Always on my mind

My recent veil shopping trips have got me thinking about our wedding from my neck up. The current criteria are:

1. Biggish hair, worn loose and down.
2. Heavier lined eyes, false eyelashes and a more natural/pink lip.
3. A poofy veil that sits at the crown of my head.

I've been carrying around this vague picture in my mind that I couldn't quite place. And today it dawned on me. Oh jeez, I'm channeling Priscilla Presley...

Gravel and Curry

According to Paper Source's colorscope, this is what our wedding palette says about me. Setting goals and enjoying good health? Yes. Loose boundaries? I wish.

Reasons 1-4 why I'm having a bad day

I called to make an appointment at Ultimate Bride, but they will only let you shop for veils if you buy a dress from them. Oh, get off your exclusive high horse. I'm sorry I bought a sample dress in the suburbs.

A woman backed into my car on Sunday night in our parking garage. Before we parted ways, she put her hand on my arm and said, "Don't worry, I'm a reasonable person." And then she lied to our insurance company and said it was my fault and that I ran into her.

My lunch spilled all over itself and my bag. Now my office smells like my lunch.

I dropped my favorite yellow hat today. Realizing it no more than 1 block later, I retraced my steps and it was already gone. If I see a 16-year old Christmas-breaker wearing it on Michigan Avenue, there will be words.

Merry Christmas & Happy Honeymoon!

Ed and I agreed not to exchange Christmas gifts this year. And then I got this. We apparently have different definitions of "no gifts."

This dress pretty much requires a honeymoon on Italy's Amalfi Coast, don't you think? Or perhaps a yacht party with Jay Z and B in St. Tropez?? I'm just sayin...

6 months

Will someone please tell me where these last 4 weeks have gone??

Update on last month's list:

1. BM dresses
2. Florists - we've met with 5 floral/decor companies and are now looking over proposals and seeing samples. I think we've narrowed it down to ~3.
3. Hotels - have pricing and a short list. Need to make decision.
4. Wedding website - mostly finished, just need to tweak a couple things.
5. Save-the-Dates - need to finalize design, send to printers, stuff and address envelopes. These are definitely not getting sent out by the 6-month mark.
6. Official guest list - for whatever reason, this is taking much longer than it should.
7. Rehearsal dinner - have 5+ places we're now considering.
8. Hair and make-up - My normal stylist is being weird about taking Saturday off to come to the hotel to do our hair. Since location and convenience trump having my regular girl, I'm starting to look elsewhere. She was also my make-up hook-up, so I'm searching for that too. Any suggestions?

This month's list:

1. Finish everything above. Seriously, this time.
2. Research cake bakers. And by "research" I mean "eat cake."
3. Shop for flair for my dress. If you recall, it's having some reconstructive surgery.
4. Start work on seating chart. Ha, ha...that was funny when I said I might actually start on it back in June!
5. Get our baptism certificates after 1/1/2010.
6. Shop for my mom's dress while home for Christmas.
7. Shop for Ed's tux. Someone already started this on his own this weekend on Michigan Avenue. Apparently it's much more urgent than booking hotels or rehearsal dinner spots.

Funny & unique STDs

On the heels of this post, here are some other outside-the-box STD and invitation ideas. I only wish I were clever enough to come up with these on my own!

From Tina, the funniest Chicago wedding blogger around:

From Sam's Notebook:


And my favorite, from NY Mag:

(view the entire thing here)

If

If I had to buy my rehearsal dinner outfit today, this would be it:

see it here.

Blog love

Ever have a moment when you wish you were still 24 and single in the city? Then I suggest you live vicariously through Chelsea at Chi City Chronicles.

Full disclosure: I am a biased reviewer...she is Betsy's younger sister. But if the 10 years of unblogged Chelsea-ness I've experienced are any indication, these Chronicles will not disappoint.

Stop the presses

What did you do this past Sunday?

This girl spent the better part of 8 hours finalizing the design* of our Save-the-Dates. (Thanks for asking.) The near-finished product was (IMHO) the perfect combination of simplicity and uniqueness with a vague Chicago reference thrown in for good measure. I showed Ed and he responded, "I like it. It's nice." Satisfied with that, I took a break to aimlessly browse the greatest paper blog you could ever want to read. That's when I stumbled upon this:

Ed saw it over my shoulder and, laughing, said, "That's great! Why aren't we doing something funny like that?**"

You see where this is going...

We spent the next hour cracking ourselves up and brainstorming ideas including, but not limited to:

• Shamelessly displaying both of our infamous funny/ugly faces
• Something involving Sonny & Cher (it was late...we were tired!)
• Recreating the Karate Kid movie poster, complete with a crane scene on North Avenue beach. Ed is the man who will fight for my honor, to be sure.

Thankfully the next morning brought clarity and a refined design. The bottom line is that we want to show our guests that our wedding will (in Ed's words), "be a crazy, fun time." To make people laugh. And for everything to be less formal and a more cheeky.

Any guesses on what I'll be doing this Sunday?

*What happens when my perfectionist and wannabe graphic designer sides collide? That, my friends, is a story for another post.
**The answer to this is, of course, "Because you never expressed any sort of opinion on this subject until now, Buddy, and I had no idea you wanted to do anything different." Ahem.

image from oh so beautiful paper

The Big 5

Ed is a pretty big soccer fan. The seeds for someday traveling to the World Cup were planted as we watched the games unfold in Germany in 2006. As the years passed and it became clear that we'd most likely be getting married in the summer of 2010, it seemed perfect to honeymoon in South Africa! A little soccer, a little safari. Plus Cape Town, wineries and maybe a beach resort.

Well as my *brilliant* ideas often do, this one quickly became better in theory than in reality. For several reasons, we will not be sharing our first married days with lions, elephants, buffalo, leopards and rhinos. Our Big Five will instead be Spain, France, Italy, Turkey and/or Croatia.

And while experiencing the world's most popular sport on a World Cup stage would be unbelievable, somehow I think watching Italy play in Italy on June 24th will not disappoint.

image from theage.com

bouquets and boys

The bride will carry a stunning bouquet of peonies, ranunculus, dahlias, dusty miller, anemones and garden roses. The bouquet will be mostly whites and creams with mustard yellow and gray accents.

This comes from the 1st of many floral proposals. It was all I could do not to throw my deposit $$ at this florist after reading her description. But I will stay true to my thorough nature and meet with everyone else before making a decision.

Oh, something else I've learned: no matter how opinionated and involved in wedding planning your fiance is, he really doesn't care about flowers. He will go to one (OK, 2) appts. and then decide you can handle them on your own. A guy is still a guy, I suppose.

image from once wed

Better than a Christmas tree

If I were Celine Dion, I would spend all day listening to myself sing "O Holy Night."

In college, I once weaseled my way into a campus choir (I don't sing) just so I could hear "O Holy Night" in surround sound.

If there's anyone out there who doesn't think this is the best Christmas song ever, please keep your opinion to yourself. Thanks.

You can wear it again

I am happy to say I'm done micromanaging the bridesmaid dress search! Five perfectly complementary, long, gray dresses have been chosen and will soon be ordered. Like my lovely girls, the dresses are fun, beautiful and unique. And generous and patient.*

Sentimentality aside, how great are these responses I got after asking their opinions on the long list of potential dresses we had gathered:

"am kinda scared I would put stuff in pockets and then get unneccessary
bulges.... Not cute!"

"Dresses I cannot wear: In these v-neck dresses I will look like a $4
hooker..."
"...even if it means me wearing the long orange, long sleeve pumpkin
dress!!! I will wear whatever you want..."

*The girls, not the dresses. Apologies. Work is crazy and mental exhaustion causes me to get overly emotional.

An almost dress

I'd almost forgotten about this dress that I tried on back in July. It was a heartbreaker. The back couldn't be more perfect, but unfortunately the front was rather boring.

And since I can't walk around all day backwards (or so my mom and sister said), I had to take it off and put it back on the hanger.

Not the dress.

Life imitates art

Lest you think I only post unflattering pictures of Ed, I present to you...

The Girl with a Pearl Earring, Hair in Ponytail and No Makeup

In other noteworthy news...last night, I was standing in my wedding dress talking to my sister. We were minutes away from walking down the aisle and I hadn't gotten my hair or make-up done and I was panicked. I looked at Ellen and said, "This doesn't feel like a dream, but it must be because I'd never let anything like this happen in real life." Within seconds, I willed my eyes open and proceeded to lie awake in bed for the good part of an hour.

And now you know why this is such a frightening nightmare.

For the record, this is my first wedding-related dream. I considered it a small miracle that my subconscious waited until the almost 6-month mark before torturing me.

Pretty girls in pretty dresses

You know when you have a Really Great Idea and you spend a lot of time planning for it and then all of a sudden you start second-guessing it? Well that's where I found myself recently with this whole gray, mismatched dress plan.

Then I came across these pictures. And all was right again.

from style me pretty

Ok. Ok.

Sick as a dog.

2 Things

1. Why, when you're sick and there's nothing to do but watch hours of mindless TV on the couch, is every commercial about food?
   
2. Text exchange from this morning:

Ed (in NYC): T - what are the bachelorette party dates that u are thinking about?
Me (in bed in Chicago): I'm not having a bachelorette party...I'm dying.