Weddingbee

I received a voicemail last week- my dress is in a month ahead of schedule. While I am excited about it, I haven’t called the shop back yet because they want me to schedule my first fitting. For which I need my shoes. Which I don’t yet have.

I posted earlier about what I am looking for in regards to shoes, and when I was in Cleveland, decided to take a trip to my local shopping bazaar (read: mall) with my mom and try on every red shoe in sight that was even remotely close to what I was looking for.

First stop was Nordstrom’s. First, that store really does have phenomenal customer service. As you may have noticed in my last post, most of the shoes that I really like are closed in the back. Turns out that I absolutely.can.not.wear.those.shoes. There is a reason why most of the heels I own are slingbacks or strappy sandals. Stephen, the most understanding and patient salesman ever, carefully explained to me why those shoes will not work for me. I have narrow feet- not only does this mean that it is narrow by my toes, but it also means that my heel is narrow. So me heel will consistently fall out of gorgeous D’Orsay heels, unless they either come in narrow or comfortably fit in a size 9.5 instead of a 10.

::sighs:: And there are such pretty shoes out there.

MAXSTUDIO Savannah
Why can’t you be a slingback or a strappy sandal? You would have been perfect, but you have that darned heel issue. I (surprisingly) even liked the bow in front.

Read more…

When we first were considering settings, we went to several local jewelers. Abracadabra seemed nice, but small. Austin and Warburton was high quality, with a similarly high price tag. And then we stumbled on what we thought was a winner, rated by local newspapers’ readers’ polls as the best jeweler in town.

They ordered stones for us, and we found the perfect one. Given the type of setting I wanted- low profile, half bezel set- it had to be a custom ring.

Long story short, the ring was originally made in the wrong metal, so they remade it. In the meantime, Mr. Dahlia proposed to me sans ring. The ring came in, and it looked lovely:

Read more…

Miss Peony had a great post recently about different aspects of the 4Cs of diamond shopping- cut, clarity, carat and color.

Which got me thinking about my own engagement ring. I do not have a “traditional” engagement ring, in that it isn’t a diamond solitaire, or even consisting only of diamonds. The concept of “the traditional diamond engagement ring” stems from a giant advertisement campaign by DeBeers in the 1930s. This Slate article does a good job of discussing the evolution of the engagement ring.

Conflict and corporate sponsored tradition aside, I knew that a diamond engagement ring wasn’t for me. When we first started looking at rings more than six months prior to getting engaged, we looked at a lot of different things. And trying on diamond rings just didn’t feel like me. It was too sparkly, too bling-y, too girly, and not in a good way. And I am rough on my hands, so I knew that a traditional solitaire and setting wouldn’t work for me.
(l to r: round solitaire with tiffany (prong) setting, princess solitaire with prong setting, both from Blue Nile) Read more…

I’ve always been a low maintenance sort of person. Maybe because my mom is that way, or I only have brothers, or because makeup and hair products cost money, and using them takes time…I’m not really sure exactly why I missed the whole acting like a girl thing when I was a teenager.

But when I started teaching, I wanted to make sure that I was able to look professional, and somehow putting on makeup in the morning made me feel like I was putting on my “game day” face, in a good sort of way. At the recommendations of friends, I went to the Clinique counter during their bonus days, and bought way more makeup than I thought was possible. I have since spent the last year and a half getting increasingly better at putting on my own makeup. (The big thing for me is that in the last month or so, I have finally figured out how to put on eyeliner without looking like Marilyn Manson. This is huge for me.)

The point of all of this is that I still haven’t been convinced about the need for makeup. I mean, really- how much of a difference can it really make on a day to day basis? But then Mr. Dahlia and I went to hear DJ Tiesto in DC. I looked at the photos, and while Mr. Dahlia thinks that he looks like a mess (I disagree), we both agree that I look much better than I normally do in pictures.

Read more…

Saturday

On Sunday we woke up early, packed up our bags and spent awhile driving around Old Mission Peninsula, which is absolutely beautiful.

Right before we left Chateau Grand Traverse

Read more…

This past weekend, Mr. Dahlia and I traveled up to the Old Mission Peninsula just outside of Traverse City, Michigan. (This was his gift to me for our anniversary; back in September, I took him to Cedar Point as my gift to him.) Not only would it be an amazing place to just visit, but the area would be perfect for a honeymoon or destination wedding.

Map is found here

Read more…

Part 1

I would like to share with you another open source program that I really like: OpenOffice. Like Microsoft Office, only free. In addition to word processing, spreadsheet and database features, the OpenOffice suite also has a really nifty (but basic) design program: OpenOffice Draw. Overnight Prints recommends Draw as one of the programs in which to design postcards. Since we will be printing our invites through them, I thought I’d try it out.

Here’s what OpenOffice looks like when you first open the program:

Read more…

For some, that might conjure up images of leaves, apples and pumpkins. While those are maybe items 2, 3 and 4 that come to mind, the first thing I think of is baseball. I’ve always been a Tribe fan, but will also root to long-standing baseball teams that haven’t won in decades. (If the Indians can’t do it this year, I hope the Cubs will, even though it doesn’t look good.  This also means that I always root for the team playing against the Yankees.)

Jacobs Field (a.k.a “The Jake”). Picture found here.

Read more…

There is a tremendous amount of open source software available on the internet. Open source is free! Which means if you are looking at dabbling in designing invitations or placecards and don’t have InDesign or Adobe Illustrator (or want to splurge on it), you can download a similar program at no cost to you.

Today, I bring to you a design program I have worked with: Scribus. Now, documentation for the program isn’t fabulous, but there are plenty of good tutorials available on the web. I’m definitely not the most design savvy individual, but I’ve been able to figure out some of the very basics of the Scribus without too much trouble. And the benefit is that it is easy to do layouts, when compared to using Microsoft Word.

Here are some screenshots.

Read more…

For shoes. Fantastic, fabulous red shoes. And not just any red, mind you, no. Deep, dark, burgundy wine red. Since my dress isn’t red, I want my accessories to be my favorite color. Besides, it is more practical to get shoes in red, which I would wear after the wedding whenever I could find an excuse to- holidays, formal wedding, vacuuming- whereas white/ivory/ecru/snow colored shoes would just stay in my closet for a couple of years before I donated them to goodwill, like I did with the white satin ballet flats I wore to prom.

Unfortunately, while red is a big color for shoes this season, it seems that patent leather is the material of choice. While I covet these shoes (identical to ones available at a local boutique):

Red ballet flats by Jeffrey Campbell

Read more…