Mandalinn- I'm still reading though your thread - but I'm curious about the dress and sizes - that's what I'm struggling with the most. My wedding is in late September and I'm working hard to get in shape, so I really hesitate to buy a dress in the 16W that fits me now. How long ago did you buy your dress? Should I just not worry about it, and have faith in the gal doing my alterations?
Cindy

Cindy - I bought my dress in an 18W, last October, which was about 7 months before the wedding. Because of that, I had to take it in quite a bit and find a specialty alterations lady. However, if you find someone good to do your alterations, you should be ok! If you have joined The Knot, there are "local" boards - you can post on one of the local boards for your area for alterations recommendations.

I love tulips but I had my wedding in the fall so tulips were expensive. The flowers we went for were great, they are also known as peruvian tulips?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alstroemeria

They are in season in the fall. I think they are my favorite flower now.

Hi everyone - I'm glad to have this thread here as well!

DF and I started looking at rings last February, ordered one in May, and finally got engaged in August. He had the diamond from a previous engagement, but had bought it down in St.Thomas, so it was very reasonably priced. We looked into trading it in, but then they want you to trade up, and we didn't want to put more money into it. At first I was a bit weird about the fact that he'd given it to someone else, but it actually wasn't the one he proposed with - when they got that one appraised, it wasn't the quality he'd been promised, so it was returned and this one was sent as a replacement. So, once we knew it wasn't feasibly financially, I decided I could be ok with this one, especially since it's 1.04 ct! (I like to just pretend we got it from eBay!) My setting is from Somos Creations - I wanted something antique-looking and they had some nice choices. All the rings are made-to-order, which is why it took so long - that and I made some tweaks to the ring, so the standard version of it had to be hand-crafted for me. Now I need to find a wedding band to go with - this one didn't have one to match, so I am struggling with that. It sits higher on my finger, so a standard band, which I would be fine with, is just too low to be next to it.

http://www.somoscreations.com/jewlry.asp
http://www.weddingband.com/somos.html - this site shows my ring - it's the in the 6th row, the third one over. My band is 18k yellow gold, with platinum shoulders and head.

Can you tell I love my ring?

Ok, anyway, the wedding is September 29th of this year. I live in the Albany NY area, but the wedding will be in Michigan. Fun doing this all long-distance.

Wedding should be around 80 guests, if I can get DF to keep it that small. The fact that all his friends and family will have to travel from NY to MI should keep that list smaller than it would be.

I have a DJ, a photographer, the church and reception location. I've decided to do individual table cakes for centerpieces on each table, and my mom may be doing them (probably 12 tables), so we'll save $$ there.

Wedding party is small -just my sister and DF's niece for me, his brother and nehphew for him.

Flowers are still a big question mark. I LOVE tulips, so may splurge on them just for me, then something more seasonal for the gals. I may do potted mums in the church and around the reception, and then just something for the head table.

I went looking at dresses at David's Briday just this past Friday. I really don't want strapless or sleeveless, but there are few options. My arms are my biggest trouble area, even when I'm in better shape, so I'd rather not be showing them off. Has anyone seen anything with sleeves by anyone?

I've narrowed what David's has down to about 10 that I plan to try on soon, but will check some other bridal stores soon. I'm still thinking I may do something less formal- maybe a nice mother's dress, or even a bridesmaid dress - I just have to start looking and looking...

Not sure on colors yet - I want to go with fall colors - something like gold and red, or burnt orange, but it will really depend on the dress styles and color availability.

For favors I really like the "perfect pair" candles - getting those on eBay, and then am doing a clear favor box w/gold ribbon containing Juicy Pear jelly bellys in them to go with. That is all gold and green, so that's another possibility for the color scheme. We plan to do silk autumn-colored leaves on the tables.

Thats about all so far. I guess the dress is really my next big focus for now.

Oh, and for our honeymoon we are splurging on a European cruise on Royal Caribbean. Barcelona, Nice, Florence, Rome, Naples and Sicily. A rather hectic schedule, but we wanted to go to Europe, but wanted it to be easy. A floating hotel room helps!
Cindy

Cindy - wow, your plans sound amazing! We are also doing the cruise honeymoon, but we didn't want to fly, so we're going to Mexico. Europe was definitely on our short list, though - just couldn't work it with flights.

I have dress fitting pictures for you ladies!

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y12...Fitting007.jpg

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y12...Fitting008.jpg

Those give you a fairly good view of the back...

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y12...Fitting006.jpg

And finally of Sarah:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y12...Fitting005.jpg

I just lost a long response. Oh well...

Cindy- Your wedding plans sound lovely so far. I am running into the same problem that you are with sleeved dresses- I would like one with sleeves probably, but so many of the options are sleeveless, especially at david's. One dress shop lady told me to not rule out sleeveless, since a bolero is always an option. If I come across anything good I will let you know.

Mandalinn- Your dress is looking lovely! with the primary reason being how slim you are looking- congratulations, I hope you are really happy with your success.

Nelie- Those flowers are pretty, I like them. I may have to keep those in mind.

Well, I'm off. Everyone take care!

Nelie, the flowers you want are sooo pretty! and i love your dress Mandalinn! You both look so great!

Well, while you guys are all on to flowers and gowns and final countdowns, I think I may have found the engagement ring I want I originally was thinking of maybe not having a big center diamond because I really want something different, but I think I found it over the weekend. I can NOT, though, for the life of me, find a picture of it anywhere online, even though I saw the same setting in 3 different stores yesterday, which is really frustrating because I want a picture of it.

Anyway, my best to describe it: it's white gold (I don't really wear yellow gold jewelry, so I knew I wanted white gold), and it has a round diamond in the center with a deep blue sapphire on each side. What makes it really unique is that the sapphires on the sides are not round nor baguettes, but rather they are square stones tilted to be diamond shape. There are also small round channel-set diamonds on the band--I prefer not to have a plain band.

madalinn – You look just stunning, the dress looks like it fits perfectly. I’d love it if you could get Sarah’s opinion on the tulips and if there’s a way to get them to last throughout the day.

Jason totally surprised me with the ring. He picked it out all by himself, I think he did a really nice job! These pictures don’t really do it justice but you get the idea.

I hadn’t even thought of looking on e-bay for the dress. I might look onto that, if I can save some money on the dress I can maybe splurge on getting it altered to be just the way I want it.

shan- Your ring is pretty! That's great that he picked it out himself. It must have been an exciting suprise!

Jill- Sounds like you found a really nice one. I like that it has sapphires- that color will be lovely I'm sure.

The boy and I spent time discussing reception food last night. We both really like to have food from different cultures, so here is what we are talking about:

It will be a buffet-style meal, with three different areas to choose food from. One station will be indian- (which we both love! and a lot of our family has never even tried) Another station will be a local Italian shop which has cool sandwiches, and has sentimental value for us. The third we are thinking will be greek- so people can make their own gyros. It sounds sort of expensive, but we were getting quotes from people, and it sounds like it will be the same price or a little less than going out to some fancy restaurant and paying for a meal. Plus, this is so much more US. I'm really excited about it, I hope we can make it work.

BFL- we are thinking about doing the individual table cakes as well. I saw that in a magazine and got excited about the idea. I like the idea that people could choose a table based on what kind of cake they like, or that they could barter with other tables or something.

So, I'm having a little bit of a struggle with the wedding planning/eating conundrum. It seems like I am eating out SO MUCH MORE as these final weeks are coming up. This weekend - Saturday we met with our friends to talk about flowers for their wedding, not ours, over dinner - one meal out. Tonight we're meeting with our hairstylist/friend over dinner to discuss our wedding hair - another meal out. Shower - tons of food. My sister's shower - again with tons of food. Rehearsal dinner - tons of food. Continuing onward up until the weddding.

90% of my weight loss success has been due to me cooking at home, grocery shopping, and planning. The other 10% of the equation has been exercising...and my regular gym time falls right during the standard "social" hour...so I've had to sneak in half-workouts wherever I can. So how are the other brides out there dealing with this? I know - make good choices at restaurants, watch portions, etc, and thats all well and good, but its starting to slow my losses down and make me unhappy with the scale in the morning.

Thoughts?

Hey neat, I just found this thread Always more than happy to chat wedding!

DF and I have been engaged for a year and 8ish months. We're getting married June 30th (which is almost exactly 100 days away--eek!).

I'm glad to see that for the most part you ladies like things pretty simple... The average cost of a wedding nowadays is apparently around $22k, which I can't even imagine! Sheesh! Anyway, it makes me feel like less of an oddball to be planning something pretty low-key.

We're having about 50 people, although if it were up to DF's mother, we'd have half of Brazil up here in no time. (He's from Brazil originally... read Catholic... read family-centric... read fond of giant weddings!)

Here's what I have so far:

My dress. It's actually a bridesmaid's dress! I didn't want a train anyway... It's a little dramatic for my taste... So this was the perfect compromise. It was very affordable and it is also very beautiful.
Here's a link to the dress:
http://www.alexiadesigns.com/main/index.php?p=124
Be sure to check out the back of it, too. That's my favorite part Have to find undergarments, though, that go low enough for that back... There's a problem to be solved. It's shown in white and claret, mine is in ivory and claret. Subtle difference, but I'm pale enough to begin with and don't need pure white against me!

My locale: We're having a lunch reception and the ceremony on the site of a bed and breakfast in northern VA: http://www.thebluerockinn.com/
It's surprisingly not incredibly expensive, and it's so beautiful! Also, the general manager is just about the nicest guy I've ever worked with, it makes the deal even better. I haven't figured out what to do with the evening yet. We don't want to dance, but we want to get everyone together once I'm out of the dress.... Maybe we'll take over my dad's farm and have a bbq

The cake is made by the b&b, and one of the owners of the b&b also owns a flower shop in Crystal City and therefore claims all the wedding flower business from weddings at the b&b. So those two things are set. We're getting one arrangement for the mantle in the dining room, then some kind of bouquets for me and my girls. Have no idea about colors or kinds of flowers!

I got a photographer off craigslist, actually.... A middle-aged married couple who want to get into wedding photography seriously. They've done a few, mostly family weddings, but they do very nice work. For two people they're only asking $500! I guess they see this as building up their portfolio... And when they're more established they can ask an arm and a leg like everyone else. They are very friendly and I'm incredibly happy to have found them.

I think the main thing I'm missing is someone to actually marry us!! We're having a civil ceremony. We might use the same guy my dad and stepmother married with.... It would be neat. But for some reason having a person actually perform the ceremony has taken a backseat to silly things like dresses!

Ooh, have to talk about rings too! In January I finally found my perfect wedding band. It's still with DF for fear that I will start wearing it right away The engagement ring he gave me is estate jewelry from the 1940's and was very difficult to match in style with a wedding band. There is one central diamond and six smaller flanking diamonds, three on each side. The trick is, they're bead-set. So of course I want the diamonds on the wedding band to match... Nowadays most diamonds are either claw-set or channel-set in the ring, both of which look silly sitting next to my engagement ring. But such are the modern tastes. After going to MANY different stores and being told over and over again I'd have to get my ring custom made (for more $$), I finally found this little tiny independent shop. The owner designs and creates his own jewelry... And there it was! He had made an engagement/wedding set which had a bead-set wedding band, and he let us just get the band. So that's that story. I can't wait to wear it



Somehow talking about my wedding makes me feel like I'm more prepared than I actually am! I keep thinking I ought to be worried/stressed out about it because people expect me to be... But I think I have a lot under control... Along with juggling a job and grad school and immigration applications for DF, I think I've done pretty well!!

David's bridal has an undergarment with a low enough back - its the one I'm wearing with my dress (and I think the backs are similarly low). I just googled "low back bridal bustier" and found several. Just make sure whatever you buy is marked as "low back".

Your plans sound GORGEOUS...and that dress is amazing! My cousin is wearing a very similar one for her wedding in June.

We did a very similar thing with our photographer - only he had just moved to San Francisco, and was looking for gay weddings for his portfolio. 20% discount off his standard rates to be his token gay couple...he is a sweetie.

Do you have someone very special in your lives who could officiate? They can become an ordained minister online at www.ulc.org, giving them the legal permission to officiate your ceremony. Sometimes, the perfect person to officiate isn't an official at all - its someone more close to home.

I think our wedding is probably the most "formal/traditional" of what is being planned in this thread, and we did that on purpose. Our thinking is that having the traditional wedding format would make people more comfortable with the untraditional wedding...and this is indeed the feedback we are getting from our more traditional guests. Gives them an idea of what to expect since the ceremony itself is going to be a new sort of thing.