Let's get some shoes

10 points to anyone who gets the reference for that title.

Now that I had picked out my dress, my attention turned immediately and fully to the much bigger decision: the shoes.  I am a shoe person by any definition.  I am hopelessly clueless about how to dress myself, so my day-to-day wardrobe consists of jeans, a tee shirt or tank top, and some kick-ass shoes.  I feel like they make it an "outfit" rather than something I just pulled out of the laundry basket (which, ahem, I would *never* do.  Yeah, never.  Moving on...).

Whereas I decided on my dress in a single afternoon, I spent weeks--nay, months!--agonizing over the shoes.  I scoured each and every shoe store website, checked on every pair in Macy's, DSW, Bakers, and even Payless during each trip to the mall.  I found hundreds of pairs that I absolutely loved, but there were some requirements that made actually choosing a pair insanely difficult:

1. I'm pretty tall.  5'8", which isn't insane, but it is in the upper levels of normal.  This in itself isn't a problem, since Jeff is 6'1".  However, my dad is going to be walking me down the aisle, and he's also 5'8".  I'm okay with being a little taller than him in heels, but it definitely rules out platforms and anything over 3 inches.
2. While I drool over pictures of Balenciaga, Louboutin, and Manolo, I actually BUY Mossimo, Style&Co., and, sometimes, Nine West on sale at Ross.  My budget just does not meet the needs of my taste.  I love bargain hunting and finding killer shoes in my price range, but it definitely takes a lot of leg work.
3. I hate white shoes.  There, I said it.  There are women who can pull off this look, but I choose not to even attempt to be one of them.  Maybe because I'm not easy on things and I know white doesn't stand a chance, maybe because I got scared off by that whole "no white after labor day" thing, I don't know.  I just know I don't do white.  Which becomes a problem when you slap the word "bridal" in front of a shoe search.

After narrowing down the possibilities via the above requirements, I began my search on Piperlime, Bluefly, and Zappos.  I LOVED the yellow peep-toe shoes so popular on wedding blogs like these:

(From this website)

However, searching for these online was kinda scary: I'm crazy-particular about shades of yellow and was terrified of getting something best described as "mustard" or, in my own personal vocabulary, "baby poop yellow".  So, basically, I decided to search for silver instead.

The first pair of shoes I ordered (yes, you can see where this is going) was from Piperlime.  So pretty and feminine and just a teensy bit edgy:

I was so excited to get these, and thrilled that I had found *my* shoes.  I tracked their shipment obsessively until, one day when I got home from work, I finally saw the telltale Piperlime box leaning against my front door.  I cut open the box, peeled back the tissue paper, and stood in pure awe.  So pretty.  So very, very pretty.  A little shinier than I had expected, but I was ok with that.  I tried them on right away.  I slipped it onto my foot, admired the pretty, and then stood up with my full weight on the shoe.  Huh.  Felt a little loose.  No worries, I thought, it's just because I'm wearing one 3 1/2" heel and one flat.  I put on the other shoe.  I took two steps.  My right foot came flying out of the pretty silver shoe.

Major sad face.  The length of the shoe was right, but that strap at the front was just.too.wide.  I hurried to my computer to see whether this was maybe just a fluke.  But when I pulled up the reviews online for the Pierre Dumas Godiva, I saw countless others saying the same thing: that front strap was just too big.  And ordering a half-size smaller would make the length wrong.  Sigh.  They had to go back.

Lesson learned from Shoes #1: Always, ALWAYS read customer reviews first when buying online.

Because this post is already way too long, the shoe saga will have to continue another day.  Until next time, I leave you with more shoe eye candy:

Sigh.

Dress You Up in My Love

...from your head down to your toe-o-oes!  That song always gets stuck in my head.

I thought I'd wait awhile to buy a dress, until more details were ironed out and I knew what style would suit the wedding, but it was really important to me that my mom be there for my first dress-buying experience.   I wanted to share that "Oh my gosh I'm a bride" moment with her, so while she was in town, she and my sister and I headed over to David's Bridal to see what they had in stock.  I had heard negative things about it from other women, but my sister bought her dress there a few years ago and absolutely loved it.  I don't know what other brides' experiences were, but I loved my whole time there.  I attribute this in large part to the consultant, Lucy.  She was helpful and patient and really listened to what I wanted, and we came away with some great styles I probably never would have tried on my own.

Just as I had hoped, when I stepped out of the changing room in the first dress, it really hit me: I'm getting married!  I just stood looking in the mirror, taking it all in.  My mom teared up.  It was a hugely exciting and emotional moment, more so than I had anticipated.  I wanted to buy that dress right away, but  I think it was just the thrill of the wedding dress that had me sold. The longer I looked at it, the more I realized it wasn't right for me:

It's a gorgeous dress, and surprisingly well-constructed, but I felt like that bejeweled V-shape under the bust drew attention exactly where I didn't want it to be drawn.  Oh well, on to the next!

I couldn't wait to try on more dresses even though the first one wasn't right for me. In the end, I think I tried on almost every dress in David's Bridal.  Because Jeff reads this blog, I'm not going to show the dress I ended up buying.  But here are some of the ones I tried, just to give an idea of how much variety there really was in the store:

These dresses were all really pretty and, okay, there were some duds I tried on as well.  And even though I liked a few dresses, I had every intention of waiting several months before actually buying anything.  But then I tried on THE dress.  Lucy brought it out without my requesting it, and on the hanger I wasn't sure I liked it.  But when I put it on and came out of the dressing room, my mom just melted.  She started crying, and my sister nodded a quick, decisive "yes"--for her, the decision was made.  When I looked in the mirror, I looked like myself, but better.  The dress was flattering and elegant and very, very ME.  I didn't cry, but I did twirl.  And jump up and down.  And clap.

I hadn't even looked at the price tag, so I was sort of afraid to find out how much it cost.  I know, nothing at David's is astronomically priced, but I was on a self-imposed budget that was pretty freaking strict (I wanted to make up the cost of the venue in other places, remember?).  I was really, really hoping for something under $500.  So imagine my astonishment when Lucy told me the grand total of the dress was...

$250!  Half my insanely low budget and less than a lot women spend on shoes!  I just about fainted, I was so excited.  The dress was on sale, she said, and I would have to buy it fairly soon before the price went up again.  Now, I've worked in sales and I know that's the oldest line in the book, but I honestly would have bought the dress for way more than that, so to me the price was just icing on the cake.

I walked around in the store for probably another ten to fifteen minutes, "just to be sure."  But between you and me, I was already sold.  I just didn't want to take it off.

Finally I could tell Lucy, for all her patience, was trying to prod me back into the changing room.  I reluctantly took off the gorgeous gown and changed back into my stupid old regular clothes (note to all brides: wear something really, really pretty when you go dress shopping, because changing out of the most beautiful dress you'll ever wear and into ratty jeans and a tank top is just depressing).

My mom paid for the dress in full (I mean, come on, it was $250, what would the payment plan have even looked like?) and they gave us a date to pick it up.  The whole way home I looked at pictures of the dress that we had taken.  I was smitten, with a dress.  Weird.

I was surprised at how easy it was for me to find a wedding dress.  I had anticipated months of searching and trying on hundreds of gowns.  In a way, I'm sad I didn't get more chances to play dress-up and admire all those beautiful dresses.  But then I think of all those brides who really do have a hard time finding something they like, and realize I was so lucky to find a dress I love so quickly.  I couldn't be happier with the end result, and I can't wait to wear my dress on the big day!

Be Our Guest, Be Our Guest...

We just got back our first RSVP cards, so it is officially safe to put our invitations out there for the world to see!


First of all, can I just say how exciting it is to get these little envelopes in the mail? I know it makes absolutely no sense--after all, I was the one who addressed and stamped the things! And yet I get a little flutter in my chest every time I see one of those pretty white-and-yellow envelopes in my mailbox.

Now, I have a confession to make: I bought these luxe beauties at Michaels.  I am not one of those brides who lusts after 5-dollars-each invitations, nor am I quite crafty enough to come up with something pretty on my own.  But after stalking the wedding aisles at Target and Michaels for several months, I finally found some that I LOVED.  They matched my wedding colors and the overall tone I was trying to set.  The best part?  They were $20 for 40 invitations, and I had a 20% off coupon.  So the grand total for my fancy-shmancy invitations was $64.

Okay, enough intro.  Ready for some eye candy?   I really hate having to blur out the details, but just imagine these without weird grayish patches running across them:

This is the whole "invitation suite".  That sounds so fancy!

The invitation itself, both the outside & inside.

 The invitation with the envelope

I printed each person's name on their RSVP card.  It guarantees I won't get any RSVPs back and wonder who they're from! It took some work, but I'm really happy with this little detail.

 The RSVP card with its envelope

I adore these invitations, but they definitely required some work.  And some cursing at my printer, but we won't get into that.  This is what my coffee table looked like during this whole process:

That's Trigger, supervising the invitation-making.

There was actually a template to download from the company's website, but because I use Open Office instead of Microsoft Office it wasn't compatible, so I had to start from scratch.  I downloaded fonts from dafont.com (Engravers MT for the body of the invitation and English for our names).

After the invitations were printed, I had to glue them into the folders and then add the ribbon.  Thank goodness for my friends, because without them I would still be working on these!  Instead we popped in the first Sex and the City movie, opened a bottle of champagne (or two or three...) and cranked these puppies out in a couple of hours.


I used clear address labels--I know you're supposed to handwrite addresses, but I honestly have the worst handwriting ever and thought THAT would offend people more than address labels would.  For the addresses themselves I took the somewhat controversial step of making the invitations out to "FirstName and FirstName LastName and Family" rather than "Mr. and Mrs. LastName and Family."  I sent my Save-the-Dates out to Mr. and Mrs. and a lot of my female friends and family got offended that their names weren't listed on the invitation separately.  Eh, whatever keeps the most people happy, right?  I try not to stress about it too much.

So there you have it.  In retrospect, these invitations were a lot more work than I thought they would be, but I would really say it's worth it considering the results-to-effort ratio.  And ESPECIALLY considering the results-to-price ratio.  Now, to sit back and wait for more RSVPs to roll in.  Are you listening, potential wedding guests?  Just sitting around waiting...

STDs

To those in the wedding blogosphere, that usually very scary acronym stands for "Save the Date".  This is a sort of pre-invitation listing only the most basic details of the wedding (couple's names, wedding date, and city).  They're usually pretty casual compared to the invitations, and are totally optional.  I decided to send these out because we're going to have so many out-of-town guests for the wedding.  I wanted to give them as much notice as possible so they could look for good deals on airfare and hotels and, knowing me, I was afraid I wouldn't send out invitations until two weeks before the big day.

So, I knew I wanted to make STDs (teehee, that makes me giggle every time!), but I'm generally lacking a craft gene and didn't think I could pull it off.  I showed my sister a link on Martha Stewart Weddings for this project, just because I found it adorable, but with no expectation to actually make it happen.  The next weekend she called me from Michael's to let me know she was buying supplies and what color paper and ribbon did I want?  She's pretty awesome like that.

Once we got all the supplies, I printed these out on my home printer:

Sorry for the blurred-out details.   Internet anonymity and all that jazz.

The next weekend I went to Jaymi's apartment and we spent an entire evening hole punching, stamping, and tying bows.  Here's the finished version:

 
 We got about half of them assembled, and then the next weekend my sister and my wonderful bridesmaid Danielle came over to my house to finish things up and add address labels and stamps (don't worry, they were paid generously in pizza and sangria).  After all was said and done, here's the final product:
 

So there you have it!  The STD project that would not have been without some gentle shoving from my sister and tons of manual labor from my two besties.  Next post: the invites themselves.

Venue Found!

As in "Paradise Found"?  Anyone?  Crickets...

Okay, so, I've strung this out enough.  After weighing all the options, and driving by a few more venues on my spreadsheet that we hadn't set appointments for, I narrowed it down to El Dorado Golf Course and the Red Horse Barn.  My mom came to visit the following weekend, and one of the many tasks on our wedding-related agenda was finalizing the venue choice.  So with her and Jeff in tow, we checked out both of these.  And the clear winner was...

Red Horse Barn!  This was a surprise to me, as I thought my mom would go for the more traditional (and more convenient and more affordable) El Dorado.  But I think she saw how happy Red Horse Barn made me.  As soon as we drove up, I had an insta-smile plastered on my face.  Jeff really liked it too--he thought it was more "us".  And you know what?  He was totally right.  El Dorado is a great venue, and I could easily see getting married there.  But when I think of that venue, I think of a beautiful wedding.  When I think of Red Horse Barn, I think of MY beautiful wedding.  See the difference?  And it ended up being really important to both of us that this not feel like a cookie-cutter movie wedding.

Just for funsies, let's look at some more pictures of RHB, shall we?

This is the front porch of the entrance/sitting room

The inside of the sitting room.  That's me looking really confused, though I'm not sure why.  Maybe contemplating whether I'd be able to use the fireplace in July? (It's an awesome fireplace!  A girl can dream!)

A partial view of the courtyard, with the stables behind.  Real stables, with horses!  How cool is that?

A side view of the gazebo.  They were setting up for a wedding, so you can see how it would look.

I love the twinkle lights on this tree.  Sadly, our reception will be over before dark so we won't get much use out of them.

This is a really charming venue with lots of character and endless possibilities for decor and setting the right vibe.  We booked it and, yes, I cringed a little when my mom signed the deposit check, but I knew I would make up the cost somewhere else.  And, helpfully, our caterer of choice was trés affordable:

And trés chic, non?  That's right friends, we are having the In-N-Out truck cater the wedding!  This was Jeff's idea, and his one serious request for the wedding.  And to be perfectly honest, as soon as he suggested it I knew we had to do it.  We are not stuffy people, and while we appreciate really good food, we also appreciate really good greasy cheesy beefiness.  And remember that backyard-picnic feel we were going for?  This takes that to a whole 'nother level.  My parents took some serious convincing--my dad, especially, was afraid it would look cheap.  He may be right, but honestly I don't care.  It IS cheap, but more importantly it's something Jeff and I both love and are excited about having at our wedding.

So, there you have it: the big mystery of why we HAD to have a venue that would let us bring in our own "caterer".  We're going the untraditional route, and we couldn't be happier about it.

The Search for the Perfect Venue, Part 3

Where last we left off, I had fallen in love with a venue out of my price range and ruled out one that was a little too traffic-adjacent for my taste.

The next venue was at another golf course (what can I say, Southern California is heavy on golf courses!).  We were early for our appointment, so my sister and I decided to poke around on our own.  The course was amazing, and they were setting up for a wedding later in the day, so we were able to see where the ceremony would take place.  I didn't take any pictures here either, but here are some from the interwebs:

I was really into this location, with one major exception: it's located very close to the Long Beach City airport, and in the 15 or so minutes we were outside, no fewer than 3 planes passed overhead, and were so loud that we could hardly talk to each other while they passed.  I had immediate anxiety about having to pause our ceremony ten times for planes to pass, and I just could not handle that kind of stress.  So we called the coordinator to cancel our appointment, and moved on to our last venue.

The last stop for the day was the El Dorado Golf Course in Long Beach--yes, another one.  And no, Jeff and I do not golf.  But that's kinda beside the point here.

El Dorado was also really pretty and, while I remembered to take pictures, I don't think they show it to its best advantage.  Still, here are a couple, just to give an idea of the space:

The ceremony would take place on the lawn on the edge of the course, and the reception would be under these gorgeous white tents adjoining the ceremony space.  Those poles at the top of the tent are strung with vines and twinkle lights, and the venue would provide some decorations for the reception, as well as all of the tables and chairs.  They had their own caterer on site, and the price was really very reasonable, especially if we got married on a Sunday.  However, we had other plans for a caterer (I promise I will get to that soon) so this was not necessarily a plus for us, since we wouldn't be able to go with an outside vendor.

So let's sum up what we had after four venues and serious patience on the part of my saintly sister:

• 1 venue with the rush of traffic going by the ceremony site
• 1 gorgeous stable that was out of our price range
• 1 heartbreakingly beautiful golf course where no one would be able to hear our vows
• 1 very nice and affordable tented venue with too many restrictions

Hang in there, in my next post I'll reveal our final choice, as well as the big caterer mystery.

The Search for the Perfect Venue, Part 2

Once I realized that there wasn't going to be any easy solution to the venue problem (the park didn't work, we don't belong to a church, and none of our nearby family has a backyard big enough for the size of wedding we'd be having), I got serious about my internet venue research.  My favorite sites were Here Comes the Guide and Gathering Guide.  While they didn't have the greatest sorting features, they offered pretty thorough lists of all the venues in our area.

I played around on these websites for days on end, and finally took my favorites and input them into one of my infamous spreadsheets.  No, not spreadsheet...workbook.  I'm talking 10 spreadsheets in a document, outlining pricing, rental tiems available, even how much I liked the coordinators I talked to on the phone.  Oh, sorry, you didn't know I'm a total nerd?  Consider yourself informed.  Moving right along...

I scheduled a day with my amazingly patient sister/MOH to look at four of the front runners on my spreadsheet.  And yes, she laughed at me when I showed this to her.  And yet she agreed to come along anyway.

At the first venue we went to, I failed to take any pictures, mostly because I was pretty underwhelmed.  It was at a beautiful golf course (score!) but the ceremony would have to take place on the front lawn of the country club, seriously less than 20 yards from a pretty major road.  And, ok, I'm really bad at judging distance, so if 20 yards is actually really far, just humor me.  Believe me when I say it was thisclose to lots and lots of traffic.

The second venue we saw was actually my least favorite on paper.  It was at an equestrian center in the courtyard of a stable.  I grew up around horses and have no problem being around them, but I was afraid of smelling them during dinner.  However, when we showed up, I was completely wowed by this place.  First of all, it looked like this:

There was definitely no hint of horse smell, even with horses so close.  It was the perfect size for our estimated guest list (around 150--I have a very large family), and best of all we could bring in our own caterer.  This would prove very important, as I'll get into later.  The downside?  The cost.  The space fee wasn't astronomical, but it was pretty high considering we would have to bring everything in ourselves, from food and alcohol to tables, chairs, and dishes.  That plus the already high cost of the venue itself added up to significantly more than I had budgeted and would make the rest of wedding planning pretty difficult.

So, with one venue I just couldn't use, and one I loved but couldn't afford, we still had two more to go.  Potential venues three and four up next...