new bridesmaid dress ideas

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.

T minus 1 year...

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!! :)

the officiant update

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.

how to convert a library into a chapel?

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..

updates

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. :)

we made it

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!

the blog world is really amazing

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.

crafty pictures!

Here are some photos of the button flowers I/we have made so far. I just worked on a bunch more this eve.



OK nevermind. I forgot uploading pics here is kind of a pain. So instead, here's a link to a bunch of photos - some from Old Town Hall, and a bunch of button and paper flowers.

a case for multicolor

I think I've found the solution to our attire dilemma: here. ..haha jk.

No, I'm liking more and more the multi-color idea. Marnie sent me this picture as an example, and while I think this looks so nice because she has a billion bridesmaids, I might be able to get away with something similar - either variations of one shade OR maybe a few different colors. The difficulty would be having lots of color but not looking all crazy like a circus or something.

I also found this picture inspiration board for a multicolor wedding and I like it!

Not like: the way blogger embeds photos in blogs. I just have to keep repeating this.

I don't want to go totally over-the-top girly with a pink wedding, but considering the sort of whimsical feel the buttons will likely lend to the day, in addition to the rather informal ceremony/reception hall, I think sticking with something formal like brown/cream/blue or brown/cream or brown/cream/pink would maybe not work as well. Plus honestly if we had a few different colors it would make sorting my buttons a heck of a lot easier.. ;)

Also, at the risk of sounding super cheesy, having shades of dark blue/light blue/pinks/oranges/yellows/greens COULD work together to create something reminiscent of a sunset which I would love. I at least want to make sure when we walk into the reception hall, we'll all remember that it's SPRING and be happy. Brown and blue just isn't screaming that for me.

And then there's This inspiration board/color palette.. I feel like Zach could get behind this one, and a theme along these lines would go well with our venue.



One of the hardest things is definitely keeping the venue in mind. It's perfect, don't get me wrong, but there are definitely things I would love to do if we were going to be outside in a tent, or someplace a little more open. Or if I had different Chairs...

..PS I just looked up the stationery company that made the pieces in that inspiration board - Hammerpress - love them!! they also do posters and other stuff. Must share this with Zach!

an argument for blue

OK I just went and searched out a bunch of examples of blue/brown dresses. What do you think of these?





I understand there is a general objection to strapless dresses - that's fine, I'm probably going to just pick the fabric and color and you can choose your own dress shape. Just in terms of what kind of blue, what do you think? I really like first one the best, and the brown ones with the blue sash look pretty good right?

...oh dang I just saw another idea for "edible" centerpieces - coffee beans!! :-o picture this with anything but pink carnations (not my favorite).

the color problem

My mother and I went to Michaels this past weekend to look for supplies for making button bouquets and other fun decorations for the wedding, and I came across a whole aisle of ribbon and it made me very happy and at the same time completely insane. So many choices!! :) But so many choices. :(

I cannot seem to commit to a color scheme. Obviously, it's not that big of a deal at this point, we have plenty of time to decide. Still, I can't help but think about it all the time.

Zach and I both like the idea of brown. Maybe brown suits/tuxes, maybe not, but we like brown. Definitely it would match the venue, with all those dark beams. But one does want a Splash of color (thank you Nathan Lane), and it's that part that's getting me. We picked up a bunch of ribbon in yellows and oranges and I generally like that idea, but I don't feel committed to it. Also it's so easy to go too retro using brown, yellow and orange. Originally Zach suggested green, and I was resistant to it because his brother's wedding was a lot of green, and I don't want to copy them.

However. I do love green. And it's so darn springy. I also love pink. And the way bare pre-spring trees look against a dusky blue sky... Blue is not "my color" but it would look darn good on my bridesmaids - well, 3 out of 4 of them were made for blue, Marnie can pull it off but she'd probably prefer brown!

Hmm.. Scenario: Mary's wearing a tux anyway, so she'd be in brown with blue accents, then if we put Sarah next in blue, then Marnie in a brown dress with blue sash or something, then Kara in blue.. That could work!

Another thing though.. brown and blue.. so baby shower right?! I don't want it to look like a baby shower.

Anyway one awesome thing from the Michael's trip - we found a new idea for the button flowers. I picked up a small bag of antiquey looking buttons, and also in the packet were several sets of paper flowers with neato patterns. So my mom layered a single button, or a small button on top of a larger button, on top of one of the paper flowers - difficult to describe but they came out super cute! I'm trying to find the set on michaels.com, can't seem to find it. I think it could add a new dimension to the button bouquets.

Have I mentioned the latest idea for the favors? I can't keep up with it all sometimes.. But Sarah suggested giving out candy buttons for the favors, and I want to put them in these tins! My mother has volunteered to hand paint each one. Guess I'd better order them soon so she can start painting..!

DRESSES (zp not allowed)

I wasn't going to talk about dresses too much on here because Zach follows this thing too, but I'll ask him to not pay attention to dress talk. I can't imagine it'll be too difficult, not like i'm talking about HAM.

So. I umm loved every single dress I tried on. Annnd, wouldn't you know, my favorite dress was The Most expensive, at a whopping $3,190. Sooo that's awesome. Scouring those sale racks! Come onnn Running of the Brides!

Anyway I only know the exact style numbers of my top 2 - can't find the others, but it's ok. Here are the links to my favorites:

#1 - Jim Hjelm Style No. 8763 - you must click on "More Views" to get a better look at it. I wasn't really expecting to love all the lace but ummm I did. The train is just beautiful. The sash they put on me was not exactly like the one in the picture - they tied me in the back and the front had a bit of bling - yay sparkles!

#2 - Sarah Danielle Style No. 5523
- Style 5523 should be the one right in the middle, but if you don't see it, just type in 5523 in the style search box and it should come up. I love how the buttons go all the way down the back!

The others I tried on were all nice too. One of them was a champagne color, kind of pinkish, with a v-neck - it was alright, I thought it was too low-cut. The other one was strapless, similar shape to #2 above, but the back was really neat. Unfortunately I don't have the dress vocabularryyy to describe these two dresses very well... If I come across them or anything similar I will show you.

Ultimately, I was pleased to find out I Can get away with a mermaid/trumpet sort of style (see dress #2), but there are a number of different styles I feel good in sooo hopefully if I do Running of the Brides or just keep an eye on the used market, I will find something I like for le cheap.

Sooo the next Running of the Bride's event is in Rockville (near White Flint Metro), on April 3. Who's with me?? I'm thinking maybe for this first one, I won't want to camp out and get rill crazy with it, but maybe wait until 1 or 2pm when maybe the craze has died down a Little. I'd work a half day and then head up. If anyone wants to join me, let me knowww-oh-oh! There's another one in July at Friendship Heights, which is still far from most of you buut a shorter metro ride anyway. That one I'd consider going rill early and going crazay - especially if I don't have a dress by then, I might be a little more desperate!