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I may need an Anthropologie intervention soon. I can’t seem to NOT buy something whenever I’m near there. It’s shameful, really.
Back in the spring I went in there to get my rehearsal dinner dress, and I found these adorable little teacups that I just couldn’t resist buying. I got 2 of them at $12 each, which isn’t really very expensive, but I still felt the need to justify this unwarranted purchase — so I made them wedding related! That way Mr. Radish couldn’t chastise me for buying something we didn’t need because I could say, “It’s for the wedding.” He never seems to know how to counter that argument. He just gives me a suspicious look and says, “Okay… I hope it wasn’t expensive.” Poor little guy; he stands no chance against my Anthropologie addiction.
Thinking of a good location for our engagement pictures was 100 times more difficult than I anticipated. Our photographer was not from the area so we had to come up with something on our own. We ended up in a cemetery (kind of a long story) because we really wanted to avoid the typical beach/garden/landmark type of thing. Now, there is nothing wrong with that kind of thing, but we were looking for something a little different.
Recently, I noticed these really cool carnival engagement pictures that our wedding photographer, Tim Forbes, posted on his blog. I think it is such a cute idea and the couple looks like they had a great time. I’ve always loved carnivals and amusement parks, and all of the colors and the glowing lights are beautiful and strangely romantic. I wish I had thought to do something like this! Though I must say that I do love the way our surprisingly un-morbid cemetery pictures came out 
We had a hard time thinking of what kind of gifts to give to some of our wedding party and to our parents, and then I remembered an episode of Frontline World that I saw on PBS a few months back that featured a non-profit microlending organization called Kiva. Then it struck me, what a perfect gift idea!
What is microlending, you ask? Well, it’s a system in which you give a small loan directly to a poor person in a developing country who is trying to start their own business, or improve an existing small business. The idea is that these loans will help the borrowers improve their lives and will help them to break the cycle of poverty. I would think it also helps the economy of their community because as small businesses grow, they will need to purchase raw materials, etc. from other nearby businesses and often they will begin to employ other people in their village/town/city.
Also, the borrowers almost always pay back these loans in full and on time. My guess is that this is because of the direct relationship between the lender and the borrower, rather than the impersonal relationship one would have with a bank or financial institution. So far, Kiva has a 100% repayment rate. That’s pretty impressive!
I need to stop even going into an Anthropologie store. I can never seem to leave empty handed. I already got my rehearsal dinner dress there, and the last time I went I bought (another) dress to change into for the “after party” that we had following the formal reception. I’m not sure that it was really necessary… but I couldn’t help myself. I don’t have any pictures yet from the wedding day of me in it, but here is me wearing it in my apartment.
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Like shopping for bridesmaid dresses, finding flower girl dresses that I liked was much harder than I expected it to be. Most flower girl dresses I found were either really expensive (over $200!) or very tacky. I didn’t want something all white that looked like a mini-bride dress or a first communion gown.
Then I found this dress online from One Small Child for $150. They are silk dupioni (same as most of my dress) in slightly off-white color with a contrasting sash and underskirt and a detachable flower pin. There are about 15 colors to pick for the underskirt and sash and they actually had navy blue, the color of our bridesmaids dresses. Yay!
… or at least to us it is. So we didn’t take choosing our first dance song lightly. No picking it out of a list from the DJ for us. We wanted to pick a song that actually had a lot of meaning to both of us.
Right before we first started dating and we were just buddies, Mr. Radish made me a mix cd and the first song on it was “That’s What I Wanna Do,” by Graham Coxon (he used to be in Blur). The chorus repeats “I just want to be with you, that’s all I wanna do… ” I remember listening to it and wondering if he was trying to tell me something… and it turned out he was! The little bugger had a crush on me 
Anyway, that has kind of been our song ever since but it’s not a song that we can dance to so it was out of the running for our first dance song.
But… on our very first date we went to see a band called Spiritualized and they played this song called “Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space.” It’s a beautiful song and he put it on another mix cd for me that he sent when he was away at grad school and we were dating long-distance. Every time I heard this song it reminded me of our first date and how I had those butterflies in my stomach.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
I started blogging kind of late in the wedding-planning game so there were many, many things about my planning process that I never got the chance to tell you about. So while I’m waiting to get the digital negatives of our pro pictures, I’m going to go back in time and bring you up to speed… starting with the bridesmaids dresses.
Picking out the bridesmaids dresses was much more challenging that I expected it to be. I didn’t want my girls to go broke so I set a strict price limit of $150. No matter how much I loved something I wouldn’t even consider it if it was more than that. I thought about picking out a cute party dress from somewhere like Anthropologie, but one of my bridesmaids is a size 24 so that didn’t really work as an option. I also wanted to avoid anything that would look too formal or too “bridesmaid-ish” so that the dresses could be worn again someday. I wanted something knee-length that had a vintage-ish feeling to it.
With all of that in mind I began the hunt. This endeavor proved to be one of the most annoying wedding related tasks that I encountered. I searched high and low and left no bridesmaid rock unturned. Eventually, with the help of my sisters, I found these lace dresses from Bari Jay in styles 432 and 317.
Off getting married — that’s where!
Things got REALLY hectic the week before the wedding and I never got around to blogging. But we’re back from the honeymoon now and I’ll be updating you all on the awesomeness/craziness that was our wedding.
(Photo by Tim Forbes)
Mr. Radish is, well, “vertically challenged.” His license says that he is 5′8, but really I think he is 5′7. I am just a hair over 5′7 so I decided to go with flats for my wedding shoes.
I found this pair of lacey ballet flats from Report on Zappos.com for less than $50. I like that they aren’t so bridal looking so I will actually be able to wear them again. I am really trying to minimize buying things that I’ll only use/wear once. Also, they are extremely comfortable and they go perfectly with my dress. It’s almost like they were made for each other 
Ok, so you’ve seen all of the dresses that I tried on now (or most of them anyway), here are the five finalists that I narrowed it down to:
1. Casablanca
We didn’t DIY our invitations since our design skills are not so hot, but we needed to cut our costs so we tried to go as cheap as possible on the envelopes. We sent out nearly 200 invitations so this could’ve gotten pricey if we weren’t careful. I ended up getting all of our envelopes from Office Max (or maybe Depot… who can keep it straight?) for less than $60. I probably could have gotten an even cheaper price by looking online, but we were in a hurry to get them out.
The only problem was that the envelopes were just plain ivory. Pretty dull and utilitarian looking. To solve this problem I went to Paper Source and got a few rubber hand stamps to liven things up a little. The prices on their stamps are a little higher than other craft stores, but they really had the best selection of any place that I went to. I think for the 2 stamps used below it probably cost me about $25, but I will use them again for other things too.
Anyway, here’s how they came out.
Outside envelope (5 3/4″ by 8 3/4″)
Okay, so now I will walk you through the rest of the bridal salons that I went to (all in the Chicago area) in the fifth installment of Miss Radish’s Adventures in Dress Shopping.
Saeyoung Vu Couture: I really loved the bridesmaids dresses at Saeyoung Vu but none of the wedding gowns really impressed me that much for the price. I tried on a bunch of dresses but the only picture I saved was of this chiffon dress. It had kind of an old Hollywood glam kind of like to it that made me look surprisingly busty, which is always thrilling for me as a 34B girl, BUT it was well over $3,000 and that’s just too rich for this radish.
After going to a few bridal salons to try on dresses, I noticed something… I’m pretty close to most sample sizes! I’m about a women’s street size 4 and in wedding dresses about a size 8. Then I heard about this great sample and once-worn dress shop called White Chicago. They carry a lot of high-end designer gowns here (Vera Wang, Badgley Mischka, Reem Acra, Monique Lhuillier etc.) at about 50% off the original price. In many cases, that meant they were still over my budget of $2,000 but I found quite a few dresses in my size that I could afford.
When I went for my appointment, the first thing I noticed is how pristine looking the shop was. They make you take off your shoes and put on these little hospital booties as soon as you walk in the door, and have you wash your hands before you try on any dresses and they wear gloves while handling them. So unlike some other sample and consignment shops that I went to, these dresses were in great shape. I worked with one of the owners, Ursula, when I went. She was fabulous! The boutique itself is really cool too and it even has a catwalk instead of one of those blocks that you stand on. It’s the closest I’ll ever come to being a model… what fun!
After my post about our cookie favors, a few readers asked for Mr. Radish’s recipe - so here it is.
This is a vegan recipe, but trust me, no one would ever notice…they taste delicious! And I know that the raisin can be a very divisive food - you either love ‘em or hate ‘em, so if you fall on the raisin-hating side just leave them out. It shouldn’t affect the recipe at all.
We already had our invitations made by the time that we decided to have an after party. But I still wanted to include some information about the party, so I decided I would DIY them. However, like Miss Petunia, I am a Photoshop/Illustrator dummy. So I turned to Microsoft Publisher and designed the little invitation below. I just used a blank Publisher template and I used free vintage clipart images that I gleaned from a few different websites. I didn’t want to spend any money on them so they are just printed in black & white on a regular Xerox machine, but they do the trick.
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Mrs. Radish, Chicago/Syracuse Age and Occupation: 27, Executive Assistant/Journalism Student/Musician Fiance's Age and Occupation: 28, Anthropologist/Musician Engagement Date: December 20, 2005 Wedding Date: August 18, 2007 Blogging Since: June 26, 2007 Venue: The Wellington House in Fayetteville, NY About Me: Mr. Radish and I are both from upstate New York, so we are planning a wedding in Syracuse from about 700 miles away. When I’m not obsessing about our wedding I play the cello in my band (which Mr. Radish is in too), read as much as I can, sleep even more, travel whenever possible, and try to find time to have fun with my friends. I’m also working on finishing up my journalism degree with a concentration in environmental reporting and I’m the VP of my campus Amnesty International chapter… so I’m a pretty busy bee.
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