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(Beware: Wedding gown overload up ahead!)
Very early on in our engagement, like many others before me, I started (compulsively) looking at pictures of dresses online. On a weekly coffee date with a friend, we decided to pop over to the bridal salon across the street. On a whim, I tried on my very first wedding gown. I was not expecting to like it, and to be honest, I didn’t love it on the hanger, but when I put it on, we both had chills! I knew the dress wasn’t exactly what I was looking for, but it is a wonderful dress! The gown was Maggie Sottero Ireland:
(source)
Now that I had tried on a dress, I knew that this was the style that I wanted.
Let’s be honest: shopping for guys pretty much bites the big one; it’s so not anywhere near as fun as shopping for girls. What are the options? An electronic gadget, a tie or cologne? Girls are easy, give ’em some lotion, makeup and jewelry and everyone’s happy. Guys, on the other hand, are not so easy (and we women are supposed to be the hard ones to please, ha!).
So it took Mr Trail Mix and me a long time to decide on gifts for the groomsmen. We debated some of the customary gifts, such as a flask accompanied by a bottle of alcohol or a monogrammed overnight bag, etc. but ultimately decided that for our groomsmen, a “thing” just wasn’t the right choice.
And so we decided to go for an experience, instead. Namely, a sporting experience. Mr Trail Mix, in lieu of a traditional gift, is purchasing tickets to a sports event for each of one his groomsmen to attend with him.
This gift is cool for multiple reasons:
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So, I already talked about the rain, but now I have one more piece of drama to share with you that occurred in the days before the wedding. After this, I promise lots of pretty pictures and happy stories, like this:
And this:
Before we knew it, it was Sunday morning and time to go home.
On the road again
It was back to the grind of 5:00 AM alarms and commutes across the sprawl of Los Angeles; back to homework, studying, finals, and not drinking all the fabulous wine we came home with. I wouldn’t exactly say I suffered from “post-wedding depression”… but man did reality hit hard after the honeymoon! Folks, if you can take an extra day or two readjusting your sleep clock before returning to real life, I highly recommend it! I did have a few amazing things to look forward to when I got back, though. Not only did I graduate law school just five short weeks (okay, five intensely long weeks) after we came back home from the honeymoon…
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A Polish wedding is not simply a one day affair. It is a full-out celebration consisting of three full days of binge eating, drinking, and dancing. The fun begins with the Polterabend: a Polish/German custom (side note history lesson: our part of Poland was under German/Prussian occupation for close to 300 years before WWI) where anyone from the community that wants to come and wish the soon-to-be-married couple well is invited to bring a collection of bottles and jars and smash the glass on the porch of the bride’s house. Traditionally, the bride and groom were supposed to clean the glass up themselves to prove that they would work together on the household chores. The people “testing” them could only be persuaded to stop throwing glass if the groom persuaded them with enough wodka.
***All pictures below are personal shots taken by Mr. P or me at my cousin’s Polterabend in Poland.
In the modern version of the Polterabend, some things have changed:
Do any of you have other things going on in your life besides planning a wedding? Really? I’m not alone? 
Within a period of about three months, Mr. Turtle and I are both graduating from college, leaving jobs and finding new ones, and moving clear across the country. Oh, and not to mention getting married! On Saturday, Mr. Turtle graduated from college with Bachelors degrees in English Literature and Classics with a Latin Emphasis. We had a wonderful day and I felt so proud of him!
In addition to these joyful life events, in the last few weeks, our family and friends have been experiencing an unbelievable amount of tragedy.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
I haven’t been around much lately, and rather than continually apologizing I’m just gonna lay it out on the line: I’m probably not going to be around much until the wedding is over. At 12 days out, I still have a million things to do and I’m stretched tooo thin. But! That doesn’t mean I can’t sneak a post in every now and again on my lunch hour!
One of our (many) pressing issues right now is our wedding music. We’ve booked our DJ and we’re finally meeting with him tonight to finalize everything… that means we had to make some serious decisions. Choosing our playlists was a pretty daunting task; we both have pretty strong opinions about music and those opinions are complete opposites. I like folksy indie music, while Mr. Doxie tends to like more traditional wedding music. Read: boring. In my opinion, anyway.
It was really bringing me down trying to incorporate all the songs he wanted, because I felt that they didn’t go with the feel of the event that I had spent so many months trying to establish. Finally, after a few arguments, he relinquished all music control to me and things went much smoother. I realize that makes me sound like an insensitive and controlling jerk, but for the record I did incorporate all the songs he really wanted.
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We’ve come a long way. From our completed mock-up to pre-dress jitters to an unholy stain-induced meltdown, we’ve seen it all.
And I have a confession - we actually finished the dress a week ago. However, I wanted to wait until Mother’s Day to try on the whole ensemble. Since Sewing-Mom wasn’t able to experience the whole mother-daughter dress-search bonding like you see on Say Yes to the Dress, I at least wanted her to be the first to lay eyes on our finished project.
It’s no easy matter to photograph a white girl in a white dress, it seems. But not impossible, thanks to my patient father who sat through my incoherent diva-demands. So with no further rambling, here is our $300, 5 week-long project. Our labor of love: my dress.
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Mr Pretzel and I booked our rehearsal dinner catering company with only a phone call conversation and without having taste their food. It might sound crazy, but that’s how we roll. Let’s rewind a bit to early on in the planning process. Like many couples we had the “financial” discussion with our parents. Regarding the rehearsal dinner which is customarily thrown by the groom’s parents, Mr Pretzel and I offered to host this part of the wedding. Our wedding is 2,000 miles from Mr Pretzel’s parents and we felt that it would be an unnecessary hassle to ask his parents to plan this event. Plus we are having a hometown reception just a few miles from his parents’ house, and we really need their assistance in pulling that party together. So, we tossed the traditional groom’s parents-hosted rehearsal dinner aside and took on the task ourselves.
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On Thursday morning I woke up and couldn’t believe it. The wedding day, 11 months of planning, everything I had been anxiously awaiting was finally here! I hopped in the shower and we hit the breakfast buffet like every other morning that week. When we got back to the room, Mr. N was off to hit the pool and he asked me what my perfect wedding morning would be. I didn’t want to get all sweaty and my plan was to let my hair air-dry which can take hours with my mop, so I decided to have a quiet morning by myself on the balcony lost in a book. It was exactly what I needed to keep myself from getting antsy. About an hour after Mr. N left the room, I got this in a text on my phone…
(personal photo)
Seriously, how sweet is he?
There were over 130 entries into the Project Wedding DIY Wedding Challenge 2010 this year, and a panel of judges including Livy from A Field Journal, Cathleya from Weddingbee (that’s me, wheeee!), Chelsea from {frolic!}, Jesi Haack, and Mary of Pretty Good narrowed down the finalists to an amazing top 10.
Head on over to Project Wedding’s blog and get inspired by the top 10 finalists—and be sure to vote on your favorite to help determine the winner of this year’s contest!
Yes, it’s true. I’ve joined the throngs of brides-to-be who are in crunch time (no pun intended) to get in shape for the wedding. At the beginning of the year I decided to change my eating habits and see what kind of an impact it would make. I wasn’t really looking for a physical change, more just interested in feeling better. And I must say, just changing my food choices has had a pretty significant impact. Am I crazy, has anyone else experienced this?
Okay, so I don’t exactly look like her. But here are the small things I’ve done so far food wise… then we’ll explore… ugh… exercise. Can you see how thrilled I am about the physical activity part?
I’ve cut out or tried to limit the following:
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When guests found their way to their tables, they would have found their menus at each place setting. I think there’s something kind of exciting about opening up a restaurant menu and perusing the delicious choices. We wanted the dinner reception to feel like a real treat for the guests, so menus were a must.
To create the menus, I got myself some wedding elves (i.e. my sister and her husband). Then, I purchased metallic sage 5 x 5 cardstock from Paper Presentation. My sister Goccoed our infamous artichoke image on the cardstock, and then inkjet printed menu text that I had created in Word.
My brother in law rounded the corners and meticulously spray glued each menu onto another, slightly larger (5.75 x 5.75) piece of cardstock, in Caramel Metallic.
Final product:
Personal photo
(MMM yum yum yum)
Just kidding, I was totally not that clueless! There were a couple things that Mr. Hermit Crab definitely wanted to have a say in, and food was the big one. Since we keep kosher, we were allowed to bring in an outside caterer. After some extensive research, and more countless hours on the phone, we narrowed it down to three. We met with all three caterers, and decided to set up a tasting. Unfortunately, one of the caterers was terribly unresponsive.
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