I am so mad

That I didn't find this site BEFORE my wedding. These dresses are totally awesome! And completely affordable!! And they rent them too. Damn it!!

I mean, my dress was okay. It was definitely affordable :) But it was way too boobalicious, and I had to keep hiking up the front of it all night - those bad boys just didn't have enough support. It's the one thing I would change if I could go back. Le sigh. Maybe I can help someone else avoid making the same mistake. Your dress is important!! Not $2,000 worth of important, but you do want to make sure you're as happy with it as you can possibly afford to be. I felt too overwhelmed and was too afraid of being a high maintenance bride to make enough of a stink over choosing my dress. Lesson learned.



Yes. This is me singing with my sister and my cuz. We had a lot of live music that day :) But the point I'm trying to illustrate with this pic is actually the complete lack of mammary support. I had a bra on, I swear! Like it made a difference. Ugh.

And so. What makes a dress perfect:
1. It fits you. Perfectly. (read: enough booby support! and make sure you're not going to be tripping over it while you're dancing!).
2. It's flattering (Hello saggy migillcutty.)
3. It fits your budget. (aka doesn't make you want to cry every time you remember the price tag. Also, you don't have to sell your soul to get it.)
4. It's comfortable enough to let you focus fully on what is happening around you.
5. It makes you feel like the most specialist girl in the room (not because that's what it's all about, but because you'll be getting a lot of attention, and it's kind of nice to feel like you're dressed for it :)). Don't underestimate the value of feeling pretty.

So stalk your dress!! It's out there! Whether you're having a formal wedding for 400 people or eloping in Kuala Lumpur, trust me, It Will Be Worth It.

That being said, as long as you manage to look this happy the first time you dance with your husband (or wife), then nothing else really matters that much. Yeah, I'm pretty lucky.



Seriously though. Don't be afraid to insist on getting yourself a dress that makes you feel super special. Really. It will be one less thing to worry about that day - you'll know you look awesome, and you won't have to be constantly worrying that your naughties are showing :) Which obviously equals having way more fun :)

p.s. sorry about the extreme hiatus. for whatever reason, I just haven't been feeling it lately. I'll try to be better... much love to you all!!

p.p.s. Also, I want to point out that the reason Matt and I aren't gazing into one another's eyes in this shot is that we were LITERALLY surrounded on all sides by our guests, who were all singing our first dance song TO us (Dream a Little Dream). So we alternated between looking at each other and looking at all the other people we love! Absolutely one of the most incredible experiences of my life.

Eleven Days

Okay, so tomorrow I can get the 10-day forecast on weather.com. But apparently accuweather has a FIFTEEN day forecast, and according to THAT, it is going to rain on October 10. NO!! I'm not totally freaked out though, because, I mean, how accurate are weather forecasts even for the CURRENT day? Not very. So I'm holding out hope. But still.... a little nervous. Sheesh, after all my big talk about rain.....

In other news, my wonderful and loving bridesmaids threw me an awesome surprise bachelorette party on Saturday (which explains the picture above)! All I have to say is amazing food, cinnamon-mango cocktails, and then an 80's dance party with glowing accessories. Perfection :) I don't know how I got so lucky, but I sure do have some ridiculously great friends!

p.s. my shoes just got here!! and they fit perfectly!!

Rings!!

Two weeks from today will be my wedding day!!

We bought our rings, custom made, on etsy (yay etsy!). We got them in the mail yesterday, and they're perfect!! Simple, pretty, and they fit! I highly recommend Laurie Sarah Designs - they were great to work with, super accommodating, and I am so psyched about the results!

I don't know why, but nothing has made this wedding feel more real, or made me more excited, than trying on our rings. Seriously, seeing Matt wearing a wedding ring just made me so giddy! I was caught off guard by how happy and giggly I got - and have been ever since :) It suddenly brought it all into focus for me - the heaps of unnecessary stress, worrying over details like labels and signs, all so insignificant in the face of what we're going to be doing in two weeks. It made me, for the first time, really and truly NOT CARE about the food, the booze, or the decorations. If it rains and no one shows up, if the pom-poms and garlands don't get finished, if there's no ice at the bar, I know I will not give a single crap. Because I'm going to be married to my best friend and that's enough, on it's own, to make me happy for a long long time - no perfect wedding required.

Happy weekend!

Sixteen Days

Holy crapsticks. Sixteen days left. You know, the thing that boggles my mind is not that I have a bunch of stuff still left to do for the wedding. No, what's stressing me out is not knowing how on earth I'm going to manage to do all that while still living my normal life. You know, where I have OTHER things to do as well. Non-wedding related things. Like finding a job. Like working on the three freelance projects I've been studiously ignoring. Like keeping my apartment clean and inhabitable. Ack!


Andy Sandberg as Cathy. ACK!!

Matt has been in Miami all week for work, and I had visions of him coming home to a beautiful, clean apartment, with a fully stocked fridge and a calm, collected fiancee. Looks like THAT'S not happening! And I think I'm making it worse by being annoyed with myself for not being able to fulfill that ideal. So I'm just spinning my wheels, making myself even more stressed.

If there's one thing you can say about me, it's that I'm not shy about putting it all out there, eh? But it's important, I think, to write about the messy, uncomfortable, STRESSFUL parts of wedding planning - or, more accurately, married life planning. Because that's what I really feel like I'm prepping for. I want our wedding to feel like the first day of our new life together. But it's such a big idea, I think I'm overwhelming myself with demands of perfection. It must be time to head over to A Practical Wedding, or $2000 Wedding. The voices of sanity in the wedding planning world :) And then I need a clean apartment, a bank account in the triple digits (that's not too much to ask, is it??), and a nice loooong vacation.

A girl can dream, can't she?

Oh, and I bought these shoes.....

Miscellaneous Prettiness

Our apartment right now? Not so pretty. Dirty dishes in the sink. Clean laundry waiting to be folded and put away. Pile of dirty laundry threatening to mingle with clean laundry. Kitchen table covered in wedding to-do lists and in-progress artwork. A layer of dust on, um, everything.
Me? Not so pretty. Hair that hasn't been washed in so long it is standing on end. Frumpy bathrobe, granny panties and holey sweats.
These shoes? PRETTY.

These little pieces of awesome are all via ModCloth - I feel like I've been living under a rock or something, because there is no other way I could have missed this store!! Seriously, I don't want to sound like I'm advertising for them, but if you haven't already, you need to check them out. Not just shoes, dresses, pants, tops... the whole kit and kaboodle. LOVE!!

Nineteen Days!!

Sheesh. Nineteen days. And my calm cool exterior is beginning to show some cracks! I had my first anxiety dream about the wedding last night. I dreamed that right before the ceremony, my dress ripped, and my sister and I were frantically going through her closet to try and find a suitable alternative. I remember that horrible feeling of having people waiting for me, while I realize I'm nowhere NEAR ready for them, and that weird dream feeling of everything slowing down, just as you're trying so desperately to speed up. I woke up feeling like a basket case!!

In real life, I suppose what's happening is that it's dawning on me how very very close the wedding is, and how many more details we have to take care of. I know, really, that it will all be fine, that I have enough time, that we've worked out our schedule so that everything will get done. But it's really like something has clicked - that holy-crap-I-only-have-two-weekends-between-now-and-the-wedding-and-holy-moses-I-can't-put-anything-off-anymore-yikes-yikes-yikes!! feeling. You know that feeling?

AAAAnyway......... I also need some part time employment. Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?? Artist/Illustrator/Nanny/Errand girl for hire!!

Thats all for now.... I promise to be better this week and get back to regular posting. With pretty pictures and everything!!

Oh, and what do you think of these shoes?
The battle between flats and heels is still raging. I need to come to a resolution soon!!

Shoes shoes shoes

Okay. So my beautiful bridesmaids will be wearing yellow dresses of their own choosing. In an effort to avoid dictating wardrobe decisions, I asked them to just get "colorful" shoes. They, very obligingly, all got either pink or teal/blue shoes. Aren't they the sweetest? I, on the other hand, still have no shoes. I want yellow. I didn't think about the fact that this is fall, and yellow is not a fall color, and it is freaking impossible to find yellow shoes in the stores right now. So I am relegated to internet shopping. Here's what I've come up with......

Now, I'm not a heels kind of girl, but I love both of these.... Matt is not the tallest guy though, and I'd like to not be as tall as him - maybe that's shallow, but hey. Sometimes a girl's allowed to be shallow! Oh, and I haven't credited these because some of them are etsy or vintage one-of-a-kind type deals, and I don't want them to get snatched up!

Opinions please!!

shoes

i wonder... is it worth shopping for shoes when i'm probably just going to end up barefoot?




these are making me reconsider my hippy instinct......



and these.... although heels would probably be a bad idea (they don't really mix with outdoor weddings, right?)





and even though our "colors" are yellow, orange and teal, there's something about the color of these j.crew flats that makes me drool....





and then there are these..... so pretty!!! but again with the heels..... also, bare feet are much much cheaper :)