Clothes, Stress and Travel

I have been searching long and hard to find myself a bridal shower dress.  My theme for the shower is garden party, and since I love pink, my bridesmaids are doing it all in pink.  So naturally when looking for dresses, I looked at pink and white dresses.  I even bought one from Altar'd State.

I found this store while on a work trip in Austin, Texas.  Don't worry, I went after work in the pouring rain, but so worth it.  The store had so many cute clothes that I bought too many a few summery pieces.  Since I love their dresses so much, I thought why not buy one for the bridal shower.  There were so many to chose from but I decided on a light pink dress with navy straps and a navy belt.  I got in the mail and it is a no go.  Way too big.  So I quickly ordered another dress and I hope this one works, otherwise it's to the closet or shops around here.

So fingers crossed this is the dress that will work, fit and get here on time.

Image via Altar'd State

Along with prepping for all things wedding, I have work travel every other week it seems.  Ok not every other week, but every two weeks.  Now don't get me wrong, I love traveling, seeing new places, and experiencing new things, but it is hard to travel and plan a wedding.  

Que, stress.  I have been really good about keeping the stress levels down while planning a wedding, but lately it is all adding up.  Oh please get me through the next three months 87 days, so I can happily marry my best friend, have the most perfect beautiful wedding and start working on having babies!

Anyone else having the stress creep up just a bit much?

Centerpieces

I have looked at more wedding centerpieces than I could even handle.  I wanted something clean, vintagey (is that even a word?) and elegant.  This is what I had in mind...

Since I am using calla lilies in my wedding bouquets, it was only natural to order extras for my centerpieces.  I loved these simple centerpieces.  So when we went in for our food tasting (more on that later), I decided to ask what they had available for free and what I could purchase.  Our DOC (day of coordinator) gave me some options.  Below are two samples they came up with.

So since these are free, we are going to have parts of both.  We love the aspen wood pieces and they match our vintage, elegant, sparkle theme.  The vase pillars will be taller than in the first picture.  They are 12 or 14 inches I believe.  They will have glass beads in the bottom with a single calla lily.  Then we will have tea lights in some sort of holders placed all around the aspen block (need to look through their closet full of items like this).  And that blue table cloth you see, yes we are using that.  We will have a white table cloth with a navy overlay (we wanted silver, but those are way more expensive), so we opted for silver napkins (better priced at $1 per napkin).

Next up is the table numbers.  I have obsessed over these.  But that is for another post which will incorporate a DIY project. Stay tuned.

Tan Lines and Wedding Dresses

When I went wedding dress shopping, I never thought about how the style I wanted would affect my "tanning" sessions at the beach this year.  I am very good about wearing sunscreen, but sometimes I get a little too much sun while walking Walter, gardening or even sitting outside for lunch.

I chose a strapless dress which means I need to be very careful about tan lines this summer.  I want some color as I don't want to be a pasty bride, but it comes at a cost.  I have a few bandeau bikinis and triangle tops.  The bandeau bikinis are good for the chest area, but with the wide strap in the back, will it show the tan lines on the back?  It is a better option to wear the triangle tops and untie them to avoid the lines?  Should I not worry as much and use self tanner a week before?

So many options.  I read that self tanner can rub off on a dress and that seems to be a no-go for me.  Unless someone, anyone has suggestions on products that won't rub off through sweat and normal wear and tear.

I have been coveting two bikinis from Victoria Secret.  Both of them are the new sort of bandeau types that have the under wire in them.  I really want these two bikinis.

Image via Victoria Secret

I am in love with both bikinis, but the pink one is so pretty.  I love the beading and think it will be the perfect amount of sexy on our honeymoon.  But I haven't pulled the trigger in buying it.

What swimwear will you be wearing this summer to help with the tan lines and prepping for your wedding.

Flower Girl

This past Friday we went to dinner at our friends house...more specifically our flower girl's parents house.  Raymond and Misty have been good friends of my family for years, so when we got engaged I knew right away I wanted to ask their daughter to be our Flower Girl.  She is ever so cute.  She loves princesses and dressing up.  She even told me that she dreamed of princesses, more specifically Ariel last night.

Meet our Flower Girl, Brooklynn.

Miss Brooklynn will be 3 years old in a few short days.  Isn't she just the cutest?

Before meeting up with Ray and Misty, I had picked a few dresses for Miss B.  When we went to the airport to welcome her grandpa (my dad's best friend) back from Afghanistan, I asked her what dress was her favorite.  She chose the one below and my favorite.  I can't wait to see her in it.  They are ordering it this weekend and she will be ever so cute in it with her matching halo wrapped with white flowers, baby's breath and navy and silver ribbon.

The dress is by Seahorse, style #46248.  We are getting the colors as shown above (navy and marcasite).  Miss B loves the Nevada Wolf Pack and since our colors are close to the Pack colors, Miss B was really excited to wear this dress.

What dress will your Flower Girl wear?

Bridal Faire and Cake Dive

I went to the local bridal fair a few weeks back.  This was supposed to be the biggest and best bridal show in the area.  Spoiler alert, it wasn't.  Don't get me wrong, it was fun and I booked my photo booth from it, but they always stated the most giveaways, freebies, cake, champagne, etc.  Well the cocktails you had to buy which the My Wedding Library bridal fair in February (where I only went as a friend of a bride) had free cocktails, cake, waffles and appetizers.  My Wedding Library's wedding fair was so much better and free.  This one you had to pay to get in.  The only giveaways they had were at some booths you could enter to win and the cake dive. 

I had never heard of the cake dive, but could guess what it entailed.  Plus the prize, free diamond earrings.  Basically, there was a dance off for the brides since there was so many of us.  We danced to "Poker Face" by Lady Gaga.  They picked four of us out of the 25 or 30 brides, and I was one of them and so was my co-worker, Jae.  They brought out a four tiered wedding cake with roses on it.  Gorgeous cake.  They told us to take our shoes and socks off and stand on the plastic.  On the count of three, they told us to tear the cake apart looking for a small plastic bag with the diamonds in it.  So much fun.  I didn't find the diamonds, but I did try like crazy.  My co-worker found them and I was super happy for her.  Now they are not very big diamonds at all, but hey they are free.

Here are two lovely photos of us diving in the cake.

 

Don't mind the butt shots.  As you can see we went at it and tore the cake apart in seconds.  The girl in the green shirt in the first photo was the winner.  It was so much fun.  Clean-up was another story.  We had so much cake on our feet and arms that I smelt of cake the entire day.  My puppy, Walter loved it though.

At least I have these memories from my wedding planning!

Bridesmaid Dresses

I have looked at tons of bridesmaid dresses being a bridesmaid myself and for my wedding.  I wanted something the girls could wear again.  I know, everyone says that, but after being a bridesmaid, I can say that I have two dresses that sit in my closet that I will never wear again.  Ok, maybe if someone has a bridesmaid dress/groomsmen suit party, I can, but probably will never wear them again.  Those dresses cost me around $200 to $300 for the dress, alterations and accessories (as in a sash, flower, etc.).

I searched all the common websites (david's bridal, pinterest, etsy, local bridal shops, weddingtonway, Nordstrom's, watters.com ).  On pinterest I found a picture of bridesmaids wearing taupe lacy dresses.  Hello, we have a winner.  Alas, they were from a different season and not available.  So I looked at other dresses that were similar on Nordstrom's website, and I found none to my liking.  At least I had an idea of what I wanted.  I found the dress I loved on watters.com.  It comes in several cuts, but these two were my favorites.

Watters Dress Camillia

Watters Dress Iris

I used their locations search and found they had the dresses at the shop I bought my wedding dress, Swoon.  I met up with the bridesmaids on a Saturday afternoon and had them try on the different cuts to see what their favorites were and if these were dresses they even liked.  They loved the dresses and said they could and would wear them again since they are not the "classic" bridesmaid dresses.  Well at least I hope they are being honest about that.  After all four girls tried on different cuts, I asked them to pick out their favorites.  I told them if there was one, two or four different cuts they liked, we could work with that.  After asking each of them, they decided they all wanted to wear the Iris dress.  They will be navy lining with navy lace.  I am so excited to see them in the dress!  They tried it on in white which was not a good color for the dress, so hopefully navy is better.  Plus they are adding bra cups in them and they will be their size.  I will spare them the classic photos of them in each of the dresses.

Super excited and I wish it was June when I get my dress and they get theirs too! 

Save The Date

We took engagement photos in March after picking our photographer.  Now I was a bit apprehensive as we booked her for our wedding without even doing engagement photos.  Luckily, we loved her photos she took of us.

We got our photos back 2 1/2 weeks later and were onto save the dates.  We went through our engagement photos and picked out our favorites.  There were way more then we could ever fit onto a save the date which is a good thing I guess.  After many go arounds we picked out six photos and put them into the template to see which we liked the best.  That was the easy part, compared to trying to pick out a font the fiance liked and change things around a bit.  Why fix it when it isn't broken.  We picked out everything then set out to dinner to mull things over and when we got back make sure it was just right.  Nope, fiance didn't like it as much, so after much toying, we missed out on the 25% off deadline.  Boo for me, not so much for him since he wasn't paying for them.  We went back to the original fonts (just like it should have been) and made it only one sided which was a better option.

So here are some of our engagement photos...

And last but not least, our Save The Dates...