Final Haircut & Fitting

This morning, I had my final haircut and color (highlights) before the wedding. I'm happy with how it turned out. I hadn't had my hair done since March sometime, so it was in dire need of a touch-up. I didn't mind the extra length in my hair, but I couldn't stand how it was all one length and so flat. This is me last week when we got our marriage license:

And this is me today (note: it's a little messy since I've been caught in the pouring rain about three separate times today!)...

Much better.

Let me just go off on a tangent here and talk about the weather for a minute. Today? Worst wedding weather EVER. My second (third?) cousin got married today. We weren't invited (we barely know each other), but I know my grandma was going.

I saw the weather forecast yesterday and saw that it was calling for rain, but when I woke up this morning, it didn't seem so bad. I thought perhaps they were going to luck out and it would be better than forecasted. Well, hell no. It started raining around noon and it literally did not stop until just a little while ago. I was at my mom's earlier, and for a while there, it was actually raining cats and dogs. Horrible, horrible wedding weather. Well, it is if you want pics outside, anyway.

My mom is convinced we are going to have perfect weather next weekend. I'm trying to prepare myself for anything. In fact, today, after my haircut, I ran to the Dollar Tree and bought 14 black umbrellas for Michael, me, and the wedding party in case it decides to pour on us. We thought us all having umbrellas would make for some cute pics if need be. I told my mom about the "Plan B" locations we selected with the photographers in case we can't take pictures outside. But my mom keeps insisting, no, we're going to have perfect weather.

And I hope we do. Last weekend? Ungodly hot and humid--absolutely miserable. This weekend? Pouring rain--depressing. So next weekend... it has to be nice, right? In theory. Even the laws of probability would seemingly be with us. But hey... you never know. I'm still prepared for anything.

After the Dollar Tree, I ran to my mom's and then we headed over to the seamstress for my final dress fitting. Just the hem and the bustle, actually. But my matron of honor also met us over there because we needed my mom and her to learn how to lace me into the dress. And thank goodness for the corset back. The seamstress was telling us horror stories about brides losing weight and gaining weight at the last minute and having to make changes even after the "final" fittings. I actually lost three pounds this week (without even trying!) so I'm grateful to have that flexibility with my dress. I'm hoping to drop a few more next week! :)

All is going well... only ONE WEEK to go!! At this time next week, we will be married.

Prepping and Pampering

Tonight, I had another dress fitting. She wanted to check the hem again before she made any permanent changes to the dress (i.e. cutting!) and she also wanted to figure out the bustle. The first time I went, she said the dress really needed to be pressed to see the true length of it. So today, she made a few adjustments for the hem, and then showed me a couple of potential bustles. We're going with a three-point underbustle; I think it'll look nice. I go back on June 7 for my final fitting. Whoa!

Also tonight, Michael and I sat down and went over a little bit of music for the reception. We got a start, I guess, but it feels like we didn't really make any progress. Our DJ has an online planning system, so we were able to electronically go through his music and select songs for "priority," "additional," and "do not play." We also decided that we don't want to play boring jazz or classical music during cocktail hour and dinner, but instead just want to play songs that we like that just might not be ideal for dancing. So we wrote down a few ideas for that, too. We have a meeting with the DJ on Friday and the big things we need to figure out are all of the "special selections"--bridal party intro, our intro, first dance, father/daughter, mother/son, cake cutting, bouquet toss, and garter toss. The only one we have figured out for all of that? The first dance.

We're screwed.

Tomorrow we meet with the priest performing the ceremony to go over the nitty gritty details with him. Fortunately, the ceremony is one thing that I think we actually do have figured out already. Readings and songs have been selected, thank god. Well, there is one thing outstanding... we still need to ask our readers. Whoops. We should probably get on that, given that the wedding is 4.5 weeks away.

The other thing I have accomplished this week is to set up pre-wedding pampering! I made an appointment to have all of my bridesmaids, my mom, Michael's mom, and two out-of-town close friends (one of my mom's, one of Michael's mom's) to meet at a nail salon and all have manicure/pedicures. We found a salon that could accommodate all of us at once, their prices are reasonable ($35 total for both mani and pedi!), and they said they would pretty much shut the place down for us. They're still obligated to take any walk-ins that may come, but they're not going to schedule any other appointments during the time period we'll be there. Since this is all starting at 11:00 a.m. the day before the wedding, and we'll likely be there until around 2:00 p.m., I'm going to have lunch brought in for everybody (my treat). I guess this is sort of my version of "bridesmaids luncheon." It should be really fun, I'm excited for it.

32 days! That's all for now.

Fitting #2

I had a dress fitting this afternoon.

Fitting #1 was pretty informal, it was just my mom and me at her house back in December when the dress came in. So I guess this was my first actual fitting. It was fun to have the dress on again. Also, it was the first time I had my veil to try on with my dress.

After searching and searching, I ended up finding shoes (finally). They just came yesterday from shoes.com:
I tried them on, and pretty much immediately decided they had to be it. I needed the shoes to do the fitting because as it turns out, as much as I tried to fight it, I'm going to need a slight hem. I wanted to avoid one altogether, but it's just not going to happen. The seamstress said the original hem is actually quite crooked. It's longer on the sides than it is in front, so she needs to take it up a little in some areas but not in others. She said the dress designers usually assume that the dress will need to be hemmed anyway so they aren't too careful with the hems. Lovely.

She put all the pins in place and I will go back in mid-May for a third fitting to make sure the hem turned out correctly, and also to figure out the bustle. She says it'll be easier to figure out the bustle once the hem is done. I was a little disappointed because I thought we would be doing that today... oh well. Mid-May will be here before I know it.

I'm crossing my fingers that all goes well with the alterations! I'm grateful that the hem and the bustle are all I need to have done.

Psssst... (whispers)... it's here!

Chrissy O's called me on Thursday to tell me they were shipping my dress out that day. They told me it was coming via USPS, and that it shouldn't take any more than 5 days. Since Chrissy's is only in NJ, I couldn't imagine it taking a full 5 days to arrive, so I had a sneaking suspicion yesterday before I left work that it was here. I asked my boss to leave work a few minutes early. The dress can't be left on the doorstep (it requires a signature), so I knew that if it was here, I would find a note on my door from USPS saying that I needed to go pick it up at the post office. Since the post office closes at 5:00 p.m., I knew I had to get home quickly if I was going to pick up the note/form and get over to the post office in time.

I pulled up to our house and didn't bother to pull into the garage, thinking that I'd be going back out again. I walked up to our door and pulled open the storm door. To my surprise (and disappointment), there wasn't a note on the door. Booooo... I assumed my dress didn't arrive after all. I walked over to the mailbox to get our mail, and when I pulled it open, I immediately became excited again. On top of our mail was the little note/slip/form informing me that my dress was waiting for me at the post office!

I ran inside, took Tessa out to pee, gave her food, and grabbed a bunch of stuff--camera, wedding day shoes, necklace, garment bag--and headed out the door to the post office. Once there, I signed for it and they handed it over.

I had a hard time believing it fit into this box. It seemed too small and not nearly heavy enough. But anyway, I took the box, threw it into my car, and drove immediately to my mom's.

Once there, we opened up the box to find the dress, neatly folded and wrapped in plastic, as well as the Maggie Sottero certificate of authenticity. The dress itself was actually inside out.

My mom and I laid a clean sheet down on her bedroom floor, unwrapped the dress, pulled it right-side out, and managed to get it on me.

I ordered a petite length dress because the sample was so long. At the time, the saleswoman suspected that I might not have to have a hem if I got the petite length. The entire four months I was waiting for my dress, I was paranoid it was going to come in and be too short. Well, the good news is--it's definitely not too short. The bad news? It's still too long. It's soooo close to being perfect, but it is dragging, which it's not supposed to do. I'm going to give a hoop skirt or a crinoline a try and see if it picks it up a little bit. If not, oh well, I'll just have to get the hem done. At least now they'll only have to chop off an inch or less... not FOUR inches like they would have had to do had I ordered the regular length.

Other than that little hiccup... I LOVE my dress! And there it is, nestled safely for storage in my mom's closet. It's a good thing I'm not storing it at my house. I'd be way too tempted to go unzip it all of the time, just to look at it!

And that's all she wrote, folks. No other photos allowed here, because Michael reads this blog. :)

Only 6.5 months to go!

Wedding Nightmares

Alright, so I'm a little less than 8 months out... and it's happened.

I've started having wedding nightmares.

I don't wake up in cold sweats with my heart pounding or anything, but they are still NOT fun! I wake up in a panic, thinking... OK, well, that dream was reminding me of something I need to make SURE to do so the nightmare doesn't become a reality.

During the week last week sometime, I had a dream that our photographer didn't take any posed wedding photos of us together, or with our bridal party, with our parents/families, nothing. We hired "photojournalistic" photographers, so yeah, we want to keep that stuff to a minimum, but not to have ANY posed photos was surely not a good thing. So I woke up and thought to myself, "OK, we have to make sure to fill out that 'shot list' the Krackes gave to us!"

Then, on Saturday night, I had a dream about the wedding where all SORTS of things went wrong. First, it was like 20 minutes before the wedding was to start, and Michael came in the room and said to me, "OK, where are our clothes?" (meaning the guys' tuxes). I said, "I don't know, you were responsible for that." Turned out that he had never even ORDERED tuxes, let alone picked them up. Around that same time, I realized that we didn't have any wedding flowers. I had forgotten to arrange for someone to go pick them up for us. So I'm looking at the clock, and the wedding starts in like 5 minutes, and in my dream, I'm thinking... Michael and the guys don't have tuxes, we don't have flowers. AND, I'm not dressed. I didn't even have my stinkin' dress on. What chaos that whole dream was.

So I woke up on Sunday morning, and I had learned the following things from my "nightmare":

1) Make sure to be involved with the tux ordering/pick-up process.
2) Make sure to figure out who will go pick up the flowers since we're not having them delivered.
3) Plan to get dressed at LEAST an hour before the ceremony is to begin. And as a side to that, why was I still at the house 5 minutes before the wedding? Where was the LIMO in this dream? So there's a fourth lesson...
4) Make sure the limo is booked and on time, too.

I'm still 7+ months out. It's scary to think where the dreams can go from here.

Ordered my dress!

I ended up ordering my dress on Friday. I can't post photos here because Michael reads this. :)

I ordered it from a bridal shop in New Jersey (yes, Jersey!) called Chrissy O's. I had heard great things about them from The Knot. It's a "real" shop, not just some internet business, but they started taking online/phone orders to expand their business. They're not the only ones--there are several shops out there that do it. I had also checked into RK Bridal, Lee Philips Bridal, Pearl's Place, Netbride, and I think a few others as well. I liked Chrissy's because they were listed as an authorized retailer on the designer website, and also did price matching. My lowest quote was from Lee Philips, so I took it to Chrissy's and they beat it by 6%. Pretty cool. Saved me a couple hundred dollars.

I tried on and found my dress here in town at a local bridal shop. Before I knew anything about the possibilities of mail ordering it, I was planning on buying it there. I'm glad I have The Knot to teach me things! The local bridal shop lied to me and told me the dresses only came in one length. Come to find out later (again from the ladies on The Knot) that the designer offers the gowns in a "petite" length that is three inches shorter than the standard.

We were in the Poconos over the weekend to visit family friends, and Chrissy O's was only an hour away, so on Friday morning, my mom, Marie (brother's girlfriend), and I drove there to get them to measure me in person and so I could try on my dress again. I didn't HAVE to do it, I would have ordered from Chrissy's anyway, but since we were so close it was nice to make the trip to order it in person and have the extra peace of mind. While there, I mentioned to the saleslady that I had heard the designer's dresses come in a petite length, and asked if she could look into it for me. She went and looked at the sizing chart and said it was three inches shorter. She offered to pin the hem three inches to see if it would be appropriate for me. Turns out that it is--so it will save me at least $100 on the alterations because I probably won't need a hem. I was so happy when I walked out of there!

It should be shipped to me in 4-6 months. I can't wait to get it in and see what MY dress looks like! It'll be so different when it's not dragging three inches on the floor. If anyone out there has anymore questions regarding ordering dresses online, please let me know, I'd be happy to share!

Dresses and paper samples

At the moment, wedding planning stuff is kind of slow. Last week, I researched prices on my dress, and also ordered some paper samples so I can decide what I want to use for our invitations (which I'm also doing myself!).

I'm about 98% sure I'm going to end up ordering my dress online. I can save more than $200 off of what I would pay for the dress at a local shop. And hopefully I'll be able to save on alterations by going through someone other than the bridal shop. The online vendor is actually a bricks-and-mortar bridal shop in NJ that has started taking online/phone orders and shipping the dresses out of state. They are listed as an authorized retailer on the designer website, so I feel pretty confident. Plus, numerous people on The Knot have had good experiences with them. So right now, I'm researching seamstresses. I want to find someone I like and can trust to measure me before I place the order for the dress. Plus I'd like them to give me some idea of what they think they'll charge for the hem and bustle. We'll see. Oh, and by ordering online, I can also save each of my bridesmaids about $55. Amazing!

On Wednesday, I ordered 10 different paper samples. I need cover weight cardstock to make my pocketfolds, and I'm looking for an aqua color, which can be difficult to match with online swatches. So we'll see what happens. I also need white/ivory colored text weight cardstock for the pocketfold inserts. I won't need invitations for quite some time, but I'd like to get a jumpstart on them so I can work on them a little bit at a time. Making 125 invitations and copies of all of the inserts will certainly get old after a while. So if I can work on them until I get sick of it, take a break, then work on them again... that will be helpful.

We are getting our engagement photos taken on August 13. I'm excited about them, but also a little nervous, too. It's kind of weird to think about prancing around in front of a camera with your fiance. But I suppose we'll manage. Then, once we have the files back for those, I'll get to work on designing our save-the-dates.