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Things I Learned From My Sister’s Wedding: #2
When making your honeymoon reservations, make sure you specify what your new, married name (if you choose to change your name) will be.
I think it’s quite common for the bride to really take control of the wedding planning, and this often includes the honeymoon. My sister was no exception. She made the honeymoon reservations in Cancun, used her account to pay for it, etc.
Well, as a result, when they arrived at the Dreams Cancun, they were greeted as Mr. and Mrs. H (her maiden name) instead of Mr. and Mrs. V (married name). Things were labeled in their suite as Mr. and Mrs. H, and when my new brother-in-law called down to the front desk he was referred to as Mr. H. Oops.
Luckily, my sister and her husband have a good sense of humor. Still, I would suggest making it quite clear to your honeymoon accommodations what your new name is going to be!
I have mixed feelings about wedding etiquette, to be honest with you. I firmly believe that only brides actually know anything about wediquette, which is why some wedding communities are full of brides complaining about their maid of honors that aren’t throwing amazing bridal showers or parents that aren’t coughing up $30,000 for a wedding. Not to mention the never ending discussions about whether or not it’s acceptable to include registry info in the invitation or, for that matter, whether it’s “two thousand and seven” or “two thousand seven” (because apparently the grammar books and Emily Post wildly disagree). All in all, I think these are things that only the bride thinks about.
That being said, I do know a lot of people who have gotten married, which potentially could mean they are etiquette experts, which potentially could mean they will kick me out of the family for not handwriting each and every outer envelope. Except, you know, they won’t.
Last summer our local newspaper ran an article about the growing trend of bridal blogs. At the time it was particularly interesting because my family & friends didn’t know the extent of my own bridal blogging. The brides interviewed ranged from women who had created “wed-sites” to women who were letting online readers choose specific details of their weddings via online polls. Honestly, nothing there shocked me, as I was quite familiar with the online wedding planning sensation. Still, it did get me thinking about my own bridal blogging journal.
After getting engaged, I turned to such online sites like TheKnot and LiveJournal for ideas. It amazed me that there were always new posts appearing on these communities, and when I posted I almost instantly received tons of feedback from other brides just like me! It was only a matter of time before my involvement in these communities deepened from occasionally commenting and absorbing ideas, to rushing home after dress shopping and posting tons of pictures. It was then that I revealed my new obsession to Mr. Chickadee. He was indulgent at first, laughing good-naturedly when I talked about my “friends” online. However, when I told him not to go snooping around my websites because there were dress pictures there, he changed his tune a little.
“You put pictures of yourself online?”
If you’re not willing to spend a bundle on day-of makeup or don’t feel comfortable with the gobs of foundation and powders your make-up artist slapped on during the trial, you absolutely can do it yourself (or at least have a trusted bridesmaid do it for you).
However, I do have a little caveat. If you’re doing it yourself, I’d actually recommend getting it done by a pro well in advance. Just let the make-up artist know that you plan on doing it yourself for the big day and let her/him teach you how to make yourself over! If you’re unsure about actually doing it yourself, take along a trusted bridesmaid or family member to learn how to do it. I would recommend, though, doing your own eyeliner and mascara, as it was nearly impossible for me to do that to someone else.
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Just yesterday I wrote about my dress. I ordered it in July (ok July 19th to be exact, and I’m probably going to take my dress out to dinner every year on our anniversary I love it so much). I wasn’t expecting it to be in until December or January, but surprise! It’s in now!
Right now in a little shop in Aurora, Illinois (which is woefully, 2 1/2 hours away) MY DRESS is hanging there, lonely and in need of me. Luckily my newly married sister lives there and I was planning to go see her this weekend anyway, so I’m sure we’ll make time to swing by and visit my darling dress.
My wedding is still a good 8 months away so I’d really rather not start the fittings/alterations process yet. Especially as I’d still like to lose a little bit of weight and haven’t even begun the process of looking at shoes/elaborate undergarments (probably Spanx? Anyone have other recommendations?)
If you, like me, just recently found out your dress is in, feel free to just squee and post pics in the comments. I promise I’ll jump up and down for you in excitement!
Awhile back, Abby of the amazing blog Style Me Pretty held an Inspiration Board contest. Between all the pics I save to my hard drive on a daily basis and my penchant for Photoshop, I knew I had to participate.
For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, an inspiration board is a sort of collage that embodies the feeling and tone of your wedding. It is, just as the name implies, the inspiration for your wedding!
So I put my new Photoshop CS3 to the test, and this is what I came up with:
(click to enlarge)
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
I stumbled across this knot bio a couple months ago, and it really struck a chord with me. I’d been back and forth about colors since we got engaged and when I saw this bio, I thought OMG BLACK WHITE AND YELLOW and haven’t been able to think anything else since, seriously. So then I decided to completely rip off this girls wedding. I’m sorry if you’re her, but I’m only doing it because I love you.
I obviously can’t have her exact wedding (there are no places with black and white flowered wallpaper in my town, I’m nearly certain) but I’m really in love with the color scheme. But no one was really believing that it’d really look good. My mom just kept saying “yellow, like a bumblebee?” So I decided to take action and go find what I wanted.
So I was definitely intending to tell you more about my dress hunt after my last post on the subject, but I got so busy that I forgot! So now I’m back to finally wrap up the saga and show you my dress!
While my mom was still up north we stopped by Wolsfelt’s Victorian Bridal in Aurora, Illinois. We went into the experience thinking we’d just look around and try a few gowns on, but wouldn’t end up buying anything because I still had my heart set on trying the Watters dress. Looking around before we were helped only reinforced this idea. The dresses we saw were mostly over $2000, while I was looking more in the $1000-1200 range. Still, we figured it couldn’t hurt to look.
So anyway, when I made the appointment the lady on the phone was so nice and friendly and asked a ton of questions. When we arrived, she had already pulled a few dresses that she thought I might like and then I went through and picked a few more. While I was trying them on, Pat, the assistant kept asking questions to get a better feel for my personality and what kind of wedding I wanted to have. I felt like for the first time I had a sales lady who was using her expertise to help me. She actually told me what worked with my body and what didn’t, and I wasn’t offended to hear it since I knew she just wanted to help me.
Since my sister’s wedding, I’ve gotten a few inquiries about my mom’s dress. I’m planning a whole series of tips/tricks/lessons I’ve learned from my sister’s wedding but for now, I’ll tell you about the adventures of shopping for my mom’s dress.
Picking out a dress was one of the things my mom was most worried about prior to the wedding…and the idea that she’d need to buy TWO dresses in a year made it even worse. Living 3,000 miles from my sister and I certainly didn’t help either. She’d perused the Nordstrom’s website and found a lot of promising options, but was disappointed by the selection at the actual store. So she made plans in July to fly up to Chicago from Dallas to go MOB dress shopping and to look for bridal gowns with me.
I’ve been a bad bride-to-be. When I first got engaged I rushed to book so many of our vendors. We had a date, a photographer, a reception venue, and the church before the first month was up. But then….well, I just got busy. You know, that sort of busy-ness when you graduate college and don’t have a job yet and actually don’t have anything to do on a daily basis except watch The Office on DVD? Yeah, busy, right.
So now I’m getting married in June and I don’t have a DJ. That’s ok, right? Well, I hope so. My FMIL and I are going to meet with our first DJ tomorrow but I’m sort of stumped. When I met with photographers I looked at their work, but what do you look at with a DJ? It’s not like he’s creating the music, just pressing the buttons to make it play, right?
How did you go about choosing a DJ? Any important questions I should make sure to ask? Anyone have central IL recommendations for me? Thanks ladies!
Sorry I’ve been a little absent the last week or so, but I’ve been a very busy bee. On Sunday, my big sister became a Mrs. Despite early forecasts of thunderstorms and cold weather, we ended up with a beautiful, but blazing hot day in the Chicago suburbs. In the coming days I’ll fill you in on some of the details of my sister’s big day, but for now, I’ll leave you with some pictures taken by my FMIL, me, and other random people who picked up our cameras throughout the night. I ended up with some 250 pictures from the day, so believe me, there are more to come!
One of my favorites from the day: My dad with my little sister and I. I loved the guys’ get-up, especially after they added the bright pink rose as a boutonniere!
Well, it’s T-6 days until my sister’s wedding… and, just in the nick of time, I’ve finished my biggest DIY project for her: the escort cards. As I mentioned before, we had previously bought up the entire stock of Martha Stewart’s evergreen cardstock from Michael’s for the project. However, we hadn’t planned on going green originally.
She had found this picture on the Knot (from the wedding of Andrea & Geoff in St. Paul, Minnesota) and thought it would be perfect for her clover green wedding:
At the end of my first dress shopping experience, I decided I wanted to look for dresses with a mermaid or trumpet skirt, but I still didn’t know where I would end up finding a dress like that. Most of the dresses I had seen at Michelle’s were a-line or ball gowns, so that option was out, and I didn’t have much confidence in the other local shops. So I decided I’d look at shops in the Chicago suburbs in July when my mom was coming to visit.
In the meantime, I was scouring the internet for some dresses in the mermaid style. I came across this dress by Watters that I absolutely loved. I’ve always adored the beachy casual feel of Watters dresses, but never thought I’d find one appropriate for our formal wedding. However, this dress, in my opinion was just perfect. Unfortunately, it was part of their newest line and wasn’t in shops yet. I made plans to see the dress at a Watters trunk show in August at Michelle’s, but in the meantime, I was shopping with my mom!
This Monday a new season of The Bachelor started on ABC. Unfortunately, I’ve got to admit that I watch it every year, despite fully realizing it’s pretty much a wasted hour of every week. I love to see them fall in love…even if it is a short-lived TV sort of love. Also, this weekend, one of Mr. Chickadee and my good friends went on a date set-up by a popular dating website.
Together, these two facts have got me thinking about ways to meet significant others. Mr. Chickadee and I have an unoriginal story, as we went to high school together. However, our relationship really took off after talking a LOT online. It was really a way for me to get to know shy Mr. Chickadee before we started dating.
So, what’s your dating story? Did you meet in any interesting circumstances? Any internet set-ups out there? Tell me how your love story started!
So I have to admit, I love playing dress up. Always have, probably always will. And getting a wedding dress is pretty much like playing dress up for grown-ups. Needless to say, trying on wedding dresses has pretty much been my very favorite thing in wedding planning so far.
The very first time I went dress shopping was a mere 2 days after getting engaged. I was finally “allowed” to go do it and I couldn’t wait. However, that day was more of a fun time with my girls than anything else. There was only one dress that I liked that day: Maggie Sottero’s Grace, but it definitely didn’t give me the “this is it” feeling.
Fast forward a couple of months. I had graduated from college and gotten settled in my new apartment when my FMIL suggested we go dress shopping. So we drove down to Michelle’s Bridal Shoppe in Urbana because we’d heard it was the best in downstate Illinois and it’s just an hour down the road from my in-laws’ house.
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Mrs. Chickadee, Peoria, IL Age and Occupation: 22, Freelance Advertising Fiance's Age and Occupation: 22, Mechanical Engineer Engagement Date: February 10, 2007 Wedding Date: June, 2008 Blogging Since: September 13, 2006 Venue: Methodist Church/Country Club About Me: My parents always said I should wait until graduating college before getting married…Mr. Chickadee and I finally graduated this past spring and we didn’t waste any time getting straight down to business. It’s been four long years, but the wedding planning is finally underway!
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