Flower Lust...

If I hadn’t already settled on a VERY limited amount of fresh flowers at our wedding, I would be ordering these babies right now!

source

Aren’t they perfect? And the eggplant coloring in the middle of the calla is just SO perfect! I love them. And they’re even better because their mini callas! (You know everything is SO much cuter when it comes in the mini-size!)

Be still my heart...our flowers are all done and you can’t include these too...

Loving These Much?

Look what I found when I was “browsing” for some good silk flowers…

Isn’t that GORGEOUS?!?!?

It combines all of my colors, and I love the whimsical look of the whole bouquet. What’s even better? It’s all silk, which means that it’s something that I could keep forever, if I wanted to. Plus, as a personal side note and nod to myself and MOH, these people in the floral business KNOW what color eggplant is! Unlike those fools that seem to abound in the linen business…

This bouquet is already made up and ready to order, with a kickin’ price tag! I think that I’m going to order one JUST so that I can see it in person. How awesome would it be if this was as gorgeous in person as it is online? I would literally die…in contentment!

And if that wasn’t enough, look what other options they had in their pre-made bouquets section:
Not “quite” right on the purples, but still beautiful!

LOVE this one. It brings in some other colors, that I wasn’t really thinking of using, but gorgeous!

And then low and behold, this online store might have become my new best friend. I found something that I didn’t even know existed. Lavendar. Lilies.

Check it out…

Aren’t they gorgeous?!?! Mr. CC has made ONE tiny request on the flowers – to include his personal favorite flower, which is the lily. He actually like the Stargazer lily the best, and I’m working hard to fit it into our black, cream and eggplant color scheme here, but I wonder if these beauties would do? They fit in a little nicer…

So if I place the order for any (or ALL!) of those bouquets just to check them out, I think that I’ll also order some of these lilies. They’re on close-out, being discontinued, and I could probably return them if I don’t end up liking them. But if I did like them…WOW!

Have you ever been searching for something else and stumbled upon what could be a little goldmine for your wedding? I’m loving them!

(All images courtesy of http://www.afloral.com/)

Dresses for the Maids...Part II

Now for part II of the Maids dresses…

Yeah, there’s more. You didn’t think that I’d stop there, did you?

To be fair, I also went online to trusty Alfred Angelo to take a sneak peek at their bridesmaids dresses. They have a great selection, and the prices are about what I would expect at a bridal store. And as a bonus, my bridal lady gave me coupons for my maids to use if they purchase their dresses at Alfred Angelo. To be perfectly honest, I can’t remember how much of a discount it is…it’s either $20 or 20%...about the same either way, since most of what I liked fell into the two flower or three flower price range.

For those of you who haven’t ever looked at prices for dresses online – Alfred Angelo rates their costs in ranges, showing bells or flowers for groupings of price. So one flower is the cheapest, and 5 or 6 flowers is the most expensive. Then they give you a range decoder – two flowers is under $150 and three flowers is under $175…

Here are some options that I saw on Alfred Angelo that I liked…

(The really cool thing is that I was able to change the colors on their website for the most part, so you can see them in all black!)

















Short, sexy and sassy!


















A softer, romantic flowing look that I LOVE!


















Now, SHE looks sassy! Looks like a great salsa dress…


















LOVE the rusching…very flattering and it combines short length and long…


















Also a flattering style, but does it look too much like a bridesmaid dress?


















VERY fun, flirty…looks like a great New Year’s dress.


















I like this look, since it shows the ivory ribbon/sash…but not sure that the style would flatter me – you’d have to have the perfect body to pull this one off? I’d have to see it on.

Now, on this one, the color changer thing would only let me change the color of the dress. The sash and hemline didn’t change from the original. But it would be ordered in black and ivory…I like the flower, but once again, it looks a little too much like a bridesmaid dress.

That’s all that I saw at Alfred Angelo. Maybe this will help give my girls some of my vision that I’m seeing for their dresses. Once again, with the coupon, some of these dresses aren’t any more or less expensive than a good LBD from a department store. So it’s another option that we have out there. But then again, I saw so many of the dresses here that I picked out that greatly resemble a dress that I had already found at Dillard’s.

So there. Ladies, you have some things to think about. I know that David’s Bridal also has a LOT of good choices on the maids dresses, so I’ll check out their website too…just for kicks and grins.

So what do you think?

Now for the Maids...

Ever since I first started thinking about my wedding, I knew what I wanted for the bridesmaids dresses. I want them all to wear a LBD. Yep, you read that right – a little black dress. Each of their own choosing, and they can all be different.

There are several things that I like about this idea.

#1 – you can find a good LBD anywhere. Doesn’t have to be at a bridal store where the prices can run pretty high. You can find one on sale at a department store, and I’ve even gotten a few really great ones at ROSS.

#2 – they will more than likely wear this dress again. It’s the bane of normal bridesmaid dresses – the fact that you’ll more than likely never wear it again. You spend hundreds of dollars on a beautiful gown, and it looks great on you that one day. (Or maybe not so great – depending on the bride’s choices!) But no matter how hard the bride tries to pick out a dress that you can wear again, it’s hard. Many brides pick a longer dress, thinking in the back of their mind that the maids can have the dress shortened and wear it out again. But more often that not, this doesn’t happen. I know this because two of my own bridesmaids thought that VERY same thought when I was in their wedding. At the time, I agreed with them. In reality, I never had either dress shortened, as I didn’t have anywhere else to wear the dress to anyway – short or long.

#3 – I LOVE the idea of mixing the dresses, the fabrics, the styles. Everyone can choose a dress that fits their own sense of style, their personality, their body type and their budget. This doesn’t have to break the bank.

And I love the idea of all of my ladies and I making a weekend of shopping up in Dallas or somewhere equally fun doing some girl time and bonding over LBD shopping. Love it, love it, love it. I mean, come on – how cute are some of these?

Fun and Flirty? Yes, siree!

















Sultry and Sexy....in spades!

















I LOVE the ruffles/layering effect on this dress - might have to buy it for myself!
















I'm not really sure about the one-shoulder thing, but the look of the whole dress appeals to me...and there is a maid or two that might pick this one for her personality...sassy! I'm not naming names, ladies!
















The little cap sleeves on this makes this dress SO cute!

















Simple and elegant - LOVE IT! Oh, right, I'm NOT shopping for me here....

















This looks like the perfect black sheath dress - check out the sexy slit in the side! growl...
















The rusching here reminds me a little bit of my own dress...and I LOVE the flare hem at the bottom!

















This is just stunning...no other words are needed.

All images courtesy of dillards.com

So what do you think? What I like best about this idea? ALL of these dresses can be found at Dillard's. And in most cases, they were all under $120. LOVE IT! There were even a few that I looked at that were on sale for under $100....and something that you could wear again? I'm sold!

Did anyone else want to do something similar with a LBD? Is any other bride out there just as excited about your BM dresses as you are about your own dress? Sometimes I feel that way...

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?

The TO DO list shortens...by one

Let’s talk about table linens. They have been the BANE of my existence for about two or three weeks now…seriously. It’s been a major dilemma and road block in the whole wedding planning process. I know, Mr. CC, I know. I’m making it harder than it has to be…just like SO many things. Oh well. That’s me, and you know that you love me anyway. Thanks for being patient while I was the linen-Nazi there for a few weeks. You’ll be happy to hear that thanks to my MOH coming through in a pinch…we HAVE table linens!

YEAH! YEAH! The crowd roars in the background…ok, so maybe that’s all just in my head. In real life, it’s just me doing the happy dance here while I write this post...

So here’s the problem with my linens. They’re not abnormal in any way, just your standard 120” round tablecloths that I’m looking for. I’m not looking for special material, just plain old regular tablecloth polyester. But I am looking for a specific color. It’s eggplant. (see color chart below)

It’s not purple, it’s not lilac, and it’s definitely not Burple. (If you don’t know what color burple is, just comment below and I’ll explain on a case-by-case situation…) The color that I’ve been looking for is eggplant. A deep, rich, elegant shade of purple that’s almost black it’s so dark. And it’s elusive. Very, very elusive. At least it is in Austin, TX. Maybe in other parts of the country it’s really easy to find. But not in Austin. All of the major party rental places that I’ve contacted do not carry this color. Now, they carry a nice ivory tablecloth that I could then rent a dark purple organza overlay that would work nicely in a pinch…but that’s $12 for the cloth and then $20 for the overlay??? Uh, uh. No way, no how.

I’ve searched high…and I’ve searched low. And honestly, I think that I’ve searched everywhere in between high and low. I’ve searched in person (don’t even bring up the disastrous shopping trip, Mr. CC!) and I’ve searched online. I’ve contacted smaller rental companies by phone and email. I feel that I was VERY diligent in my search here in Austin.

So then I started searching for alternative ways to score me some eggplant tablecloths. Because by this time in the wedding planning process, I’ve worked VERY hard to sway Mr. CC over to the eggplant team, and now he’s set on having these dark purple, very elegant looking, eggplant tablecloths. When I slightly suggested that we use lilac or ivory tablecloths, the look that was shot in my general vicinity was almost murderous. And who can blame him, after riding the color merry-go-wheel ride for several weeks/months and finally being able to stop the craziness – no one wants to start that up again! So, the search started.

I thought of three options: buy them, make them, or rent them from out of town.

Rentals still topped the chart on my list because of the price factor of the other two options. But I was a little leery of renting online without seeing the color with my own eyes.

I found a wholesale party supply place online that I fell in love with their shade of eggplant (image source of above color chart) but unfortunately, to buy the tablecloths, they were $28 a piece. Kind of steep when you’re talking about ordering 15 of those bad boys. Mr. CC gave me the go ahead to order them, but I was a little scared. What if the quality was bad? What if I didn’t like them? So I tried to order just 1 to see how they would work in real life so that I could touch and feel, but since it’s a wholesale supply place, the minimum order was 10. Not going to work. And at $450 for the 15 that I needed, I just didn’t feel right spending the budget on linens.

And I did toy with the idea of trying to resell them as eggplant is a popular wedding color right now. I even thought about trying to find someone to go in together with them through the boards on weddingbee.com. If someone else could pay half and I could pay half and we both got to use them, that would be cool. And when you actually think about it, I would only have to sell them for the price that I paid for them MINUS the rental price that I would have paid to rent them. That way I was selling them for the extra money that I paid out, not just trying to recoup what I had actually paid. You get that? A nice idea, but still seems like a lot of work.

And making them? Even more work. And lots of money. I found some material at a fabric store in North Austin that would work, but it was $5.99/yard. And I calculated that I would need between 5-6 yards per table…not a budget-friendly decision. Not to mention the time that it would take to actually MAKE the darn things.

Enter my MOH. Apparently in all of my forgetfulness I didn’t recall that she organizes her community Christmas dinner each and every year for the Fire Department. And this isn’t some little small-town deal, this is big. So she has all sorts of contacts with restaurants in her town to get linens and such for her party. When I sat down and had dinner with her last week and officially asked her to be my MOH (yes, we both cried) her first official act was to agree to work her contacts for the table linens.

And she came through for me today. She emailed me just now and told me that she found them from her first choice lady for $15/cloth. In the right color. The only downside being that the lady just has 14 cloths, not the 15 that I had originally told her to look for. No problem! Book it! Does she need a deposit? The total of 15 cloths needed that I had given her originally was just an estimate and if I did need extras, then I can always do the bride/groom table or the wedding party tables in ivory to set them apart. No worries. And even though it’s renting sight unseen for me, my MOH assures me that the color is right, and she’ll be able to just bring them in with her and take them back with her. No worry about shipping them back and forth if renting from afar. A NICE solution!

Table linens…CHECK!

Do you feel a great sense of accomplishment when you manage to check off items on your own personal to do list?

It’s FINAL…a decision HAS been reached!

There are a few people out there that are going to be SO proud to read this post. BH you can breathe a sigh of relief that we won’t be having those long, drawn-out conversations about nothing except for colors…and I KNOW that Mr. CC is going to be elated when he sees this in writing. We talked about it the other day, but I know that he was still skeptical…

What all-important decision has been reached, you ask?

I have selected wedding colors!

I know, I know. You were thinking that maybe it was going to be something a little more…well, I don’t know what could possibly be MORE important than choosing wedding colors. I really don’t. Do you know, or can you understand, how important this decision is? Everything regarding the whole wedding planning process is touched in some way by this decision. Everything. From the dresses, to the tuxes, to the flowers, to the centerpieces, the stationary, and even down to the table linens and favors. They are ALL affected by the color scheme that I select for our wedding.

Ok, so maybe you’re thinking that it’s not THAT big of a deal that I didn’t have this decided upon yet. And truthfully, although I’ll deny that I ever wrote this at a later date, maybe I’ve made this a teensy-bit harder than it actually had to be. I get that. I do. But most of you know about this anal-retentive, obsessive, type A personality side of me, and you all love me anyway…so how could I NOT make this decision harder than it has to be? Yeah, I really couldn’t help myself.

But that being said, the selection is made and the decision is final. Yes, BH and Mr. CC, I said final. No matter what anyone else should come up to me and say regarding my decision. No matter what other picture that I see in my next bridal magazine (I should probably just stop reading them now!) of a new and different color scheme that I hadn’t previously considered. It doesn’t matter. I promise. To keep my own sanity, I know that this decision has to be final and made.

So without further ado…I give you my wedding colors…

Black

Ivory

Eggplant (deep purple for those of you who might be color-challenged)

Lavendar

There will also be some pinks (both light and dark) thrown in for good measure here and there so that the Stargazer Lilies that Mr. CC and I love so much will fit right in. The main colors will be black and cream (ivory) and the eggplant and the lavender shades (and also pinks) will be accent colors. I don’t want the whole wedding to be purple, but I need more than just the black and cream. I think that the deep purple of the eggplant color will lend some elegance and charm to the venue, going along with my rustic elegance theme in my head, and the lavender will lighten it all up a little.

I LOVE the color purple. And I have struggled SO hard with this decision because it’s my favorite color. You know, sometimes a favorite color isn’t meant to be a wedding color. But I think that I will regret not making this wedding MY wedding, and what better way to do that than to have my favorite color there? There’s no better way, let me assure you. And having the option of throwing in some pinks in there to complete the look just…well, I can’t resist saying it…I’m just “tickled pink!”

I know, I know. Corny. That’s me. Welcome to my world.

So there. Whew. That felt SO good to put in writing. I have my wedding colors. Oh, I got a little tingle just writing it again! (I know that I’m silly, it’s ok – you can laugh along with me)

Am I Obsessed with Colors???

This is a question that I’ve recently been asking myself…which is shortly followed by an even bigger question…is this NORMAL for most brides? I’ve never been one to follow the strict code of what is most popular, but in this case I’d like to think that my temporary insanity is perfectly normal, and an affliction that hits most brides at the start of the planning process.

I mean, like I’ve stated in an earlier blog, the main problem is that I like too many colors. I like brown, I like black, I LOVE purple and pink, I think that green is pretty, but could also go with a deep navy color. Not to mention those nice fall colors that make such beautiful centerpieces that I’ve been seeing EVERYWHERE!

And that’s the real problem…once you start obsessing over these kinds of things, it just grows exponentially on you so that everywhere you go, everything you see reminds you of something that you saw somewhere in some bridal magazine that you probably paid too much for to just rip pages out of it anyway! ARRGGGHHHH!

Ok. I can do this. I can take nice, deep breaths that will calm me and settle my nerves. Breathe in. Breathe out. Deep breath in. Deep breath out.

You see, last week I didn’t have all of this tension. I had decided upon my color scheme for the wedding, and I had even talked Mr. CC into a color that I was certain he’d have problems with. Surprisingly, or maybe not so surprisingly since I know that he just wants me to be happy with it all, that was a very easy decision for him to come to terms with. But then, over the weekend, I talked to some new people about the wedding and one of them didn’t like my color selection at all. And she was SO against it, that I started to doubt and rethink my whole vision.

It’s not that she’s against my choice, it’s just not what she would do. And that’s something that I need to learn to deal better with. It’s not a personal thing if you don’t like my color selection, you might simply not like the color purple (like in this case). That doesn’t mean that I need to question what I want, right? But you know, she had some good arguments for some other colors…and that brought up decisions that I had long since made, so that I’m rethinking those initial decisions too…what a mess!

I’m just a mess. There’s no way around it. And poor Mr. CC…he literally does NOT know what to do with me, or what the big deal is. He doesn’t get that I can’t move forward in my planning (or my envisioning) until this VERY important decision is made…and stuck with. I know that he’s wondering if he got engaged to a total wacky lady – he knows that I didn’t used to be this color obsessed…even if I have always been slightly wishy-washy…

I’ve made a deal with myself. I WILL make this decision soon. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But soon. Like within the week….or two…