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:

Will the Wedding Police Come After Me?

Through the course of planning for my daughter's wedding, I have learned more than I ever wanted to know about today's prevailing American wedding etiquette. Or should I say, some people's (or region of the country, or age group's) idea of wedding etiquette. At first I was highly intimidated and sought to follow down to the letter all the "rules" as I read them on the Internet on The Knot or Brides.com, or in the wedding planning advice books I was using (such as the Emily Post guide for the Mother of the Bride.)

But I eventually learned, that believe it or not, every bride's situation is different (as is her family.) And I have discovered that hard and fast rules for brides in some regions of the country are not so important in other regions. (Obviously there are differences, too, in wedding customs of different countries and faith groups, but I am just focusing here on the current prevailing American wedding etiquette.)

The major American bridal magazines are published, as most magazines are, in New York or Chicago. Their staffers are mostly 20 to 30-somethings. Obviously, there is also a great concentration of the American population living in Northern regions of this country. So my humble opinion is that the regional customs of the younger generation of the Northern part of the U.S. are what's most commonly portrayed in America as Modern Wedding Etiquette. (or MWE as I will call it from now on!)

The MWE ideas seem rather inflexible. What the young, hip, Northeast Media complex dictates is RIGHT, and everyone else must be WRONG. I currently live and am a native of Texas, with a Southern family tradition on both mine and my husband's side, so consequently many of our planning ideas have come into conflict with MWE. Because I have lived (happily I might add) in both the North and the South, perhaps I have a unique perspective and understanding of both "cultures." I have been fascinated to observe and analyze some of these differences.

What types of things am I talking about? For one example, it seems the idea of getting married in a church is turning into mostly a Southern thing. Other parts of the country seem to be opting for the all-in-one public venue. (Actually, now that I've been exposed to some of the logistics of wedding planning, I can definitely see the advantages of that!) I think some of the secular wedding trend may also reflect the influence of the younger generation -- they just don't have the church ties as in previous generations.

The serving of alcohol at weddings is a prime example of the cultural difference. In the Northeast, there had better be plenty of it, and no Cash Bar, either, thank you very much! In the South, a number of Protestant families still frown upon alcohol being served at the reception at all. (My husband and I are not total teetotalers, but my daugher and her fiance opted for a dry reception of their own accord and we respect that.)

I think the dancing ban was the first to go in the Bible Belt. What was frowned upon in Baptist circles in the South even 20 years ago, is now widely accepted at wedding receptions (just not on church property!) My daughter is getting married in a Baptist church, but then we are moving to a hotel ballroom so that she can have the DJ and dancing she requested.

I think the traditional church basement reception of cake, punch and mixed nuts may be almost a thing of the past too, except perhaps in some small towns with not many other options for a reception venue. (A church hall might be the biggest building in town!) Again, the youth culture is coming in to play here, too -- that kind of reception could honestly be pretty boring!

Another example of MWE involves the wedding invitations. Most wedding advice I've seen says it is not appropriate to put Gift Registry information anywhere on the printed materials. Even for Bridal Showers, it not considered polite to put that information on the invite itself, although they grudgingly give the OK to have a SEPARATE sheet of paper inserted with that info on it. Hello?!!...isn't that the purpose of a Bridal Shower, to "shower the couple with gifts?" And why waste another sheet of paper (and the tree it came from?) I just don't get that at all. Personally, we had no problem in just listing right on the shower invitation where the couple is registered.

Well, the Wedding Police say, the proper thing to do is for guests to just ask the bride's mother where the couple is registered! Well, in our case nearly 2/3 of the guests are college students in another town who don't know me from Adam. That rule, I think, is from bygone days when a bride gets married in the same town the family has lived in for generations, and everyone knows everybody. What we opted for is to list the couple's wedding website (powered by http://www.theknot.com/) on an insert to the wedding invitation packet. From there, those of her generation can find out what the registries are. Those of my generation who are not computer-savvy (and who likely are relatives or family friends) will likely ask me or the groom's mother. (Naturally, I have read some opinions from some MWE purists that listing the website is viewed as a sneaky, back-handed way to give out the registry info in the invitation and it is frowned upon too. I say to that, "Take a Chill Pill!")

And then there is MWE's opinion on the Bridal Shower guest list. The Grand-Daddy Rule of them all is what I have come to call THE RULE! "It is terribly rude to invite someone to a bridal shower who is not also invited to the wedding!" OMG - I cannot believe the heated arguments and soapbox speeches some people have gone into about THE RULE on the wedding websites and message boards. Lets just say the majority of people are quite passionate about THE RULE! The gyst of the rule is this: If someone goes to the trouble and expense of buying a bridal shower gift, they should be rewarded with a wedding reception invite. Or to put it another way, they look on it as "I'm not good enough to get invited to your wedding and reception, but you still want me to buy you a shower gift? No Way!" Currently the only "acceptable" exception to THE RULE that most everyone agrees on is the Office Shower.

We had to cross this bridge in our own experience -- some of my friends from church graciously offered to give a shower for my daughter, so the question arose -- do I follow THE RULE and invite everyone who attends the shower to the wedding? This would be almost impossible, given our miniscule number of guest slots left over after the couple's friends and our families were invited! And since the wedding is not being held at our church or even in the same town, what is the likelihood that these people would even come to the wedding if they were invited?

So I started to analyze, where does THE RULE come from in the first place? In my opinion, the opposing views on THE RULE can be divided straight down the North/South line, and also reflects the younger generation's "What's in it for me?" attitude.

In my mind, what a typical Northern wedding looks like is a fairly large affair in a nice public venue, features an open bar, with usually a sit-down dinner or at least a nice buffet meal, and a band or DJ for dancing. A wedding invitation in the North is understandably a coveted thing -- it's a "free" night out including drinks, a nice meal and entertainment!

Conversely, up until recently, as I alluded to earlier, the typical Southern wedding reception was a more no-frills, cozy, intimate affair in the church basement or someone's home or backyard, with minimum refreshments served, and certainly no alcohol or dancing involved. There was usually an open invitation extended to all the "church family". So, in the South, the Bridal Shower was something given by the older church ladies for the bride; and it was understood that anyone in the church is welcome to come. If they don't get an invite to the wedding, it was no big deal --because the wedding reception itself was not that big a deal either. The church ladies just enjoyed coming to the shower for the fun and fellowship of being with other women, and to start the young couple off right with things needed for their new household. (Besides, sometimes the munchies were even better at the shower!)

When I mentioned my concerns about THE RULE to the church shower hostesses, who were also from the South and from my generation, they seemed to have no problem with the idea that not all of them would get wedding invites, and they thought my concern was kind of silly. But when I asked some of my Northern friends' opinions, they advised me not to go through with it. They wondered if we could just squeeze a few more people on the wedding guest list, or just somehow limit the shower guest list to invited wedding guests only? Or could we maybe host an after-wedding party for the couple at our church, to which the shower guests would be invited?

You see what I mean? It just boils down to a cultural and generational thing, going by what has been their experience with weddings in the past. We opted to go ahead with the "open" shower guest list, but I did give a heads up to the hostesses that not all guests would be invited to the wedding, and if they were OK with that and the guests were OK with that, well then, let's have us a Shower! We had a fine turnout. My daughter had a great time. The wedding invitations had already gone out before the bridal shower invitations did, so I figured if anyone had a problem with THE RULE they would just opt to stay home, and that was fine, too.

My take on this now is that MWE is slowly evolving into what it should be -- a more fluid set of "guidelines" rather than hard and fast rules. I am breaking some of the rules of MWE, and have even broken THE RULE, but I have relaxed because the Wedding Police are NOT going to come after me! The important thing is -- what works best for the couple, their situation, and what works best for their families who are along for the ride!

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.

Who Knew It Would Be So Hard? (Part II. - The Search for the Perfect MOB Dress)

As the season turned from summer to fall and the Holidays approached, I began running around to many stores and bridal shops in my area. I found a few dresses in the designer lines I had seen and liked on the Internet, but not the particular styles I was looking for. And I discovered that these designer lines were for the most part, out of my price range anyway.

I had heard good things about the Alfred Angelo store in Frisco, and one of my good friends found her MOB dress at this store. Most of my friends recommended Alfred Angelo over David's, but honestly I can't see much difference in the two mega bridal chain stores. It turns out, all A.A. has is separates for MOB’s, but there was one set that actually was a contender. The color is shown in green in the photo , but I would have obviously ordered it in a medium to dark blue. It was flattering on me, but still would have required major alterations for the top to fit me right, and the more I thought about it, the fabric and total lack of bling just wasn’t very “special” for being a Mother of the Bride dress. And when I found out it was stretching the top of my budget, I was even less impressed.

I expanded my search into Dallas to the mega stores for formal dresses like Terry Costa and Whatchamacallit, and upscale department stores like Nordstroms, with still no success. Either the dresses were too much, or too little. (Speaking of bling and cost!)  I tired very quickly of wasting my time, energy and gas on shopping.

I took a breather and went back to looking online. I discovered there were some online bridal apparel stores with lots of options, like TJ Formal, Ashley's Mother of the Bride, and House of Brides. Usually their prices are a bit better than what you’d find in the local bridal shops too. But again, I refuse to order something I have not tried on, especially since these formalwear websites usually have a No Return policy, or at best will charge you a hefty 20 to 25% "Restocking Fee" if you return the dress within their narrow 3 to 5 day deadline!

So, my next plan was to try to narrow the dresses down to a few styles, and then email and call bridal stores in the area to see if they had them, go try them on, then I could order them online if they suited me, but I never could seem to locate samples locally for me to try on. When I could get the stores to answer my emails or return calls at all, nobody had it or anything I was interested in.

And I was running into another issue…  I was quickly running out of time for a dress to arrive in time for alterations before the mid-May wedding.

Then another idea struck me -- some of the major department stores such as Nordstroms and Dillards have a far wider selection of affordable evening attire online than they do in the stores, they arrive soon after you order them, you try them on, and then return them within 30 days for a full refund if you don't want them. So, one day, I ordered $1000 worth of dresses online from Dillards. They arrived within 5 days, and I tried them on in the privacy of my own home. Amanda happened to be home and so I had a fashion show for her.

I have to admit there were some contenders in that bunch. One of them became a Finalist in my search and almost became The Dress. It was chiffon in a sapphire blue, with short flutter sleeves, and a wide satin waistband with a faux diamond brooch on it. 

The other dresses I began returning, one by one as I eliminated them, to my local Dillards store. Actually, not a bad way to shop…and I will definitely keep that in mind for the future!

Before making my final decision, I took the Finalist to a local tailor to see how much the alterations would be to make it fit me better, and got bad news. It would be almost another $100 dollars!

I was getting so frustrated at this point that I enlisted all the help and advice I could get. Several of my friends had offered to go MOB dress shopping with me but our schedules just didn’t work out, so I actually posted some dress photos on Facebook, and had people give me their opinions! 

(Continued on Next Post!)

How Hard Can it Be? (Part I. - The Search for the Perfect MOB Dress)

The next group of entries probably will seem pretty self-indulgent, and those who know me may be wondering why I obsessed so much about finding the dress that I would wear to my daughter's wedding. I still don't really know why. It is something I had looked forward to for a long time, and I think it IS important for the Bride's mom to look special on the big day. But there are so many considerations involved...formality of the wedding, coordinating with the colors, you don't want to outshine the bride, etc. etc. Basically, I just wanted to get it right.

Maybe it can best be summed up by something funny I read recently. It seems in the last decade or so, the MOB is taking more of a back seat in the wedding planning as the couples tend to want to be in control (and rightfully so), so really the main thing left for the MOB to do is find a killer dress!

After a long hunt I finally settled upon and ordered my dress. This was after 4 months of trying on 30 or so different dresses in local shops and even some stores out of town, and an online search that began soon after the engagement was announced almost 7 prior. As many people have commented, it is often easier selecting the brides' wedding gown than it is for her mother to select her dress, and that certainly was the case for us.

In one of the first bridal shops we went to looking for my daughter's wedding dress, back last summer, I remember the bridal store manager advising me not to wait too long to start looking for my dress, because it will be harder than I think to find it. But like most MOB's I suppose I was hoping to lose a few pounds before starting the hunt, and I thought to myself, "Yeah right. How hard can it be?" You choose a color, you choose a style, what’s so hard about it? After all, I live in a major metropolitan area, so there ought to be plenty of stores and dresses to choose from, right? It's not like I'm back in Kansas again, Toto. (Yes, I used to live in Kansas.)

Besides, I knew I could not really get serious about choosing the dress until after my daughter had chosen her wedding gown and the bridesmaid attire was settled on, because that would tell me the formality, color, and style I would need. I was excited to begin the shopping…but figured it could wait until these things were settled…besides there were other more pressing wedding planning tasks to take care of first.

I did start looking online fairly soon in the process, just to see what was out there on the market. This preliminary online search turned up many options that I thought would look good on me, and you could order them in a rainbow of colors. I just assumed I would be able to easily find these styles and try them on in stores or bridal shops locally. Piece of cake!

Within 2 months of becoming engaged, my D had chosen her princess ballgown, and even though we had not chosen the final design for the bridesmaids, we knew that they would be in floor length dresses, in a light blue color. We also knew this was going to be an early afternoon wedding.

So my challenge was to find an affordable, floor length dress that was special, elegant and fairly formal, but yet not over-the top with bling. I had decided on some shade of medium to dark blue, to complement the wedding color scheme of light blue and ivory. I did not want a low back, halter or strapless, preferring to have my shoulders covered somehow – either with a bolero or at least cap sleeves. And I thought chiffon would be best – lightweight, for this Central Texas wedding in May.

The problem with getting too specific in what you want is that you seldom find it… especially when there are other challenges too. I had a few things working against me:

First, I am not a tall beanpole - you know, the body type that can basically wear anything and look good; the body type that most designers make their clothes for! I am petite and curvy and short-waisted. Try finding a traditional Mother of the Bride dress in petite sizes. Almost impossible. And, I have packed on a few extra pounds in the last few years, especially in the midsection.

The second obstacle was that right now, short MOB dresses are in. There are LOTS of affordable short MOB dresses and suits available in the mainstream department stores. The long, formal gowns, however, are not so plentiful outside of the bridal shops. There are a few long dresses in the department stores and boutiques, but a lot of them have more of the prom/pageant dress feel and show a bit more skin than I would like. The ceremony will be in a Baptist church, after all! On the other hand, most of the long dresses in the Bridal Stores look quite frumpy. Or they have a lot of bling and beading on them. And the bridal stores seem to tack on an extra hundred dollars or two to their already outrageous markups just because it is long.

While researching wedding photographers, I happened upon a Mother of the Bride dress in one of the photo galleries that I thought would be absolutely perfect. A pewter (grayish/blue) chiffon with rouching at the waist, a crisscross bodice and a ¾ sleeve bolero. Just a touch of beading on the edges. The color was a bit lighter than I first imagined myself in, but it would still work with the wedding colors. It was understated and elegant, almost everything that I was looking for.


I must spent hours Googling the description of the dress, and finally found it. Of all places, it came from David's Bridal. Aha! I thought my search was over. I went to our local David's store as quick as I could to try it on.

They did have one shopworn sample (should have been my first clue) in the store in a champagne/ivory color (which was awful) and it was way too big for me. I went to the front desk to inquire whether any other stores in the area carried the style so I could try it on in my color and size. There are several David’s in the DFW metroplex, so I thought it was very do-able.

The clerk looked and looked on her computer. There were no stores in Texas or Oklahoma that had that style in stock. The closest store she found was in Wichita, Kansas. (Kansas?!! -- you've got to be kidding me.) She suggested I look online.  Struck out there, too.  Evidently the dress was being discontinued and all they had left were plus sizes.

Unfortunately, even though I resolved myself that I would not be getting that dress, it was now stuck in my mind, so then everything else I looked at, I began to compare to it. Little did I know that very dress would cross my path again in a most unusual way.

(Continued on Next Post!)

The Maids, Music, and Saving the Date

Well, the wedding plans took backseat to the holidays and related travel for a while, but now we were back in the saddle again.

We had been able to tick off quite a few things on our wedding planning checklist over the preceding months, but it was still pretty overwhelming how much is left to do.

Over Thanksgiving break we noticed Amanda seemed awfully tired and run down...the Fall semester of her Senior year took its toll on her with a few tough classes, trying to negotiate through the post-college job offer process, and of course this little wedding thing hanging over her head. Thankfully, she was blessed with multiple job offers for after she graduates and was even able to play one employer against the other for more money!

Between Thanksgiving and Christmas she was able to design and get her Save the Date cards sent out, using one of the best shots from the Engagement photo shoot. (Yes, they finally were able to get those taken in October and they are awesome photos by Abigail Criner of Waco.) Here is a link to Abby's blog featuring a few of their photos:
http://abigailcrinerphotography.wordpress.com/2010/11/03/ian-and-amanda/amanda/

My daughter did a great job with the Save The Dates - they are postcards with "You are invited to our wedding; formal invitation to follow" on the back. She designed a custom logo incorporating the first initials of both their last names, and was able to bring in her wedding colors, light blue and ivory on the framing of the photo. She found a great company online (OvernightPrints.com) that not only prints the cards but mails them out for you for a decent price. Here's a link to their website: http://www.overnightprints.com/

I did a little preliminary research of DJ's online, and also during the Fall Amanda and Ian met and contracted with Johnny Bradshaw, who had been in the DJ business in Waco for many years. They described him as "rough around the edges" but a really nice, down to earth guy. I had a few concerns that he tends to dress down at weddings. Oh well...could be worse I guess. I put my faith in his many years in the business and reputation-- just about everyone of the vendors I checked with had at least heard of him if not worked with him. And his prices were not bad considering. Here's a link to his business, Central Texas Talent: http://www.centraltexastalent.com/index.htm

Oh yes.. a word of advice -- do some snooping online of the DJ's name (or any vendor you are thinking of hiring), and see what comes up besides what's on their official website.   Googling one day, I found out that one of the other DJ's who was actually on our final list of choices turned out to be currently serving time for possession of kiddie porn. Why his DJ website was still up on the Internet, I don't know.

Anyway, Amanda really needing the long Christmas break from school to rest and recuperate. I tried to not bug her about the wedding too much, but she did finally have the time to go pick up her wedding gown which had been sitting at the Bridal store in Denton for over a month. Alterations weren't going to work out there, so we opted to bring the dress home and look for a more convenient alteration person, after she picks out her shoes and borrows a petticoat to wear under the dress. Luckily I found out there was a lady at work who does alterations that everybody raves about. Done deal!

We were really getting down to the wire on ordering bridesmaids dresses. When we picked up the wedding gown, the bridal store manager in Denton fussed at us a bit that we were needing to make a decision SOON! We had a few more expeditions during the holidays, and Amanda finally decided on the dress for the girls. Despite my reservations about David's Bridal stores, that is where we found the dress. And we were pushing it...they were to arrive around the end of March/first of April...and there would likely need to be alterations before the wedding in mid-May. I think even my fussy younger daughter (the Maid of Honor) was OK with the final selection -- It was a simple but flattering style for all body types, and it actually had hidden pockets! It was mostly chiffon but the waistband is satin. Can't see it too well in the photo, but there were some fluttery petals on one of the straps.

Speaking of attire, I had been on the hunt for my dress, too, and if I ended up having to order one from one of the bridal designers, I was down to the wire myself. No pressure or anything.