Two More Special Dances…

After having our first dance as man and wife, it was time for the Father-Daughter dance. In reality, I wasn’t really sure that this was something that my Dad really wanted to do. I’m not being mean by saying that, just honest. I mean, this wasn’t my first wedding (as he kept reminding me), so I wasn’t sure if he’d want to do all the things that he didn’t do the last time…and I had to just swallow my pride and ask him about it. And don’t you know that when I did that, he acted like he’d never been anything but supportive of the idea for us to have a big wedding and of course he wanted to do a Father-Daughter dance with me.

We could have easily have left it out, but I’m really glad that we did it. There was no Mother-Son dance, so it wouldn’t have been that odd if we’d left this one out…but like I said, I’m glad that he wanted to do this tradition this time around with me. I know my Dad well, and knew that he would really only be comfortable doing a waltz. With that in mind, I selected Natalie Cole’s version of “Unforgettable” as it’s one of our favorite songs and a great song to waltz to.

Except that when we took the floor and the music began playing, there was another song playing at the same time. Right now, six months after the fact, I can’t recall what the other song was. But basically the problem was that we had given the DJ a burned CD for the songs that we wanted played that weren’t already in their library of songs…and of course, our First Dance song wasn’t in their library. So she had just played the Black Keys song off of the CD and then was switching to her library of music for the Natalie Cole song…but somehow the CD wouldn’t stop playing. It wasn’t really a big deal, other than there we were, my Dad and I just standing out in the middle of this dance floor waiting…and waiting…and waiting.

Of course, I made good use of the time and reminded my Dad (repeatedly over and over) that I couldn’t go backwards like normal in our waltz. With my bustle, the dress was up off of the floor, but just barely and I was really concerned about tripping and falling flat on my face. Call me Grace…but if it was going to happen to someone on their wedding day, it would be me!

Luckily, the music finally started and we moved into our motions. Without me going backwards. But leading me in the wrong direction kind of threw my Dad off a bit and we ended up doing a cross between a waltz and a two-step…it was cute though and no one but us could probably tell. But apparently we don’t take good pictures together, as this was the only really decent picture of the two of us dancing…

Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great picture of the two of us – the joy and laughter on my Dad’s face is just priceless. I just wish that we hadn’t been making such awful faces through the rest of the pictures!

After that song ended, I got a small surprise. J came up to me and asked if it was her turn to dance with me now. I have to tell you that I nearly cried. If I had though ahead to plan this out, I couldn’t have done it better, but honestly it never crossed my mind that she would want a dance all on her own with me. Silly mommy! I quickly caught the DJ’s eye and requested what at the time was “our song” – Taylor Swift’s “Love Song.” We played this CD out in my car – at top volume and to this day, she still requests it on random days.

I’ll let the pictures show you this special, unplanned dance…



And of course, she wanted to be spun around and around…




And like the “little lady” that I’m trying to teach her to be, at the end of the dance I bowed and said “Thank you!”

Like I said, I couldn’t have planned this better if I’d tried…it was the perfect ending to the special dances before the dance floor was opened up to one and all!

Did you have any “surprise” special dances at your wedding? Or are you planning on any? I’d love to hear about it!

**All photos courtesy of Christina Carroll Photography

Need to catch up? Here’s some links:
Girls’ Spa Day
Bachelor/Bachelorette Party
Setting Up the Venue…
Practice Makes Perfect…
Rehearsal Dinner
5 Minutes is All that I Need
A “Quick” Stop at the Hair Salon
A Sneak Peek at the Venue...
Arriving at the Venue...to Stay!
Getting Dressed
The Maids Pose for the Camera...
Oops - I’m Out of Order!
The Boys Smile and Say “Cheese!”
It’s Show Time!
Here Comes the Bride!
Becoming Man and Wife...
We’re Man and Wife!
Family Pictures
Now THAT’S Love!
The “Group” Says Cheese!
Now It’s Just Us...
It’s the Smallest Things...
Here Comes the Bride! And Groom!
Raise Your Glasses...
Our Cake Buffet
The Great Cake Cutting Debate
We Danced...

Happy Mother's Day

Yesterday was Mother’s Day, and it was a great one for me! First of all, I want to wish ALL mother’s out there a VERY happy (albeit belated) Mother’s Day. Being a Mom is one of the hardest jobs out there, and it’s the most rewarding job on the planet.

My day was perfect. I got to sleep in, and then I got sweetly woken up (not with a kiss, but close) to be told that breakfast was ready. I usually do the cooking around our house, unless it’s on the grill of course, and for my special day I didn’t have to do the cooking or the cleaning. As the “chef” I also am usually the last one that gets to eat, so it was a double rare treat to get my plate handed to me when I got downstairs and I was the one that ate first. But before I could eat, I was blessed with gifts galore. I had cards from both kids and flowers from my FH, along with a small teddy bear with a mini-balloon and some candy. Mr. CC did good!

After breakfast, since I didn’t have to do the dishes either, I was given the REMOTE. Yes, girls, you read that right. I had total control over the remote for the ENTIRE day. It was nice, let me tell you – the power that one little device holds is just amazing. We settled down to watch a movie, Mr. CC did some laundry and I was not allowed to do anything that remotely resembled work. So it was a restful day spent for me.

I did remember to call my own mothers about halfway through the afternoon, don’t worry. I missed both of them the first time that I called, but talked to each later in the day.

The perfect day was topped off with Mr. CC grilling up some chicken for dinner…yummy! Although Mr. CC’s son had to go home in the middle of the day, little CC was there with us all evening. She was super cute about “helping me” all during the day so that I had a good Mother’s Day. Isn’t it cute when kids are old enough to understand that this is your day and they make the choice to do all that they can to make it a good day? This is the first Mother’s Day that little CC had understood this, so it was very special indeed.

How was your day special?

Flower Girl Dress #1

Yesterday I wrote about how cool it is to get free things…and I think that we can all agree on that point. But I teased you about the flower girls dress(es) that I had already found and bought, so I figured that today I should write about that. actually, just to be mean, I thought about waiting another week before I wrote about it, you know make it a “real” teaser. But I’m just not that mean, contrary to popular belief…

So early on, I had something in mind for my flower girl dresses. Knowing kinda what I wanted for the bridesmaid dresses helped, and with the colors of the ceremony being mainly just black and ivory, it was a simple choice. Having a late October wedding means all kinds of things could happen with the Texas weather, but it’s probably not too early for velvet. In my head, I had conjured up something that had a black velvet top and an ivory or ivory/black skirt that was fuller and some shiny black patent leather shoes. Cute, huh? Yeah, I thought so.

I was at work one day when a co-worker mentioned to me that Macy’s was having a sale. (Now, I have to be honest here, and I’ve never been really impressed with Macy’s. I LOVED Foley’s and the whole store has just gone WAY down hill since Macy’s acquired the chain.) She went on to tell me that they were deeply discounting their winter dresses to make room for Easter dresses and she thought that she remembered seeing black and ivory dresses. Score!

Now me being the procrastinator that I can sometimes be, I waited almost a week before finding time to make it over to Macy’s. I don’t remember what exactly was going on that week, but there were things keeping me from trotting myself over to Macy’s that very night. So by the time that I have my daughter and talked Mr. CC into accompanying us to the dreaded mall for a “quick” shopping trip, it was nearly a week after I had heard about the sale. And of course, by that time there wasn’t much left of the sale. There definitely wasn’t anything in black and ivory, but we did find one dresses that had potential.

It was a simple black velvet sleeveless dress, with a high waist and a small, built-in petty coat to give the skirt some volume. The bad thing? There was a sash on the dress that was god-awful ugly. No, make that U…G….L…Y. The good news? Well, there were two pieces of good news in my opinion. #1 – the sash is removable, so I could easily envision the dress with a different sash (maybe ivory satin or something fancy like that) and could see how that would be easy to make, and fairly cheap. #2 – the dress was on sale. How much you ask?

$17. A whopping $18.40 after sales tax. Sold, ladies and gentlemen.

But to be frank, I wasn’t sold right away. Mr. CC was the one who encouraged me to go ahead and get it, just in case. You see, the velvet isn’t the type of velvet that I had pictured in my head. I was envisioning a lush, very fancy or formal velvet. This dress was velvet, but it was a cheaper, stiffer, not quite as fancy of a velvet as the one in my head. That was pretty much the only thing that I didn’t like about the dress. Well, and that UGLY sash!

But like I said, in my head I could totally see this dress on my daughter the day of the wedding with a fancier ivory sash and possibly a small bolero style fancy jacket to further dress things up a little bit. VERY cute.

And at that price, Mr. CC had a good point. Even if I wanted to keep looking for something else for my daughter to wear, it was a good deal and could be worn just as a regular church dress any given Sunday. Yes, thank you, I would like to keep that hanging!

One flower girl dress down…possibly more to find? Should I keep looking or try to make this one work?

Rearranged Dreams...

Has anyone out there ever started planning your perfect day – your wedding day – only to have something happen to make it totally out of whack? So much so that you just have to go back to the main drawing board and start again?

That happened to me last night. I’ll tell you about it…

My parents seemed to be excited about my new engagement. My fiancé and I live about 4 hours away from my family, so it’s not as if they know him on the level that I know him, but we make the attempt to visit with them and give them that opportunity. So when he asked them for my hand, they all agreed. Some gave advice, and some didn’t – that’s just my parents. (They have been divorced since I was a small child, and have both remarried – he had two sets of parents to talk with.)

But when we got engaged, it was more a formality in my mind. To me, we’d been talking about the wedding that we wanted and how we wanted to do things for the last three months. I hadn’t really talked too much with my family about these things so that he would have the opportunity to ask for my hand without them knowing that we’d already been talking about it. So, pretty much, I need to give them time to catch up.

But the whole time in the last two or three months that we’ve been looking for venues and vendors and deciding what we wanted to have for our wedding, I’ve had this image in the back of my head on how this all would go down. My family would be excited for me, and my mom and step-mom would get involved in the planning aspect of things. At least to go dress shopping with me and maybe be there to help me pick out colors and flowers and that type of thing.

So imagine my surprise when I get a tepid response from my mom when I asked her about having friends to invite to the wedding. She said no. And she didn’t just say no, she said NO. I was taken aback and kinda confused, but I didn’t say anything other than ok. I got off the phone with her and went about my business. But it bugged me. It sat in the back of my head and bugged me all night long. And for most of the next day.

So by the time that my fiancé came and got me for dinner, I had worked myself up all kinds of ways. I laid it out on the table with him to get his opinion. (He’s absolutely my best friend in the world and I trust what he says and value his opinion.) He encouraged me to call my mom and talk things over.

When I worked up the courage to do that, sometimes a girl needs a little pep talk first, I called and talked to her about us picking a date for the wedding (still not decided on that one) and her opinion of it. She started asking some questions and even wanted the website of the venue that we were looking at doing the shin-dig at and I had pretty much convinced myself that I was wrong. That I had just caught her on an off night or just totally misread things. But me being anal me, I had to ask the question to be sure. (Are there ever times you wish that you’d just shut up?)

Her answer was that even though she was happy for me and excited for me, she was old fashioned in her beliefs and let’s be honest here, this was my third wedding. One just doesn’t do a big wedding for the third one. She didn’t have any friends that she wanted to come to it, since it was my third. She went on to say that most of her friends now didn’t know me and she didn’t think that they would want to travel the 4 hours to see someone that they didn’t know get married. She was nice about it all, but pretty much she told me that she thought that it was tacky that I was having a big wedding on my third marriage. It’s just not done.

And my dreams were crushed. The vision in my mind of us dress shopping and asking her opinion on this color vs. that color or helping with the centerpieces just swirled around and around and around the delete tank in my mind until they disappeared. They are gone and that never will be. As I sat back and thought about it, I cried. And not just little tears, but great big wrenching sobs. My mom’s approval means a lot to me, and she pretty much told me that I didn’t have it.

It’s disappointing, but nothing that I can’t work around. Despite how she might feel on the subject, my fiancé and I BOTH want a big wedding. Neither one of us had happy last marriages, including the actual wedding ceremony, and we want that. We truly want to have our friends and family around to support us and cheer us on as we make this step in our lives. We’re not old, we’re both in our very early 30’s, so this is a big step for us. Since we both have been married before, we’re not asking anyone other than ourselves to pay for this, so if this is what we want then it’s what we want. And I’m happy with my decision to press on. And feel truly blessed that when faced with this crying girl that wasn’t even making sense while she tried to explain what just happened, my fiancé scooped me up and sat me in his lap so that I could be held while I cried. When the tears stopped and I was able to explain without the sobs, he hugged me and said that it would be ok. That he would be right by my side and help me do the flowers….he’s a gem of a guy!

But the little girl inside of me is still sad to lose the person that I wanted most by my side during this process….

Has anyone out there had to re-arrange or cope with a new theory on how to do something like this without that one person that you wanted to be involved in it with you?