Sixpence Found!

I'm too excited not to mention this (and apparently I'm becoming quite a sentimental bride). I have procured, via my fabulous future Mother in Law, a sixpence. Now, this alone is great news because it's one of the tiny details that I keep pushing to the back burner. (I've found blood tests and marriage licenses much harder to schedule, so there' s justification.) But the most fabulous part about this is the sixpence itself.

The sixpence comes from Mike's sister; she wore it in her wedding. This is awesome to begin with because we're good friends. However, when I was told about the sixpence, I was also told that we can then hold it for my flower girl's wedding. This way, the sixpence at her wedding will have been carried by both her mother and godmother. Isn't that fabulous!

The Mane Attraction

I got my hair cut the other day and finally started pondering hairstyles. I thought for certain that I was going to curl my hair for the wedding, but when I came home with natural curls in my hair (only enhanced with a diffuser), I discovered that a certain boy hated it! So, I'm back to the drawing board and have decided to straighten my hair for the wedding. I can't wear it down since it's so heavy it ends up in my face (and I end up pushing it aside too often). So, I know that I want to straighten it and I've narrowed my hairstyles down to two relatively simple ideas. Here they are


I like this one because it would allow me to show off the length of my hair. It's also a slightly modified version of what I traditionally wear when I only pull up the front of my hair. Also, it won't be hard to readjust once I remove my veil for the reception.

But then there's this one.



This one seems just a touch more elegant (largely because of the hair wrap around the pony tail). I think it's my favorite of the two so far. But then I'm worried about how my nice thick hair will take to laying this flat. I'm going to experiment with the two and see which works best. I'll check back in when I've had time to settle on a design.

Flower Girl Dresses (A Decision)

After a very successful trip home, we've returned and rested. There were a lot of decisions made and plans finalized over the course of the week. But I left with one thing left to do on my list--flower girl dresses. However, now that we've been back and had time to get all of the ideas down on paper, we've also had the chance to search for flower girl dresses. Honestly, I found myself in a different world--the "Goldilocks bride" world. This dress was too poofy, this one was too grown up, this one too expensive. I even emailed Cathy for an opinion when I thought I had found "the dress." Unfortunately, I forgot to check sizes first. We couldn't get it in both the sizes that we wanted, so it was back to the drawing board.

Mike threw himself on the sword for this one. After half an hour, he had found the perfect dress (isn't he great)! So, without further ado...here is our flower girl dress. It's within our price range and in the sizes and colors we want. Yeah Mike! I'm ordering them next week.

A Flower Girl's Head Shoud Not be Consumed!

When I first started looking at flowers, I was considering floral wreaths for the flower girls. I could just picture the darlings with dainty little wreaths in their hair. I've decided, however, to go with something more along the lines of tiaras (and I'm sure the girls will appreciate it). They are princesses, after all. But let me give you a chuckle or two as to the final decision that made me realize I did not want flowers in the head of my flower girls.


I want to say, sure, these were good ideas in concept (and these are not the worst that I've seen), but a flower girl's head is only so big. Tiaras. Definitely tiaras. Oh, and how terrible am I for looking at millions of flower girls and continuing to think how much more adorable mine are!

A Booted Decision Made

So a week ago, I got a call from my Maid of Honor telling me she had just bought boots that she thought would be perfect for the wedding. Now, what is hilarious is that I know that I could easily have told her they weren't what I was looking for and she would have kept them anyway and bought others for the wedding. But, I pulled them up online, and they are perfect. The pictures and links below are to the official Durango boots. However, I'm not a name brand girl, so if you find cheaper ones that look like these, great! I've heard that you can get similar boots at Wal-Mart for like $30. The groom swears by Durango, and these pictures are large enough to see what we want. Me, I'm buying either brown or black boots from Durango and then getting some inexpensive ones for the wedding. Somehow, I just don't see me wearing white boots very often. Remember, boots are the foot attire for the wedding party. They are not, however, required of other guests. Okay, here they are:




My boots (well, the expensive version of them anyway.)









The Bridesmaid's boots

















The Groom and Groomsmens' Boots. The groom says he's not requiring steel toes. Like me, a similar boot is fine as long as it looks like these :)

Flower Girls, Fishing and Formal Wear

One of my favorite pictures of one of my flower girls involves her standing on the patio of her grandparents' lake house in a princess dress with her hands extended as she smiles for the camera. The reason this is one of my favorite pictures is not that she looks like the perfect little princess all dressed up for the ball. In fact, this is my favorite picture because she has dirt and worm guts all over her hands. Her cousin and partner in flower girl land is much the same way. These two precious girls are my flower girls because they remind me much of myself at the same age. I didn't care what I was wearing; if there was a tree to climb or a worm bin to play with, I was all over it.

So, in the past few days, I've been procrastinating my paper research to look for the perfect dresses for these little angels. I've seen many adorable dresses that would work well with the wedding theme and look precious on the girls. But I refuse to buy any of these dresses. Why not? Well, I have reality staring me in the face. My bridesmaids gowns are costing about $180 each. I can fully justify spending this money on these great women because the attire is a two piece and both pieces can (and I hypothesize will be) worn at later dates. Flower girl dresses. Well, that's another story. These precious little girls will likely wear the dresses again--and I hope they will until they outgrow them. And I know that my girls will wear the dresses to climb trees in, to fish in, or to splash around in a mud puddle if there's one nearby. And there is nothing wrong with that. However, paying between $150 and $300 for a cute dress that will end up wit mud, tree branches, and worm guts on it is completely out of the question.

The sad thing is that I know exactly what I want in a flower girl dress. It's the one in this post. But with some sleeves. The dress is adorable without sleeves, but little frozen flower girls are not on the wedding agenda. What I like best about this dress is that it is, really, a simple A-line dress that isn't overly sophisticated for such young girls. But, I'm refusing to buy it. Why? It runs about $175 at the cheap sites online. That's ludicrous! So, next spring, I'm going shopping for my girls. I want something similar to this dress, but with sleeves. I figure something similar cannot be too hard to find. A simple white dress with sleeves. Then, what I can do is get a sash that matches the color of my bridesmaids' gowns, or one in the oft forgotten color of my wedding (crimson) and add that to the dress. If I'm feeling creative (and my friends who are not as sewingly challenged as I am offer help), it would not be a problem to attach the sashes either around the waist or, like in this dress, around the upper hem of the dress. I figure that buying the gowns just around Easter and then purchasing the sash and attaching it, I'm still coming out with a more reasonable price than they charge for any "official" flower girl dress.

First Wedding Mini-Crisis Averted

For some reason, probably paper procrastination, I felt compelled to take another gander at my gown today. I can't explain it, but I had to. So, I hopped on the website, pulled up the dress from my favorites and ogled for a minute before I realized that there were now comments on the dress. Ooooh! I love knowing what other people think about things like this. So, I started with the oldest comment and, about three comments into the page, I read this one:

I love it! I searched everywhere for it, like the other woman said- if you love it get it NOW!! It is being retired. I cant wait, i try it on like every day.

Now, I don't panic over comments like this. Okay, so the dress is being retired. It's not the end of the world, I thought as I perused the rest of the comments. All of them said the same thing.

"I'll just find another gown." I thought as I browsed through the new additions to the website.

But, as I continued searching the pages, nothing was jumping off the page begging me to look more. The longer I looked, the more I began to realize that this was my dress. There is not another dress for me. I'm too attached to this dress and have been since I tried it on this summer. So, this let me with several ways of approaching the problem.

1. Sell $700 worth of plasma and run spastically through the bridal stores in the Dallas area until I found one in a size near my own. I can hope that the size is close enough to alter when the time comes.
2. Apply for immediate credit card and dash to bridal store this weekend. Buy whatever is in stock, regardless of size.
3. Wait patiently until mom shows up in several months, explain situation and buy then. Okay, so I have to still hope that the dress is in the appropriate size when it comes time to have the alterations done.
4. Curl up in cozy chair, set tea on coffee table, and Google with fingers crossed.

Well, I chose the last option. It sounded like the best idea for my current situation. The reason for this is that I really don't want to buy the gown this early. I'm hoping to be a size smaller (at least) when I start alterations. So, if I can wait, I would rather. Now, in addition to this, I want my mothers (yes, both of them) the chance to see the gown before I buy it. Sure, if the store doesn't have it at the time, I understand. But I want the option.

Guess what I found on Google. A different designer makes the same gown. Yeah! But that's not all. This designer makes the same gown and I can add an extra foot to the train (an idea I like), rush the delivery, pay for overnight shipping, and still save close to $200. And, if I don't want to do it this way, there are four stores in the area that carry the designer, so I can check with them and see if they can order it. So, crisis averted. Now, it's time to sit back enjoy my tea and see if they have flower girl dresses that I like.

Bridesmaids Gowns

Well, we know we have three bridesmaids and we know that we have three very different girls. The men will be wearing Texas Tuxes, and I wanted something elegant and beautiful, with a hint of winter to the gown for my girls. There's a hint of silver in the wedding gown, and he and I were already contemplating silver as our wedding color. It's official now. We're going to be doing white and silver as our main colors. So, here's what I'm looking at for the bridesmaids. All of these come from David's. This gives the girls the same option for skirt (because it's the one I like the most) and three options for the top so that the can pick the one that they like best (and is the most flattering).

Bridal Shoes!

So, I'm pretty sure that this picture has just found a life of its own in my wedding. I caught it in The Knot Texas (it's an ad for J. Cogliandro, a Houston photographer). I jokingly showed the picture to Mike and asked if I could wear cowboy boots under my wedding gown (since it's way too cold to go barefoot)! Mike gets this very serious look on his face and says

I want a picture of you in that pose for my wallet!

So I've been pondering it a lot here in the past few days and really, I love the idea. I mean come on, we're doing a natural themed wedding in muted colors in a state park. Why not cowboy boots? Did I mention the guys will be in cowboy boots since it's a big part of the Texas Tux they'll be wearing. Mike's in complete agreement with this. Only he wants me to get white boots for under the dress since he's certain that black ones will show through. But he's also said that if I humor him on this one point, he's going to buy me a pair of black boots!

So, looking at this from a girly perspective; I get to wear boots under my wedding gown and I get a free pair of shoes to go with it. Woohoo! I guess I can wear white boots for him. It is his wedding too...and he's been such a dear with the input and actually participating in the planning. Okay, white boots it is. But I'm wearing the black ones to all the other wedding related functions I can justify! And a girl can never be without a good pair of white boots. Right.

I'VE FOUND THE DRESS

Oh, my! It has been done! I have officially decided on a gown. It's mine! I know it is! I walked into the store and had two that I wanted to try on. I didn't think Mike liked one of them, so I was putting it on as my second choice. Well, here's what happened.

I tried on the second choice gown first. You know, I wanted to save "my" gown for last so that I would know it was the one.



Then, I get into this second choice gown and I'm standing in front of the mirror in this beautiful gown and the sales lady puts the veil on me and she's explaining about the blusher veil and I honestly thought I was going to cry!

It took me almost half an hour to finally take it off. I kept pretending I was waiting for the sales lady (because I didn't want to look like I was that anxious about the gown since I didn't want to be let down if Mike still liked the other better. I thought I liked them both equally).

When I tried on the second gown--the one that I had assumed for weeks would be my wedding gown--I wasn't that impressed. I looked at it in the mirror for about two minutes and then took it off. That's a sign, right?

The chapel length veil in that third picture (with the black background) is indeed the one I'm going to be wearing! Isn't that beautiful! The embroidery is what I fell in love with. I love the white and silver look SO much! And I can afford the dress (now that's the scary part)!