Bridesmaids (344 Days to Go)

So I'm currently attempting to try and gather a majority of my bridesmaids together for a bridesmaid luncheon and to go shopping for dresses.  Yes, it's early.  But some of them are students, currently unemployed, etc. etc. such that I figure if we go now, then there's time to sit back, stash up the cash, wait for a sale, and all of that good stuff.  But by going and picking a dress now, I can end a few more annoying conversations and scratch one more thing off my list as far as stress inducers.

Sometimes I feel as much as I try to be cooperative and easy going on the girls, the harder things become on me because Jeff and I's mothers are old-fashioned about how the bridesmaids should be dressed.  Back in the 80s when they were getting wed, bridesmaids wore heinous, matchy-matchy dresses.  Now, today the trend is leaning much more towards the bridesmaids wearing whatever style best suits them in a general colorway.  But because we have a rainbow bridal party, I have more pressure being put on me to force them all into the same style dress.  Essentially, if I don't, I can look forward to a minimum of five years of complaining everytime the wedding pictures are looked at.  

Compound into that, both of our mothers feel that the Mothers' dresses are just too "matronly" and "old" for them.  Certainly at fifty they aren't so old that they can't wear something from the bridesmaid dress rack, right?  I guess they're trying to cope with the fact that they're old enough to have children getting married in their own way.  So, if I let the bridesmaids pick what they want, and being all different colors, I'm going to end up with the mothers and maids blending together with nothing but a few wrinkles to tell the difference.  And why yes, I've made a relatively obvious suggestion that the mothers wear a patterned dress and the maids were solids.  Nada in the cooperation department.  This is when I start wanting to bang my head on my desk, which is metal by the way.  And yes, they're insisting on wearing the same material too.  These are stubborn women, I tell you.  Nothing can ever persuade them to get off a subject until it's too late to have much more effect, but then you can still look forward to some disheartened griping that they were ignored in the decision making process.  Toss into the mix, the junior bridesmaid (aka mini bridezilla, aka MBZ) who wants to wear my wedding gown and have a date to walk her down the aisle and I've got one heck of a pot boiling over.  And seriously, it's all over what people are going to wear?  I suddenly understand the appeal of the nudist wedding.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to dictate the fashion choices of my mom and FMIL, however, I don't appreciate that they're dictating the fashion of my bridesmaids.  I mean seriously, when does that ever go well?  Because all it does is then complicate the issue of making them happy all the more.  And boy, do I get tired of hearing and phrase that starts with the word "Just".  "Just" is someone's way of making things sound easy.  As in "Just do it", "Just say no", etc., etc.  Or my personal favorite: "That just doesn't make sense."  Please, if the word "just" ever comes out of my mouth, slap me silly.  I deserve it.



Henkaa
Convertible Dresses



But I did come up with a third option that will set my girls apart, let them be individuals, make them identical for the ceremony and pictures and silence the mothers.  Now, if I can only get the girls to go along with it.  It's convertible dresses.  I figure, they agree on one of fifty some styles for the ceremony and pictures, and when we duck away somewhere to bustle my train before entering the reception, they can reconfigure their dress into any style they want.  That way they get to feel like they got to completely change dresses between ceremony and reception.  It's a win-win...at least for me.  I just hope the girls will see it that way too.

I ordered one of the dresses for myself to wear as a bridesmaid in Becca's wedding.  They're supposed to be one size fits most, so I figure the girls can play with mine and see if they like it when we get together later this month.  I'm crossing my fingers.  I really need to start nailing down details and therefore nailing problems to the wall.

Engagement Photos Today--Eep! (348 Days to Go)

The day of the engagement photos has arrived.  I even somehow managed to miraculously convince Jeff to pull together his clothes, hats, and shoes to wear for our pictures.  Well, I'm close on the shoes, at least.  He's told me he's wearing his Berks and red Chucks.  Will the miracles never cease?

So why do I feel like I'm about to toss my single cookie that I called breakfast this morning?

Could it be that I have three and a half hours from the time I get off work to get hair and make up done, pick up dinner, eat with my fiance, drag him out of his workplace an hour before the shop closes without having to commit patricide in the midst?  Oh, and the manicure I gave myself last night: well, I apparently managed to rub the french tips off in my sleep.  Go me.  So I think I'm now going to also try to squeeze a mani into the picture somehow too.

Or is it merely a delayed reaction to the realization that I'm going to have to hire a private detective to find my father and get him to my wedding next year?

I'd like to think that I'm not really nervous about getting pictures taken of myself.  I mean, I thought I was excited about it because I'm so often the one stuck behind the camera that there are so very few pictures of me, let alone of both Jeff and I together.  Actually, pictures of me are such a rarity, that baby picture are even hard to come by.  Childhood are actually near impossible.  Apparently photographic documentation was not my family's strong suit. 

Perhaps it's just an absurdly strong urge to make sure they're perfect.  I will admit I've been a mite OCD on that.  But his family's huge, and I haven't met even the smallest fraction that his parents insist on inviting.  Therefore, these pictures will quite literally be my first and only impression on these people before and if they come to the wedding.  As I told Jeff, I'd prefer that his family be under the impression that he scored a hot, city girl rather than a frumpy, country girl.  Why let it ever enter their minds that he might be settling (as opposed to settling down), right? 

And the same goes for my family.  The opportunities for Jeff to meet anyone on my side of the family has been few and far between.  I want him to look good too.  Growing up, I was the girl who never dated, so I'd hate for my family to think that I settled for the first guy that gave me a second look.  My family's bizarre and there's already been muffled discussion that I must have gotten knocked up or something.  I feel this might stem from the fact that I came from a small town with too little to talk about and that there was a mistaken rumor before I'd even met Jeff that I was having twins.  Long story, but the short version is, a friend of my mom's was knitting baby sweaters for twins.  I want them to be able to see him the way that I do--as the fun, incredible, handsome, funny guy that he is.  I want them to see how incredibly lucky I am to have found Mr. Right and My Best Friend after having gone through only one Mr. Oh-So-Very-Wrong.

But then I'm back to the whole missing father incident too.   My father is a nervous fella.  Probably why he ended up becoming an alcoholic.  He's always had problems with his parents and hasn't had very much luck with marriage either.  But, he has a bad habit of when he feels pressured of managing a disappearing act that would make the CIA jealous.  Now, for the past two or so years, he's been dry.  I've been proud.  Everyone else has been harassing him for money (ex-wife #1: my mom), to move his vehicles off their property (ex-wife #2), and to go to rehab (his parents).  The last time he disappeared, he turned up in California with my eldest ex-stepbrother.  Impressive considering he was under probation in the state of Maryland for DUI.  This time, nobody knows where he's gone to. 

You might think that I'm making excuses for him.  I'm not really.  I'm peeved that he's pulled this disappearing act again.  All I wanted was to let him know when and where to be for our father-daughter dance.  But I also feel bad for him too.  I feel sorry that his instinct is to shut himself away from everyone instead of reaching out instead.  I guess he just doesn't know how or doesn't realize that anyone's willing to listen without asking for anything in return.  And I guess I have just enough daddy issues that I'm willing to be that one person.  But I really for sorry if I'm the only person who is willing.  For a bunch of people who consider themselves good Christians, it's a shame none of them know how to listen.

Mother's Day Gifts (403 Days to Go)

So Jeff and I went shopping for a mother's day gift for his mother this weekend.  I had already gotten and given my mother her gift at Easter: a gift card for the Pirates so that she and her boyfriend could go to a game of their choice sometime this month.

Jeff had in his mind a charm bracelet that could have all the birthstones for everyone in the family.  Since the family is grown exponentially fast recently and hardly anyone's birth months overlapped, it seemed excessive to try to buy a ring at this time.  When we got to the jewelry store we found out that there weren't any linked chains that could be used for charm bracelets.  Jeff was a little frustrated that the only options they had in that style cost a couple hundred dollars.  Apparently Pandora has quite literally knocked down the demand of the traditional charm bracelet such that you can't even find them anymore. 

So, there we were look at Pandora bracelets.The first step was picking out chain which Jeff went with a silver lobster claw.  We also decided to get at least one clip in order to make sure that the beads stay in place the way they're supposed to without the risk of them falling off.  We went with this one:

We next checked out the different options for birth stones.  Jeff wanted to start with just his own and his brother's and for the following holidays we would start to fill in the rest.  It sounded like a great idea until we started adding up the cost of the different charms and the add-ons that we hadn't expected, such as the clip.  The birthstone charms that the lady first showed us were definitely a) out of our price range and b) completely inappropriate to represent her two sons.

Our second option was a dangling charm for the birthstones but I told Jeff that on my "knock-off" bracelet that the dangling charms tended to press into my wrist awkwardly or get caught on things.  So we quickly decided against that particular style of charms.  Especially since we were informed that they were discontinued and we'd never have a chance to get a matched set by the time Christmas rolled around.

The third option was a more recent design that wasn't necessarily meant to be birthstones but just came in a wide variety of stone colors.  We liked these, but it was still out of our budget to afford both Jeff and his brother's stones and didn't seem right to buy only one of theirs.

So we started contemplating what single charm we could buy that would be appropriate for Mother's Day.  Of course considering the occasion we looked at the newest "MOM" charm but decided to not go quite that obvious or cheesy. 

We instead got her this:

Can't go wrong with something tropical for this scuba diving family.  So now we've got to make sure she knows that we'll fill it in over time and to not rush out and buy all the charms herself.

The Royal Wedding Fashion (407 Days to Go)

Because let's face it--this is all that really matters today when it comes to the topic of weddings.  

Already 2 billion people have watched footage.  Yes, 1/3 of the world population.

Kate's dress was of course amazing.  I've been hearing the word "understated" tossed around quite a bit but I'd like to think that the Duchess is merely sensible, classy, and my favorite: timeless.  The simplicity will never cause no one to ever look back and think "What was she thinking?!"  Because if we're all honest with ourselves, that's what we'd say about Princess Diana's poofy shoulders.  But that's something we'd never say of Princess Grace Kelly.  I feel like after half a century we'll have a truely classy princess once again.

As customary, she had a long train, but not so long that it required a troop of girl scouts to carry it--only her sister Pippa.  And of course Pippa looked absolutely lovely too in her thematically matching Alexander McQueen dress. 

I loved the lace bodice that Kate wore in order to meet the Abbey's requirements.  It was subtle and beautiful. Sigh.  And can we talk about the hair?  Half-up, half-down in an effort to exhibit her own style as well as appease her new royal fam.  I don't envy her the sacrifices she has to make for the sake of appearances and tradition.  But she is certainly doing a fantastic job of making the best of it.

Possible Bridesmaids Gifts (425 Days to Go)

Frenzy Shark

So as I mentioned yesterday, I had contemplated giving each of my bridesmaids a silver pendant from a jewelry line carried in my fiance's store.  Well, I'm still contemplating different options.  Even though I can really see my one MOH, Kansas, loving that I'd give her the shark.

Pretty in Pink, Absolut-ly

There are also other options that are a tiny bit overused but still quite amusing.  Such as pink hip flasks.  This would be a fantastic idea as a little toss in gift to be included with something else, except for the fact that two of my bridesmaids would be anything but amused.  One doesn't drink hardly ever and the other one is actually allergic to alcohol.  Other used and abused ideas are monogrammed tote bags and luggage pieces and heart pendant jewelry.  I'd like to get away from trite if at all possible but I would also like for my gift to not scream "I got his from Jeff and Alyssa's wedding."  So how does a bride find the perfect gift for her six bridesmaid (and one junior bridesmaid) without breaking her bank and without it looking like I bought the first thing I saw on mybridesmaidsgift.com?  Why yes, there really is a site called that.

The other day when I was cruising the internet and the various wedding websites, I cannot remember who it was that featured this particular handbag designer, but Sara Lloyd makes beautiful clutches and is apparently becoming quite popular for bridesmaid gifts.  And why not?  She offers to work with a bride in order to customize the colors and patterns in order to coordinate the set to the wedding colors and also to the individual tastes of the bridesmaids.  And each clutch is accented with a beautiful brooch.  Sara collects all of her materials from markets and through refurbishing materials in order to guarantee that the bag you buy from her is a one of a kind piece of art that won't be found anywhere else.  For now, they only places you can find her bags are on her website and also in a small boutique in Athens, GA near where Sara grew up.  But for now, all of the bags are made by Sara's own hands out of her NYC apartment as she works to build the reputation of her label.

Well, after seeing Sara's bags, I was reminded of a brand that my mother carries in her store.  Offhand Designs is a cooperative out of Oakland, California and all of the bags are handmade in order to ensure the uniqueness of each piece.  The materials are always luscious: velvets, brocades, and now leathers.  Larisa Snydal does a fantastic job of creating designs that are functional for the average woman but also for the avid knitter.  It's great to be able to take a purse and reorganize it into a knitting bag on the fly and in the reverse too.

Mom has always had a good relationship with the company and so I've contemplated bringing up the idea to her to see if we could get a set of them specially ordered in colors and materials that would suit the wedding and  my girls.  I'll have to keep this idea on the backburner of my brain for now.  But for those of you interested in seeing these bags in person, there are many distributors spread out across the country and you can find them here.

Wedding Jewelry (427 Days to Go)

Starry

So as I mentioned once upon a time, my fiance is a scuba diving instructor and he and his father run a scuba diving merchandising business.  Well, back around Christmas they brought in a line of jewelry from Big Blue Jewelry that included some pieces with dive flags but also many pieces that were just sea life themed.  I know you're probably all thinking this is relatively corny, but some of the pieces were actually quite elegant looking.  I particularly liked the starfish and turtle designs.  So, it was early on during the engagement period and of course I thought this is exactly what I want for my bridal jewelry.  I'm no longer

Ocean Traveler

quite as certain four months later.  I have a feeling that I might still wear one of the pendants for a necklace but that I won't be cheesing it up by wearing matching earrings or anything else from the collection.  The solitary pendants really are quite beautiful and my FMIL has been wearing the turtle almost non-stop and it looks good with anything and everything.  Luckily, I'll be able to borrow the piece from the store for when I go to try on my dress when it gets delivered.  Oh, it makes me a tiny bit sad to think it won't be in until early fall.

Of course the long wait until when I have my dress will not keep me from browsing and looking at different pieces that catch my eye.  I have ADD; shiny jewelry is like my kryptonite. 

Clarissa Boutique

So early on in the week, I got an e-mail from Clarissa Boutique over in South Side about a trunk show that they were having for the Haute Bride jewelry line.  I have been absolutely dying to go over to Clarissa's and look around.  Unfortunately, it's not often I can find time on Saturday to run down to Southside and it's even rarer that I can get away from work early enough to go then.  Unfortunately, once again, that's exactly how my week played out.  So, I'm missing the trunk show.  But, if you have time, you can still catch it.  Today's the last day and they're open from 10am to 4pm.

So, since I couldn't view the trunk show in person, I'm doing the next best thing, I'm looking at the pieces on-line.  At least now I know that I can keep an eye open for a future trunk show or request an item to be ordered when it finally is time for me to look for real in the fall.

Haute Bride's Home Page

So it's usually a really good thing when you look at the home page and immediately find something you fall in love with.  Unfortunately, I can't seem to find the hand band modeled on the left in their catalog in order to get a catalog number.  I had seen bridal head bands before but they were usually a little clunky looking on wide ribbons.  That however, is much more dainty and elegant looking.  I love it.  And it would look so cute with the veil style that I've been considering.  However, I also really like the flower on the right as well.  Thank goodness I have so much time to make up my mind about what kind of accessories I want to have.  Granted this is making me all the sadder that I'll be spending my day hanging out at JoAnn's instead of going to the trunk show and being able to see the accessories up close and personal and possibly even on my head.

Haute Bride B621

Digging deeper, I found this really beautiful bracelet.  The centerpiece of the bracelet really makes me think of the jeweling on the wedding gown I've got on order.

Haute Bride SB107

So if you follow the link to their "Cocktail Collection", they have all kinds of beautiful jewelry, but also bling for the shoes!  What a cool way to customize your wedding shoes.  Now you can buy any pair of shoes to wear for the wedding and with the money you save, bling it up with one of these and you can use it on any pair of shoes afterwards!

Okay, so please don't be like me and end your weekend with trunk show regret.  Check out Clarissa Boutique and oggle up these pretties before they leave town.

~*~

So, before I sign off for the day, I just have to give myself a tiny little pat on the back.  I've been getting a few articles published on Yahoo, and right now if you Yahoo search "2011 graduation songs" my article is #1.  Google search and I'm #8.  So I'm a tiny bit hopeful that it might make slightly more than a few pennies.  Like maybe a quarter?  Here's hoping that all of this writing stuff will eventually help put some quarters and dimes into the wedding budget.

My First Bridal Nightmare (431 Days to Go)

So Sunday's plan more or less completely fell apart.  Oh well.  I think that Jeff and I needed the day to stay home and watch movies more anyway.  My knitting class has now been tentatively rescheduled for Palm Sunday.  Good thing I'm not super religious.

Saturday he had to go back into the shop to work since his dad had to be in the pool with students, so both my FMIL and I kept Jeff company and made sure he didn't over exert himself trying to grab inventory from top shelves.  The last thing we needed was for him to pull his stitches after only a day.

Kohls.com

After we got the shop closed up mid-afternoon, my FMIL and went shopping for the rest of the afternoon until dinner time.  Almost 95% of that time we spent at Kohl's because she a) had a coupon and b) she cannot pass up good sales.  Since I'm still relatively fresh out of school and my current job requires quite the opposite, I don't have much of a professional wardrobe; so together she and I pulled together a nice blazer outfit with a couple of different shirts.  I really liked the blazer (pictured right) because it was so versatile which I thought was incredibly important when just starting to build my wardrobe. Pretty much everything that I bought was Apt 9 brand which was incredibly youthful and vibrant in the color selection.  I never really felt like I was looking at anything that was frumpy or too old for me despite the fact that I'm a little too big to fit into juniors or misses anymore.  I blame the linebacker shoulders I inherited from my father's side of the family.

But it was interesting shopping with my FMIL because I haven't often enjoyed shopping at all. I'm the type of person that prefers to go by myself, try stuff on and get out.  Mostly because my girlfriends have never really had the time that we could get together for shopping trips or even when we do, I feel rushed when looking for myself.  That and shopping with my own mother is difficult because she already has preconceived notions of what I should like and wear.  Typically these don't match up with reality.  I grew up in a town where fashion is about 2-3 years behind and once I moved to Pittsburgh, I was determined to not let that be the case any longer.  I'm not too far out into crazy fashion (like Lady Gaga) but I certainly don't like bells and penguins to decorate my sweaters in the winter.  So hopefully I'll soon have a job interview and a career to go along with the new wardrobe that's underway.

But Saturday night was, well, interesting.  Jeff slept in a recliner in the living room in order to minimize how much he moved around because of his wrist and after a year, I no longer sleep as well in bed alone.  So I was tossing and turning which has pretty much been the case for both of us since he broke his wrist.  Well, that night I had an incredibly vivid dream about our wedding.  Yes, my first wedding nightmare.  I dreamt that when I woke the next morning that it was our wedding day and of course, nothing was done, ordered, ready, delivered or booked.  It was just utter chaos and I went through the day from start to finish in a near panic and missed the ceremony because I was too busy trying to arrange flowers for the reception.  Basically the entire day I was just trying to keep one step ahead of everyone else that I didn't see anyone except for my MOHs and that was to give them the meager six bottles of alcohol I had for the bar which I later found out that the groomsmen drank between the ceremony and reception.

Well, eventually my tossing and turning woke me up and when I fell back asleep I dreamt that I was telling Jeff all about my dream.  We then walked through the whole dream together watching myself flounder about aimlessly and helplessly.  It was an extremely weird out of body experience for a dream inside a dream.  Well, when I finally woke up Sunday morning, Jeff had moved back to the bed at some point and I started to tell him about my weird dream and then paused half afraid that I was about to re-experience the whole damn thing a third time.  I even went so far as to make him pinch me.  It feels like it's way too soon for me start having wedding nightmares.

Broken Wrist and Wonder Woman (434 Days to Go)

So first up and most importantly: Jeff is home and all titanium plated up!

He's in some pain, but that's to be expected after someone drilled some screws into your bones.  He spent the afternoon yesterday sleeping on and off because the anesthesia made him groggy.  But in between naps, the pain in his arm made him incredibly restless.  Thankfully I didn't have to convince him to sit or lie still for very long in order to get him to fall back asleep again.  Luckily he hasn't suffered from any nausea.  I managed to get him to eat some soup for a late lunch without too much trouble.

I got notified yesterday that my first article was published from the Yahoo! Assignment Desk, so I'm a little tickled with that.  Hopefully occasionally writing some articles might make me a few extra bucks that I can apply to either paying for Jeff's medical expenses or towards our honeymoon fund that got totally depleted to pay the required upfront payments.

Image Source

As I mentioned briefly before, I'm a total geek and so I have to comment on this: Adrianne Palicki's newest Wonder Woman costume reveal is almost as bad as the first.  Ugh.  I know, it's not very wedding related or even day-to-day related, but it's a fashion thing, so that counts right?  What I wouldn't pay to be their costume department chair for one day.  I'd put her in black boots and pants and a motorcycle jacket and leave the red corset alone.  Bam!  Easy peasy, she'd look just like the modern age Wonder Woman from the comics and look like she belongs in the real world rather than a 90's TV series.  When I first heard that NBC was launching the show in the fall and read some of the script break down I nearly cried.  Wonder Woman shouldn't sound like a character reject from Desperate Housewives.  It was so terrible.  It was like they were trying to aim Wonder Woman at well, women.  Wrong! 

Image Source

Wonder Woman isn't for girls, she's for fanboys!  And you're certainly not going to make anyone a comic fan with that kind of show.  Instead, you'll turn away all viewers completely and get canceled faster than FOX's records at canceling shows.  What is FOX down to now, two episodes to sink or swim?  Yes, that's my personal prediction, Adrianne Palicki will not be on TV as Wonder Woman for anything more than one episode.  The rest will make their way into vault and never be seen again.  Why do I think this?  Because it's already happened before, granted on CBS, for a JLA series.  The pure fangirl in me just had to see it.  I wish I hadn't and I'm fairly certain the same will happen when Wonder Woman comes on TV--except I don't have cable, so by the time I seek it out online, it will already have so many criticisms that it will be canceled.  One final word on the subject and then I'll hopefully leave it alone until the show airs: they would have been better off hiring a busty WWE star to play Wonder Woman rather than Adrianne Palicki.  Then Wonder Woman might look believable in the aspect that she could kick your butt.