Tag Archives: bridal

Shower Style.

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I am starting to get very excited about our upcoming wedding shower. Because we are two women the guest list is a little large but we’re certainly not complaining about getting to see some of our very favorite ladies for a special day.

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Fun, right?

So I’ve got the dress. I’m keeping that a secret for now but I had my eye on it for many, many months when I finally caved and bought it. I’ve got some fun, super-high wedge heels to pair with it from BC Footwear. I wanted nude shoes with a splash of color and I certainly found them. Now all I need is the perfect necklace, which I’m working on.

My sister is flying down that Friday morning for a special lunch and shopping date so we can finally find her a gorgeous dress for the wedding. I know what I have in mind but we’ll certainly take plenty of photos the day of. Now all I need is to be patient until June 1st!

The Lengths I’ll go to.

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My wedding vision has always been something a little blurry and a little bizarre, and it has always included long, flowing hair. Hair that I cannot grow myself. Hair that would need to be professionally created. Enter Jill Hammelman, my new personal hero.

After a million questions and a few freak-out emails (Should I really be doing this four months before my wedding? Will I ruin them? Are you sure I won’t ruin them?) I couldn’t contain my excitement any longer and we went for it. The results are amazing. I am now incredibly vain and obsessed with my hair. However, I am about to leave for a spin class and this will be my first work-out with the hair. I don’t know how Jill does it. I cannot get all of this hair into a proper ponytail. Oh well, looking insane is a small price to pay for the best thing that has ever happened to me. (Second only to Sam … )

See the transformation below.

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Before. I’m simply giddy with excitement. My hair is long-ish but thin and damaged. This is no way to live.

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Back of my hair before. Gross.

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Now dyed and trimmed … check out those dark brows.

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So this is love.

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I mean. I can’t.

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Jill and her awesome hair. The lady who made this all possible.

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This post would not be complete without a selfie.

I have to stop writing now and go stare at myself in the mirror. Bye.

Wedding Bands.

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One of the trillion ways that Sam and I are different involves our decision-making skills. When it comes to the easy stuff, she cannot volunteer an opinion.

What do you want for dinner? I don’t know, what do you want for dinner?

What do you wanna watch? I don’t know, what do you wanna watch?

But she can test drive one car and drive it off the lot that same day. She found a wedding band online from Bario Neal, she liked it, we went to Philadelphia and she bought it. Done. I, on the other hand, am just as indecisive about what to choose from a dinner menu as I am about the big decisions, like my wedding band. I’ve been putting it off since I cannot make up my mind. Finally, Sam made an appointment with the people who made my engagement ring and dragged me in there. We sat down and I stared at bands full of diamonds and thought, None of these are me.

So she suggested I go try stuff on at local jewelry stores to see what I liked. First stop was Tiffany & Co., and I know that place is a zoo, that tourists are literally revolving in and out, but of the three associates who helped me (Some of the rings are on different floors) the man was polite, and the two women were rather rude. The first had absolutely no patience for me. I tried on three rings, all from the same case, and she treated me like I was wasting her time. The other was the same. She couldn’t be bothered to let me see the rings. So we left. When you’re an indecisive girl looking for a wedding ring, being treated poorly does not help you make up your mind!

So we walked over to DeBeers, where Jeff greeted us, offered us drinks and took us upstairs to try on some bands. He didn’t mind that I was asking questions and was incredibly patient and helpful. While the woman at Tiffany seemed aggravated when I asked her to repeat the name of a ring, Jeff wrote down all of the information on his card and didn’t rush us out. What a pleasant experience.

Wedding planning is a lot of work and a lot of money, so even if I dare to walk into the world-famous Fifth Avenue Tiffany & Co., I don’t think that it’s asking too much for their employees to be courteous and help me out. It’s not like wedding bands are a $10 investment.

I digress. I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing. I tried on two thin bands that I quite liked, one channel set, one pavé, and I am sure I would be happy with either. I also love the unique rings at The Clay Pot … It might all come down to flipping a coin.

Old Hollywood Glam, I am not.

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There are some women who might look stunning in this gown, many women actually, but I am not one of them. What I loved about this gown was its old Hollywood glamour. I imagined this on a tall waif of a gal with a blonde bob. This dress hugged me in all the wrong places and my mother demanded I remove it.

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I did. But not before striking this ridiculous pose.

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Sadly this was never a contender, but it is still a lovely and elegant dress with an art deco flair, a gem for the right lady. This was also definitely too small for me, and pretty beat up. I know I’m lucky that I can be squeezed into a lot of these samples, but I had to ask: What happens when bigger women come in to try on dresses, as a lot of sample gowns just fit me. Ever the Bridal Consultant, she found a delicate way to tell me that they rip apart a lot of these dresses shoving women into them. Or they don’t get all the way into them. Finding a dress that I couldn’t even squeeze into certainly wouldn’t make me feel like a beautiful bride or make me want to spend thousands of dollars. Oh well.

Recap:

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It can’t all be glamorous right? So this post is just a check-in of where we’re at about 6 months from the wedding.

SIX MONTHS!?!

This week we:

  •  Went over our wedding contract with our amazing wedding coordinator and culinary mastermind, Stephanie and Lisa at Cedar Lakes.
  • Sent our selected ceremony readings to our Celebrant Elizabeth. (Sam also sent out her questionnaire, on time. I got an extension. Bad student!)
  • Sent our invitation suite wording to Breck at Sesame Letter Press, who in turn sent us  a .pdf of our suite. We will be finalizing with him this week.
  • Planned a Monday morning phone call with Cheryl, our planner.
  • Booked a hair and make up trial for next weekend (So excited. So nervous)
  • Got on top of bach planning (Post on those to come. Let me just say they’re both going to be totally out of control)
  • Made appointments to finish gift registries
  • Sent out accommodation info to family
  • Checked in with John Ragusa, who found us one of our wedding’s most important elements; the band!
  • Discussed the fact that we need to purchase and finalize wedding favors (Does that count as something we got done? I just like crossing things off lists … )

According to our Wedding Workbook (printed and included in the Wedding Binder courtesy of Sam) we are pretty on top of everything. I think the next 2-3 months are going to be really busy for us with wedding stuff, but amazing busy like tasting cake and choosing my wedding band. Sam chose her wedding band in December. She saw a photo on the web, we drove to Philly and she put down a deposit that day. I’m not quite so easy and I don’t know what I want! We do need to finish reserving important rentals like golf carts, and I’m not going to worry about the bullet that reads: Buy stockings and any special lingerie your dress requires (My goal for my wedding was NO SPANX! I love dressing up and I definitely have an assortment of uncomfortable under garments, but for my wedding I’m going as glam as I can as comfortably as I can)

So we’re on track! All is well. Oh, Sam also bought amazing wedding shoes. I’ll post a picture of those soon, if I can get her permission. We also went to see our band last week when they played a show at Prohibition. They are not only super gracious and very cool, but they seriously rock. I cannot even wait to go nuts to some Honky Tonk Woman!!

I Repeat Myself.

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A lot.

Ya know how I like to talk about how much fun it is to try on absolutely ridiculous couture wedding gowns? So I went on a very last-minute secret trip to try on wedding dresses with my friend Kate a few months ago. I tried on all sorts of crazy stuff, and the two of us got carried away. I mean we got swept up, big time, and it wasn’t until later, when we were having cocktails and talking it out that we both admitted that this dress, which we referred to as the “Swan Lake,” was totally inappropriate for me, for a few reasons. I am essentially getting married in the woods and I am not a bride who can stand still for very long. I will be eating, drinking, dancing, sitting down, bending over (I drop stuff) and throwing my arms all over the place … but just look at this dress.

The lovely lady working with me that afternoon brought this over to me, “fresh off the runway,” she told us, and she wasn’t lying because they had to stuff me into this thing! It had been altered to fit a girl who was probably my height but about 40 pounds thinner. The boob cups were a touch lopsided and my own breasts were somewhere else altogether but it did not even matter because I put this dress on twice and then stood in front of the mirror in the middle of the shop so that Kate and I could just stare at it. Honestly, I’ve never looked better. In a few years when I’m fat I am going to reach into the depths of my mind for the image of my body in this gown.

This dress is Mark Zunino and yes, the front is gorgeous:

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Both photos are property of Mark Zunino, featured on Bridal Guide.

… But just look at the back. Stunning.

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As you can see this is not me. If you’re going for a jaw-dropping gown and you think a woman’s back is as sexy as I do, then go put this thing on and you too will feel like you’re about to win a gold medal in figure skating at the next winter Olympics.

Lunch Date

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Part of the fun of planning our wedding is that everyone we’re working with has been incredible. Yesterday we met up with Lisa and Stephanie Karvellas of Cedar Lakes Estate, along with Meg Low, our designer, from That Time Events. We had a long, delicious lunch at El Toro Blanco in the West Village, where we discussed everything from our crazy wedding menu to boutonnière ideas to lighting design. When we mentioned our plans for our honeymoon, we finished off lunch with stories of our craziest travel nightmares.

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Clockwise from left: Stephanie, Meg, Sam, Laura, Lisa

Every time we see them we get even more excited for our big crazy wedding weekend. Just over seven months away now … Agh!

Photo Practice

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Some couples take engagement photos. We are no such couple. There was simply no possible way for us to take engagement photos without looking completely ridiculous.

So when Grazia got in touch with us to do a photo shoot (Yes, we’re just going to ride this totally weird wave) we thought, “Why not!?”

Turns out we really needed the practice. Our wedding photos should certainly be interesting because we had no idea what we were doing. Where to look? Smile? Walk? Stand still?

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We haven’t seen the final product, but if nothing else I bet they’ll be funny. We got to work with amazing women who were really fun to spend an afternoon with, and they made us feel as comfortable as we possibly could in such an odd situation.

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More to come on this we hope …