A Bride Themed Christmas

This Christmas was a very fun Christmas - it is bitter sweet because it is the last Christmas that I will spend with my immediate family and while I love our family taditions, I am also very excited to start new ones next year.  As I look back on 2010 there are so many things that I have to be thankful for but I really can't wait for what 2011 has to bring, I have a feeling its going to be one memorable year :)

I recieved so many great gifts this year for christmas that all revolved around being a bride-to-be.  I am so blessed to have such thoughtful gift giving friends and family.  Here are some of the wedding themed gifts I got this year for Christmas.

Gifts for getting pampered :)

A new cute apron for when I cook

Seeing my future name is so exciting - too bad I can't use this for another 9 months! 

A book and some tools to help eliminate wedding planning stress

And one of my favorites  - Ballroom dance lessons!!!

When You Know You Know

I knew from the beginning that I wanted to plan my wedding myself with my mom -- My mom has a knack for hosting really unique parties and I wanted the two of us to be able to plan everything together.  Planning a wedding to be at your own home though turned out to be a much bigger undertaking that I ever imagined.  Things that you would never even think of needed be done....for example my poor brothers were put to work all last summer to get our gardens 'wedding ready', we got new lighting, had trees taken out and are having the driveway re-paved. My parents claim that these things aren't "just for the wedding" they were all on the to-do list, but were expedited due to the wedding.   On top of all that maintenance that would have been taken care of for us if I had chosen a country club, hotel or reception hall, I had to find vendors to rent everything from big things like tents, tables & chairs to little things like every fork, knife, spoon, glass and dish.  Choosing vendors can be a stressful part of wedding planning, but once you start doing a little research I found it pretty easy to make decisions.   I pretty much made all my decisions based on 1. professionalism of their web presence  2. Timeliness in communication 3. First Impressions and 4. Referrals. 

Photographer -

I found my photographer through Whirl Magazine's semi-annual wedding edition -- and the reason why I chose MichaelWill to be my photographer was because I e-mailed him to find out some more information about his pricingg and packages and he didn't just respond back to me with an e-mail....he called me, literally 3 minutes after I hit the "send" button.  I liked this prompt communication because like I mentioned before, patience is not one of my strong suits.  But not only was he prompt to get back to me he was SO enthusiastic - I could tell he really loved photographing weddings and he had a great personality that I felt would spark some good candid pictures.  Each time I e-mail him or comment on something on his facebook page he always tells me how excited he is for my wedding and I actually believe him :)

Caterer

I thought that I had booked my caterer like a month after I got engaged....wrong.  My parents went to a restaurant in Meadville (that I wont name) which is right outside Conneaut Lake, and starting talking to the owner about my wedding -- he mentioned that he didn't run a catering business for a full time career but that he did catering for "select" people and would love to bid on my wedding since my parents were good clients of his.  He went on to say that he would also provide bar tenders and valet parking - I thought "sweet, 3 birds with 1 stone!"  About a week after my parents talked to him at his restaurant he came over to our house to try to get a lay of the land and talk with me about what I wanted.  I sort of knew what I wanted but I really needed a professional opinion to help me figure out a menu that would blend well together -- and he wasnt able to offer that.  After talking for about an hour he said he felt like he got enough information from me to get a good proposal put together and I gave him until September 10, 2010 to give us the quote, which was about 3 month (a really long time to work on a proposal...).   The week before September 10th he e-mailed my mom saying he needed an extenstion and would get us the quote by October 4th.  Not really a good first impression asking for an extention on a deadline you had 3 months to work on buddy.... but I didnt give up hope - I kept faith in him until October 12th when we had still not heard from him and I had made appointments to meet with multiple other vendors on October 23rd.  I e-mailed him and asked if he would be able to get me the quote by October 22ed so that we could get an idea of how much $$ we were looking at for food as a starting point and so that I could tell the rental company what supplies we would need.  Well, today is December 10th and I still have not heard from him....snooze you loose buddy.  Not only are you not getting my wedding business, my parents are never going back to your restaurant. 

I am so excited that I didnt end up going with that guy as my caterer because I came across Jody's Pantry catering again through Whirl Magazine and I am SO excited about the food and menu that they are going to provide.  Jody's Pantry answered my e-mails at lightning speed, had my parents and I out for a complimentary tasting and showed us videos and countless numbers of picture books of previous work that they have done.  Now this was the professionalism I was looking for!! 

And as an added bonus....Jody's Pantry is a Little Black Book vendor which means they are a vendor that has been featured on http://www.stylemepretty.com/ .....my FAVORITE website EVER, my "wedding dream" is to have my wedding featured on the blog.... Jody's Pantry is going to help me out :)

Check out some of their catering videos - I am so excited!!  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39Szf5P5qLQ

Day-of-coordinator

Like I mentioned earlier, I knew that I didnt want a wedding planner because I am having way too much fun and I am way too much of a control freak to let someone else plan my wedding for me, however, when it comes to the day of the wedding I want to hand the reigns over to someone else....and that is why I decided I need a day-of-coordinator.  I got 2 names from Whirl Magazine (I love Whirl's wedding guide if you can't tell....anyone getting married in Pittsburgh, I would definitely recommend buying the magazine and using their website) - 1 was based in Pittsburgh and 1 was based in Erie --they both had beautiful websites but 1 had better communication.  I e-mailed Sumer Schmit at Simply Pefect Weddings to see if she had my date available and if she could give me some more infomation about her services and she not only got back to me in like an hour but she sent me the most adorable packet of infomation that was all outlined in pink swirls. I think Sumer is a girl after my own heart and she doesnt even know it....haha, on her "Top 10 reasons why you should hire me" # 3 was "we love spreadsheets....seriously!".  I am pretty sure this sold me before I even met her -I live by spreadsheets-  I made an excel spreadsheet outlining my outfits for my Las Vegas trip this summer....categorized by "daytime, evening, and night".   My mom and I went out to meet Sumer at a Starbucks and I got there about 15 minutes early...Sumer was already there, sitting at a table in an adorable pink caridgan holding a pink folder of information for me.  I knew from a 15 minute conversation with her that she was exactly what I was looking for, and that she would take care of anything I needed.  So far, she has proven to follow through on everything and anything I have asked her!  I needed hair/make-up recommendations....I had a list of them waiting for me in my inbox a day after I asked for them, same thing with a florist. 

Florist

Flowers are SO important to me....but I was having a hard time researching florists until Sumer referred me to Mocha Rose Floral Designs..... I only had to meet with 1 florist before I knew that April at Mocha Rose was going to be the best choice.  The flower appointment was so fun - my maid of honor came with me and my mom and we spent about an hour and a half talking about flowers and looking through pictures on April's iPad of other events that she had done.  I am excited to work with April because she only does weddings and corporate events, she doesnt do your typical birthday and funeral arrangments so I know that she is putting all of her efforts into my arrangements.

Spam

One of the first decisions I made about my wedding after the location and bridal party were the bridesmaid dresses.  According to the knot.com I did things way out of order but  I felt like picking a color for the bridesmaid dresses would help guide my overall color scheme because I was thinking anything from blue and purple to purple and pink to blue and white to blue and champagne to blue and pink. I took my maid of honor with me to David's Bridal to try on a few dresses just to see if I wanted to continue to look there or if I thought that all of the dresses were kinda cheesy looking. I have to admit I was very skeptical because when I was in High School we do this fundraiser when you are a senior called Prom Fashion show - and each girl gets assigned a local store and you borrow a dress for the night and put on a fashion show.  When I was a senior I was assigned to David's Bridal and not only did I hate almost every dress in the store - they sent it to me in a size 4.  I think that it was supposed to be a size 10. However, when it came to bridesmaid dresses I was willing to give them another try because I wanted the dresses to be reasonably priced and it was convenient that they are a national chain since I have bridesmaids in Pittsburgh, NYC, DC and Northern Virginia. I know that the chances of my bridesmaids wearing the dress again are pretty slim to none but I still wanted them to feel comfortable on the wedding day.  Turns out that we found 3 dresses that we really liked and I was able to settle on a color - Marine, which is like a navy blue.  It was a pretty easy decision, just like my wedding dress was!
After we picked the dresses I gave the bridal consultant my information so that my bridesmaids can just go into any David's Bridal and give them my name and the 3 style will be in the system.  Bad idea.  I think that I got about 5 e-mails a day from David's bridal about sales that they were having.  Like sorry, if you have a $99.00 gown sale every weekend, its not really a special occasion.  My Blackberry was buzzing like every 3 minutes with another e-mail from David's Bridal....and NONE of them were for things that I would actually want, of course the sales were never on the bridesmaid dresses....and they were only the wedding gowns that looked like they belonged in a Prom magazine or in My Big Fat Country Wedding or whatever that show is. Like no wonder they are $99.00.  Finally I realized that I could unsubscibe to all of these e-mails and then I got smart.  I made a spam gmail account that I use anytime I have to register an e-mail address for anything (which in th wedding world is EVERYTHING).  I felt so proud of myself...its definitely something I would recommend to anyone who is recently engaged.  I currently have about 250 e-mails in there that are all junk mail.

Well, apparently I wasn't too too smart, because even though I give my decoy e-mail address out I did entered my phone number in to some of these places and I swear - they sell your information.  Like on Friday last week I got a phone call from a number that I didn't know...and when I answered it was a woman named Tanya who was calling to tell me that I won an all inclusive vacation, free wedding bands and $1,000 worth of grocery coupons.  Oh and that I was entered into a drawing to win the grand prize of a Harley Davidson. All of those things seem like reasonable prizes for a bride-to-be but a Harley Davidson?!  Umm no thanks, I'm not really a leather pant and helmet type of girl.  The "all inclusive vacation" was to the Bahamas for 3 days but didn't include air fare.... and the "all inclusive" resort doesn't even have a website... sketchy.  The wedding bands were sterling silver, plain wedding bands- sorry, I have an affection to anything that sparkles I just cant help it....so that plain sterling silver wedding band is not exactly my cup of tea.  And I guarantee the $1,000 worth of coupons would be for all food that I don't eat. 

So I guess, I out smarted the spam e-mails but I didn't out smart the telemarketers.....my new phone number is now (123)456-7890.

Wedding Dreams

No, I am not referring to having the wedding of my dreams, I am talking about literally having dreams revolving around the wedding.  I sort of figured that I would have nightmares about things going wrong at my wedding but the dreams I have been having this week have been so bizarre. 

Saturday night -

Saturday night I had a dream that Jon went home with his parents on our wedding night.  I think that this dream stemmed from an incident that happened earlier that week -- I called the hotel where we have rooms blocked off to get an update and to find out who had been able to get their rooms reserved.  The receptionist was running through the list and telling me names and how many rooms they had reserved - she got to K.Roby and the number that followed her name was 9.  9?!?!?!?  WTF does she need 9 rooms for?!!?!?  I thought - I have been on vacation with Jon's parents before and I know that she doesn't pack lightly for anything but I was seriously appalled, what could she possibly be doing with 9 rooms - what did she need 1 for her, 1 for Jon's dad, 1 for his brother, 1 for Jon and 5 for their things?!  After calling Jon and giving him a piece of my mind (sorry, Jon)  I found out the rooms were actually reserved for members of Jon's extended family....okay, fine, that's what she was doing with 9 rooms.  But I think that this initial freak out made me have nightmares - In my dream - we literally forgot that we had reserved the bridal suite at the historic lakefront hotel for the night of our wedding...and I was calling him at 3 am to remind him.  This was bizarre dream #1.

Monday night -

Monday night I had a dream that our DJ lit fireworks while we were cutting our cake.  As you can see above...apparently this can actually happen.   Fireworks are great for the 4th of July...but they aren't exactly how I picture the 'cake cutting' pictures we will get back from our photographer.  In the dream Jon and I were dodging fire sparks while trying to get a piece of cake....

Tuesday night-

Tuesday night I had a dream that Jon forgot to plan the honeymoon.  We both had our bags packed and I guess it was supposed to be a surprise for me where we were going (which BTW would NEVER happen....I am way too much of a control freak to allow my honeymoon to be a surprise destination.  How would I ever plan my outfits if I didn't know where I was going?!).  But once we got to the airport I asked him where we were going and he basically said "I don't know where do you want to go?".  I think at that point in the dream I saw that there was a flight to Fiji leaving that night....so we went home and booked a hotel in Fiji - I don't really know how things ended, I guess fine...but I was not happy in my dream.

Thursday Night -

Thursday night I had a dream that a friend of mine scheduled her wedding on the same day as mine and asked me to be in it.   Not only was I supposed to be a bride and a bridesmaid on the same day but we were sharing 4 other bridesmaids.... All of the things I had planned for my wedding day like spending the morning with my mom and bridesmaids getting our hair and makeup done were ruined because I had to be in her wedding at noon and then my own at 2.  Luckily I know that won't happen because the girl who was getting married at noon in my dream was married last November.  I think this dream was because I was watching E news and Speidi decided to get married again on the beach....weren't they like JUST married like 2 years ago?

Wedding # 1

 Wedding #2

Feeling Bridal

One of the most important things about a wedding is the dress!  A lot of brides will try on hundreds of dresses before they find the perfect one.  My experience was much easier.  Like I mentioned before I had just about every wedding magazine published as soon as I got engaged - so I had tons of pages flagged with dress styles I liked. Since my wedding was going to be outside I thought I wanted something very simple, nothing too big, nothing too stuffy, no sparkles (even though I have a weak spot in my heart for anything that sparkles, I just can't help it) - I knew I loved lace, but all lace dresses seemed a bit too formal for my lakeside wedding.  These are all things I thought I wanted.... whether or not thats what I got- you will have to wait and see :) A lot of times dresses will be featured in multiple magazines - and with this one dress I had ripped the page out twice and didn't realize it until I was trying to organize all of the tears of wedding dresses that I had to make a collage in my ever-so-organized wedding binder.  At the time I had a co-worker who is also getting married and we had very similar taste - we would constantly be sending each other links to dresses and other wedding eye-candy pictures from our favorite website- stylemepretty.com.  I came into work one day and said to her "I think I found my dress"  its a little different that what I thought I would want but I have never had an attraction to a picture of a dress like this before.  Turns out, she had been looking through wedding magazines and said that she thought she found a dress too - she said, show me the one you like and then I show you the one I found.  I pulled up a picture on the Priscilla of Boston website and she goes "shut up, that's the same dress I was going to show you!"   We started joking that since her wedding was a few months after mine and she was about 3 inches taller than me that I would buy the dress, wear 3 inch heals and then she could have it altered to fit her and she would wear flats since she wanted to get married on the beach. 

I went onto research where I could try this dress on... turns out its not sold anywhere in or around Pittsburgh, no where in Cleavland (I thought maybe we could take a road trip) or in Baltimore (I thought I could go on a weekend I was visiting Jon - without him of course). Great, I felt like I was literally not going to be satisfied with anything until I at least got to try this dress on....if I didn't like it, then fine, but I at least had to try it on. 

About a month after I found this picture in a magazine I had a trip scheduled to NYC for one of my best friend's (and bridesmaid) bachelorette parties.  I was sort of hesitant to schedule an appointment while we were there because the weekend was about her, not me, and to add to the mix she didn't know where we were going so I couldn't even ask if she would mind if I took an hour or so to go try on this dress.  I decided that I couldn't pass up the opportunity to try this dress on and asked the bachelorette if she would mind if I made an appointment in "the place that we were going" for her bachelorette party.  She of course said not only did she not mind, but that she wanted to come with me!  I was so excited, since my mom wasn't able to be with me I took 2 bridesmaids - 1 who was the bride-to-be we were celebrating and another who lives in NYC.  Now, if you have ever seen Say Yes to the Dress, you know that bringing an entourage with you to try on wedding dresses is sometimes not a good idea - for me it was great.  I only had 2 people with me, 1 who was in charge of documenting the experience and 1 who had bought her wedding gown from the same designer had some helpful hints for me.  Before I left for New York I asked my mom if she would mind if she wasn't there - and she graciously said that "if I felt like a bride then we would make it work" and that her feelings wouldn't be hurt if she wasn't there.

We started the appointment with the dress that I had come to try on...they put it on me and I felt weird, it was a feeling I had never felt before - the bridal consultant asked me "how do you feel?" I was a bit speechless, I didn't really know if "good" was the right word to describe how I was feeling - I just said "I think I like it".  So after that, the consultant left the room to get me a matching vail so I could "complete the look."  I was planning on telling her not to bother because I didn't want to wear a vail, but if she left the room it was a good opportunity for us to sneak some pictures. (At Priscilla of Boston you aren't aloud to take pics unless you make a purchase).  So, while she was out of the room one of my bridesmaids snapped a few pics on her camera so that my mom could see and then the consultant came back in with a vail.  She put the vail on me and I completely changed my mind about wearing a vail on my wedding day....it really did "complete the look".  The consultant had me walk around the salon to see how the dress would feel while I was walking and so that I could picture myself walking down the aisle.  This was all so fun, but I wasn't totally set on this dress.  I went on to try on about 8 or 9 more dresses and with each one I could find something I didn't like about it, it was almost like as soon as I put it on I wanted to take it off - but not with the first one, the first one I wanted to just hang out in.  So after about 10 dresses we put the first one back on and I decided "this is it".  I think I said to the consultant "So, I am going to buy this dress, so can my friend start taking pictures so we can show my mom?"  I think I surprised the consultant a bit that I made my decisions so quickly but my mom was right, I felt "Bridal".  I don't really know how to describe how feeling "bridal" feels but I know in my dress I did :) 

Here are a few pics of our wedding gown shopping experience.... none of "the" dress....you'll have to wait until the wedding for those :)

Finally Engaged

Jon and I met in September of our sophomore year at Virginia Tech.  When people ask me how we met I wish I had a nice story to tell, but I don't - we met at a frat party.  We dated for about 3 and a half years before we got engaged in May 2010.   Even though we had only been out of school for about a year when we got engaged, it felt like I was waiting for-e-v-e-r for the ring.  Patience has never been something I was good at, I wish I was, but I am just not a patient person - I partially blame it on my red hair.  Jon on the other hand has the patience of a Saint - which is lucky for me.  

Like I mentioned, I am not patient.  In addition to being impatient, I am a bit OCD about planning things. I like to know when and where something is happening and what I am going to wear.  Because of this planning gene that I have, I tried to plan when and where we were going to get engaged and of course what I would be wearing.....

Everyone kept asking me "when do you think you are getting engaged?!"  and I had a couple answers in mind.  My first thought was "January when we are in NYC".  Jon had surprised me at Christmas with a trip to NYC that we would take in January.  One of the events that we had planned for our trip was dinner at the restaurant where the first episode of the Sopranos was filmed.  I planned to wear a new outfit - I thought maybe we would get engaged at dinner, I had sort of always pictured it at a nice candle-lit dinner.  No dice, which was fine - I just thought he was "saving up" for the perfect ring.   It still was a bit early. 

My next thought was "My birthday"  - again Jon had planned a really nice dinner for the two of us and I planned to wear a new outfit.  I even talked with a co-worker of mine about these great new shoes that I got and how they were perfect shoes to get engaged in. (Yes, I was serious....) This night didn't end well, I had gotten myself so excited about getting engaged that I disappointed myself when it didn't happen.... bad idea.  Anyone reading this waiting to get engaged, let it be a lesson to not try and predict when its going to happen.  If its supposed to, it will.

After it didn't happen on my Birthday I sorta gave up trying to predict when it was going to happen (sorta....) but the only other thing I could think of was that it would happen when we were on vacation in Las Vegas that summer.  The only problem with that was that we were going to Vegas to celebrate one of Jon's best friend's wedding....and I sort of hoped that it wouldn't happen then because I didn't want to take away any of the spot light from the soon-to-be newly weds. 

The day we got engaged never popped onto my planning radar as a possibility and that's why it was so great.  Jon had come into town on a Thursday night to help me move out of my town house the following day.  We worked our butts off all day to move all of my things out of the house and into a storage unit in 85 degree temps.  Needless to say, we were exhausted at the end of the day and all I wanted to do was put on the most comfortable t-shirt I owned and some shorts and drink a bottle of wine.  Before we could get to the wine, we had one more thing to do and that was drive about an hour and a half to Conneaut Lake, my family's summer home.  It was the start of memorial day weekend as soon as we got there.  Jon and I relaxed on the porch, had a pasta dinner with my parents and then took a sunset "booze cruise".  None of this was really out of the ordinary, because having cocktails on the porch and booze cruises are what make the lake so great, the only thing weird was that Jon changed his clothes before we went on the boat.  He put on a nice collared shirt, one that he knew was one of my favorites.  As we were watching the sunset on the boat, Jon started giving me a little speech about how he wanted to spend forever with me.  I started to put the pieces to gether that the reason why he changed his shirt was because he was about to propose!  I think my response to the start of his speech was "are you serious?!" he responded "Im dead serious, Jamie, will you marry me?"  and he got on one knee.  I of course said "YES!" (I think like 10 times) and we went on to celebrate the rest of the weekend.  

In retro spec, I shouldn't have planned when, where and what I was going to be wearing when I got engaged because Jon was taking care of that for me.  I didnt get to pick out my outfit for the engagement but lucky for me that was just the begining of pre-wedding and wedding celebrations and now I have plenty of shopping to do :)

Jon in his nice shirt and me in a stupid t-shirt. 

One of the most beautiful sunsets I have ever seen at the lake was on the night we got engaged.  I can only hope for the same the night of the wedding!

Some pics of the ring requested by AViv :)

Bridesmaids

I would consider myself a very lucky person.  I have a great family, I am marrying my best friend and I have truly amazing friends.  I am going to have 9 bridesmaids with me on my 'big day'  (Yes, 9) and I wouldn't have it any other way.  One thing that you learn very quickly after getting engaged is that everyone is going to have an opinion about everything, whether it be positive or negative its still an opinion.  Having 9 bridesmaids is surely something that people have given me their opinion on, but the way that I see it is that it really cant say anything bad about me. So what? I have 9 best friends -  no, I wasn't trying to avoid a sticky situation by not "cutting" anyone out of the bridal party, I just want to be surrounded by people that I love and who love me on my wedding day. 

Along with endless to-do lists posted on the Internet there is also a ton of articles that feed into bride-to-be's brains that the world should revolve around them for however long they are engaged.  These articles seem to give bride-to-bes the license to treat their "bridesmaids" like they are truly servants of the bride.  I came across this article one day, and I realize that it is a bit satirical, but I think that these "tips" came from real live brides.   

http://brideswhomeanbusiness.com/?tag=weight-loss

Sure, I am going to need someone (probably a bridesmaid) to bustle my dress for me, help me carry it while walking to the church to avoid getting dirty or carry my things for me, but the minute I start asking for plastic surgeries to be involved I will officially accept a pink slip to end our friendship.

Some of my amazing friends....

And my awesome parents....

To-do lists

On of the first things that a newly engaged bride will be spammed with in their e-mail box are "to-do lists" that are pages long.  I am the queen of to-do lists, I make lists about making lists; one of my bridesmaids once told me that if I was an object I would be a to-do list.  But wedding to-do lists are insane.  I actually read on one of the many published "one size fits all" to-do lists on the Internet to "take a deep breath today".  Thank you, for the reminder to breath, I almost forgot!  Or how about "Remember how much you love your fiance today".  I would hope that if you are engaged to be married that you think of that everyday.

One of the first things that I did after getting engaged (okay, so I did this before I got engaged....its a guilty pleasure) was buy every wedding magazine that I saw. It got to a point that I had to wait until the month changed to buy new ones because I had already purchased every June 2010 edition.  Most of the time I would look through the magazines for pictures, flag the pages I liked, rip the pictures out and then throw the magazine away or share with another bride-to-be who may have different taste than me.  But there was one particular magazine that was not only fun to look at but it had actual helpful information in it like what kinds of flowers are available in each season, what colors they were available in and some other helpful hints.  Not only was the information useful but it was all laid out in tables- so easy to read!  I am keeping that magazine for all my friends who will be married.  This magazine published a to-do list that is a great shell for wedding planning.  It helped me to get an idea of what kind of timeline I should be working with.  Finally, a wedding to-do list that tells it to me strait without a whole bunch of BS muddying up what actually needs done.  I like to cross things off of a to-do list as much as the next person, but I don't need to be crossing things off like "envision your wedding"  thanks, but I do that everyday. 

In case you are interested....

http://www.realsimple.com/holidays-entertaining/weddings/planning/wedding-planning-checklist-00000000000222/index.html