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ok Dang I just saw this lady's etsy shop on the blog A Practical Wedding - and I am charmed! The prices are no worse than David's Bridal, and each dress is custom made to your size, and for a lot of the dresses it looks like you can choose different colors/patterns from the ones in the pictures. My favorites for the maids are the Swing Dress (would pick a different color/pattern for the wedding, but I love the polka dots for myself!) and the one she made for someone else's bridesmaids.Eee! totally cute. If my bridesmaids aren't really into it, I don't mind - I might order a couple things for myself though! Those bathing suits! So awesome!
But speaking of bridesmaids dresses.. earlier today, before I found Miss Braches' etsy page, I was perusing David's Bridal's site for bridesmaid dress ideas. I probably should wait till the summer to start seriously thinking about these - especially since one of my bridesmaids is getting married in May! She'd probably prefer to worry about my wedding after hers is done. I just can't help myself.
Here are some color/style combos I think I might like (fyi the vest ideas are for Mary, not the groomsmen).
Scheme I:
Scheme II:
Scheme III:
(with this I was thinking a champagne sash or some other accent on the strapless one)Scheme IV:
Scheme V:
I tried to pick a variety of styles and colors just to get across the idea that I'm open to mixing and matching - as long as there's Something to tie them all together. Either fabric, style or color family. I don't want them all to look completely mismatched and indistinguishable from other wedding guests, but I don't mind if they're not all matching exactly. Can you tell I really like that rounded neckline..? :)
I'm not sure my maids will like the strapless ones, but I just loved the fabric of the two in Scheme V - you can get a closer look at it here. I think the original picture is in Canary Yellow - the others are just colorized and look funny.
Eee it's our negative-one-year anniversary today. AND I want to say Happy Anniversary to Elaine & Rob - we'll be sharing it with you after next year! so. exciting.
...I actually started this post this morning and now I have more EEEEing to do - I bought a dress!!! woop woop! But, if anyone still wants to go dress shopping, I still want to go to the Running of the Brides, and probably a few other outings. I got this dress at a Blowout price from the Priscilla of Boston sample sale. Original price of the dress was $4,200. I got it for $167.16, and we couldn't find any damage at all, it just needs a cleaning. And it's a really great dress, I just might take it to a seamstress to see if they can turn the neckline into a sweetheart, right now it's just straight across the top. But it fits me almost perfectly, so alterations would be cheap. Still! I'm going to keep shopping around. In the meantime, Jessika has offered to keep the dress at her place, since I was in a zipcar headed back to Bethesda, and also where would I have put it otherwise?
Anyway that's all the description I'm going to give here! Can't let Zach hear too much about it. :) :) I might send an email out to inquiring minds, once I get the pictures uploaded. I've been searching for images online, but nothing's coming up when I put in the style number.. guess it's probably a couple seasons old!
Tonight zp and I are going to Lebanese Taverna in Westover to celebrate our negative one year anniversary. :)
I just spent ummm a really long time making up a Spring inspiration board, I was hoping to share it here but I can't figure out how to save it as one file! dang. well I'm outta here! happy first day of spring!! :)
Zach and I had our meeting with the officiant last night. It went well! We liked her. I think we'd both prefer to have someone we both already know really well, who knows us - but since that's not possible, I really don't have super high standards for who I'd like to conduct our ceremony. Not speaking for Zach, my hopes for the meeting were that she would have a plan for the ceremony, and that she didn't annoy me, or rub me the wrong way. And she was great, she was very warm and easy to talk to and presented a very professional proposal for how she would personalize and conduct our ceremony. That's really all I can ask for.
I have this nagging feeling that we Should interview other people for the job, maybe find a better price or someone we connect with even more. However. I just really don't feel like it! She had a lot of good ideas for different things we can do (some ideas didn't really jive with us but we can veto anything we don't like), and what she does is pretty neat - we each fill out a questionnaire (separately, and then we share our answers with each other) about our relationship, ourselves, what we love about the other person, etc. etc., and she even offered to interview friends and family about us if we wanted her to. Then she takes what we've talked about and what we've said in our questionnaires, and writes up a draft. She sends it to us, we go through it and make whatever edits we want - re-write the whole thing, take out whole sections, amend wording here and there, whatever. And together we create a really personalized and meaningful ceremony! Which sounds awesome.
Included in her fee, she also conducts the rehearsal, provides cue cards to whatever musicians and coordinators or anyone else who might be helping out, and a few other little extras that seemed nice.
Sooo, we're going to think about it for a bit. We've got Plenty of time.
So, for lack of any other big decisions to make, I've been thinking about the decor for the upstairs. As you can see from the pictures (the picasa web album I linked to earlier), the upstairs doubles as a library and art gallery. I love this feature, don't get me wrong. I'm just thinking how we can add simple decorations to make it more romantic/formal.
I found these lanterns, thought they might be pretty lining the aisle? And then after the ceremony we could move them down to the tables for the reception?
Just got a sample menu with quotes from Helga's Catering... they sent me a menu with "red bliss potato baskets filled with sour cream and caviar" as one of the hors d'oeuvres. ICK. I can't imagine serving caviar at our wedding.. Also they ignored my request to show me all taxes, fees, delivery charges, etc. They sent me a document showing a buffet option and a sit-down dinner option, with a note saying "does not include taxes, delivery charges, blah blah blah," and then they're asking me to sign it and send it back with a 50% deposit to secure the date. Nothing about coming in for a tasting first, or any kind of explanation of extra fees and charges we're likely to incur. So far, I'm not impressed. I sent them an email back with more specific requests for menu items (ugh no caviar!!), what the extra fees might be, and also when we could schedule a tasting..
ooh more later re: ceremony decor, I'm off for some fish & chips! (picture of me in my wig coming soon)
.....
and here's the photo as promised. :) Happy St Paddy's Day! We do like to have a little fun around here..
I guess my frenzy has subsided a bit huh? Just haven't had as much to blab about I guess!
But I do have a couple updates. Tuesday, March 17 (St. Patrick's Day what, I'll be wearing my green wig to work), we have an appointment to meet with A.C. Warden, of Capital Ceremonies, to talk about her officiating our ceremony. I will for sure let you know how that goes! We're excited.
Also, Tuesday, April 14, we have a tasting appointment with The Purple Onion catering co. I really really like the lady who's been working with me, I hope we like their food. Just to be safe, I've been researching other caterers and I'll try to set up a couple other tastings so we can compare. But she's just been so helpful already, I think she'd be great to work with and I'd like to hire them as long as their food doesn't stink, and we don't find someone else who's way cheaper.
This weekend I'm going to try to make more button flowers. Hopefully after a while I'll have enough to form a full bouquet and I can actually see what it looks like in real life. Maybe I'll take it with me the next time I go dress shopping! Would probably freak out the sales people but.. I need to see what it looks like against a dress. I may decide it's just too goofy and I want real flowers. I think I'd still work in the button bouquets somewhere, maybe in the centerpieces, I dunno. I just don't know! We'll see. :)
Zach and I decided to make this past weekend a no-wedding-planning weekend and we succeeded! We are determined to not let our lives revolve around the wedding - though we still have a bit over a year to go so, we'll see how it turns out as March 2010 draws closer. For now at least, we are capable of putting it out of our minds (or at least out of the conversation) and actually still have stuff to talk about. So that's good. :)
But anyway back to the wedding! haha. Sarah is busy experimenting with different cake frostings/toppings/fillings/flavors, I can't wait to see more of her progress. She's sent me a few pictures, I don't think I'll share them though. I mean mayyybe eventually, but you guys have to have Some surprises that day, I have to keep some things to myself. I know she's going to make a very pretty and very delicious cake.
I'm still super excited to find a dress - but at the same time I don't want to find it too soon because I want to have a lot of fun dress shopping! haha. I keep looking at oncewed.com's listings, but at this point I think I've literally seen all the old posts, and they only add a few per day so it doesn't take me long to look at the list of 5 new postings and see that only 1 of them is even close to my price range and it's not perfect. There is one I really like, but it's up for $700 and I'd rather go to Running of the Brides first, see if I can score something in the $250 - $500 range. April 3 just can't come fast enough.
I have to say I keep going back to that Sarah Danielle dress and I just stare at it. I really really liked it. I'm trying not to get attached to it but I think I will try to find more dresses like that, keep an eye out on the used dress circuit for that one in particular.
I'm really just blabbing for the sake of blabbing at this point. More later when I have something interesting to share!
I can't believe how many blogs there are out there, for any kind of thing you can imagine. I just keep finding cooler and cooler blogs and I'm not sure it's such a great thing because I keep seeing so many cool ideas!! In the end I'll have to choose just a few to go with, it's going to be tough.
Anyway my favorite blog right now is OnceWed.com. They have pages and pages and pages of blog posts that are inspiring, but my favorite ones are the DIY posts. That's where I saw the tutorial on making those rolled-up-paper flowers, and today I found THIS. Amazing. I want.
