Dresses and dresses and dresses

This past Saturday was a lovely fall Maine day full of moms, sisters, and dresses. My lovely mother and sister, as well as my future-mother-in-law and future-sister-in-law, all joined me in first selecting bridesmaid dress options and then choosing a wedding dress.

We started at Andrea's Bridal in Portland to look at Alfred Angelo dresses, where a very nice lady helped technically matron but it makes her sound old Maid of Honor Moxie (my sister) and Bridesmaid Comic-con (Vader's sister) humor me by trying on dresses of all sorts and colors to figure out what they prefer. Since my sister hasn't put on a dress since her wedding and my future sister-in-law has never gone shopping with me, I half-expected revolt mid-appointment. Things went pretty smoothly, though, and both found a style they like. So far the bridesmaids vote is all for one dress, so it's still up in the air on whether there are mixed dress styles or not, aside from MOH Moxie who gets to be special. Since she is 100% responsible for the cutest members of the wedding party, I guess we'll let her pick the dress she likes most...

After a long lunch with breadsticks aplenty, we moseyed over to David's Bridal in South Portland for me to try on wedding dresses. Sure, they're a chain. Sure, I probably could have gotten champagne and more personalized attention at a smaller boutique. I like the experience of fitting into the samples and not paying thousands of dollars for my dress, however, so David's it was. I'll let the pictures (and my faces in said pictures) do the talking:

1.) First dress I tried on. Not really what I wanted, but it fit! And it had pink!

2.) This dress was BORING

3.) Vader's mom thought this one looked like lingerie:

4.) I described this one to the consultant as "monotonously interesting," which she found entertaining













5.) This chick next to me kept stealing the dresses I wanted to try on. The family was dreaming up "accidents" to get the dresses back, but luckily she finally picked one. Here's the one she picked:

6.) This dress had so many layers I got stuck getting into it, and could apparently be heard chuckling at myself from outside the dressing room.

7.) This dress was SO PRETTY. According to my consultant person, I said this a lot.
















These dresses were all beautiful (and some that were not-so-beautiful didn't make the blog photo cut), but the one I chose is actually not on this list! I tried on THE dress third or fourth among these, and was comparing each to that dress as soon as I put it on. Some decisions were harder than others (#7 took minutes to overrule, while #2 was never even a consideration), but ultimately the dress I chose featured elements of all of the dresses I've posted. Conveniently, it also matched my mom's wedding veil perfectly, and I'll be wearing both next July. My dress is comfortable, pretty, easily wear-able, and at least for now a secret. If I don't keep a few surprises up my sleeve, what will our guests have to look forward to?

Weighty Matters

In the spring of 2011, bridesmaids Madonna and Irish and I went on a wedding adventure. Bridesmaid Madonna was starting her search for a wedding dress (she got married this past summer), and we set off on a girly adventure full of brunch and dresses. We first headed to Vows in Watertown, where the girls convinced me to try on a few dresses for my then-two-years-away wedding. Not knowing anything about wedding dress sizing, I grabbed a few and took them to a dressing room where I discovered that I did not fit in a single one of them. The frazzled consultant grabbed a dress that I would actually fit in, and when I saw the size on the tag the panic that set in took a fair bit of time and chai to settle down. The large selection of plus size dresses at the David's Bridal we went to later that day certainly gave me more options, but did no more to ease my own embarrassment about my size. 

I was heavy my whole life, loving brownie sundaes and french fries and finding as many excuses to get out of gym class as possible. The dining hall Ben and Jerry's and Monday mimosas in college certainly didn't help, and the novelty of adult life (why yes, I will have cookies for lunch) took a while to wore off. The idea that my habits would kill me much quicker if I continued along that path, combined with a burning desire to be a confident bride, made me turn things around in the summer of 2011. I tracked my eating, dusted the cobwebs off our elliptical machine, and started my journey toward feeling deserving of Vader's plentiful compliments and reassurances. 

Tomorrow morning I'll run 2.5 miles without dying walking, then have a balanced and low calorie breakfast, and then daydream all the way to work about how different next weekend's adventure will be compared to the spring of 2011. And that's because....

...I'll be going wedding dress shopping on Saturday! And with 90 pounds less of me than there was two years ago, I'm over the moon excited to find a dress I feel great in without feeling the need to hide behind it. 

In Memory

This weekend we were abruptly reminded of a topic not at the forefront of my mind most days: those who will not be attending our wedding. Vader's grandfather passed away late Friday night, and the family will say their goodbyes this week. Grampa Bill lived a long and happy life, and he will be greatly missed by all.

Between the two of us Vader and I have grandfathers, grandmothers, and great aunts and uncles who are no longer with us and we have thought long and hard during our engagement and particularly this past weekend about how to memorialize them during our wedding ceremony. We want to celebrate their lives and the love we shared with them without weighing down the hearts of those closest to them during a (we hope) joyous occasion. Many couples before us have created various memorials to family members during their weddings, and we turned to the Internet for subtle yet meaningful suggestions.

A popular memorial is to have a single rose or other flower displayed during the ceremony for each loved one no longer with us. My sister did this at her wedding and it was very touching when the flowers were presented to the spouses of those being memorialized. However, with a giant wedding party and my wavering on whether or not we'll have programs, I fear this type of memorial would be lost in the chaos and would go unnoticed.

Several other folks have held moments of silence during the ceremony, which seems a bit somber for the occasion. Others have included jewelry for the bride or on the flowers from those being remembered, but with our crowd being overwhelmingly male that seems a little unlikely.

Cobbling together ideas from several people and magazines I've decided that we will honor those we've lost in a way that focuses on celebrating our time with them rather than mourning our time without them. Vader and I will take lessons from our families and their relationships as we begin our own family and for many decades afterwards, and we want to honor the forming of those families by featuring wedding pictures from our parents and grandparents on all of the sides.

Something like this, but all wedding pictures

 In our venue there is a grand piano that is useless except for being a surface, and during our ceremony and reception that piano will be covered with wedding pictures dating from the early 20th century to the early 21st century of weddings from my and Vader's families. We hope this display will honor the marriages and lessons we've learned from those of our family members who will be attending the wedding and will memorialize the relationships that built the foundation for ours.

Boys and weddings

Yesterday Vader had his second taste of wedding madness in the form of a bridal show. We went to a Southern Maine bridal show once coming back from a holiday with family, and mostly just learned everything in and around York costs $20 bajillion dollars. So when The Great Bridal Expo sent me free tickets via e-mail, I managed to wheedle Vader into accepting with promises of a short enough trip to not miss the Pats' 1 p.m. kickoff.

Having done the whole shebang (read: fashion show, talking to every vendor in the place, signing up for prizes and getting weekly calls from Mary Kay since) a few months ago at a show with Bridesmaid Madonna, we had one mission: coupons. Since I'll be headed to David's Bridal in a few weeks for dress hunting, I was hankering for the $50 off a dress card I knew would be available. And since we were there anyway, we found similar deals for Vader and his boys' options. And cake samples :) And as promised, we were home, Gronk jersey and all ready for the Patriots to take half a game to remember how to play football well.

As a whole, Vader is a man of few wedding opinions. He chimes in when it counts: the open bar, the billiards room, and the bar crawl are all Vader's brainchild. It took him months to inform his groomsmen who they were and he thought an acceptable flower budget started at $30, but our wedding will be a party from start to finish courtesy of my future husband. Of course, he has his moments...the other day we spent an hour discussing sword gifts but his response to "Do you want the guys to wear matching ties?" this weekend was "Stop, stop, too many questions!" 

My Vader: a wedding anomaly. I wouldn't let him near a glue gun in a thousand years, but his vows will probably blow mine out of the water. 

ARGH

Earlier this afternoon, I got a message from the photographer I found several months ago and booked that said "blah blah, I won't be doing your wedding or engagement shoot [scheduled for a week from now], blah blah, refund."

Yes, we've got nine months, but everybody that's been recommended to me since has been booked already or costs $2000+. Since we had $500ish budgeted for wedding photography, spending more than 200% of that budget isn't going to work.

So anybody reading this who has had/been in/been to a Maine wedding recently: any affordable photographer recommendations? I'm looking for decent quality, nothing fancy, and printing rights to the photos.

Thanks!

Girlishness

I believe I've mentioned this before, but I've got a crap ton of bridesmaids. Yes, it means the wedding party will be huge. No, it doesn't mean everybody I love ended up in the wedding party. Yes, it means finding bridesmaid dresses will be a pain in the ass.

This past weekend I ventured out to the lovely town of Dedham (strip malls and more strip malls) with two bridesmaids to have a first gander at Alfred Angelo bridesmaid dresses. I'm looking to select a few styles with the same fabric and length, then let each girl choose the dress they would most like to wear of those styles. This weekend I learned that bridesmaids Irish and Cupcake (I'm kind of into inventing names for people, so hope you don't mind them girls!) look good in everything AA makes in short chiffon dresses, but they managed to pick a few favorites. Their top choice was this one:

Just kidding! Sexy as they are, they went with something a bit less reflective. Both liked mainly halter dresses with slight bust ruching. Once I've had a chance to go shopping with more of the girls I might post some overall top picks, but for now I'll keep you all in suspense. 

With the hard work done, we then went shoe shopping. And clothes shopping. And ice cream shopping. It was a great day :)

A side note: I keep looking at Pinterest wedding ideas, and have so far decided I like candy buffets, s'more bars, and ice cream sundae stations. Do you think it would be a problem if we only served dessert at the wedding as long as there are copious amounts of all of it?

A pointed conversation

Some of the difficult conversations Vader and I have shared so far in our wedding planning:

• How much can we afford to spend on a wedding? 
• What are our religious commitments (or non-commitments) to the wedding?
• How many guests is too many? Who should be cut?
• Are weapons as groomsmen gifts a bad idea?

...yes. You read that last one right. When Vader brought up the idea of personalized swords as gifts the other night over cocktails, I was 98% certain he was joking. So was he, until a Google search proved that swords are not hundreds of dollars apiece as I had originally hoped thought.

So now as we wait to progress in wedding plans over the next few months, I find myself Googling the distance to the nearest hospital from where we will be staying in Portland next summer, picturing bachelor party flesh wounds. 

I'm opening this one up to the peanut gallery. Swords: most epic gift ever or extraordinarily stupid? And more importantly, to my bridesmaids: will you ever forgive me for not matching Vader's plans and gifting you weaponry?