real talk: wedding planning

When I wrote this, I had stars in my eyes and wedding blogs on my mind and was so, so innocent. Now, seven months later, I am a little bit... emotional. Somehow both overemotional and emotionally drained at the same time, actually.

Weddings cost money.

source: Once Wed

A lot of money. Even when you don't want them to or plan for them to, they just surprise you. And of course the things I care about the most – photography, location, food & drinks – are the most expensive elements. And of course I have a giant family and Brian has a big family and we both have a lot of wonderful friends that we really want to be there to celebrate with us (and of course people tell you the guest list is the first thing to drive up the price but of course I scoffed and said I could figure it out and now I'm realizing what they tell you is one thousand percent true). And of course I want to be one of those laid-back, easy breezy brides but I'm not sure I've ever really been laid-back about anything in my life.

I'm a perfectionist and I'm neurotic and I'm type A and I'm my own worst critic.

All of these traits would make me fabulous at planning someone else's wedding, I believe. But when it's my own my emotions get too involved and I kind of freak out.

It's a hard thing to talk about. It's hard to say that planning this is making me do things and be someone I don't want to be. It's making me care way too much about things that are silly. In fact, a grand theme of wedding planning (at least when it is your own) is to care about things you don’t want to (and really SHOULDN’T) care about. And you know it’s totally silly to care about it, but you DO and you can’t HELP IT and you feel dumb but that doesn’t change anything.

For example, there is a surprising downside of wedding blog addiction (you know, besides millions and millions of hours of my time trickled away into the ether [and besides the inevitable envy at their Louboutin wedding shoes and multiple dresses and breathtaking decor (basically, all the things that half-million-dollar budgets can get you [seriously, do they think they are kidding us, calling a wedding "DIY-chic" when I can see that the shoes are Manolos and the dress is Vera?])])...

Where was I?... Oh yeah, a surprising downside is that it starts to seem like everything has been done before. When I first started perusing the wedding web, I found some engagement pictures that I fell in love with and immediately planned to blatantly rip off for our own save-the-dates. Then I saw similar ones on several other sites and started thinking I need to come up with something new and different and original (we ended up copying the idea after all). Same thing with the hanger for your wedding dress saying "Mrs. So-and-so" (will probably get scratched anyway for budgetary reasons) and peacock feather decor (will likely still be some, but scaled back from my original plan). 

It’s even worse when your friends beat you to it. Three of my favorite ideas for our wedding (Scrabble tiles and bridal TOMS and putting your mom's dress on display) have already been done by close friends of ours and even though we had the ideas completely independently and in the end it really doesn’t matter at all, I feel like if I do them I will be copying someone else’s big day. Which is dumb, but honest. 

On the other hand, flowers are something I never figured I'd care much about in the grand scheme of my wedding – not that I don't love receiving them in real life, hinthintBrian – because they are expensive and there are so so many things to buy. I just wanted something simple inexpensive, but beautiful. Then I see about seventy billion breathtaking bouquets on various blogs and suddenly I'm thinking, "well maybe I do want a fancy schmancy flowery thang to hold on to..." Which only leads me back to the budget and the millions of other things and I'm defeated all over again. 

I was never one to find eloping particularly appealing or romantic, but lately I've started thinking those people – the ones who reclaim their weddings from the hype and expense and all the people trying to tell them what they "should" do or what is "appropriate" and instead of worrying about offending people, they just go off to celebrate getting married and starting a marriage, which is the whole point of a wedding after all – might have the right idea.

Don't worry, I'm not eloping. I'm just saying I appreciate anyone who just says "screw it" and does it exactly how they want. After all, a wedding is about the bride and groom (or the bride and bride or the groom and groom, I'm all about equality) making a promise to each other, not about anyone or anything else. That's what I need to remember.

So there it is. Real talk. I promise to crop Penny's head on something ridiculous next time to lighten the mood, but it feels good to share. 

The Dress

Happy Memorial Day!
I have a wedding dress!

Okay, so this news is a little old. I actually decided on the dress almost a week ago. I've kind of been neglecting the ole blog lately the whole last month. Not that I haven't thought about blogging a ton. It's just that whenever I got around to actually writing my thoughts out... I didn't feel like it. I'M ON VACATION MAN... NOT ON THE RUG, MAN!!

I'm not going to put a picture of the dress (ahem, The Dress) up because Brian reads my blog and I don't want him to see it before The Big Day, but I will tell you that it has tulle:

and ribbon:

and flowers:

... DAMMIT!! Y'all totally know what it looks like now, don't you?!?!!

Well anyway, I've been engaged for several months now (over five, wow!) and have been perusing wedding blogs like it's my JOB (seriously, if someone wants to hire me for this, I am an E-X-P-E-R-T) but when it came to picking out my actual I'm-getting-married-in-a-wedding-dress wedding dress, I sort of freaked out.

Which was silly. I am so lucky. I got to go to NYC and stay with my mom and one of my best friends and have a whole whirlwind adventure of wedding dress-vaganza. It was like a cloud of organza and estrogen for three days straight.

But I still freaked out. I freaked out over spending that amount of money on any one piece of attire, especially one that I will only wear once. I freaked out over the fact that I'm getting married, y'all. I freaked out over the fact that Brian will choose to say, "I do" based on this dress.

Except that's totally absurd talk and only in my head. Brian has told me more than once that he will love whatever I come down the aisle in (yes, I've tried to pick his brain about wedding dress styles, to not much avail). But when it came to committing - to saying, "Yes" to The Dress (NO WE DIDN'T GO TO SNOBTOWN KLEINFELDS, STOP ASKING)... where was I? Oh yes, when it came to committing to this really expensive dress, I just really really wanted to talk to Brian. Which is also silly because I've always been one of those people who thinks that the groom shouldn't see The Dress until it is walking down The Aisle with The Bride inside it (It?). But I really needed to talk to him in this moment.

So it was unfortunate that he decided to take a nap right after I tried on this Very Important Dress. This meant I ran around like a crazy person, barking at my mom and Tait, making us waste a thousand hours in the Crate & Barrel around the corner while I stared at my phone and pretended the large knot in my stomach didn't exist.

Yes, it's not very glamorous.

But that's real life.

Brian eventually woke up, called me back and told me to chill out. So I did, and then my mom, Tait and I drank some wine and watched Harry Potter.

And the next day I committed to the dress!
In the end, it was exciting and glamorous and just right.

When I was newly engaged, I googled images of wedding dresses using very specific search criteria (which again, I'm not writing here to keep the dress a surprise) and I came up with one dress that I thought was beautiful. I had no idea who designed it or whether it was even in-season, but I printed the picture out and sent it to my mom and bridesmaids. A couple of months later, I saw the dress again in a magazine and discovered who made it. A few months after that, I was in New York, trying on dresses and on a whim I decided to call the salon and see if they had an opening.

Not only could they squeeze an appointment in for me, but they were having a trunk sale!! (For all you straight males out there, that means all the pretty things are discounted for one weekend only.)

And so I ended up with THAT exact dress which is kind of storybook perfect and the ladies in the salon gave us a champagne toast while I twirled around in my future wedding dress and it was great. Big thanks to dress expert Emily, who supported me while I paraded around the salon in my dress, touching pretty things. Even bigger thanks to my dearest momsy and Taiter for putting up with my slight(?) crazymaking and telling me how wonderful I looked in the dress.

I can't wait to marry mah man in it!

odds and ends: THE WEDDING

Hello world. It’s 2 a.m. and I am still awake because I swore to myself I wouldn’t go to sleep tonight until I had transcribed every last minute of my many interviews over the past week or two. And that takes a long ass time, y’all. And my fingers are cramped and I’m hyped up on 5-hour energy yet awkwardly tired in the way that only finals week can do to a body.

What I’m saying is, this might be the most cracktastic post I’ve ever done.

It’s odd and ends again time, friendys, and this time it’s all about the most important wedding ever. No, not my wedding. It’s THE ROYAL WEDDING, which is the most important wedding in anyone and everyone’s lives, if you listen to the media lately.

It seems like most of the people that are vocal about THE WEDDING are either super intensely excited (“OMGGGGGG Ican’twaitI’mwakingupat4a.m.justtoseewhatshe’swearingandherperfecthair IloveKateMiddletonholyshit Kate+Wills4ever&EVERRRRRRRRRR”) or super intensely bitter/disdainful (“I am SO over the royal wedding, just get married already, am I right? How could anybody care about something so superficial? Don’t you know there are so may other more IMPORTANT things going on in the world?!?”)

I, and I assume many of the silent masses, lie somewhere in between.

I am genuinely excited for the wedding – excuse me, THE WEDDING. I’ve followed the buzz, but not stalker-level closely. I am excited in the way that many females of my generation probably are, because this is a real life princess story. And it’s the first one that our generation has experienced. I hadn’t been born yet with Diana became a princess, but I remember when she was killed. The whole thing was so tragic, even to my young self. (On a sidenote, my fifth grade teacher looked just like Princess Diana. Exactly like her.)

And Kate and William’s relationship is so much more of a fairy-tale because a) They actually seem to be in love, and b) She’s an everyday girl! Well, except for being super rich and blessed with the best hair on the globe. She was born a “commoner” (and god FORBID the media ever let her forget it, she will be called a former commoner until the day she dies) but she is going to be a princess as of today.

So I was never planning to wake up at 4 a.m. to watch every single second (but since it looks like I may be pulling an all-nighter for finals week, I might check in), but I am excited to read/watch the coverage later to see what Kate wore and how good her shiny, shiny hair looked. And I’m even MORE excited to see all the incredible hats and fascinators the guests wore. I LOVE A GOOD HEADPIECE, Y’ALL. Especially if it's feathered.

sassmonster

Anyway, the most entertaining thing about THE WEDDING has been the runup to it, particularly the awesome/ridiculous swag and other hype centered around it.

I should have done this post last week so you would be able to go out and order all this vital paraphernalia to enjoy today… but I didn’t. Luckily, like Kate and William’s love, this stuff will be beautiful and useful FOREVER.

Like, for example, the Lifetime movie William & Kate. You could watch the extra-speedily written, cast, filmed and edited movie on your own, or you could read the Fug Girls review. It was truly cinematic… something (I mean, not that I watched it*).

And if you are watching the movie (or reading the review) on your laptop, why not snuggle under the William and Kate Royal Bed-ding? Wake up next to the future King, ladies!!

looking a little flat there, Kate

While watching the movie, you can work on your own Coat of Arms juuust in case you and Harry really are meant to be together. Apparently mere commoners must invent coats of arms when they marry princes.

If you finish the movie and immediately want to act it out again in your own home, consider creating your own Lego wedding or knitting the royals.

you'll use them again and again!

If you need something a little bigger, just snap up the $57 Princess Catherine doll.

oh honey, that fascinator needs more sass

Your lego/knit/doll reenactments will clearly gain you a ton of prestige and money, so why not spend a few of your new millions by bidding on a jellybean that looks like Kate Middleton? Or if you are hungrier than one lil jellybean, perhaps you’ll want to order a royal wedding-themed pizza?

nothing better than a mushroom veil

Which, obviously, you will serve on your William and Kate plateware set.

And since I'm sure your cat, like Penny, would hate to be left out, treat her to a special dinner of Royal Wedding Cat Food.

After eating, be sure to apply your William and Kate engagement photo nail decals so that when you practice your royal wave, your fingers are up to par. 

Of course, when your lover comes home to find you under your William & Kate covers, watching the William & Kate movie, eating William & Kate pizza and cat food, playing with your William & Kate Legos and dolls and flashing your William & Kate manicure, there’s only one thought that will go through his head: “I'm gonna tap that.”

Luckily, William and Kate can be with you even when you get intimate, in my personal favorite crazy swag item: Crown Jewels Condoms.

just perfect

Well, I’ll leave you crazy kids to it. I’m going to go put this on:

source

And get back to work.




UPDATE: So Time just tweeted about this. Holy shit, y'all. I love the English.

* I totally did. The second half at least.**
** I would have watched the whole thing if I had realized earlier it was on. ***
*** It was really bad. Like… Really. Bad.

All photos belong to the sites linked to.