

I have very few bad habits. I don’t drink, I don’t smoke, I always wear my seat belt. But I do love television! Yup that is my confession. I love all sorts of shows, but I have a real weakness for reality shows. You name it, I have probably watched it (no really just try to stump me!
).
One of my regular shows, The Real Housewives of Orange County, spent the season following around Lauri, one of the housewives, as she prepared for her wedding.
OH. MY. GAWWWWWWWWWD!
My heart can’t handle any more of this pounding. I knew we were being adventurous with our $$$ to go to Bora Bora, but I’m in a total sticker shock … mostly because of my own fault. I’m in love with a resort by the name of Thalasso.


You guys are the best! Last week I threw out an SOS in hopes that some of you could help my dear best friend find a place to get married here in New York… with the added stipulation that she wants to get married by this summer. Y’all wrote your hearts out and — you helped! My lovely friend has secured a date at Pochron Studios for the end of May. Hurrah! Thank you guys so much!

It’s funny how my eyes naturally began drifting towards every woman’s left hand after I got engaged! I had never ever paid attention prior to that, but now I find myself unconsciously checking out every woman’s “bling” (as they say) on the bus, on the train, and - yes, I admit - during meetings at work
.
One of the first things I noticed was that the large majority of women wear their engagement ring on top of their wedding band. Growing up, I had always thought that after marriage, the e-ring goes on the right hand with only the wedding band on the left. While many people still do this, the large majority seem to wear both on their left. And I must say that I love that look!
So here’s the rub. My e-ring is a three-stone ring, one which I absolutely love. Mr. D has great taste! One of his childhood classmates happened to be in the jewelry business, so Mr. D got the ring custom designed! The set, however, doesn’t have a smooth edge, so it wouldn’t sit flushed next to a traditional wedding band. While the easy solution is to just wear my e-ring on the right after I get married, I’ve come to really like the left-hand look. It looks like I’m going to need to get a custom-made wedding band as well…if only I could come up with a design that I liked!

As Miss Jasmine has shown us, Indian culture is incredibly rich, colorful, and vibrant. Last summer, one of my best friends married his beautiful wife with a 4-day long celebration full of Indian traditions and lively dancing. I’ll share some details of the Gujurati garba-raas event, which took place the night before their ceremony and reception. It was amazing to watch and even more exhilarating to be a part of!
I’ll get back to posting my wedding pictures soon, but first I’m going to tell you about my flower girl baskets. Just like with deciding on ring pillows, I had an equally hard time picking out baskets and I waited until the last possible minute to come up with something. At least after making my DIY ring pillows it was easier to figure out what to do since I just made them in the same style.
I found some baskets on clearance at the craft store that looked similar to the grapevine wreaths used in the ring pillows. I already had left over fabric, reindeer moss and ribbon, and that’s pretty much all I needed. We took the fabric and lined the basket with it, holding it in place with some tacs and hot glue.
Before our trip to Hong Kong, I was told by many people to go check out the wedding mall.
What?! There’s a wedding mall?!Oh yes, in Hong Kong, there’s a whole mall dedicated to wedding stuff.
Why isn’t there one in the US? Beats me - there should be wedding malls everywhere!
Anyway, at the news of the the existence of this wedding mall, I felt obligated to go. After we finished touring for the day, I dragged Mr. Toucan and some others on to the subway to go here:
Read more…
A reminder that The Lovely Details Showcase is this Sunday, February 3rd from 11-3 at the Fort Mason Firehouse in San Francisco! I’ll be there demonstrating the Gocco, and there will be lots of great ideas, inspiration, and Bay Area vendors showcasing their talents. They’ve added several AWESOME vendors to the showcase list, so come get inspired! Admission is FREE! Check out their website for all the info at
http://lovelydetailsshowcase.com/

See you there!
When it comes to the wedding, I know I’m kind of a keener. I mean like any bride, I’ve had (and continue to have) moments where I am totally uninterested in wedding planning, but most of the time, I’m working on crossing things off our wedding checklist like a fiend. In fact after Christmas, we broke down everything we had to accomplish between now and the wedding into month by month checklists and I managed to finish up my January list a couple of weeks early.
So with a little extra time on my hands, I figured I would get a jump on some of the other smaller things that were going to be clogging up my February since, I figured, the more I get done now, the less I’m going to have to worry about dealing with right before the wedding. I mean even though I’m looking forward to it, the week or so before the wedding is going to be a bit chaotic and stressful, so why not work to reduce that as much as I can, right?
Unfortunately, of the half dozen vendors/sellers I contacted about wedding stuff in the last two weeks, I have successfully received replies from . . . no one. No calls. No e-mails. Nothing.
Mr. Dahlia and I planned our honeymoon without the help of a travel agent. I’m definitely DIY when it comes to travel, and this was no different. (I’ve used a travel agent once. It was fine. But I could have just as easily done it myself.)
Planning this trip was different from the other trips that I’ve planned for a number of reasons. First, while we were concerned about price, we were also concerned about service (especially for the 18+ hour flight to Bali!). We booked our flights through Singapore Airways, because we have both heard really good things about their service (and food!) Since the flights are so long, we looked at seat guru to help us pick our seats. Not that we were willing to spend any amount of money (I did keep an eye on prices for several months), but if you are traveling that long, it can be nice to have the better service. Tip: The airline may not tell you what model the plane is when you book, but by comparing the airline’s seat diagram with seat guru’s, you can get a pretty good idea.