Wedding budget break down

When we first got engaged, Mike and I determined our budget to be $2,000. My dad and stepmom provided all of the beverages and most of the food, and a few others contributed food as well. We borrowed as much as we could, and bought cheap on everything else. We also decided to include our [...]

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Wedding recap: the reception, v.2

One thing I will always remember about our wedding was how EFFING HOT it was! I couldn’t be more grateful though because there was a threat of rain, and hot thick sticky air is better than rain any wedding day. I tried to encourage people to dress comfortably, but several men had long pants or [...]

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Wedding recap: getting dressed

I’ve told the story of how I found and purchased my dress already. And I even mentioned that I was worried I wouldn’t actually fit into it the day of the wedding—I hadn’t tried it on in months, and I didn’t want to bother getting it altered. If I managed to maintain my weight, it [...]

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To be beautiful

The other day someone said to me that they picked out their particular wedding dress because they wanted to look beautiful—breathtaking even—for their soon-to-be-husband on their wedding day. That was the key: be stunning for the man you’re marrying. I get that, but it surprised me to realize that such an idea never really crossed [...]

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Rehearsal… or whatever

I took the Friday before the wedding off, but Mike had to work in the morning. While he did that, I went grocery shopping with Des, my stepmom. We bought WAY too much food, as Mike has already detailed. By the time we got back to the house, Mike arrived with a bunch of borrowed [...]

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Slippage

As I mentioned before, I’m about 10 pounds heavier now than I was when I purchased my dress over a year ago. I got a bunch of slips and shapewear (I figured out that’s the technical term for “sucky inny thing”) from my friend Robin (who got them all free somehow), but none of it [...]

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My makeshift fitting

My dress. Oh man. It fit great when I bought it over a year ago, when I was about 10 pounds lighter. When I tried it on again a few months ago, my body fit inside, but I wouldn’t it say it was as flattering as it could be. This was when I first bought [...]

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Our take on wedding traditions

My friend Lindsay suggested that we break down the wedding traditions we’ve been detailing in our Wedding Traditions Explained series from our own point of view. We thought it was a good idea, too. So here it is: Tossing the bouquet and garter We will not be doing either. In fact, we won’t even be [...]

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Wedding Traditions Explained: white dress

Wedding traditions are traditions for a reason: they’ve been around a long time. But where did they originate? Our Wedding Traditions Explained series attempts to find out. We have no real evidence to back up these claims, but they were gathered from various online sources. Take them for what they’re worth, and if you’ve heard [...]

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It’s a loaner

We all know that wedding dresses are expensive, and brides usually spend a lot of money on a dress they wear once and then put in a closet for all eternity. Some brides sell or donate their dresses, which I think is brilliant, but most, I believe, stash them away for all time. So when [...]

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