Happy Birthday!

Today JewishGuy's sister (BigSIL) had a baby girl! Happy birthday to her!!!

Florist meeting!

The chuppah is going to be four bamboo poles (held by friends) with a white cloth on the top. JewishMIL is making it! At the corners there are going to be a couple of these pink & yellow daisies plus some greenery:





The rest of the flowers are going to be these white daises (and also some smaller, also white daisies):


The daisies will be mixed in with the felt and button flowers from Princess Lasertron (click flower for link to etsy shop):



Except the flowers will be in this color palette:



so... YAY!

I think I am going to have the bouquets be a mix of a couple of white gerbera daisies with the button flowers, mine having more button flowers than the bridesmaids'. I don't know if anyone else is having button flowers, it depends on what they want - I know my mom wants a button flower corsage but I don't know if anyone else wants, so I will have to ask :)

The centerpieces as they are right now (subject to review, I think) are going to be two white gerbera daisies and one button flower in one of three clear vase designs (ellipse, rectangle and square).

Also I want to have little tea lights on the tables with the centerpieces, I think that is pretty easy to coordinate.

Overall I think everything will be simple and fresh, I don't want to compete too much with the mansion.

Grandma & Grandpa (dad's side)

I figured since I was going to post a picture of my mom's parents I should post a picture of my dad's parents so you can see where (I think) I get my face from (my grandma). At least my eyes and my nose.

Fashionable Grandma

I would wear exactly what my grandma is wearing in this picture (this is from their wedding day). Look how fashionable! Sadly, the outfit is long gone.

Well maybe I wouldn't wear the heels, not because they aren't cute, but because I do so badly wearing heels. CankeyB wants me to wear heels but I would be so uncomfortable and would probably fall at some point.

You can't tell but my grandma has bright red hair - she is 95 and she still has natural red hair.

Hair pieces again

Lalala... looking at hair pieces on etsy on Christmas morning.

Two things I like:

1) The headband. Super easy for me to put in my hair, since I am planning on not wearing it during the ceremony (veil only) and then during yichud (the time when the bride and groom are alone together after the ceremony) I will take off the veil and stick something nice in my hair, like a nice headband.

2) The crown. I like this because it's also super easy, and also makes me look kind of like a woodland princess. I think it looks really fresh and playful.

I am looking at clips but clips and combs tend to annoy me because they slip around in my very fine hair and I end up having to constantly adjust or just take them out.

All the images are links to the seller but not the individual item. I've decided not to do that for etsy anymore because things tend to disappear and then I can't find the seller again!

Anyway, I think I can go a little elaborate on the hair piece, since I won't be wearing any jewelry except the wedding ring and my dress is going to be as simple as it gets.

ALSO NOTE... these are custom made pieces, none of these are actually for sale, if I wanted something like this I would talk to the seller and design my own piece.

The Make-up Consultation

I guess I will preface this by saying I have a lot of hang-ups about make-up and my face in general. I have low self-esteem and have always had low self-esteem, and sometimes when people talk about make-up on my face, and about how important such-and-such is, sometimes (okay, all of the time) I get the thought in my head that my face is not really all that pleasant to look at on its own and I would be doing a service for humanity by wearing make-up. When someone tells me about the make-up I SHOULD wear, it always comes out to me like a list of the faults on my face: you have bags under your eyes so you should wear concealer, your eyebrows are light so you should darken them, and on and on. Instead of hearing, there is natural beauty in your face, let's highlight some things, I hear, here are your faults, let's cover them up.

In general, in life, I don't wear make-up, and when I do it's for a fancy occasion and I can't wait to wash it off after. If I didn't feel like my dress would completely wash out my face in all of the pictures because I am super-di-duper white, I wouldn't bother with make-up at all.

I am pre-wired to be defensive about my face. Or really about anything. (This is something I am working on)

I guess I should have told the make-up artist that before I went, because after I told her I didn't wear any make-up ever nor did I know anything about make-up or what looks good on me, I kind of felt defensive the whole time. I felt defensive because I don't use a different moisturizer in the winter than in the summer, or an eye cream (because of my previously mentioned bags under my eyes), or have an extensive make-up routine, and on and on. I said, I concentrate all of my face-care efforts on preventing acne.

I am so sensitive about comments on my face. Like, "oh you have big eyes!" which should be a compliment, I guess, but it was followed up with, "oh, this one is bigger than that one," which is my NUMBER ONE anxiety-producing aspect of my face, the thing I see in every picture and every time I look in the mirror is that one eye is bigger than the other, and I had it pointed out to me by someone else. And she said, well, it's natural for one side of our body to be bigger than the other, which is true... I know that's true, but it's not exactly a compliment.

She did a very nice job with the make-up but I have to say I felt kind of down during the consultation.

I also felt defensive because we had only scheduled an hour and a half for make-up, nobody knew how long it would take, etc etc... "You aren't having a wedding coordinator?" "Isn't the bride's family the one who pays?" "You're letting your fiance see you before the wedding?" (We are doing the picture-taking before the ceremony) And all these questions and I was just like ........... I just wanted to see what you would do to my face...?

Dress Nightmares!

I had the most annoying dream this morning. It was annoying because it played on my worst fears of the dress-deciding process.

To make it short, because I know reading dream posts is boring, in the dream I was in the car with some people from school and I said, let's stop at the mall and I will try on some wedding dresses, it won't take very long. It ended up taking 6 hours and I was unsuccessful. After trying on no fewer than 15 dresses, other people modeled them for me, and my friends were getting impatient. In fact, all of them at one point or another had gone into the mall to do their own shopping because they were bored. I wasted their entire afternoon and didn't even have a dress to show for it!

This is honestly my worst fear about dress-deciding. This is why I'm having a trying-on party at my house. At least then if it takes a while, everyone's sitting down and eating and drinking and talking to other people. I don't want to waste my friends' time. I know when people volunteer to help me shop for dresses they know that they are just watching me, but I assume they don't mean for hours on end with a picky shopper who also always thinks she looks fat. It's exhausting, I'm sure.

Mysterious Dress

This dress... I saw it a year ago, before I was even engaged, and I said, that is the dress I want.



Unfortunately, this dress doesn't exist anymore. I looked on the designer's site and it isn't in the last two years' collections. It's an old dress.

I don't think it would look good on me but it is so pretty.

Also, since the trying-on party isn't until January, I am still looking around. Ha!

(EDITED TO ADD: I think I need to say why I was looking at wedding dresses before I was engaged. My friend was getting married and SHE was looking at dresses and sending me to those sites. Of course I looked, too! I wasn't pre-planning the wedding :-P )

Arrivals!

Two of my dresses and my fancy underwear arrived! So now I'm waiting for the other dress and my trying on party will be in January ... I kind of want to take them out now but I think I will save that for the party.

Invited Conundrum

I have written before about what to do about inviting people from our current city, since we have a lot of friends in the synagogue and I would want to invite my whole graduate program class.

We've decided to invite our closest friends from shul to the wedding and then have a separate party for the people in my class when we get back. The reason is, there are a lot fewer people from shul we want to invite, and we simply can't invite another 27 people. Additionally, if we only invited a few people from the program (because there are a few people I would really like to be there), there is a good chance they can't afford to come anyway, so all I would accomplish by inviting them would be to point out who are my closer friends in the program. We're all getting along really well right now and I don't want to start any drama, like why did she invite her and not me, and I don't even know if that will happen but I don't want it to happen.

So that is the solution. I'm not 100% happy with that, but there is no way to invite everyone from the program. I feel bad inviting them to pre-wedding things, like my dress-trying-on party, but not inviting them to the wedding. I wish they could come. But we are really overbooked, and I don't want to put pressure on people who are already spending tons of money on school (and who likely don't have jobs, very few of us are working at all and those who are do so in order to pay back loans immediately that are gaining interest) to spend $200-300 on a plane ticket and $100+ on the hotel room per night.

Well, we weren't invited to our friends' wedding here when we first moved here because we'd only been friends a few months and they didn't have any more space. We weren't offended! We understood guest list limits and whatnot. I hope everyone understands for us!

Hair pieces

Here are some hair pieces I like today. If I had a hair piece, it would go in after I take the veil off, between the ceremony and the reception. So I wouldn't wear two things at the same time. (All images are links to seller)

This is just what I like today from looking around on etsy... Yes, my coursework is done, you can tell because I am posting like crazy and don't feel guilty about spending the entire day looking at wedding stuff.

Right now my hair is really short and in the best haircut I think I've ever had. So I am going to keep my short hair and just put something pretty in it. I kind of like the headbands because there's little danger of them falling out.

On the other hand, I might not want anything at all.

Mantilla

For a while I was pretty sure I didn't want a veil. Then it was the question of, so what happens at the bedeken if there's no veil to put on the bride? But then I remembered this entry about the photographer and the veil that I wrote back in October and decided to try to find out what kind of veil that is. It's called a mantilla. It's a Spanish style veil. I don't know how it will go with the dresses I already ordered but I think it's pretty.

I kind of need to decide on the dress first, but I think all of the dresses I ordered are simple enough to go with a mantilla veil. Also, I am going to see what my mom's dress and veil look like when I take a trip home next week.

Question about dresses

Wow a lot of posts today.

My question is, why is it assumed a man will rewear the suit he was married in, like the purchase is not a one-time-only deal, but a wedding dress is not to be reworn? Something about it is weird, even if you aren't buying a bridal gown, the idea of wearing the dress again is weird. I know some people do it, but there's the element of surprise - wow, that's your wedding dress? And you're wearing it again?

I mean, why not wear it again? But it feels weird somehow.

Bridezilla

Dresses Ordered

Here are the dresses I ordered:

from jcrew.com


from nordstrom.com


from nordstrom.com

They are all somewhat similar but I think they are nice. I had some dress drama last night as you can tell from the one-liners. But I think this will be good.

And here are the shoes I want, but haven't ordered yet:



I like the silver shoes because I think I can wear silver shoes again, but white shoes probably not as often. I have these exact shoes in black and they are so cute, except I really need to have them stretched. They are rubbing hard core and are really uncomfortable, only because the leather needs to be broken in. So maybe I will have them pre-broken in.

So I ordered these dresses to my apartment and I am going to invite some people over to see if they look good on me. I am thinking of it being some kind of little party. I have talked to many people about this, it makes me so uncomfortable for people to sit around and wait for me to try things on, but if they are at my house and eating and drinking and hanging out, it will be a lot more comfortable for me and probably fun as well. :)

Dress

Three dresses have been ordered! Now I am arranging a dress-trying-on party...

One-liners at 3:30am. Hooray.

Kittel

Are there kittels for women?

... I am exploring a range of options for bridal attire, apparently.

The Invitations!!

The last image is what it looks like all together.

We decided to do one piece of paper that is folded into three parts, the final section being a tear-off postcard RSVP!  We are leaving the whole back of the RSVP postcard free, so maybe people will write us notes or draw pictures for us, who knows.

The colors look a lot brighter on my computer screen than they do in real life.  The pink is a deep fuschia, the yellow is quite bright but the brown is a little darker, like chocolate brown.

Our benchers will have the same design as the first panel of the invitations in a bright green!

The invitations are from OrangeBeautiful :)