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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

Gifts to/from each other

The week before our wedding, I woke up everyday to a sweet gift from Mike. I’m going to Paris later this year with some friends, so he surprised me with a lot of fun things to get me prepared. Each gift was placed near my purse, where he knew I’d find it, with a sweet [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

Men in Monkey Suits

First of all, yes…I’m still alive. I’m finishing school, and as a result have 16-hour days right now. I’m sorry for my lack of presence in cyberland. There. Just wanted to get that out of the way. Speaking of school, I’ve been talking about our wedding a lot at school. My classmates have been intrigued [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

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 [...]

Read Full Post »

Shan’s shoes

One night last month I was g-chatting with my friend Katie, and we eventually started searching for shoes I could wear to the wedding. With her help, I soon landed on a gorgeous pair of ivory 1950s boudoir slippers on etsy. With shipping they were only fifty cents over what I had budgeted for shoes [...]

Read Full Post »