I'm baaaaaaaaack

I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry!
I'm sorry that I've neglected this blog for so long...bad, bad bride. Between the holidays and some personal drama that was going on the time just got away from me and I found myself putting off blogging everyday and suddenly poof! Two months had gone by.

But never fear! I am back and I am armed with a butt-load of posts about the wedding. Speaking of which, 147 days until I'm married!!!!! I am beyond excited. It hit me this last week that this wedding is really happening. I mean, I knew that I was always getting married, and I never doubted that. But this engagement has really been a marathon, not a sprint. There was a lot of time spent just looking at pictures, bookmarking webpages and just waiting. But now, I feel like I'm coming up on the last 5 miles and it's just going to fly by!

There's a lot to do and a lot that still needs to be planned so stay tuned....

Today's the day!

No not our wedding day...that's still over 6 months away (thank God). Nope, today is the day that I break out the Gocco!!!

I got my Gocco a few months ago and aside from taking her out of the box to snap a few pictures she has been safely tucked away in the office ever since....until today.

Here it is still in the box right after it arrived.

J and I set aside today to work on our save the dates which means the Gocco gets to come out of hiding. I'm not going to lie...I'm nervous about using this thing. I've heard horror stories about Gocco mishaps...but I've also seen the amazing invitations and save the dates that other brides have made, so I have hope.

Let the misadventure begin!

SHOES!!!

I never used to be a shoe junkie. For a long time I was the type of girl who could slip on a pair of Birks and be on her way. And then I met K. K is my best friend (more like sister) and maid of honor. Once I met her it was all downhill. K is what I consider the ultimate shoe junkie...when she moved into her new house with her new hubbie she brought with her over 100 pairs of shoes!!! Needless to say that some of that shoe whoring has rubbed off on me. It also didn't help that for 2 years she lived near the best shoe store in the world (I call it my happy place) Kick on Main. When I would visit her we'd spend hours in there trying on every fabulous shoe in the place.
Now that it's time for me to start buckling down and seriously looking for shoes...I'm stumped. I have an idea about what I want, but I also know what I don't want...I don't want a frumpy old pair of white shoes that are categorized as "bridal shoes." Plus I would like to wear my shoes more than once...these would never see the light of day again.

Wedding shoes, in my opinion, need to be something fabulous. They need to make a statement, and the shouldn't fade into the background. I've seen too many great photos of wedding day shoes to ever settle for some plain white shoes.

Some adorable blue shoes...what a great "something blue"

From Leslie Spurlock Photography

Love love love this picture

From Still Motion

But finally...my absolute favorite (but I am biased...I'm the one in the yellow, K is in the white)

The other problem is that I am just slightly taller than J...which means that unless I want to pull a Katie Holmes and be all slouchy in my wedding pics, I need to go with flats or kitten heels.

Which sadly rules out most of my favorite shoes thus far....but for the sake of all things beautiful...here's a little shoe porn with a few of my favorites


You can see that I am a fan of all things sparkly. But obviously the 4" heel isn't an option...which means that I have my mission; fabulously sparkly flats! It's a tall order (please excuse the bad pun), and thus far, everything I've looked at has falled short (again with the bad puns). But I'm hopeful that my perfect sparkly, flats are out there.


Did height play a big part in your wedding shoe choice? Did you find your self limited in what you could chose or was the sky the limit?

We love bacon!

(Before I begin...I have to say that our 4th bridesmaid Chelsea wasn't able to make it to brunch...and even though she wasn't there physically, we kept her there in spirit!)


It all started innocently enough....4 girls getting together for brunch to meet and discuss wedding plans.

It was shortly after this picture was taken that we discovered that we all ordered extra bacon with our breakfast....hence "We love bacon!"

I don't know if it was the excitement of dress shopping or the over-abundance of bacon, but things quickly devolved into this...

With bellies full of bacon, pancakes, eggs and more bacon we headed out. Ready to dive headfirst into a world of taffeta, crinolines and sequins. Little did I know when I arranged this little Sunday outing that most bridal stores are closed on Sunday! Ooops! Undeterred, we soldiered on, to the one bridal store we knew would be open...David's Bridal. I have to say, that the enthusiasm displayed by my girls was inspiring. They dove right into those racks and started pulling dresses.

At first we made a serious attempt to find some dresses to fit my then non-vision. Unfortunately I wasn't much help in giving them any sort of direction about what to pull. But they persevered, but with slightly underwhelming results...

This dress featured the ever popular "schoolmarm" length

Is that a nightie or a dress?

There were no words, only laughter

Finally we succumb to the madness and tried on the three most ridiculous dresses we could find....

Halloween anyone?

and let's not forget the back...oh the back!

Eventually we did find a dress that looked good on all three girls. The only problem...it didn't come in any attractive colors.

Definitely the best of the bunch!

So at the end of the day we left dress-less, but I think it's safe to say that we everyone had a great time! It was great to see that everyone got along so well....but I guess bonding over bacon will do that!

How was your first dress shopping trip with your bridesmaids go?

The old switcharoo....

When we left off I was 99% sure that this was my ring:
In my mind I was done looking now it was just a matter of waiting for J to get down on one knee!

About a month before the proposal, out of the blue, J suggested that we check out one more jewelery store. We both loved the 5-stone ring, but we didn't love the jeweler (bad customer service, etc, etc..). I checked around and found a jeweler in the area who had the ring and a reputation for good customer service. So we headed out....

I have to say that the customer service alone was enough to make us buy from them. We sat down at the counter and started talking with one of the sales people about what I was looking for in a ring and pointed out the ring we had picked out. I slipped the 5-stone on my finger and thought that was the end of the discussion. The sales woman brought over a few more rings that she thought I might like; they were nice, but not it. As we were talking stone sizes and ordering times J spotted another ring. It was a small, unassuming ring, hidden toward the back of a case. White gold, one stone, and the minute I saw it, I knew that it was my ring. And when I put it on J said you could see my face just light up. That was it, I had found my ring, end of story. We didn't leave with the ring that day, because J wanted to surprise me with it....and surprise me he did. So here she is....

This picture was taken right after J proposed (that story to follow)....

And here she is with some tomatoes...because every ring looks better with tomatoes, right??

So there you have it...the story of my ring! Did you have a last minute change of plans when picking out your ring?

Penelope is comin' home!

That's right...my baby is coming back to me. I just got an email from our jeweler letting me know that she just got the wax back from her caster in Chicago and has already put everything in the mail (Fed Ex overnight).

I don't know what I'm more excited about...seeing the wax of my wedding band or getting my ring engagement ring back. Either way, I'm excited!

But, I thought that while I'm (not-so) patiently waiting for the FedEx truck to pull up to my house I thought that this might be the perfect time to tell you about how my ring...came to be my ring.

J and I began looking at engagement rings about 8 months before he actually proposed. Now when I say "looking" what I mean is that I started casually suggesting that we stop in to some jewelry stores whenever we were at the mall. For a long time I had always envisioned myself wearing a 3-stone diamond ring; similar to this:

But after trying on a few 3-stone rings I didn't really like how they looked on my hand....too much bling. I won't lie, I was disappointed...I had my heart set on a 3-stone ring, but it just looked so wrong on my hand. I guess I shouldn't have been suprised though, I've never worn a lot of jewelry and what I do wear is usually pretty understated. So after saying goodbye to my 3-stone dream we started looking into "alternative" engagement rings and by this point it really was "we," not just me persuading him to go into stores anymore. He was as determined to find "the one" as I was.

We considered a traditional anniversary band...but it didn't have the movement and the curves that I wanted.

Better, but still not right...

Then we found this little beauty and I was 99% sure that I had found the ring....

It's a 5-stone journey ring, but the one I liked was in white gold. It was different than most of the rings I had tired on, it had some movement to it and it looked great on my finger. I was just about sold on this ring...I even took some friends to "visit" it while we were shopping at the mall and they all agreed that it was a great ring for me. After that I thought my ring search was over.

But I was wrong....how did I end up with Penelope? You'll just have to stay-tuned to find out!

Was your dream ring "the ring," or did you have to search a bit before you found the one?

Dressing the ladies

Last week I got together with 3 of my 4 bridesmaids (our 4th, Chelsea, was on a research cruise somewhere warm and tropical, not fair!) for a little brunch and dress shopping. As soon as I get my computer back I will be able to share the photos from that little get together.

I had a great time hanging out with the girls and it was a relief to know that everyone got a long, but after our shopping trip I realized one thing...I have no idea how I want my girls to look for the wedding!! Absolutely no idea. I keep throwing out some generalizations..."a shade of pink or gray" "anything knee length" "they don't have to match" but really I haven't given them much direction as to what I'm looking for. Partly because I don't want to seem bossy and bridezilla-ish..."you WILL wear this dress and you WILL like it!!!'...but also because I really have no idea what I want.

But I realize now that I've got to get it together and come up with some inspiration. Besides, I've spent hours and hours toiling over details that were much smaller, and let's be honest, less noticeable...why shouldn't I give my girls and their dresses the same sort of attention? Plus, we are getting together this week for another round of dress shopping and I really need to be better prepared. So with my inspiration deadline looming I went on the hunt for dresses this morning and here's what I came up with....

Mismatched bridesmaids. I know it's a bit of a trend right now in the wedding world, but I think it's a trend for good reason. The women who are standing up with me are all wonderfully unique individuals, with their own style...by having them each in a different style that is suited to their personality I am giving them the chance to shine. And besides, when you are in something comfortable that you love, you are much more inclined to boogie down, right?

This first pictures has made the blog rounds before...and why wouldn't it? It's fabulous!

The dresses are so flattering on each of the girls

It's nice to see that the mismatched look works with a smaller bridal party too...

I adore this next picture...I actually found it a few months ago and it was the whole reason I was considering gray

But, since we've chosen silvery-gray table linens I think that I'm going to have to nix the gray dress idea...I don't want the girls to look like an extension of table cloth when they are seated. So I went back to my other color choice....pink. Not pepto pink, not energizer bunny pink, not baby pink. Antique pink.

So mismatched dresses plus antique pink plus vintage wedding led me to.....

my bridal party look! This picture captures everything that I want for my bridal party look. I love the mix of solids and prints. I love how all the different shades of pink manage to look cohesive and elegant. I love the vintage feel of the whole thing. Perfection (in my opinion). The funny thing is, I remember seeing this picture a while back and thinking "hmm...that could work," but not pursuing it because at the time pink wasn't part of the mix. But now with pink in the picture...I think we have a winner!

Was picking your bridal party look difficult? Where did you search for inspiration?