s only one day late so not too bad!  Ok today’s post is titled:

“So You Want Your Dog to Be in Your Wedding?”

Yes, our dog is part of our wedding party.  It was my fiance’s idea.  We don’t have children, so instead we have a 70 lb. moose of a dog.  I love him with all my heart, but he is kind of crazy.  However, I have grown to enjoy entertaining the thought of his happy little face when he walks down the aisle.  Of course I’ll have the rear view on the actual day, but I know it will be adorable.

How feasible is it, though, to have your dog in your wedding?  Is it a possibility for everyone everywhere?  Can every dog handle the responsibility?  🙂

The short answer is no.  But if the stars align, your venue is very accommodating, and your dog is not a complete psychopath, then it just might be in the realm of possibilities for you!  When we decided to have Django (see image below) in the wedding, we had to understand a few different things about the reality of that situation.
1. We could not be the ones to take care of him all day and manage him at the ceremony.
2. Whoever was deemed in charge of him that day might miss out on other things going on.
3. He would have to practice and be trained enough to walk down the aisle instead of running and dragging someone behind him and knocking over a table like we are in the movie Beethoven or something.

Meet the ring bearer.  🙂

Our venue just so happens to be incredibly accommodating when it comes to pooches.  They said as long as he is kept on a leash, cleaned up after, and monitored at all times then it’s fine.  To make sure we don’t stress out the entire day, we asked a friend who wouldn’t mind missing part of the cocktail party to be in charge of Django for the day.  This includes making sure he gets in pictures, keeps him entertained when he isn’t supposed to be somewhere, and taking him to the pet hotel after the ceremony.  He will be working with him prior to the wedding to make sure he can handle him on a leash.  He has his own detailed schedule for the day and makes our lives a whole lot easier!

Although Django is our ring bearer, he will not be carrying our rings.  We love him to death but we don’t trust him that much.  He will, however, be sporting the classiest dog collar you have ever seen.

Isn’t this the classiest boxer in the world??

Tips for having your dog present the day of:
1. Have many poop bags.  If your dog is like our dog, he poops more than you think he is capable of whenever he is out in public.  You do not want that problem.
2. Have your designated dog escort be well equipped with treats.  We are filling his pockets full of cheerios that will be constantly dispensed while he is one the premises.  If you start training a couple months before the wedding, then the dog will know a bit more of what’s going on when the big day comes.
3. Have the pet hotel booked well in advance so that your dog escort only needs to drop him off.
4. Make sure your dog escort is not someone who is required to be in photographs after the ceremony!  You wouldn’t want him missing out on anything important.
5. Make sure to get at least one really good photograph of the two of you with the pooch on the big day!  You will treasure it forever.

❤

183 More Days

I absolutely can’t believe that I started this blog with 500 days to go in the countdown and now we are already in the 100’s!  (Six months out, to be exact)  I think it’s only fitting that to celebrate, we have a nice little chat about the

guest list.

(Insert spooky music and screams of horror)

You may not think about the process that goes into your receiving an invitation to a wedding.  There is a lot that happens before those invitations are even ordered.  Let me review a bit of background info for you on my experience before we get into this: Steve’s Italian/Irish family + my Italian/Cuban family = A LOT OF PEOPLE .  If you think we are having a huge, crazy Italian wedding…you would be correct.  Back in the day (like when my grandparents got married) the whole town showed up to the wedding.  They had 1,000 people there and everyone brought food.  I imagine it was the most insane/awesome thing ever.  But that’s what was expected and no one was ruled out or turned away.  Today if I had 1,000 people at my wedding I would have to take out a 2 million dollar loan…so thankfully our family isn’t THAT big.

This is probably around the time that I imagine things were insane when it came to wedding guests.

But like, no joke.  If we were financially capable of having 400 people at our wedding there would undoubtedly be 400.  And ethnic backgrounds aside, Steve has divorced parents which currently entails three separate families and I have divorced parents which entails two separate families.  And then there are family friends, long-time friends, work buddies, old classmates, those people you always see at parties who have known you since you were three but you can never remember their names, people you just met yesterday but feel really close to……..there are just a lot of people that come into your life at any given point!  The biggest question is, how do you make everyone (including yourself) happy when it comes to who gets an invitation?

The answer: first, remind yourself of whose wedding it is.  (hint: it’s YOURS)  Then take into account the people who mean the most to you.

*Keep in mind, though: This process is political, emotional, and personal.*

Sure, you want to make everyone happy and you definitely want as many people as financially possible to witness this awesome event that you’ve slaved over…but ultimately you have got to have the final say (somehow, if you try really hard).

Here are the scary things that will make you doubt yourself (and life) when going through this process:
1. The person who you definitely weren’t going to invite who says “I better get an invitation!”
2. The dreaded realization that your guest list will double if you elect for people to bring a “+1”
3. The great great great aunt on the other side of the world whom you haven’t seen since you learned how to ride a bike but who would just die if she didn’t at least get an invitation.
4. The death threats from all family members that make it seem like the guest list will determine if you will be disowned or not.
5. The “I really want my friend to come whom you’ve never met.”

These are the things that make life challenging.

Now if you’re having a small wedding (especially a small destination wedding), then you may not know of all of these troubles, or rather you may have entirely different troubles.  Because your guest list space is so limited, it’s easy to tell yourself that you are going to invite the 20 most important people in the world to you and no one else.  You, of course, still have the struggle of narrowing it down.  On the other hand, if you’re having a large wedding you really have to keep budget and sanity in mind.

Here are the steps Steve and I took to make it through this process:
1. When we first got engaged we sat down and wrote down every person that we could possibly think of that we would want to come to the wedding.  We didn’t consult anything or anyone except our Facebook “friends list”.  We knew we wanted to have 150 people there and our list ended up at a little over 200.
2. We slowly but surely began talking and processing with each one of our important relatives (parents/grandparents) and reviewed who we came up with.  Then decisions were made on who could be removed or who we forgot about.  We utilized the “guest list” tool in Wedding Wire and found it to be an excellent way to combine my 11 different spreadsheets into one organized system.
3. Then came the super intimidating Italian part of the whole thing: the different heads of the family basically each handed us a list of names and address.  Now in our family, this is really not something to be questioned.  When our parents hand us a lot of money and then a list of family that have to be invited, you just do it.  This is most likely not common practice in all families.
4. We went over it with each other a few hundred more times to narrow it down and look at priorities.  We had to keep in mind that each person over 150 people meant extra money spent.  But eventually the list stopped growing and stopped changing and we settled on a set list.
5. We took a deep breath.  (This was a critical step)

By the end, we had a good combination of everyone we had to invite and everyone we wanted to invite (obviously most people fell into both of those categories).  Now collecting correct addresses for over 200 people…..that’s an entirely different deal for an entirely different time.  And don’t even get me started on how to seat all of these people in one giant room together. [see future blog post on seating charts]

Before you hyperventilate, just remember this: at the end of your wedding day, the reality is that you aren’t even going to be able to process who was there or who wasn’t, if there was an empty chair somewhere, or if someone unexpected showed up.  You’re just going to know that you were surrounded by the people you care about most, which will make you feel all happy and loved.  THAT’s what counts.

 ❤

214 More Days

After talking so much about men’s attire last post, I just felt the strongest need to talk about women’s attire!  So that’s what’s about to go down.

It’s been a long time comin’, but I can thankfully say that I (or we, really) am done bridesmaid dress shopping.  The dresses are here, they are beautiful, they are accurate, and everything is right in the world.  Praise baby Jesus.

However, it was not a smooth and happy road to finding these dresses.  When faced with the idea of selecting bridesmaid dresses, here’s the reality: you must find a style of dress that six different girls with very different personalities, body types, and tastes will willingly put on their bodies and take pictures in for hours in front of hundreds of people.  Now yes, yes you might say “who cares what they think because it’s your wedding and they should wear whatever you tell them to”.  And to that I say “I CARE”!  These are my friends and sisters, they are not slaves who I hired to follow me around for a day.  If I have to ask them to give up an entire day and dedicate it to me (and not to mention drop some cash throughout this whole process), I at least want them to feel good about themselves while doing it.  Other brides might have other opinions on that.  (See below)

Just take that in for a moment.  Those women probably held that against that bride for years after.

Concerning my journey to “saying yes to the bridesmaid dress”, I took a very unconventional and challenging path to the perfect gowns.  I could have easily taken a selection from my color palette, slapped it on a solid floor-length piece of chiffon, and called it good.  And yes, it would have still been perfectly lovely.  But did I want “just perfectly lovely”?  No.  I wanted stunning….glamorous…..elegant….WOW.  Basically, I never make things easy for myself.

I had a very specific idea in mind for the dresses.  A vision, if you will.  (No surprise there.)  But I also had the body types and personalities of the bridesmaids as well as the style, season, and color palette of the wedding in mind.  I used my ideas as a basis of searching and allowed the bridesmaids to give input and do searching of their own.  I wanted it to be a team effort.  The problem with the style I wanted was that it doesn’t exist in “bridesmaid dress stores”.  And for the price point we had, it didn’t exist in any store.  Despite the efforts of my sister (the MOH) and myself, not a store we looked at carried anything even remotely close.  We had to turn to the internet.

I spent hours…..SO MANY HOURS…..scouring the web for the perfect dress.  I tried every website under the sun, it seemed, until that one fateful day.  I was chatting with my MOH and it seemed that all hope was lost.  How could I please the very strong personalities of six different girls?  How could I find a single style that would make all of them look stunning?  How could I do that all within a tight price point?!?!

And then it happened.

Shortly after a chat with my sister, I visited dresswe.com.  Yes, it sounds kind of fishy, and it is based out of China, but what isn’t these days, right?  Believe it or not, I found the perfect gown through that site.
Reasons why this was a good move:
1. The dresses are custom-made and could even be made to fit each girl’s specific body.  This leaves less possibility for needing alterations.
2. The production time was remarkably short and they were good about communicating during the process.
3. Their prices were lower than any other site I had found for the styles they carried!  And for ordering so many dresses, they even gave me a discount and a free gift.
Now I knew that I couldn’t physically touch it, I didn’t know what the top layer of fabric was made of, and I didn’t know what it would look like in the color I wanted it.  But miraculously all of the girls loved it (really, a true miracle) and were willing to pay for it without trying it on first!  They each got sized and sent me their measurements, and I harassed the dressmakers through the entire process to make sure everything was perfect, but they came out beautifully and ahead of schedule on my timeline!

As you might have guessed, I cannot show any pictures of the dresses.  However, as per usual, I can show some pictures that inspired us on our hunt.

Note: NONE of those are “the dress”.  I promise.

And now, my tips for successfully finding the bridesmaid dress:
1. If you can buy your dresses in a shop, DO IT.  If you can get at least your MOH, if not a few of your girls to go with you, DO IT.  Do you have one girl with a stronger opinion than the rest?  Maybe try shopping with just her at first so that you can set everything straight.  Always keep in mind that you are the bride and YOU have the ultimate say in the matter, and no one should ruin that for you.  Of course, online shopping does work on occasion, too.  😉
2. Stick to the set budget.  Chances are, your girls are not going to willingly want to drop $300 on a dress that they could potentially not wear again.  Keep it reasonable and stick to it no matter what.  (Think of the movie Bridesmaids!)
3. Consider if YOU would want to wear it.  This was key in my selection process.  If I looked at it and thought “wow, I wish this was in my closet”, then there was a better chance that my girls would think the same thing.
4. If you choose to be so kind and open, then take into consideration the body types of your bridesmaids.  There are so many styles that flatter many body types.  A modern trend is to pick a single color or pattern and allow each girl to choose the style that best fits their bodies in that color/pattern.  Some styles that flatter most body types are long a-line dresses, shorter empire waist dresses, and long flowing sheath dresses.
5. Coordinate with your venue, the style of your wedding, the time of day, the time of year, and your men’s attire when choosing the dresses.  It also helps to imagine what they would look like standing next to you in your dress.  The whole picture has to flow.

Then once it’s all done, and you have six happy girls with six pretty dresses, be sure to sit down and have a glass of wine.  🙂

❤

244 More Days

Let’s talk about men’s attire.

Men’s attire may seem like a no-brainer when it comes to wedding planning. You may think there are only so many options and that you just have to pick one option and be done with it. On the contrary, selecting attire for the groom and groomsmen can take just as much time and detailed selection as the bride’s gown!

When initially considering our vendor for men’s attire, I knew we had to pick something accessible to the groomsmen on the east coast. It was immediately obvious that our best option was the well-known and prevalent Men’s Wearhouse. Not only are they everywhere, but they are also very accommodating to wedding parties that are scattered around the country. Here are the reasons why Men’s Wearhouse has proven to be beneficial:

1. They allow you to register your wedding party with a group number that can be used at any location to connect the groomsmen to the account.
2. They have a very user-friendly app that allows us to track our group with our group number to see who has been fitted and who has not. You can also email all of the men through the app. Pretty nifty!
3. They are very attentive and allowed Steve to try on styles in which he was interested and see styles in person for his groomsmen. Being able to see and feel the fabrics and colors makes it much easier to make choices than just seeing it in a catalog.
4. Their website features a “build-a-tux” feature where you can assemble the exact pieces you want and get an idea of what the ensemble will look like.  It’s super fun and addicting.

And with a whole catalog of options, where do you even begin to narrow it down? Well with the formality level of your wedding of course! Are you have a casual wedding on the beach with bare feet and oodles of organza?  Or a black tie soiree of diamonds and satin?  Other major factors to consider include your season, event venue, bridesmaid attire, and color scheme.  Summer and spring weddings might find the men in cream or gray while fall and winter weddings may inspire black, chocolate, or even navy tuxes.  Some causal weddings may be full of men with suspenders instead of jackets and sneakers instead of dress shoes.  Some creative weddings may feature men with superman t-shirts in place of button-down shirts or broach pins instead of floral boutonnieres.  It just depends on what “suits” your style.  (See what I did there?)

But it’s not just about the pants and jacket!  You have ties, socks, vests, cut of the coat, shoes, cufflinks, lapel shapes, coattails, shirt collars, buttons, and pocket squares!  Did you know that if you ask for a black vest, there are 20 black vests to choose from….and they are all different?!  It can be overwhelming, especially for a groom who may have been mostly out of the planning game until this stage.  I definitely sat back and let Steve make a lot of the choices, but the staff and I also gave him some style suggestions along the way.

With all of these choices, there are so many different combinations of color, pattern, and texture that can create the perfect look for your wedding.  Although we can’t give away much of what our men will be wearing, I will say that they will be dressed to impress with a clean and classic James Bond look.  Their style will complement the ladies to perfection and complete the elegant feel and theme of the wedding.  Steve will definitely stand out in a special tux ensemble that he hand-picked!  Unfortunately he won’t get to see the finished product until a few days before the big day!

So, to hold you over in the meantime, here are some of my favorite inspirational looks for men’s attire.  🙂

 

❤

257 More Days

Welcome to the Engagement Anniversary special edition blog post!

As of today, we have been engaged for 1 year.

If you were wondering….that’s
52 weeks, or
365 days, or
8,760 hours, or
525,600 minutes
(how can you measure, measure a yeeeear….in daylights, in sunsets, in midnights and cuuuups of coffee…)

Sorry, I had to have a musical break.

Anyways, it literally feels like just yesterday that we were standing atop that mountain in Sedona at sunset and Steve got on one knee.  Sigh.  (Refer to our wedding website for the full tale if you haven’t heard it before.)  So much has happened in the past year and I can’t believe there is still 8.5 months more before the wedding.

 

Note the ugly crying face and the plastic cups of wine. The indicators of a perfect engagement. 🙂 If you want to witness how it went down you may view our engagement weekend video!

Some of you may think “We know you have done the things you have blogged about, but is that all you have accomplished in a year?!”.  The answer is OH MY GOD NO.  Since the very moment we got engaged I have devoted anywhere between 5 minutes to 10 hours per day planning this wedding.  I have spent many nights staying awake until well past midnight staring at checklists, candle votives, fabric swatches, and scrapbook paper with complete delight.  Call me obsessed if you will, but it has been the biggest and most joyous thrill to be able to devote a good chunk of my life to this.  [Stay tuned for future blog posts on my “wedding planner career” contemplations.]  Really though, some people dread certain aspects of wedding planning that I have not found the least bit tedious and have, in fact, thoroughly enjoyed.  Weird?

 Just to give you an idea, here are (a good chunk of) the things I have accomplished in the past year in no particular order.  I won’t list everything because no one wants to read that many things.

Created a wedding website, picked a wedding date, created a “hashtag”, selected wedding color scheme, titled wedding theme, selected the bridesmaids, selected the groomsmen, purchased wedding planning book, elected “something old”, got ring cleaner, became a member of theknot.com and weddingwire.com, started a blog, selected and booked mens attire, selected and purchased bridesmaid dresses, purchased my wedding gown, purchased my veil, acquired a tiara, selected and sent save-the-dates, selected and booked the venue, selected and booked the photographer, got engagement pictures taken, created and distributed bridesmaid guides, purchased Steve’s wedding gift, reserved videographers, selected first dance song, hosted bridesmaid slumber party,  selected and booked DJ, selected and solidified ceremony readers, selected readings for those readers, selected the flower girl and ring bearer, got “something blue”, got specialty paper for table numbers, selected and booked florist, attended a bridal expo, created a rough wedding day timeline, toured hotels, booked hotel room blocks, selected bridal shower dates, purchased my wedding shoes, selected my makeup artist, selected my hair dresser, committed to a general hair style, began a personal beauty regiment, began a personal fitness regiment, designed centerpieces, acquired wedding flutes, had three engagement parties, purchased garter set, committed to “card box concept”, created and purchased guest book, created signature cocktails, selected “ring bearer attendant”, selected and purchased ceremony music, selected officiant, booked cocktail hour band, purchased my bridal undergarments, committed to an invitation stationer, committed to wedding guest favors, selected rehearsal dinner, created ceremony program, created signage for entrance and reception, etc.

But I won’t bore you with the rest of it.  I’m feeling pretty good about things at this point.  Honestly if there is one thing I can say about the accomplishments thus far, it’s that spreading everything out has been key.  Why did I decide to have a 20-month engagement?  It’s because between working full-time, having an active social life, raising a puppy, traveling, cooking, and cleaning only so much can be accomplished in a limited amount of time.  Of course it’s different for everyone, but I have loved getting to be able to devote entire months to very specific aspects of the wedding, perfecting them thoroughly until I’m satisfied.

Where do you start?  I started by taking as many “timeline” lists that I could get my hands on from the internet, books, etc. and creating my own detailed timeline by month with special designations for things that had to be created or purchased. Not to mention most lists don’t include all of the details that I require in a wedding task list, so compiling my own was important. Excel has been my BFF for the past year.

I also immediately made all of my wedding Pinterest boards private and reorganized them into about 12 different boards. Going through each one meticulously also helped me to put together my timeline task list. But there will be more on my Type-A planning craze later.

For now, I’m thankful to get to spend the weekend in Sedona with my darling fiancé and celebrate all of the amazing wedding things to come!

 

❤