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No matter how much you want to bury your head in the sand and try and forget about the million and one details of wedding planning, you must take time and find actual clothes to wear. Not doing that is against the law. At least in Illinois. With this in mind, I had to figure out something to wear to our engagement party. It was shaping up be a big party, so I had to be dressed impeccably.
Well, I think I put too much pressure on myself. I didn’t really have the time or money to shop the way I’d like. And I had the silly notion I should wear our wedding colors. There’s only one problem with that. “Regency” isn’t really in right now.
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| Personal photo of wedding color palette Left to right: regency, black, taupe, ivory, gold |
Color fail.
So I branched out. I found a great dress at Delia’s that I bought.
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Hello, my name is Miss Funnel Cake and I am a DIY failure. It’s OK to admit this… we all have DIY fails sometimes and it’s nothing to be ashamed of.
Meet my failure:
I decided to dye crinoline #2 and in true Miss-Funnel-Cake-fashion, I hastily decided to do it in my washer this weekend. In my mind, buying a large metal bowl to try and cook red hot dye on my stove and figure out somewhere to pour it out without staining my bathtub, kitchen and/or myself seemed like a bad idea.
One thing I really wanted to do for the wedding was go shopping with my mom and FMIL for their outfits. I had no ulterior motives in going with them and didn’t really care what they picked, but I always enjoy a group shopping trip. We scheduled this excursion for the Monday after the shower. My aunt, who had been unable to attend the shower, was in town and wanted to meet up, so Mr. Cannon, Cherry Bomb, Mom, FMIL, my aunt and I went to Red Robin for dinner. After eating, Mr. Cannon headed home to get some sleep, and the rest of us hit the mall.
This shopping experience wasn’t quite what I was expecting, mostly because we had Cherry Bomb with us. I spent most of the time chasing her around while everyone else browsed and tried things on. We went to several stores but finally found a few contenders at Dilliard’s. My mom tried on her first dress and she really loved it, as did I. It was very flattering and she seemed really happy in it. The second dress she tried on was boxy and not that impressive. The third dress must have been really horrible because she refused to show it to me.
As my mom tried on dresses, this was happening:
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When deciding on outfits for our engagement pictures, I knew I wanted to take one set of casual pictures and another with a little bit dressier feel.
We are lucky to have a fantastic location for our pictures—my grandparents’ old farm. My parents still live next door and, although family no longer lives on the farm property, we still own the land and ramshackle barns that make for a perfect backdrop.
The casual outfit was an easy find. Because of the country/farm feel of the setting, I wanted to find a cute plaid or “country looking” shirt to pair with jeans and some boots. One lunchtime trip to Macy’s and I scored the perfect shirt—in our wedding color, no less!
Image via Macy’s (in navy—no longer available)
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So, we have had a bit of drama finding my Mama Teaspoon a dress. She started the search about a week after I had bought my dress, as apparently my dress really sets the mood of the whole occassion in conjunction with the venue and the church! That really makes sense to me, actually, as originally I was thinking of an apple green for the bridesmaids’ dresses; however, after I chose my dress I knew that navy was a much more suitable colour. So, what did Mum go with? Also navy…strike one.
With the first “bridezilla” comment floating around, I was keen to help Mum to find a suitable dress. However, off she went shopping on her own again. I received a few picture text messages of black or grandma dresses, or my personal favourite—”too Julia Gillard” (for those outside Australia, info here):
Crappy iPhone picture courtesy of Mama Teaspoon
The Snapdragon wedding planning journey has been rather hilarious. We have been flying by the seat of our pants, taking quite a few gambles, and hoping for the best. I call it “The Tides of Adventure” - it makes life more exciting.
Seeing as Bossyboots and I have engagement photos this weekend, I decided I should probably go shopping. Here in Chicago, you aren’t allowed to walk around nekkid. Nearly nekkid—yes. Totally nekkid—no. Too bad.
We’re taking shots around downtown Chicago, and we’re so excited! I really wanted to wear a flouncy skirt and crazy pumps, so…. that’s what I’m doing. Funny how that happens! I already own unwalkably sky-high platform pumps, so I just needed the rest of the ensemble—yes, I realize that’s mostly everything. Pumps and an engagement ring, that’s what I had to work with here.
I turned to a girl’s best flouncy friend: Anthropologie! And wouldn’t you know it, they had exactly what I wanted: the Noon and Night dress. What should have been a ten-hour strenuous shopping day lasted 60 minutes. Done and done. BAM.
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
After a couple weeks of cooling down from these rather nightmarish dress-hunting experiences, I came to a decision. Mama Ticket should buy the bright red dress. She loved it, she would be comfortable in it, everyone knows she’s my mom, and most importantly I really didn’t want to argue with her anymore. I had expected dress shopping with her to be fun and exciting, and it turned into constant bickering and exhaustion.
From my perspective, Mama Ticket was in no way willing to budge. She was basically saying that her desires were more important than mine and that I was a terrible daughter for suggesting that I was unhappy with her choices (funny how we hear things differently than how people really say them). Her criteria for a dress were as follows:
1. Under $250. (That’s totally fair.)
2. Not low-cut. (Obviously not a problem, though Mama Ticket’s version of low-cut is a tad different than most people’s.)
I thought something between J Lo’s belly button and a turtleneck would be ideal.
Image via Lily Boutique
While I LOVE my wedding dress and wouldn’t change a thing, part of me can’t help but gravitate towards showy numbers. Case and point: While waiting for the seamstress to bring out my dress for my second fitting, a little something caught my eye. It was an after party dress by Jenny Packham dubbed the “make your momma faint dress”. 
If the hemline wasn’t faint worthy the price certainly was. At $1300 (after a hefty discount) it was about 10 times what I’d consider spending on a party dress I’d probably never wear again.
Finding the right sassy little number has been infinitely harder than finding my shoes.
I reserved this disco ball of a dress from Rent the Runway but after seeing it on a few women of average height I’m afraid it’ll be too long.
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So we decided to search the internet—surely burgundy dresses existed! Maybe we just needed to expand our horizons, so we checked out Macy’s, Nordstrom, and J.C. Penney. Without much luck online, we decided to go into the stores the following weekend. Mama Ticket had decided earlier to stop by a different David’s Bridal without me in hopes they would have a different selection. (They did not.) But she insisted I see her in a dress she SWORE was maroon and looked great. So I rushed over to the David’s Bridal shop and saw her holding a bright red dress. I’m sure the look I gave her somewhere between confusion and disgust was more than enough to let her know what I thought, but my inner bridezilla was beginning to come out and I haughtily informed her that bright red (”apple,” as they call it there) was in no way burgundy and an unacceptable choice.
This was my face upon seeing the bright red dress:
Image via Flickr / Screen shot from Saturday Night Live
Well really, it’s 13 months later, since I checked in last month with our one year anniversary update!
But, now that our first wedding anniversary has come and gone, I’ve started thinking again about what to do with some of our leftover wedding items.
I still haven’t gotten around to selling or giving away a few extra decor items and still haven’t cleaned any of my wedding event dresses yet. Partly because of laziness, partly because I hate getting rid of stuff, and partly because I ran out of time to take care of these things before our big move to the East Coast, and they’re still packed away.
But recently I did dig out my rehearsal dinner dress from BCBG, because I wanted to try to dye it so I can re-wear it, instead of selling it to someone. I knew that if it was a color other than white, I would have a lot more use for it, and since I really liked the silk floral applique detailing, I figured it was worth a shot.
Here’s a look at my rehearsal dress, so you get an idea of what I’m talking about (the purple sash is not attached):
{From our wedding ceremony rehearsal}
And a close up view of the fabric:
I thought flower girls’ dresses were going to be much, much easier than bridesmaids’ dresses. After all, it’s just two little girls, right? Wrong.
The first little girl is my stepsister J. I was 21 and J was four when my parents got married. My stepdad and his first wife got divorced when J was one, so her first memories are really of my mom and her dad together and of us being her older siblings. She told me the first time Mr. D and I got engaged that she was going to be a flower girl and that she wanted a poufy dress and a tiara. And if I didn’t provide these things, she wasn’t going to do it. She is very, very precocious. Now that she is almost nine, she said she will still be a flower girl, even if she doesn’t get all of the other stuff.
Little Miss J: My littlest sibling, and by far one of the biggest handfuls (Personal photo)
The two months we had before our Zivilstand in 2010 slipped by quickly. I flew to Ohio for the weekend for my brother’s wedding in July, showed off my beloved ring, and then it was back to Switzerland to prepare for our own upcoming “thing” (as I liked to call it).
Around the time of the one month countdown, I casually asked Mr. Funnel Cake what he was going to wear. “A suit, of course.” Oh. A suit… That sounds fancy. Did that mean I should wear a dress?
*quickly searches through closet for suitable Zivilstand clothing*
With my hectic schedule at work and my three-hour commute, I didn’t have much time to go shopping during the week.
I admit it, there was a lot of drama surrounding the whole process of choosing my wedding dress. A Lot. We pre-shopped, we ran, we shopped shopped, we purchased, we post-shopped, we re-purchased. There was so much going on! What I haven’t mentioned is that like many bees before me (most recently Mrs French Toast and Mrs Crepe) I will be wearing both a red dress and a white dress on my big day.
Since I was in high school, I’ve loved the idea of wearing Mama Bacon’s cheongsam (aka qipao) that she wore for her wedding to Papa Bacon in the ’70s for at least one part of my wedding. But sadly, I am graced with my father’s American build and not my mom’s much more delicate Chinese build which means that when the time came last fall to try it on, I couldn’t even get the darn thing over my SHOULDERS, let alone my American thighs. I mean, I could have worn it for our wedding 11 months later… if I dropped 40 lbs, but hello, not healthy for a girl my size. Either way, this dress needs a moment in the spotlight (along with that fantastic white tux my dad’s got on and all that hair between them both).
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| I just LOVE this photo. Who can guess the year? |
I’ve been known to don some Chinese traditional garb in my time, and the circumstances vary widely like at an 8th grade dance or on a make shift stage at an outdoor festival.
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A few weeks ago, Cherry Bomb and I packed into the car and headed down to Columbus to visit my grandma so we could pick out a dress pattern. (I mean THE dress pattern. I’m still getting used to my wedding lingo.) Grandma wanted to go to Jo Ann Fabrics to hunt for dress patterns, so we headed to the one closest to her house. I had a general idea of what I wanted the dress to look like, so it was a matter of leafing through the pattern books until I found what I was looking for. Grandma chased Cherry Bomb through the store as I looked at dress after dress after dress. There were actually quite a few patterns that I liked, but I finally focused on one that had a scalloped bottom because I felt it added a bit of visual interest. I consulted Grandma about it, and we decided to get it. (We ended up with McCall’s M6331, for anyone who is interested.) My favorite part of the pattern was that it could also be made as a romper. I find rompers to be hilarious on grown women, and Mr. Cannon often threatens to buy matching rompers for Cherry Bomb and me, so I felt it was a sign that I was destined for this pattern.
Pattern image via McCall’s
I know that being a tween can be an awkward age for anyone. There can certainly also be a slim and awkward selection of dresses to chose from to be in someone’s wedding.
My littlest lady, FSIL Sweet Cream, is laid-back and go-with-the-flow, so I knew that she wouldn’t care too much about what I put her in for the big day. She trusts my fashion expertise! I know this because she always hopes that I pick out her birthday and Christmas presents and that they are some kind of stylish wardrobe piece. (Hey! I would too if I were the first girl with jeggings in my class, JUST as they were starting to hit the runways of middle school.)
Since older FSIL Sweet Cream sometimes steals things from her 12-year-old sister, I was originally thinking that the littlest lady could totally fit into a size 0 of the BM dresses…and then with a few stitches here and there and a pretty shell top that would go underneath, we would be in business.
This is exactly what I pictured doing to my littlest lady’s dress. A few stitches would make this age appropriate and adorable! / Image via Stylehive
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