A Dress, A Dress, To Find a Dress (Prt. 1)

So...I am not too interested in going all the way back through all of my old posts and seeing if I ever talked about the J. Crew Daphne dress. I know I had it in my inspiration boards, but I'm not sure if I talked about it being my favorite dress out of ALL THE DRESSES. I've been watching a lot of Say Yes to the Dress on the old Roku lately while I dick around on the computer, and I totally understand all these girls who look at every dress and hate it. I looked through so many dresses in magazines and online, and never once saw a dress I wanted to maybe try on. My issues with picking a wedding dress were:

1. I don't particularly like white dresses. I've only ever owned one in my whole life, and it only looks good when I'm mega-tan.
2. I don't particularly like 90% of the wedding dresses out there.
3. I tend to daydream about what's beautiful, not necessarily what looks beautiful on me.

Keeping all of those things in mind, I finally happened onto a few different posts about the J. Crew Daphne dress:

Image via here

I fell in love. It was effortlessly beautiful. I loved that it had pockets, I loved that it looked like something you didn't have to wear complicated undergarments with, it didn't have some crazy train that would have to be bustled and shoved into a taxi at the end of the night. I knew it would be figure flattering because empire waisted dresses and things look good on me, plus they're universally figure flattering. It was simple, classic and lovely. Given that we married at a bakery called Lovely, it made sense to have such a dress. Only one problem...they stopped making it years ago. I scoured the internet, but of course *when* I was able to maybe, kind of, not really find this highly sought after dress, I, of course, only found sample sizes. Ladies, I present to you my non-sample size ass:

photo by me!

I became disheartened. I couldn't even bring myself to consider other dresses. I had looked through many, and had been blogging about and therefore seeing a lot of weddings, and I just didn't like my options. Plus, I couldn't afford to spend a ton of cash on a wedding dress. I wasn't one of those Kleinfeld's Brides who busts outs with a "I absolutely cannot go above $10,000," as if that kind of money is just no big deal. It is a big deal. Whether, in terms of wedding planning or not, we want to admit it, $10K is a lot of money. And I didn't have it to blow on some dress that matched the dress of my dreams that was universally sold out.

Not being able to find the Daphne dress left me without any real ideas for what to do about a wedding dress. Whereas most girls get their dress first, I seemed to be doing everything BUT the dress. Everyone would ask me if I had picked out my dress yet, and I would always sheepishly respond that no, I hadn't. I finally decided that I had two options: have a replica of the Daphne made OR find a vintage dress. The vintage dress idea was really my preference, and what I would have wanted. It made sense given our location and the look of our wedding, as well as my personal taste. But shopping vintage is a tough deal for me. I'm tall, large chested, wide-shouldered, and though I have big hips, I do not have a big butt or big thighs. I know I'm describing a clown right now, but really, the point I'm trying to convey is that vintage sizes do not always match up with my body, and so buying vintage clothes is always a pain in the ass...and now (or then, rather), I'm only heavier, so I can only imagine how much harder it's going to be. That's when my friend B-Mac told me her mother would be willing to make my dress...

...And that's also where I end this post. Tomorrow, I will post the rest of the story. That's right, I'm annoying like that. Seriously though, this post will go on and on forever, and you will get bored. I must break it up. Check back for the rest of the dress story. You'll appreciate the ending (I should be sainted for what I went through with my wedding dress).

Another Montreal Wedding and the Baby Brigade

Hello readers...I know you're out there, even if there are only a handful of you...leave me a comment (or two)...I'm lonely. No, really, though, I'm feeling the pressure to rebuild my readership. It's tough. I don't know how I did it before.

Anywho...we are back from Montreal. I loved it. I loved it so much I want to live there, but alas, I think that will sadly never happen. Oh well! We'll just have to take more trips there, I suppose. We got back early Monday and I've been going, going ever since. I started a life drawing class I'm taking, which goes all night every Wednesday. So needless to say my eye has been twitching from fatigue all week. I do have today off, though (summer hours, baby!), and I plan on relaxing, and doing more redecorating. I'm also in the middle of creating a new blog for our friends and family that posts pictures of, you know, our life and stuff, as well as posting the candids from our wedding on Picasa for our family. Oi! It's too much! Plus, believe it or not, we still have thank you cards to do! It just seems like every weekend we have nothing planned, and then two days before the weekend, the whole damn thing books up! So insane.

Anyway, would you believe that on our last day in Montreal, we saw another wedding?

Another wedding in Montreal...the bride was making weird poses in the middle of the street

The bride consults with her photographers post-middle of the street shot

So insane...that makes three total!


Besides the wedding though, I've been feeling a bit of post-wedding ennui lately. I'm also a bit depressed. The ennui-pression (that's my combo word for a bored depression) seems to be the result of two major things:

1. The fact that all these bloggers I read before the wedding all have babies now.
2. The loss of my job.

The loss of my job has hit me especially hard because I've come to the realization that I've been busting my ass for ten years and it never seems to work out. A.P. and I were lying in bed last night, and all of a sudden I broke down crying. Not because I am sad about being jobless, though that is part of it. But moreso because I am tired. I'm tired of working so hard and never getting a break. And I'm tired of being broke. I thought I was finally going to be stable and it turns out, not so much. I don't know if anyone can really understand this, but it's how I feel. And it makes my desire to look for another job and have to go through all of that business all over again nil.

The other thing that has me feeling strange these days is the sense that everyone is having babies. And even though I said up there that it was partially due to fact that all these bloggers seem to have babies so soon after getting married (e.g. A Cup of Jo's Joanna Goddard, A Lovely Morning's Kristina), I also have friends who are having babies, and other friends who are so much more certain that's what they want. I'm not. Even a little. I know I would love a child if I had one and that I would be a good mother, and that A.P. would be a good father. No one has any doubts about any of that. I just don't know if I want to be pregnant, if I want to have children crying, if I want my life permanently altered by the inclusion of children. There is so much I want to do before I have kids: be more successful in my career, pursue my talents, travel, own a home, hell I'd like to own a freaking car. Children seemed closer when I had permanent employment, but now, they seem so far away. As does permanent housing, permanent transportation, fleeting travel, and all the rest of it.

I don't know, maybe my ennui-pression is all a result of my deep-seated disappointment that nothing in my life has really changed. And I know some of you might think, "But you're married! You got married!" But all that really does for me is remind me that I blew a bunch of cash on a wedding, and that I now occasionally get weird mail addressed to a person I'm not (I kept my name...and I googled the alternative, and that girl is a crazy party girl who is friends with Miley Cyrus...seriously not me). Don't get me wrong, I don't regret getting married at all, but I just can't help but think I probably could have waited another year or two...money-wise.

A little Montreal French/English Humor

Ugh...any advice for how to get out of this funk??

Montreal Saturdays: A Day for Weddings

We are still in Montreal, and are having a great time. I'm getting wiped after walking around for just a few hours, though, and I'm wondering how, in my younger traveling days, I could walk all day and night and not be tired! Anyway, just a quick post (because it seemed apropos of the blog) to show you some snapshots of the TWO weddings we saw today. First, we went to go to the Basilique Notre-Dame, only to find out they weren't admitting tourists because of the wedding that was occurring there today. Just as we were about to leave, the bells started chiming and the usher at the entrance pushed us all to the side, and out came the bride and groom! So beautiful! All these tourists started cheering and taking pictures, and it made me think that it wasn't too long ago that we were in the same boat. I love that sense of community you feel when you witness a newly married couple, and everyone smiling and being kind. It's so beautiful.

The happy couple exiting Basilique Notre-Dame

Center of attention

The second wedding was literally a hop, skip and jump away at the Palais de Justice, where another newly married couple were having photos taken. So fun! Later, we saw the first couple again in a horse and buggy sipping champagne. They were smiling, speaking French, and having a great time. Their horse had pink hair! I, unfortunately, couldn't pull out my camera fast enough to snap a picture of that, but still, seeing all those brides and grooms wandering around Vieux-Montreal really added a sense of romance to this weekend.

Limos awaiting their bride and groom in front of the Palais de Justice

Close-up of the bride and groom being photographed

I hope everyone is enjoying their 4th of July weekend! Joyeux fete d'independence!

The Invitation

A.P. and I are getting ready to jet off to Montreal for the weekend. Seriously. One of our wedding gifts was a free round trip ticket to anywhere in Canada, and A.P. and I decided to take a quick weekend trip to French Canada! Yay! We leave at the ass crack of dawn tomorrow morning and return Monday afternoon. It should be fun, and I'm looking forward to speaking French. I studied the language for sixteen and a half years, and I haven't really had the opportunity to speak it in action in about eight years. I'm terrified of sounding like a total dumbass, misconjugating verbs and whatnot. However, I'm hoping that by the end of the weekend, it will all come flooding back to me. Right in time for the trip home!

Anyway, as promised, I'm trying to get back into the blog of things, and I figure that the easiest place to start was our invitation. The invitation itself was based on a design I made. I would scan that in and show you, but our designer still has it! Yikes! Anyway, the scroll around the wording, the two birds and the initials at the top were all featured in my sketch. I also picked the font and style of the wording, having done a mockup in Word to go with my sketch. Then, the rest is just good collaboration.

Growing up I was a huge babysitter. I worked for so many families, and made a ton of money. I pretty much worked every weekend from 4th-8th grade for one family, C. Blonde. She was like my cool aunt (though she would argue mother number two), and I was not only really close to her, but I learned a lot from her. She also happens to be a graphic designer by trade. So when I was done living in la la land and thinking I was going to silkscreen all those invitations (seriously...what planet was I on?), I went to her with my sketch in hand. She took that and designed this suite for us:

Invitation

Label
RSVP Card - Front

RSVP Card - Back

The invitation was printed on uncoated card stock, and was actually 11x17. The RSVP cards were large postcard size. What we did was center and clip the RSVP cards to the bottom of the invitation with gold paperclips, then rolled up the invitations, clipping both ends with gold paperclips. We then mailed them out in tubes with the labels affixed to the front. My mother, who has the most beautiful penmanship, did any and all writing for the wedding, including addressing 70 invitations. In the end, though, all the hard work was worth it. The end result was simply beautiful. We have a ton of invites, labels, and RSVP cards left over, all of which I plan on incorporating into a shadow box with some of the photos from the wedding. My mother is also going to write out one last label with our current address on it, which will go on a tube and also be put in the shadow box. But, as all you already marrieds out there know, this will probably happen in five years when I get around to it.

Anyway, here are some photos of us laboring to get our invitations sent out to play you out. Have a great 4th of July weekend!

All the stuffed tubes waiting to be labeled

A.P. readying the completed tubes for stamps

Me, stamping the tubes...3 $.64 stamps per tube! Oy!

Home Again, Home Again, Jiggety Jig

I am slowly trying to make a return to blogging. My life got really crazy, and the past six months have been tiring. Here's the recap:

January: We become completely overwhelmed with wedding planning. I come home from long days at work, and start my other job as a wedding planner. I return to work after our Florida vacation, and my boss chews out my whole department. Things become intense at work. A.P.'s birthday comes and goes with only a wee bit of celebration.

February: Wedding is sooo close I can taste it, and A.P. and I are fighting all the time about seemingly everything. I am overwhelmed. He is overwhelmed. We are overwhelmed. Valentine's Day comes and goes without much fanfare. A.P. loses his job.

March: My birthday comes and goes without any celebration. Wedding planning kicks into high gear. I find out I have to start going to physical therapy for my knee, twice a week. As if I have any time for that! My friend, the Half-breed Swede, comes into town (all the way from England!!) one week before the wedding and saves my ass. She keeps me calm (or as calm as possible) and helps me finish up a ton of last minute DIY projects. The wedding comes (and goes by too fast). I am an hour late to my own wedding (more on that later), but otherwise everything was wonderful. My department at work throws me this awesome surprise pre-wedding lunch and are so kind to me that it makes up for the insanity that has become my job. A.P. gets a job right before the wedding. Phew.

April: We go to Belize for our honeymoon. So awesome. I come back and taxes are due, and work is insane, and every muscle that was relaxed on that too short of a honeymoon tenses and before I know it, I'm back to being a crazy person. I still have to go to physical therapy, and am working long hours. A.P. starts his new job.

May: At the end of staff appreciation week, I lose my job. So much for appreciation. The kicker? I still have to work there for the next month and a half. Some of my superiors simply stop talking to me. I am depressed, and beaten down, and feel like shit. I have no will to look for a job (which sadly is still true).

June: Work ends (badly). I start a new temporary gig which will last me most of the summer, and then I'm officially unemployed. I am redecorating our apartment. We ended up getting a lot of money instead of gifts, so we bought a ton of stuff off of our registry, and I'm redecorating. Our goal was to move out of this place into a bigger place, but now that I'm jobless, it's just not in the cards. So instead, I'm making due and making this place awesome and liveable.

So that's the recap. It's tough coming back after such a long absence. I know I'll have to rebuild my readership, and of course, I have to post the wedding recap. I took all these pictures of the projects I did for the wedding, so that I could write some DIY posts, but I think I'll have to save those for later. In the mean time, I hope that you all will come back and read some time. I miss writing the blog, and there really wasn't a week that went by between this past December and now where I didn't think about blogging. It feels good to be back and to write again.

De-Stressed

Even though I secretly dislike going to Florida with A.P., that trip did us some good. It wasn't relaxing, per se, and we were definitely happy to be home with the animals, and sleeping in our beds again, but we were so occupied with family and friends, and gifts and food, that there was no time to think or focus on wedding planning. It gave my mind a break, which was nice (and totally in line with half of the advice posted in response to my last blog entry).

We got back on Sunday and took it easy and then A.P. had the day off yesterday. We did wedding stuff, and everything we did took a load off my shoulders. Originally I was going to silkscreen the invites. There are only going to be about 45, and I figured it wouldn't be that hard. But finding time was becoming an issue, and truth be told, I'm not some master silkscreener. I had no idea where I was going to find the workspace since we are already running out of room (our tiny dining table is covered in wedding crap, and there are shopping bags underneath the table filled with crap for various DIY projects). So I finally made a decision that we were just going to have them printed. I didn't even care if they were going to be printed at Kinko's. I just didn't want to deal with this cloud of getting these invitations done.

So yesterday, we went to Kinko's and asked some questions about high-resolution printing and blah blah blah. We got a quote back, which was super cheap. We left feeling okay about our decision. We knew they wouldn't be that beautiful anymore and that they wouldn't be anywhere near as handcrafted as we wanted them, but they would be done, and sent and out of our hair. From Kinko's, we headed over to our friend C. Blonde's house. C. Blonde is designing our invites based on a sketch I made and some text I drew up in a font/pattern that I like. This is the other thing that was stressing me out about the invites: C. Blonde. C. Blonde is awesome, but she is kind of nutty sometimes. I had wanted to stop by and drop off the sketch, and explain to her how I envisioned our invitations, and she told me to just put the sketch in the mail. I didn't think she'd take it seriously, and so I kind of already imagined crappy invitations. Anyway, I didn't have stamps, and so I didn't end up sending out the stupid sketch. After Kinko's we were heading to Paper Source, and C. Blonde's house was right in the middle, so I figured we could just drop it off. I anticipated putting it in her hands and leaving, but she was actually really cool. She talked to me about what I wanted, and let us pick out the colors we're going to use, and yeah, I'm excited to see what her version of our vision turns out to be. Once we get the digital proof I will post it here.

The other thing that happened on our visit with C. Blonde is that she made me feel really calm about getting these invites done in time. I told her I was freaking out and that I was worried these weren't going to get done in time, and when I told her that we just needed them by the end of January, she goes, "You mean you don't need them in 2 hours?" and started laughing. She told me that was plenty of time to get everything done. She's also having them printed at her printer, which means, that while we're not back to individually handmade invitations, we will at least have high end printing. And we ditched our trip to Paper Source altogether, because we're getting it direct from the printer now through C. Blonde's connection. All in all, it was totally worthwhile for me to go drop off the sketch directly. It made me feel so much calmer about the whole ordeal of these invitations.

The other big relief is that I finally handed off some projects to A.P. One of the big struggles with A.P. doing any wedding related projects is that many of them require him to be more, ahem, creative. He's an analyst. He thinks with a math/economics brain. I can't ask the man to go to a thrift store or an antique shop and magically find objects to fit into the vision for our centerpieces that is in my head. So I was having a hard time handing off projects to him. But I finally came up with two: music and hotel. Since 1/3 of our guest list is coming in from out of town, we will be in desperate need of some hotel rooms come wedding day. I started to do research, but with all the other projects that need to get done, I was worried that I wouldn't be able to get the hotel project done. Then I delegated to A.P. Makes sense for him to take on that project. After all, it's part of the planning, and it's not something you have to be creative to do. I also asked him to start compiling music lists. I'm going to find some other projects he can help me do, but I feel better that I just asked him to do specific things, rather than "just help." It's also made us less naggy with each other. We'll see how it goes, but for now, it's a weight off my shoulders.

Stay tuned...I'm posting some centerpieces, some major details about our wedding and details from my first wedding dress shopping experience! Hope everyone had a good holiday!

Okay, I'm Kind of Freaking Out

Seriously. What have I gotten myself into??? I haven't blogged in a week and a half because I'm overwhelmed. I'm on a diet that isn't going so well as of last Thursday because of the holidays AND because I'm on vacation for the next two weeks. This means, I'm hungry and cranky all the time. I haven't done ANY Christmas shopping. Christmas is FOUR days away. We're going to Florida for Christmas to be with A.P.'s family. Half of my wardrobe is soiled and in the hamper. We have exactly THREE months until the wedding as of this coming Sunday and we have SO. MUCH. TO. DO. So, I ask you again: WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO???

Here's the reality of the situation. I'd like to lie and tell you that wedding planning is bringing A.P. and I closer together. I'd like all you girls out there who aren't engaged yet to believe the lies and the fantasy and the commercials that show the man super into it and doing everything he is asked to do. I'd like you to believe that wedding planning is heavenly and romantic and will make you feel like you are the world's only couple in love every day of your damn life, but I'd be a huge, fat liar. And I'm already kind of fat, so I don't need to add liar to my repertoire.

The thing is, I know that many of the blogs that I read even would like you to believe that men do so much when it comes to wedding planning because it's meaningful to them, too. But here's one of those few times in my life where I cross the aisle and join my average joes, and their football jersey-wearing wives. Men hate wedding planning. Even if you've got yourself a man who is doing it, they are HATING it right now as we speak. They are texting their football watching buddies (and their football jersey-wearing wives) and griping about picking out paper for the invitations. They are just being nice. They do it because they love you.

And then there's me. I'm the girl who knows this about men. I have three brothers and a bevy of male friends. I should know this about men. And so because I know this about men, I don't push A.P. to do a ton when it comes to the wedding. Sure I bitch and moan and complain about doing everything and I passively aggressively make remarks about the fact that I asked A.P. to revise the budget spreadsheet over a week ago and I haven't gotten it yet, BUT I DON'T PUSH. I just come home from my long ass day of work, and start working my second job as a party planner. And for the most part I enjoy it. I really do. I like planning parties and always have. I love picking out small details. I love how everything comes together. And I love the actual party: the nonstop fun, the memories, the laughter.

But this time, I am in over my head. There's just too much to do, and it's coinciding with too many other big things: my first year at my new job, my family's health problems, my sister moving to India for two years, A.P.'s mother passing away, the holidays, A.P.'s 30th bday, my 29th bday, and so much more that I'm probably not considering or can anticipate. And look at what we still have left to do:

- invitations (HUGE PROJECT!)
- hotel for wedding prep and for wedding guests
- favors (HUGE PROJECT)
- rings
- still need stuff for the centerpieces and for the reception - thrifting (HUGE PROJECT)
- music lists for cocktail, ceremony, dinner and dancing
- vows
- honeymoon
- registry (HUGE PROJECT)
- photobooth props
- attire (A.P.'s and my own)
- place cards

So, I ask you one final time: WHAT HAVE I GOTTEN MYSELF INTO??? And more importantly, how do I get through it? I'm writing A.P. an email right now telling him he no longer has a choice. He simply has to help me, and pretend he likes it, because I just can't go to the store and try on his freaking suit for him, and I just can't pick where we're honeymooning. I can't hand make 50 or so invitations and mailers. Because if I do, mark my words people, I WILL LOSE MY MIND.

On the plus side, I finally figured out why people have attendants. Because you throw shit at them to do, and they do it. Perhaps that's really my issue...I should have asked people to be my "throw shit at people" people.