Afterthoughts on Wedding Photography

I had originally put these thoughts in my earlier blog post outlining the list of things I wish I had a do-over with during My First Daughter's Wedding.  But, that list was really meant to be more of a summary, and my ramblings on about it grew too long and detailed.  Since quality photography is something that I now realize I am very passionate about, a much longer discussion of what I learned about visually documenting a wedding is in order.

I am somewhat of a shutterbug myself, and I am visually oriented.  I come by it honestly -- my father was a good photographer (and an excellent artist as well.)   My daughters also seem to be gifted in art and photography, so we are passing down the torch.  Coming from a background like this, it is no wonder that the wedding photos were so important from my perspective.

I am not alone.  From my browsing of wedding literature and websites, and real-time communication with other Mothers of Brides, the wedding pictures are the wedding aspect that many MOB’s are the most disappointed with.  I learned a very important lesson through my experience.  If quality photos documenting a wedding day are important to you, the photographer choice is something you should take your time with and be very selective about. Don't just look at the bottom line. When my Second Daughter gets married (or any important occasion for that matter) if I am paying for the photography, it would be so worth it to me to spend more, if it meant having the type and quality of visual memories I would prefer.

I really hate to write anything less than positive about the photographer we used for My First Daughter's Wedding (who has since retired from the business).  He and his wife who assists him were professional, honest, reasonably priced, dependable, hardworking, and really nice people – those are all important, and I have no complaints in those areas. They did an absolutely awesome job of the outdoor formal bridal portraits, taken a few weeks before the wedding, and the posed pictures of the bridal party and families at the wedding were decent.

Having said that, I have to honestly say I was underwhelmed with most of the wedding day photos, especially the candid shots and images of of the wedding decor.  Maybe I have just looked at too many gorgeous wedding magazine and wedding blog spreads, but the end-product just did not have the hoped for wow-factor for me.We waited for nearly 3 months to get the photos, which turned out to be a bulk collection that did not appear to have been edited much.

The main issue was with the actual style and content of the photos, and then to a lesser extent the "unedited" quality of how the finished product came to us, and the frustration and inconvenience of actually putting together a nice collection of wedding memories in our new high-tech world of do-it-yourself photojournaling.  I blame myself partly, for not communicating more with the photographers ahead of time, conveying our wishes and expectations, and for not doing more research ahead of hiring them as to the type of work they generally do.  But then, the last time I had to hire a wedding photographer was 25 years ago, and the industry has definitely changed.

Gone are the days of the big coffee-table album of gorgeous retouched pictures that the photographer puts together for you.  Now, it must be ironed out before hand if the photographer will retouch/edit the pictures for you and put together an album, or will he just hand you a massive high-resolution digital collection of photos which you are expected to edit and photo-shop yourself. Because we opted for a lesser priced photography package, an unedited collection is what we got.  I found this to be... well...overwhelming.

I think I actually prefer the old fashioned way, when the wedding images you bought were a finished product, not a work in progress.   After we finally got our disc containing hundreds of shots, we still had hours of our own editing to do to select the "keepers" and make the shots more to our liking. (This is not necessarily a negative to the younger tech-savvy generation, it seems they would rather edit the photos to their own liking and put together their own albums using photobook services like Shutterfly, as my daughter did.)  Over a year now post-wedding, I have yet to make my own hoped-for wedding slideshow or memory album with my own favorite pictures, although I did order a copy of my daughter's Shutterfly book.  I just have the basic photo-editing software that came with my computer; it is not user friendly and it is slow, tedious, and time-consuming.  At this point, I don't know if "my album" will ever happen.

Now, I'll move on to the discussion on wedding photography subject matter and style, which is really what I am passionate about.  Yes, the wedding is mainly about the bride and groom, but I think it is about the families and guests, too, and to a lesser extent, they should serve as a record of the events and how the venues looked.   I suppose this was really important to me also because I was highly invested in putting the wedding together, both monetarily and emotionally.  I wanted a decent visual record of all those hours and dollars spent planning for this event!  Here are a few examples of the questionable photo style and content, and "missed shots" that I perceived:

- The bridal dressing shots were taken in the church bathroom - not exactly the most appealing backdrop, and not much attempt was made to "disguise" this venue.
 
- For the ceremony, most of the photos were taken at the back of the church, so they were all distance shots.  There were few closeups of the couple.

- At the reception, we have the usual traditional photos of the bride and groom, numerous candid shots of the younger crowd (mostly strangers to us) out on the dance floor, but where were the nicely-done photos of some of the older guests (including many close family members and long-time friends) who remained at tables? We get a glimpse of them (sometimes in awkward poses) in crowd shots, but that's about it.
  
-There were no professional photos taken of the pre-function area for the appetizer time, and only one messy shot of the ice cream sundae bar, after most of the guests had already gone through it.  We have no photographic history of the appetizer spread, and the sundae bar was one of the top special features of the wedding - and we also have no pictures to show for it.

-Isn't the couple waving goodbye in the limo a standard wedding shot?   Didn’t seem to get one of those either.

-For many of the photos, it seems to me the crowd or unattractive backgrounds could have been blurred, or edited out somehow..so the focal point of whatever the shot was about would stand out.

And, this is my biggest regret -- as the Mother of the Bride, I would have loved a pre-ceremony, sweet,  "just the two of us" shot of my daughter and me.  The only nice photo of my daughter and I together that day was taken by the wedding planner's daughter, and the wedding planner was also in the picture!  (At least, there is a shot of my husband and daughter together as he walked her down the aisle.)

My First Daughter had a college friend who is an amateur photographer, and she had the foresight to ask this friend to go in and take photos of the hotel reception venue before the guests arrived, knowing that our professional photographer would be tied up at the church wedding venue.  Those are actually some of the nicest photos we have of the reception decor. (However, the amateur photog had left for the wedding ceremony by the time the hotel staff set up the appetizers.) 

So, what did I take away from this experience?  I am willing to shoulder the bulk of the blame, because of the basic lack of communication with the photographer.  (And granted, there were also some situations that were out of their control.)

First, I should have vetted the photographer more carefully during the selection process to make sure that their style would fit the vision we had for the wedding.  Our photographer was apparently more experienced and comfortable with the posed genre of photography than he was with the candid photojournalistic style.   The group/crowd pictures our photographer took just seemed very similar to the reception images that guests took and shared with us.

Second, if I knew then what I know now, for a wedding of this size and held at two different venues, I never would have hired a photographer who did not work with at least a second shooter.  That way, the action at both venues could have been covered simultaneously, and we may have had some different choices of the same shots (i.e. different angles, or closeups.)

I never did make it a priority to talk to the photographer or give him a shot list of things and people that my husband and I would have liked to see in the photos, and I do not know how much direction he got from the bride and groom, either. There should have been better communication and planning beforehand on the logistics of how, where, when, and the subjects of the pictures that would be taken.

Thirdly, I never investigated or discussed in detail how the finished photos would be presented to us.  I really presumed the photos would be better edited before they were given to us than they turned out to be.

Most definitely, we should have come up with a way to include photos of more of the bride's and groom's extended families. (Aunts, Uncles, Cousins, etc...)  I shoulder the blame now that they were not asked, ahead of time, to stay behind at the church and participate in the "bridal party/family photo session"  before going over to the reception venue.  And at the reception, there needed to be some way to include guests in photos who remained at the tables rather than coming out to the dancefloor.

These are things to consider next time...At one wedding I attended, the photographer made his way around the room taking pictures of all the guests at the tables; the guests could even use "props" like dark glasses or mustaches if they wanted to.  Many people are doing photobooths at wedding receptions and they seem to be a fun activity for the guests, as well as another way to provide photos of a variety of those who attended the wedding.  Also, I have seen posed photos similar to the one shown below, which I think is a great way to show that those "Aunts, Uncles, and Cousins" were actually there at the wedding!

The bottom line is, I give our photography team credit because they were friendly, courteous and professional, they were great with the outdoor formal bridal portraits, and on wedding day they did the best they could, with one camera, and with little planning and direction. (But I will know better what to look for, and ask for, next time!)

Counting Down the Hours: Frantic Friday

Friday morning of the Wedding Weekend dawned. We knew that Saturday (wedding day) would be extremely busy and stressful, but we figured Friday would be more of a laid-back type of day.  Little did we know...

My younger daughter packed up and headed out ahead of us in her own car because the bride and bridesmaids were having a Pamper Day at a spa in Waco with a catered lunch, instead of a Bachelorette and Bridesmaids lunch.

My husband and I loaded up our car to almost overflowing, and made the drive in fairly heavy thunderstorms. We arrived around lunch time, and we had a nice lunch at a restaurant near our hotel with my sister and her husband. We went back to the hotel to check in, but were told our room was not quite ready -- neither were the other rooms we had reserved for the bride and bridesmaids.

No matter, we thought. Our daughter the bride had texted us on the drive down to Waco and asked if we could run a quick errand for her, since she would be tied up with the Pamper Day activities with her maids until almost time for the Rehearsal at the church that evening.  We had planned to display one of her formal bridal portraits prominently at the reception, in the true Southern wedding tradition. So, she had ordered an enlarged gallery-sized print at a local camera shop, and asked us to pick it up for her. She had purchased a large frame for it on sale at Kirklands, and we were to pick that up at her apartment and take it with us to have the camera shop people put the portrait into the frame. We figured we would run that errand and be back in an hour, and our rooms would be ready-- the official checkin time was 2:00 anyway. That would give us plenty of time to relax a little and change clothes for the wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

Well...we hit our first big Wedding Weekend snag. When we got to the camera store, they had the print ready all right, but they said they did not have a big enough cutting board to trim it off. So, they could not frame it for us. They suggested we take the photo and the frame to a Hobby Lobby or Michaels. Bear in mind, we are not familiar with this town at all. They tried to give us directions to Hobby Lobby but it went in one ear and out the other, and we do not have any GPS unit or apps on our phones. We called my daughter and she basically talked us to the street that Hobby Lobby was on. I spied a Michaels on the way, so we decided to just pull in there.

The framing assistant at Michael's was helpful but very slow-moving. He just did not pick up on the time constraints we were under. He suggested that we actually would need a thicker mat to make the portrait look nicer in the frame than the flimsy one that the Kirkland's frame had come with. We agreed that he had a point, so he selected several types and colors of mats and leisurely tried them all out against the portrait and the frame to find the best "look". Finally we all decided on one. Well, he said, he did not have a big enough mat of that particular material and color in stock, but he could order it and it could be here in 3 to 5 days! My husband and I just looked at him, probably wild-eyed, and said, "We need it done today! The wedding is at noon tomorrow!"  

So, the framing guy disappeared in the back and eventually re-emerged with several large mats that he had in stock. Once again my hubby and I tried to remain patient while he tried them all out. We finally decided on one and placed the order, with the understanding that we would be back before closing time that evening to pick it up. By the time we left the store, it was pushing 3 pm. The rehearsal was scheduled at 5 pm, and we had to get back to the hotel, change, and make the 20 minute drive to the church.

Then we hit Snag Number 2. We pulled up to the hotel entrance and my husband suggested to save time, he would go get us checked in if I would start unloading the car. I figured he would be gone 5 or 10 minutes max. I located a wheeled cart, and started the unloading. Well after 20 minutes, I basically had the car completely unloaded and still no sign of my husband. I waited another 5 minutes, and could wait no more. I just left all our stuff at the curb and ran inside to see what was going on. He was standing at the desk, with a frown on his face. Our room was still not ready, although most of the other rooms were. He handed me the keys to the bridesmaid's rooms and I went back outside to wait with our things.

The bridesmaids pulled up about then, all fresh and relaxed from their spa day. I handed them their keys, then waited, waited, and waited some more in the hotel's driveway on that muggy, warm Texas afternoon. We did not get into our room until after 4 pm! I was so angry I could have screamed. We had to rush around getting changed, and we were definitely feeling sweaty and disheveled. I also quickly had to figure out what things I would need to re-pack in the car to take to the church with us, in order to hand them over to the wedding coordinator. We arrived 10 minutes late to the rehearsal. (Would you believe we still beat those bridesmaids there, even after they got into their rooms a good half hour before we did?)

The rehearsal went off without too many glitches (other than a slight disagreement between the pastor and the wedding coordinator about some ceremony details and positions of the bridal party.) I honestly do not remember much about it. While we were there, a typical Texas late afternoon spring storm blew up and we could hear the thunder booming outside and rain pouring down torrentially. It had stopped raining by the time we left the church and made our way to the restaurant for the Rehearsal Dinner, but the streets were still wet and halfway flooded, some traffic lights were flashing off and on, and the Friday evening traffic was horrendous.

The ceremony rehearsal

The groom's family had booked a family-style Italian restaurant close to the church for the dinner. The food was good and plentiful, but the evening wore on a bit because the groom's grandparents (from out of town) were late arriving due to the storms, traffic, and the conditions of the streets, and then we only had one waiter working the entire party of 25 people or so. The evening was very informal -- there were no slide shows or speeches or toasts, just visiting amongst the guests and eating the dinner. In the back of our minds my husband and I knew we still had to go back to Michael's to pick up the bridal portrait before it closed, and as the time drew nearer to closing time for the store, we ended up having to leave the party rather abruptly.

We got a bit lost and barely made it to Michaels 10 minutes before it closed. Our framing guy had even begun counting his cash and closing out his register when we got there, so we all had to traipse across the store to the main registers to check out. The portrait did look very nice, although we were pretty stressed and perturbed after literally having to run around town all afternoon and evening long, for an errand that should have taken no more than an hour if the camera store had just had the right equipment!

We made it back to the hotel, changed to casual clothes again, and relaxed just a little, but I knew we still had some work to do downstairs in the ballroom. Denise, our wedding coordinator still had to finish up the bouquets and floral arrangements for tomorrow, and I knew she would not be down there, but I wanted to see what, if any progress had been made on the reception space setup. The cake-ball stand had been damaged a bit in the car trip, and we had to repair it and put the tiers back together and deliver it to the ballroom too. We had run into the groom's parents in the lobby downstairs, and they had brought the cupcake stand with them, and had already dropped it off in the ballroom.


We had to track down a hotel security guard with a key, but we finally got into the ballroom around 10:30 pm. I felt some pleasant relief then...the room was looking very nice already. The tables were all set with the linens on them, and the dance floor was in place. My husband and I re-organized the dessert table and got the stands put together and in place. For the first time, I could see it all starting to come together! This wedding was really going to happen, and even though I was exhausted and stressed out to the max, I was also getting pretty excited to see if it all turned out the way we had envisioned it during the last year of wedding planning!  At this point, I thought, "It is what it is..." and just had to let it go and trust that all the planning would pay off.



Here is the infamous framed bridal portrait, displayed at the reception!



The Final Countdown, Part 2 - (Focusing on the Audio/Visual)

The last weeks surrounding the wedding and her college graduation were quite hectic for my daughter. The Groom's brother's high school graduation was also sandwiched into that same week -- and of course they wanted to attend that and take the opportunity to spend some time with the Groom's family for a few days (including putting together the Cupcake Display for the reception with the Groom's mother and grandmothers!) So, it is understandable that my daughter decided to turn over some of the last-minute details to me and the wedding coordinator.

The Bride was not sitting around painting her nails, however. Besides wrapping up their final college semester and preparing for her graduation, she and her fiance were also busy working on some wedding projects that were nearer and dearer to their hearts -- music and visual displays for the wedding. (I suppose this reflects the interests of any typical 20-Something!)

Musical Maid of Honor and Best Man

First, they were having to nail down the details and music to be used during the ceremony and for the wedding processionals and recessionals of the wedding party and the families. She knew she wanted her fiance's brother to play guitar, and her sister to sing. However, joining their two differing performing styles proved to be a big challenge. (Think John Mayer vs. Barbara Streisand.) In the end, the simple, meaningful song "Dancing in the Minefields" won out as an opening duet, with the groom's brother leading by playing beautiful acoustic guitar, and my daughter joining in on choruses. Then my daughter, who is a voice major, was able to have her vocals better showcased in the Unity Candle song, which was "One Hand, One Heart" from West Side Story.

The bride and groom had to pick out music for the DJ to play at the reception as well, and as a surprise for everyone, they actually choreographed and rehearsed their first dance together, to "Why Don't We Just Dance." I loved what she chose as the Intro to the bouquet toss, "All the Single Ladies", by Beyonce! Actually, to finish up completing the wedding soundtrack, the couple ended up having to abandon their bridal party for a few hours after the Rehearsal Dinner the evening before the wedding!

The couple also had worked in the weeks prior to the wedding on a slide show of photos of themselves growing up through the years, to be shown at the reception. I had previously spent many, many hours going through our numerous photo bins narrowing down the choices for her. I suspect the groom's family did the same. Then the Groom had the job of spending many hours scanning all our photos, as well as his own family's, into digital images.

The Bride and Groom also got busy on another visual project - they decided that instead of plain table numbers, their table identifiers would be photos of themselves at places and landmarks in Waco that had particular meaning to them during their courtship. There was some discussion as to the type of frame or holder these would go into for display on the tables -- and in the end they chose simple, clear acrylic frames (which were also cost-effective!) We had 18 tables, so going around to 18 different places to take photos took a bit of time, and then they had to photo-shop the images and get them printed. But the finished product turned out great -- we had a lot of comments from guests on what an unusual, yet personalized idea it was.  Here's a sample:

We also wanted to incorporate the beautiful bridal portraits into the visual display of the reception somehow. My daughter chose one of the formal shots taken by Wendell Samford of Chapel Hill Photography, http://www.chapelhillphoto.com/ and she took the image to Padgitt's Photo in Waco to enlarge into portrait-size which would be prominently displayed on an easel at the entrance to the reception area. She even found a suitable size frame on sale at Kirkland's! (More on this portrait project in a later post...it turned into a last-minute ordeal which the Father of the Bride and I got involved in.)

Not to mention the final few bridal showers and parties were happening...my daughter had two showers thrown for her by her Waco friends (which I did not attend); and then back in Flower Mound, her sister the Maid of Honor, and her other local homegirls threw her a Lingerie Shower... (to which I was not invited...oh well...it would have been awkward anyway!)

So many little details go into the making of a memorable wedding...but they are so worth it in the end!

Memory Board - the Recurring Themes of the Wedding

There is a popular wedding blog that is so beautiful to look at that visiting it is almost like viewing art. It is called "Style Me Pretty". While spending some time looking through what it has to offer, I noticed that many users were using a "collage" to gather ideas for their upcoming weddings. Pre-wedding, these beautiful mosaics of collected photos are known as Inspiration Boards. Often, photos of ideas and wedding components that brides like are compiled from the website, or just from the Internet in general.

I got to thinking, it would be cool to gather some of the real components of my daughter's wedding into one of these collages, or mosaics. At this point, I would call it more of a "Memory Board."

The Style Me Pretty blog offers a Board Maker application, and you are able to use your own photos from your own computer library, rather than just public ones that are out there on the Net.

Here is my first attempt. I wanted to show some of the wedding stationery that we came up with -- including the Save the Date cards, the formal invitations, and the wedding program and reception menu. The monogram my daughter designed first for the Save the Date Cards, and later used in the programs and menu cards was featured. I also wanted to document the light blue and ivory color scheme she chose for her wedding, and the use of the light blue hydrangeas and ivory florals (roses, spider mums, baby's breath, etc.) that were such a big part of the whole wedding experience, from the bridal showers on through the reception. Finally, there was a beautiful verse of scripture that my daughter used on the invitations, and again on the wedding programs, to show that this couple honors the Lord as the head of their household.

Kudos to our wedding coordinator, Denise Harlan, who took care of the menu cards and programs at the last minute, when the Bride and her Mom had simply run out of steam! We suggested some of the design elements, she already knew the color scheme, and the finished product came out great!

The Real Wedding of Amanda and Ian

I love the "Real Wedding" stories that are featured in the glossy Wedding magazines. Even though the couples are complete strangers to me, I will read them word for word and drink in all the details. I didn't want to spend the $700 plus it costs to "feature" my daughter's wedding in one of these, nor do I have connections with a well-known photographer or celebrity wedding planner who will foot the bill. So, I decided to post my daughter's Real Wedding Story right here on Blogger! It was also a way to sum up everything that has transpired in the last year into a more fluid story. But, it turned out long...sorry!

Amanda and Ian
Waco, TX
May 21, 2011

Amanda and Ian were both incoming Freshmen at Baylor University in 2007, and happened to be assigned to the same group together in the Baylor Welcome Week activities. In no time they were dating exclusively and became inseparable during the next 3 years.

During Spring Break of their Junior year, while Amanda was out of the country on a mission trip to Morrocco with their church, Ian called her Father, Wes, and asked if he could make the 2 hour drive up to the Dallas/Fort Worth area for a visit, because he had something to discuss. With a marriage blessing secured from Amanda’s parents (and with all parties sworn to secrecy) Ian planned an outing at the start of the summer break from school. The plans were for the two of them and another couple to go on a “double date” camping trip to the rugged wilderness area of central Texas which holds a large rock formation known as Enchanted Rock. As far as Amanda knew, the whole thing was being planned by the other couple.

It was there while Ian and Amanda had a few quiet moments together admiring the sunset vista of the Texas Hill country, that he got down on one knee and presented an engagement ring to her. She was totally surprised, and accepted the ring tearfully while their friends (who were in on the surprise) snapped photos of the two, and other park visitors clapped at what they had just witnessed.

Wedding planning started soon after and continued through the next 13 months. The couple decided to have the wedding in Waco, where they had lived throughout their college career and had made many good friends. It also happened to be a convenient central meeting point for the bride and groom’s Texas families. They envisioned a fairly formal, traditional church wedding, with a reception featuring a good meal and plenty of desserts. And the bride definitely wanted there to be dancing!

Having the wedding in Waco posed a bit of a logistics problem, since Amanda was based there for the majority of the school year and her parents did not live there. Amanda was also very busy with her Senior year of college. Although she and her mother Janet exchanged many phone calls and emails planning, choosing the vendors, and pulling together most of the major components of the wedding, the Mitchells decided to also seek the help of a “Weekend-Of Cooordinator” in Waco. It would be helpful to have a local wedding expert dealing with the local vendors, pull all the details together, and oversee all the wedding weekend events so that Amanda, Ian, and their families could better enjoy the day. They enlisted Denise Harlan of “Thee Designs” to fulfill these functions.

The church choice was obvious, since Amanda and Ian are active in the college ministry at First Baptist Woodway (a suburb of Waco). Because of restrictions on dancing, the party would have to move away from the church following the ceremony. After researching the venue options in Waco and finding that not many would hold the number of guests that were anticipated, the decision was made to have the reception at the Waco Hilton Hotel. The space included three large meeting rooms, which is known as the “Three Rivers Ballroom” when combined together. The recently renovated hotel had a classic feel and featured in-house food and catering services with a good reputation.

Attendants for the wedding included Maid of Honor, Krista Mitchell (sister of the bride), and bridesmaids Sarah Childs, Rachel Scala, Hannah Crabtree, Paige Baker, and Abigail Pitzer. Ian chose his brother Ryan Hughes to be his Best Man, and groomsmen included Jon Middaugh, Jeremy Goss, Jordan Richardson, Jordan Edwards, and Kyle Martin. Amanda also selected her room-mate Kristin Johnson to attend the Guest Book, and ushers were K.C. Mangen, Moses Sandoval, and Nolan Bixler.

Exactly one week following Amanda’s graduation from Baylor, Magna Cum Laude, with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, the wedding weekend arrived. The day before the wedding, Amanda and her six attendants enjoyed a spa/pamper day including lunch at Ultimate Escape Spa in Hewitt, TX as their Bachelorette outing. That evening Ian’s parents, Chuck and Cathy, hosted a casual family-friendly rehearsal dinner near the church at Mama Bari’s Italian restaurant for the bridal party and immediate family.

On the morning of May 21st, Amanda, her attendants and the Mother of the Bride arose early and were at the church by 7:30 a.m to begin hair and makeup preparations. At 12:00 noon the wedding party made their way down the aisle, with Amanda escorted by her Father, Wes. Amanda and Ian were united in marriage before a gathering of 170 friends and family members, in a meaningful service led by First Baptist Woodway’s College Pastor, Michael Criner.

The bride wore an ivory satin ballgown by Maggie Sottero, featuring pickups, a beaded bodice and embroidered hem and train, with a cathedral length crystal-beaded veil. She chose a simple pearl choker and drop earrings for her jewelry. In keeping with the light blue and ivory color scheme, the bridesmaids all wore floor-length light blue chiffon gowns with a satin waistband and floral detail on one shoulder strap.

The bride’s bouquet was made of light blue hydrangeas, roses, and calla lilies. The bouquet was wrapped in lace from her mother’s wedding dress, and featured an heirloom blue cameo from the Mitchell family. The bridesmaids bouquets were simple stems of light blue hydrangea blooms.

Ryan Hughes played the guitar and sang “Dancing in the Minefields,” joined by Krista Mitchell. Ian and Amanda lit the Unity Candle together during the solo “One Hand, One Heart”, also sung by Krista Mitchell.

After the ceremony, the bridal party and families adjourned for a photography session. A white stretch limousine and driver was standing by to take the bride, groom, and entire bridal party to the Hilton for the reception.

By this time the wedding guests had already arrived at the reception venue and were enjoying delicious appetizers and a punch fountain in the foyer adjacent to the ballroom, which overlooked a patio and garden area of the hotel.

When the ballroom doors opened for the reception, hosted by the brides’ parents, the room was set with tables covered with linens in the blue and ivory color theme. The tables featured several different styles of elegant centerpieces including hydrangeas, white roses, and spider mums, as well as candles and pretty collected vases on mirrors. The guests enjoyed a plated luncheon, while DJ Johnny Bradshaw of Central Texas Talent acted as M.C. and provided music for dining and later dancing. The newlyweds surprised the guests with their choreographed first dance together, to the song "Why Don't We Just Dance?"

Guest tables were given names as well as numbers, with the names corresponding to locations in Waco of particular significance to the Bride and Groom. Photos of the couple at the locations were featured in clear frames with the table numbers attached. Menu cards in the wedding colors were place on the guest tables, along with bubble favors to be used later in the reception.

Instead of a traditional wedding cake, the couple opted for lovely sky-blue iced cupcakes. The tiers of the cupcake stand were decorated with beads and trim by Amanda with the help of Ian’s mother Cathy and Ian’s two grandmothers, in the light blue and ivory color theme. There was also a cake ball display taking the place of the groom’s cake. The cake balls were graciously made and gifted to the couple by a personal friend. The cake ball display stand was crafted by Amanda and her mother, and was in the colors and theme of the Florida Gators, a team favorite of the groom and his family. The reception also featured an ice cream sundae bar which proved to be very popular and refreshing on the hot Texas afternoon.




The guests enjoyed the food, toasts, and traditional bouquet and garter toss, and after a short time of dancing it was time to say goodbye to the newlyweds. The couple would be embarking on a Caribbean Honeymoon cruise the next day, and they needed to drive to Galveston, Texas that evening. The reception guests showered the couple with wedding favor bubbles as they danced their last dance, and then followed the
ouple with more bubble-blowing out to the circle drive of the hotel as the couple departed in the stretch limo. The guests did not leave the ballroom empty handed; they were invited to take leftover cupcakes with them in small Chinese takeout containers provided by the bride and her family.

The couple is still currently residing in Waco, as Ian finishes his last semester of graduate Accounting work at Baylor, and Amanda works for Hewlett-Packard on their Management Information Systems team.


Amanda and Ian’s Wedding Ingredients:
Ceremony Venue First Baptist Church, Woodway, TX
Reception Venue and Catering Three Rivers Ballroom, Hilton Hotel, Waco, TX
Photography Engagement --Abigail Criner Photography, Waco, TX; Bridal Portraits and Wedding – Chapel Hill Photography, Waco, TX
Officiant Pastor Michael Criner
Consultant Denise Harlan, “Thee Designs” Waco, TX
Gown Maggie Sottero, Bridal Co., Denton, TX
Veil Bridal Co., Denton, TX
Hair & Makeup Trendz Salon, Waco, TX
Bridesmaid’s Dresses David’s Bridal
Formalwear Squires Formal Wear, Waco, TX
Flowers Denise Harlan, “Thee Designs” Waco, TX
Cupcakes Patsy’s Bakery, West, TX
Cake Balls Phuong Luu, Waco TX
Stationery Save the Date Cards—designed by bride, Overnight Prints.com; Invitations--Jordan Browning, “Ever After” Waco, TX ; Programs and Menu Cards—designed by Denise Harlan, “Thee Designs” Waco, TX; printing by Print Mart, Waco, TX
Music Ceremony--Krista Mitchell, Flower Mound, TX and Ryan Hughes, New Braunfels, TX; Reception DJ--Johnny Bradshaw, Central Texas Talent, Waco, TX
Transportation Luxury Limousine, Waco, TX
Rentals Action Rental, Waco, TX (furniture, dancefloor, linens)
Cake Displays Cupcaketree.com; designed and decorated by the families
Favors Bubbles-- TheKnot.com Wedding Shop; Printed Napkins--Party City; Chinese Takeout Boxes-- Papermart.com; Personalized Labels—Oriental Trading Co. and 123 Print.com
Honeymoon Carnival Cruise Lines (Caribbean)

Bridal Shower #2: The Church Ladies

As the title implies, the second bridal shower for my daughter was hosted by some of my church friends. We are not really that old -- actually we are middle aged (40s to 50s); but we figure that to my daughter and her friends, we were those "little old ladies".

Around the Christmas holidays last year, two friends in my Bible Study class approached me saying they were so excited about having an upcoming wedding in the works. Many of the women in our class  have kids in their teens or early twenties, and have been through other family milestones together through the past 8 or so years, like getting driver's licenses, graduating from high school, selecting a college, etc. So, it only came naturally that this is the next step for us.. and my daughter is the first of the crop to get married!

My daughter was so honored that they wanted to do this, but first we had to overcome a little point of wedding etiquette. (See my earlier blog entry, "Will the Wedding Police Come After Me?") We knew that we would not be able to invite all the people in my class to the wedding, and Modern Wedding Etiquette says this is a big no-no. But after consulting with some bridal etiquette people and the hostesses to get their opinion on the matter, we decided that for several reasons this was "An Exception" that everyone was OK with, so the plans proceeded. As it turned out, not only the two original ladies, but several ladies in the class had a hand in helping with planning and organizing the shower.

The late March day came with brilliant sun, but a stiff breeze. This proved to be a bit of a challenge since the shower was planned poolside in the awesome, yet comfortable outdoor living space of one of the class members. The huge covered patio area is complete with a huge stone fireplace, and even a chandelier. This friend is a gardener, and her yard was spectacular with blooming flowers and tastefully arranged shrubs. She had also created a giant grapevine wreath in the wedding colors, with all sorts of kitchen gadgets tied to it, which was a focal point of the decorations on the fireplace. Two of my daughters' bridesmaids were there to lend her support, but mostly it was just us "church ladies!". (That's the maids and me with the bride in the picture below!)

This was planned as a kitchen/recipe shower, and each guess had a recipe card included with their invitation, with the instructions to share a favorite recipe with the bride by bringing it to the shower. Then at the shower the hostesses had a cool recipe book for the bride -- a binder with pages with plastic inserts for inserting the recipe cards into.

The munchies were beautifully presented and colored in the blue and ivory color theme of my daughter's wedding, and tasted just as awesome as they looked! (My friend Janet should go into business selling her cupcakes - they are to die for!)

We played only a few games, (not near as many as we did as the bridesmaid's shower) and the ladies kept apologizing for putting my daughter through them. ..Although in reality she and her maids really like them! One by one, the winners of the games found an excuse to give their prize (which was a kitchen themed gadget or accesory) to the bride, as is the old custom for Southern Bridal Showers, I believe.

Well, the church ladies shower was well done and very enjoyable, and my daughter was so impressed with the ladies' handiwork, both in the decorating and the food. She genuinely seemed to enjoy herself. And the ladies seemed to appreciate that she was a really good sport about it!

Bridal Shower #1 - Bridesmaids Rule!

Last month we started "Shower Season". There were two bridal showers for my daughter in our town - one the traditional Bridesmaid-hosted one, and the other was thrown by some of my church friends (or, as it became known as, "The Old Lady Shower.")

The Bridesmaid shower came first, and I did not know what to expect since few of these girls had ever even been to a bridal shower before, so they were clueless what to do. My younger daughter, being the MOH learned from her web searches that she was supposed to spear-head the project. She cornered me one day about 6 weeks before the planned day with a panic-stricken look and begged me to help her plan it.

At first I really thought I was going to have to pull a major MWE (Modern Wedding Etiquette) No-No and basically plan and execute my own daughter's bridal shower. But as it turned out, I basically just gave my younger daughter a nudge in the right direction. I let her know it was time to send the invitations out, and time to plan the shower, and I just sort of gave her the highlights of most of the showers I had been to: Send out the invitations, then at the shower you visit, eat, maybe play some games, and open gifts!

I encouraged her to contact the other bridesmaids for a planning session. This was a bit out of her comfort zone, since the other bridesmaids were her sister's friends and a few years older than her. But she dutifully made the first contact and mostly through texts and Facebook messages they decided how to divide and conquer. My younger daughter was put in charge of the invitations.

Since she is a Freshman in college and in the Performing Arts (with auditions, voice and dance lessons solidly booking her schedule) she asked if I would scout some invitations out for her, then she would send them out. The issue was, we were cutting it close to the shower date...we had to get those things in the mail FAST!

No problem, I thought. Back in my day, invitations came in little cellophane wrapped packages that you purchased in any grocery store or Walmart. They had fill-in-the blank lines where you put in the details of when, where, and who to RSVP to. I soon found out, once again with the changing times came a new breed of invitations. Those little fill in the blank notes are becoming very scarce--few stores carry them anymore. Custom-printed invitations are what's expected now, evidently.

Complicating this was that the MOH didn't want to give just a generic bridal shower -- she wanted a Theme to work with. Again, Mom did some web surfing, and we came up with an "Around the House" shower theme. Basically, you assign each guest a room, and the gift that guest brings should be used in that room. I found some adorable Around the House themed invitations online - but again, other than a verse explaining what type of shower it was, they were all blank and ready to be custom printed. Unfortunately we had run out of time to order any.

My younger daughter said friends had told her of a nice wedding supply store near her college campus in Oklahoma City, so she ran out on a Saturday morning to check them out -- again I told her to buy "fill in the blank" ones if she could find any that would work. We must have texted back and forth 20 times that morning -- with her sending me photo texts of what she was finding. Well, she found some cute Around the House invitations all right - but you guessed it, they were totally blank. Well, she said...one of her friends loves to hand-print things, and she had volunteered to help with the invitations. I was skeptical, but she went ahead and bought the cards. Believe it or not, her friend hand-printed 20 invitations that day. They actually came out really cute!

The other bridesmaids are all local here in town and all know eachother so they met a few times for planning sessions. I kept in touch with them through Facebook, asking if they needed any help, but they took care of everything! The only thing they asked me to supply was a floral centerpiece, which I was happy to take care of.

Everything looked so pretty when we arrived at the shower, which was held in the family home of one of the bridesmaids. One of them had made a white apron for my daughter to wear which had "Bride" on it in bejeweled studs. The munchies were so good, and everything was so pretty and color-coordinated!

In spite of my reading that shower games were basically passe' now and nobody liked them but old ladies, one of the bridesmaids had planned quite a few little games for us. Well, the guests (other than me and the bridesmaid's mom who owned the home) were all 20-somethings and they really got a hoot out of the games! There were prizes plenty for the winners of the games, and all sorts of favors as well. Nobody went home empty-handed! For being bridal shower Newbies, these young ladies really outdid themselves! I will write soon about the second "Old Ladies" shower!

All the Little Details

So now the big stuff is out of the way, and we are down to all the little details! For the bridal showers, which started last month, it suddenly became urgent that some sort of Guest Book would be needed, either individual ones for each shower or a large combined one. I located a nice spiral-bound guest book (which our wedding coordinator recommended) at Hallmark. It has plenty of pages for each shower as well as documenting the wedding attendees as well. Since it is a ring-bound binder, the guest signature pages can be removed from this book, so if needs be, some pages can be at the ceremony site and the rest of the book can be at the reception venue, or vice versa. Someone will just have to remember (eventually) to gather the pages from one site and combine with the others in the main book. (If someone forgot to bring a hard-bound guest book from the church to the reception ballroom, that would be bad...!)

With a fancy guest book comes the need for a fancy pen, so I bought 2 gold pen sets (with bases) from Party City. Except I may exchange them for silver ones, since the trim on the guest book cover photo is actually silver, and the cocktail napkins may have silver imprinting too!

Our attention has also turned to wedding favors. My daughter is not big on spending big bucks here! (And a M.O.B. friend of mine who has married off 2 daughters told me that in her experience, these were not taken home by the guests, anyway!)

My daughter decided she would like to have the guests blow bubbles for the couple's sendoff, and she opted for the slender 'bubble tubes' rather than the little bottles. She ordered white and light blue tubes in keeping with her colors from the on-line store of The Knot...(Her go-to website for everything, it seems!) They arrived promptly, but we found that the light blue color they touted was actually more of an aqua green. So, I am focused now on "disguising" that somehow. I have ordered some pretty "Copenhagen blue" satin ribbon to tie on them, and I am considering making customized labels with the bride and groom's names, the date, and the saying "Love is In the Air." We feel we may have some leftover cupcakes and cake balls after the dessert time at the reception, so we decided it would be a nice touch to send home the leftovers with the guests who would like some, as an added favor. I then began researching suitable boxes to contain these treats. I found that although the little individual cupcake boxes which are made for this purpose are abosolutely adorable, they are also pricey. Since we are not offering these favors to all guests, only those who are still present at the reception near its finish and would like to have "take home treats", I figured these boxes would not be on display, and may even be stashed under a table until needed. The guests may get icing and cake residue on them, so they will probably just throw them away after they enjoy the treats. So they needed to be functional, rather than fancy. After many web comparison searches of favor box pricing among vendors, I decided upon 1 pint white Chinese takeout boxes with wire handles, and I ordered them from Papermart. http://www.papermart.com/Product%20Pages/Product.aspx?GroupID=16206&SubGroupID=16207#16207. They can be partially assembled ahead of time, I figured, and stored within eachother in a stack. Because Papermart offers them at such a reasonable price, I ordered 150 of them to be on the safe side, figuring we would use them for both leftover cupcakes and cake balls.

Now, I am still considering "prettying" the takeout boxes up a bit with a label or something -- but again, I don't want to spend too much on this fluff because they will not be on display and the guests will likely not keep them. It is unbelievable how expensive the pretty colored custom labels with the couples' names and the date can be! I refuse to pay 50 cents to a dollar a piece per sticker! So, I haven't committed yet, but am considering ordering inexpensive generic wedding stickers from Oriental Trading Company. They may not be the best quality, but they will make the takeout boxes a bit more special.

I also bought a "card box" for the reception. This is an item I was unfamiliar with until I started watching some of the wedding shows on TV. My hubby thinks this is a silly splurge, but it just seems like a nice idea to me - to gather all the wedding cards (and perhaps enclosed checks, cash, or gift cards) into one pretty enclosed container. And my daughter can use it later for wedding keepsakes, I figured. Here's a photo of the one I purchased from Party City, with my daughter's approval:

Time for DIY!

DIY = "Do It Yourself". When it comes to home-made, hand-crafted items, I am definitely no Martha Stewart. This is definitely out of my comfort zone, and I think my daughter is in the same boat. I had not planned on us doing a lot of D-I-Y projects for this wedding, but plans just sometimes take a turn in ways you don't expect.

My frugal daughter had already decided that to her groom and her, who are not big cake fans, modern wedding cakes (although beautiful) are an overpriced addition to the wedding reception. They decided to go with cupcakes, only to subsequently find out our small-town baker does not supply her own cupcake display stands and that we would need to supply these. And we are not talking the little wire cupcake racks that hold maybe 12. We are talking a stand that will hold 200-300 cupcakes. Our venue people did not seem to have anything that would work, nor did the local party rental places. Cha-Ching!!! There goes our savings to the bottom line of the cake budget.

After a quick Internet search, we found that glass or even heavy-duty plastic cupcake display stands are quite pricey. So, despite the Father of the Bride's misgivings that they look too "cheap", we have decided to use disposable, heavy duty cardboard cupcake stands, or "trees" for both our reception cupcake and cake ball displays. (The cake balls are being graciously made for us by a friend of my daughter's as a wedding gift to the couple, and they will be taking the place of the traditional southern "groom's cake" at the reception.) I ordered a large square tree (for the cupcakes) and a small round tree (for the cake balls) online from ttp://www.cupcaketree.com/. They arrived very quickly--and they arrived unassembled. The idea is then to custom decorate them any way you like. There are decorating how-tos on the website.

There were also instructions included in the cartons for assembling these trees, but I am so challenged in areas like that, that I was intimidated from the onset! Thankfully my D is a bit better spatially and can probably figure that part out. Here is a photo of the unfinished square tree, (guaranteed to hold up to 300 cupcakes!) to give you an idea of what we are going to be working with:


My daughter also informed me that her future Mother-In-Law  is going to help her decorate the main display - which is for the cupcakes, but she will do the cake ball display at home with my help, since that is taking the place of the groom's cake and she wants him to be surprised. I was a bit disappointed at first, but it will be a nice "Bonding Opportunity" for my daughter and her future M-I-L, (and a later conversation I had with the MOG revealed that his grandmothers LOVE to do crafts and couldn't wait to help!)

At least I was invited to help her select the materials to be used. (Actually, that's the part I enjoy--I would rather design things than actually carry the design out!) So on a Thursday afternoon as she came home for her Spring Break from college, I took an afternoon off from work to devote to this project. (Thinking we would do both the material selection AND the project itself.) Ha! Ha!

Well, this was an interesting shopping expedition, to say the least. We headed out to the craft store, and of course we were too impatient to look at the how-to's that www.cupcaketree.com provides on their website, so we had nothing pre-planned as far as what items we would use for decorating. We just sort of winged it! It would have been helpful to have an idea beforehand how many yards of ribbon, etc. we would need to purchase to cover all the tiers! As it turns out, I think we may have understimated, so we may get the extreme pleasure of trying to track all the stuff down again at some future time to purchase more of it!

Anyway, the bride and I got our exercise that day traipsing all over Hobby Lobby several times over (for those not familiar -- it is a huge big-box craft store). She decided to use her general wedding color scheme, light blue and white/ivory for the main large cupcake tree, alternating the tiers with some pretty light blue crystal beading, and white lacy ribbon. I suppose it will be glued on to the edges of the tiers somehow. We are going to leave the actual tiers alone and just use the white cardboard -- the cupcakes will be nestled in paper containers anyway. We hit upon the idea of using doilies to pretty the tiers up a bit before putting the cupcakes on them. (But that turned out to be another big goof -- I proudly found her some beautiful round white paper doilies which we purchased, only to remember later after we got home that the stand for the cupcake tree is square! Duh!!)

For the cake balls, and the smaller round cupcake tree, she chose more masculine style ribbon trim in the colors of the University of Florida Gators, (which is her groom's favorite team) -- royal blue and orange. She wanted the tiers themselves to be a chocolate brown color. For the top tier, we are thinking of ordering a team nick-nack.

What threw us for a loop is how to do the chocolate brown tiers. We vaguely rememberd seeing on the decorating how-to page on the manufacturer's website that some people just use spray-paint. So we were going in that direction, until I asked my daughter if the cake balls would be in any sort of paper wrappers. She said they would not, and the Hobby Lobby employee who opened the locked spray-paint cabinet agreed with me that its probably not a good idea to lay the cakeballs directly on top of spray paint!

We ended up finding some heavy duty posterboard in a chocolate brown color that my daughter will have to cut out and glue to the tiers. I'm still a little concerned that we are going to have butter and oil stains on the brown posterboard. Since this stand is going to be round, I thought about using the round doilies I bought by mistake, but since they are white that kind of defeats her chocolate brown idea. I guess we will cross that bridge when we get to it -- perhaps I can look for some sort of butcher paper or colored foil to lay down under the cake balls to stay with the color scheme.

Getting all these materials turned out to be fairly time-consuming, and we did not get to this project that weekend or even during her Spring Break after all. We had too much else going on (like her first Bridal Shower and getting the wedding invitations finalized). So, it was postponed to another weekend that she planned to be home.

And the costs? Well lets just say the materials cost more than I thought they would. Hobby Lobby is wonderful because it is a one-stop shop and has just about all you would need. But you may also pay a premium for that convenience.

What to take away from this? Well, first off, do the math! Is your idea really a cost-cutting measure, or in the long run, would it pay off to let the experts do their thing (in both extra costs of display/decor, and time?) And if you do decide to go the D-I-Y route, if D-I-Y is not normally your thing -- definitely do your homework and have a plan before heading out to the craft store! Find out all the materials and quantities you will be needing ahead of time, and consult the experts -- those who are comfortable with D-I-Y projects can give you some pointers, and lead you to the best vendors and resources for your particular project.

To be continued...Pictures of the final product(s) will come eventually!

The Crowning Glory

Today was a fun day. My d is in town for Spring Break, and I took the afternoon off from work to go with her to take care of some wedding-related errands.

Although she found her dress early on in the process, she had never settled on a veil. We knew from trying on the Maggie Sottero Monalisa Royal ballgown at Bridal Co. in Denton, http://www.bridalco.com/, that a cathedral length veil just looked stunning. But at the time, the store's inventory of veils was down, so she did not commit to one. They promised that as Wedding Season progressed, they would get more veils in stock.

Part of the deal with buying her dress there was a "store credit" which turned out to be somewhere around $150. (This is what the store offers as a buying incentive, since the maker of the dress does not allow discounts.)

So, 7 months or so after purchasing the dress there, we returned to Bridal Co. today to look for the veil again. The first ivory, cathedral length veil she walked up to turned out to be the one! It is so unusual...it has scalloped edges with delicate crystal beading on it, and actual teardrop style crystals hanging off the edges at intervals on the veil. I have never seen anything like this veil before, and it will look awesome with the Monalisa Royale. Just the right amount of bling to accent the dress, without it being so much that it does not get lost in the elaborate train beading of the dress. (The picture to the left is not the actual veil -- but it is similar...imagine something like this in cathedral length!) We actually had a few bucks left over on the credit after selecting the veil, and she picked up a little clutch handbag with some beading to go with the dress, as well!

Our next errand did not go so quickly or so easily -- we had to go to Hobby Lobby to select the items to decorate our cupcake tree displays with. More on that later...

Meet the Vendors!

So, its a Friday night and I am bored. (No "Four Weddings" on TV tonight and must wait for the 10:00 showing of "Say Yes to the Dress". Am I wedding-obsessed, or what?)

It is now less than 3 months before the wedding. Lots of things checked off our list, lots of the little bitty details yet to take care of. My D said to me recently that these little details are stressing her out, and wedding planning seems like a full-time job nowadays. But, she is on the home stretch of her college career, doesn't have classes on M-W-F, and her fiance is out of town working an internship job, so I say, let her do her "Thang"! I am interested and involved of course, but the more she is willing and able to do herself, so much the better! Repeat again here ...it is not my wedding...!

Flowers are now arranged -- we are using our weekend-of wedding coordinator, Denise Harlan, to also do the flowers. Don't know how that will work out -- since she will be busy setting up centerpieces, etc. at the reception how much will she really be helping with day-of wedding coordination? Well, she says she will have an assistant, so fingers crossed, it will all work out! But we keep adding more flowers all the time...cake topper, second bridal bouquet for the bridal portraits, etc. (more on that later.) To top it all off, we found out that any emails I sent the lady were going to her Spam email box. No wonder we would not hear back from her for weeks after we emailed her! To her defense, whenever I call her on the phone, she always calls back within a few hours, and is very gracious and assuring.

Wondering who we are using? Here's a link. http://weddingeventconsultant.com/ She is actually listed on the Knot.com as a preferred provider - so I guess we did good!!

In lieu of a wedding cake, we are doing cupcakes. My daughter first considered a personal friend of her groom's from New Braunfels, Texas who is trying to break into the cupcake business. (And is that ever a big business right now!) But, my daughter decided that due to ease of transport, it would be best to obtain the cupcakes from the more-established Patsy's Bakery of West, Texas. (a neighbor of Waco.) http://www.patsysbakeshop.com/ Being a small-town baker, Patsy will make, deliver, and set up the cupcakes, but she does not have any sort of cupcake stand in her inventory, at least not for a wedding this big. So, after doing some Internet research on cupcake cake stands, and initially having sticker shock at the price of most of them, we found this website: http://www.cupcaketree.com/ where there are affordable, customizable, corrugated cardboard cupcake stands.

A personal friend and wedding invitee of my daughter and her fiance offered to make cake balls as a wedding gift. So, that is what we are offering in lieu of a Groom's Cake. Another smaller stand was ordered from cupcaketree.com to display these. Due to these cake offerings and the Ice Cream Sundae bar which we are also going to feature as part of the wedding reception, we figure there may be some leftover cupcakes and cake balls, so we are looking at ordering some cute litte boxes to put these in, to offer as take-home favors for late-staying reception guests!

My daughter ordered the invitations this week from a young gal in Waco (a Baylor Grad!) Jordan Browning, who is a wedding consultant and also offers wedding invitations and other wedding-related merchandise. Her business is called "Ever After": http://www.weddingseverafter.com/

The Invite stationery suite will carry through the blue and off-white color theme (although we had to go with gold lettering as the off-white offering.) Viewing again photos of our reception venue, with its gold and blue carpet, I think this will work out just fine! The stationery will arrive around Spring Break time, hopefully, so...guess what we will be doing in mid March?

The Wedding Portrait venue has been reserved. I am excited about this...The Earle Harrison House and Pape Gardens, a historic home and adjoining gardens in Waco. Here is a link to the venue: http://www.earleharrison.com/ They say the gardens will be in full bloom in mid-April, which is when the portrait session is booked for. My daughter specifically asked me to travel down to Waco for this event. (Yay!) She will need someone to help her get dressed. The wedding day photographers, Chapel Hill Photography of Waco, will be shooting the bridal portraits as well.
http://www.chapelhillphoto.com/

Speaking of dresses -- my dress arrived at David's Bridal about a week ago! I was worried that the color of it would be too electric blue -- I worried in vain. The color is perfect! Can't wait to get it altered by the same lady from my building at work, who is doing my daughter's wedding dress alterations- Penny Schnitzius of Lewisville, Texas! (972) 436-0485.

Shower season is coming up... more on that coming up soon!

"The Devil is in the Details"

This old phrase has come to my mind lately. Looking back on the past few months, it is so true.

I guess when I planned my own wedding I must have been young and foolish, or had stars in my eyes, because back then I sure didn’t seem to notice or fret too much about all that was involved in the process. (Of course, my wedding guest list was about a third of what my daughter's is.) And this time around, I have become so aware (and worried way too much over) the many wedding etiquette rules that are so easily broken!

I believe some of this is due to a cultural shift. My wedding was in the 70’s. I did not have a large extended family, and we were not socialites, so not having much to compare with, I think I just planned a wedding that worked for me and my groom’s situation at the time. My DH and I were upper twenty-somethings who had careers and had been living independently for some time. My mother had no interest in helping to plan my wedding, so there were very few conflicts in that regard. (Ironically, the one thing that sticks out in my mind about my mom in the planning stages was the difficulty she had in chosing her attire for the wedding! What goes around, comes around?)

I remember consulting some Bridal magazines for my own wedding planning, but that was about it. This was before the Great American Wedding Industry truly hit its stride. There was no Internet like today, where anything you want to know about weddings is just a Google away. There were no online Forums where people are anxious to give their two cents on whether something is proper or not, no David Tutera on TV to set the impossibly high bar for The Perfect Dream Wedding!

Reading back over my recent epic posts about choosing the Mother of the Bride dress, I am almost embarrassed. I don’t really regret recording all that happened as part of my journey of being a MOB for the first time. Hopefully it was somewhat amusing and entertaining to the reader. But, I acknowledge how trivial it was in the grand scheme of things.

My analysis has led me to believe I obsessed over finding my dress because it was the one thing about my daughter's wedding that was for the most part, in my control. The other parts of this process I have had to relinquish control, admittedly sometimes begrudgingly, to the couple whose lives will be forever changed on May 21, 2011.

How many times do I have to keep reminding myself, it is THEIR day. Their wishes are what counts here. They are the ones who need to shine, and rightfully so! And who cares if we don’t follow proper etiquette to the T – once again, we need to plan a day that works for our families, a celebration where everyone truly enjoys themselves! We want happy memories, not a bride and her mom who are frazzled and fretful.

I am also reminded that there is One who is ultimately in control, and orchestrating every step we are taking. He is the one who brought this couple together, and He is the one this couple acknowledges as being the strong Cord who will keep them united. (Knowing that about them brings me much joy!) We have to keep our eyes focused on Him, and remind ourselves that the important thing is to let His love and blessings shine through in this joyous occasion of bringing two people together as one. If we do that, the day will be successful.

After all, what is a wedding but a representation of Christ as the Bridegroom, and His unconditional love for His Bride, the Church? It is so exciting to think of the wedding reception as a foreshadowing of a Great Banquet we will one day enjoy with our loved ones and with our Lord at His table.

So yes, I confess that all too often in the last few months, the Devil has been in the details, because I have allowed the wedding details to take my focus off of what (and who) is really important in this blessed occasion!

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the saviour of the body. ... Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it… For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall be joined unto his wife, and they two shall be one flesh. This is a great mystery: but I speak concerning Christ and the church. Ephesians 5: 23-25, 31-32 (KJV)

A Change of Scenery, A New Perspective, & The Decision Made! (Part III. - The Search For the Perfect MOB Dress)

A few weeks into January, I took a trip to El Paso, Texas to visit my Mom. At this point, I had only a few weeks to make my final decision on whether I would keep The Finalist dress (the sapphire blue chiffon with satin waistband) or return it to Dillards within the alloted time to get a full refund. My sister was in town too, and we visited several of the bridal stores and dress boutiques there. I didn't have my hopes too high, but I thought maybe I could at least find something new and different from the styles I had been seeing in the Dallas stores. One boutique there was really, really nice and I would recommend it to anyone – it is called “Ella Blu” on North Mesa on the West Side. http://www.ellabluboutique.com/

It was there that I had my most pleasant MOB dress shopping experience…and I think there are several reasons why. My sister being there with me definitely made it more special. The fact that we practically had the store to ourselves was awesome. (When I had visited the Terry Costa store in Dallas the previous Saturday, it was a zoo – I had to fight the newly engaged bride crowd as well as early prom-dress shoppers.)

The dressing room was the roomiest one I have been in yet..the size of a small living room, and it actually had a sofa in it. The salesclerk was perfect – she was attentive without being annoying. She was not snobby at all and made me feel perfectly at home and comfortable there. And the dresses were elegant yet contemporary, neither too frumpy nor too slutty. She kept bringing me dress after dress that I liked and that fit my figure much better than any of the others I had tried on. Who knew that one of the best shopping experiences of my life was not in Big D or NYC, but in dusty old El Paso, Texas!

And, in trying on those dresses, I found myself gravitating away from liking the flowy chiffon to the more formal, fitted satin/taffeta styles. I think the only reason I left Ella Blu without a dress that day is that I found some I liked, but not one I absolutely loved. Since the prices were WAY over my target budget (like twice as much or more), it would have to be a dress I absolutely loved for me to buy it. But it was so much fun, and not a wasted experience at all -- it was a turning point that gave me a new perspective on what looks good on me, and what would fit in well with the vibe of Amanda's wedding.

On the plane flying home, I told myself that my dress would likely be the sapphire blue chiffon from Dillards, unless something else dropped in my lap in the next few days. It was the closest thing to what I had been looking for so far, at a price I was comfortable with paying. But, something about it still just didn’t set well with me, and I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was at this point.

Well, with less than a week to go before the deadline of needing to return the Finalist and for Dillards to give me a full refund, I happened to be on the David’s Bridal website for some reason, and decided to glance through the MOB pages to see if anything was new. Well, sure enough...there was a new dress on there. Or at least, one that I had never noticed before. It was an elegant taffeta dress with rouching and a side gather which culminated in some simple beading, and a shawl collar that went into cap sleeves. The color shown was a dark platinum gray which I liked, but to my delight, the dress was also available in Ink blue! Even better!

That evening I went back to our local David’s bridal store – they said it WAS new, and they had plenty of samples to try on. The clerk was very attentive, as much as she could be in the David’s Bridal no-frills sort of way. There was the usual problem of needing alterations, but otherwise I really liked it a lot. It was age-appropriate but not matronly, very formal but not overly stuffy or blingy. The quality of the dress seemed to be decent. (I think with David’s, the quality depends on the price…you get what you pay for.) However, even though it was higher-end for David's, the price of this dress was actually a bit less than that of the other Finalist! And, I actually had another customer approach me to say she loved the dress on me -- I had never had that happen before in all of my other shopping experiences.

A few days later Amanda happened to be in town, and I took her with me to David's Bridal to try the dress on for her. I liked it even better this time. She had liked the sapphire blue chiffon dress on me too, but we both agreed that the tafetta’s formality and elegance fit the tone and style of the wedding better than the flowy chiffon would have. The chiffon was a beautiful party dress, and would have been a great choice for another, less formal occasion, but not for this wedding. Without further hesitation, I ordered the taffeta dress.

Right after leaving David’s, we took her wedding dress to the seamstress for the first alteration fitting. I got another glimpse of my beautiful Amanda in that exquisite, intricately beaded, perfect ballgown she would be wearing for her special day, looking like a fairy-tale princess, and knew that I had made the right choice. I would complement her style.

I feel a little guilty that I didn’t keep at least one of the Dillard’s dresses, but I felt a peace about My Dress from David’s Bridal that I did not feel about any of the other dresses that crossed my path in this long, complicated search! And, here it is (although I ordered it in ink blue):

Postscript:
This is kind of going off topic, but I have to share this bizarre story. That same weekend that I was in El Paso, there happened to be a wedding in Kansas of the daughter of an old friend of mine. When I got back home from my trip, I logged into Facebook. People were starting to post pictures of the wedding. I thought how beautiful my friend Pam looked in her dress! Then I took a closer look. I couldn’t believe my eyes. She was wearing the silver/gray MOB dress with the bolero from David's Bridal that I had originally liked last Fall when I first started looking.  (See Part I of my MOB Dress Search posts.) Then it came back to me what the David's Bridal clerk had told me…”there’s one in Wichita, Kansas.” I also recalled Pam posting on Facebook that her daughter had found her dress on clearance at a bridal store in Wichita for her; Pam didn’t really have to go shopping for her dress at all. (Lucky Duck!) This would have been about the same time I was looking for the dress last Fall.

I went so far as to contact Pam, asking her if she was willing to sell the dress to me, but she is a smaller size than what I would need, and she has plans to wear the dress again. I had to say goodbye to that dress once more. But you know what? The vision in my head had changed somewhat, and I was OK with it in the end. I was pretty sure it would not have been the right choice after all.