With This Ring

Two years ago today, my beloved and I stood face to face to pledge our faithfulness to one another. I hadn't looked back at our vows much since then, so I thought it was fitting to dig them out and share them with our little circle of blog followers. :) We based them off a set of vows we found on the internet, but modified them so much that they're really our own. How long we spent laboring over these words together!
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John, do you covenant before God to be first and foremost the spiritual leader of your home, seeking God's kingdom and righteousness throughout your life together? I do.

Do you covenant before God to study your wife in order to know her disposition so that you will provide for her emotional, physical, mental, and most importantly her spiritual needs? I do.

To strive not to allow the sun go down on your anger? I do.

To be kind, tenderhearted and forgiving? I do.

And to obey God's command to love your wife as Christ loves His Church? I do

Gretchen, do you covenant before God to love John, to be sensible, pure, and a worker at home, that the Word of God may not be dishonored? I do.

Do you covenant before God to fulfill your role as your husband's helper, to recognize his

God-given responsibility and authority as the leader of your home, and to do John good and not evil all the days of your life? I do.

To strive not to allow the sun go down on your anger? I do.

To be kind, tenderhearted and forgiving? I do.

And to obey God's command to submit to your husband as the Church is subject to Christ? I do.

John, what token do you give as a symbol of your authority, strength, protection, and love? This ring.

With this ring, I thee wed;

I take thee, Gretchen, to be my wedded wife,

and do solemnly covenant before God and these witnesses

to love, cherish, protect, and provide for you unconditionally,

in sickness and in health,

for better or worse,

for richer or poorer,

and forsaking all others cleave only unto you,

as my lawfully wedded wife,

for as long as we both shall live,

so help me God.

Gretchen, what token do you give as a symbol of your submission to John’s authority, strength and protection, and your unselfish love to him? This ring.

With this ring, I thee wed;

I take thee, John, to be my wedded husband,

And do solemnly covenant before God and these witnesses

to love, honor and obey you unconditionally

in sickness and in health

for better or worse

for richer or poorer

and forsaking all others cleave only unto you,

as my lawfully wedded husband,

for as long as we both shall live,

so help me God.

(We'll finish up Gemma Grace's birth story very soon!)

POW - Attendant Gifts

With five each of bridesmaids, groomsmen, flower girls and junior groomsmen, we had a rather large wedding party.  I wanted it large--I almost wished I could have asked more friends to be bridesmaids and more little girls to be flower girls, since there are so many people I love dearly!  But John thought it was best if we kept it at five each, and he is wise.  The front of the church is only so large.  :-)

One thing I didn't realize was that a large wedding party would add to the expense of the wedding to an extent.  We needed a lot of bouquets and boutonnieres!  We also needed to have gifts for all our attendants, and I wanted to have something thoughtful and nice to give to each one without spending an exorbitant amount. 

It seemed like a practical thing to give my bridesmaids jewelry for the wedding.  One day I complimented one of my students on her necklace and she told me that she'd made it!  I learned that our art teacher held weekly jewelry club meetings after school, and after speaking with her personally, I got myself invited.  :-)  She was excited to help me come up with gifts for my friends, and after chatting and looking at some pictures online, she went home and made a prototype necklace.  The next time we met, we adjusted the design a bit, and she taught me how to make them myself.

Using Swarovski crystals, silk cord and mostly sterling silver elements, I was able to make jewelry from nice materials for less than they would have cost to buy.  I made them matching earrings as well, Mom stitched up some jewelry bags out of leftover dotted swiss, and I felt happy about the personal touch involved.

There were a few afternoons after school when John helped me with my jewelry-making.  Once we got on a roll, I decided to make our mothers little bracelets to match their dresses, and to go along with the pashmina wraps we also purchased them.

I was really excited about our gifts for the little girls, and owe everything to my Mom.  She made them all doll dresses to match their dresses!  We found pretty little suitcase-boxes at the Christmas Tree Shop on sale and the dresses looked darling inside.

Little boys were harder for me (I think boys are always harder to buy presents for!).  Theknot.com had some good ideas in their online shop, but I think it's hard to judge quality online.  John and I visited G. Williker's in Saratoga with our junior groomsmen in mind and found some wooden pop-guns that we liked.  There were only one or two in the store, though, so John went home and ordered five online.  You can imagine our distress last October when we found the carton of pop guns in a closet in John's parents' house!  Somehow they got overlooked on the day of the rehearsal and got handed out three months late!

With our wedding date fast-approaching, I started to be a bit concerned that John still had nothing for his groomsmen or our dads.  I shouldn't have worried.  We went to the mall together, and within an hour, our shopping was done!  John's a good shopper.  And God blessed our efforts!  We bought father/son and father/daughter Willow Tree figurines for our dads, and John found exactly five small digital picture frames for his friends.  He took them home and loaded them up with pictures of him with each of them.  A nice blend of the techie with the homemade, eh?

POW - The Band

We're now past our anniversary, but there are just a few more wedding planning posts that I want to share.  :-)  Today's is the story of our band, because it's kind of a neat story.

Sometime early in 2009, we started discussing music for the reception.  Mom offered, "Wouldn't it be neat if Mr. Kirby's band played for you?"  The Kirbys have been family friends for years, after Pamela Kirby and I hit it off in high school.  Mr. Kirby plays the mandolin, banjo, and probably other instruments, and was in some sort of group, I think, at the time. 

We investigated.  :-)  Mrs. Kirby invited us to their house, casually, one afternoon in March when they were hosting a jam session.  John was in town, which worked out great, and we brought some bread for their buffet and sat and enjoyed the music.  But when Mom called back later to formally request them, we were disappointed.  Apparently there was a big bluegrass festival on July 25 which they were all planning to attend.  Back to the drawing board.

Next, I took a leap and e-mailed the Lindsey Family, after hearing that they were to be touring in NY and thereabouts in June and July.  Having been charmed by their sweet performance of Christian, bluegrass music in South Glens Falls in June 2007, Mom and I both knew that if they played for our wedding, it would be very special.  Mom thought it was a long shot, but I e-mailed them with our request and details about our wedding, and Mrs. Lindsey sent me a very kind reply!  Unfortunately, they would be returning home before our wedding, but if the timing had been different, I do think they would have come. 

It was back to square 1, again.  I remember discussing our music situation with some of the teachers in the break room at lunch, and one suggested the jazz ensemble a fellow teacher played in.  I looked them up online and learned that said ensemble would be playing in town in Saratoga very soon, so I called up my bridesmaid, Dawn to go with me to check them out.  

That was an, ah, interesting evening.  :-)  Apparently, there is a night life in Saratoga which I never knew existed, and as we parked and walked to hear our group on that spring night, we passed lots of restaurants and bars with their own live music.  Our destination proved, indeed, to be a bar, so we ordered a couple of ginger-ales, found some seats, and tried not to be too conspicuous.  At one point, Dawn started chatting with the guy next to her, and must have said something about us checking out the group for a wedding, because he then beckoned toward both of us and asked, "You guys' wedding?"  awkward! 

The music itself was good, but I realized that I'm just not into jazz enough to listen to it for several hours on my wedding day.  Thankfully, John seemed fine with all this.  Yet, once again, we had made no progress.  From the outset, I wasn't interested in a DJ myself; if you know me well, you know that I'm not a big fan of popular music.  But now someone else suggested that we could make up some mix CD's, borrow equipment, and have ask a friend to be in charge of playing them.  We were both OK with this idea, and it certainly seemed like the best one going at the time!  I wasn't stuck on bluegrass, despite our first two band attempts, and started making a list of orchestral hymns and some of my favorite songs performed by Andrea Bocelli.  John picked out the song we planned to dance to--Steve Green's "Holding Hands."  I still can hardly listen to that song without crying. 

We got back from our brother and sister-in-law's wedding at the end of June to exciting news.  Apparently, Mr. Kirby was jamming with a few other musical friends and realized that they sounded really good.  The Kirbys gave Mom a call, asking if we still needed somebody!  They set up another jam session and once again invited us over.  And we loved them!  They let us choose some of our favorites, like "You are my sunshine" and some of the old gospel hymns, and even invited us to prepare a song or two to sing with them.  Then, the fiddle player asked us if we wanted some square dancing, because she could call! 

 Singing "Are you washed in the blood?"  and "I'll fly away" with the band

And so, at the last minute, we ended up with an awesome band for our reception.  In fact, it turned out far better than I had imagined.  On the one hand, we didn't get to dance to "Holding Hands," because of a miscommunication and our inability to hook up John's ipod to their sound system.  Instead, they spontaneously played a lovely waltz, and, since John's such a good dancer, it didn't matter that it was entirely new music to us.  :-)  I couldn't have predicted how wonderfully the children would take to the music, or how the group would spontaneously play "She'll be coming round the mountain," with a cluster of little girls singing the refrain in the microphone.  And even though I knew that they planned a few square dances, when I looked down from the second-story window where we were changing into our going away clothes, I was overwhelmed.  Here was a blend of relatives and friends--most had never met each other--all come together because of us, and all evidently enjoying themselves very much.  My bridesmaids sailed down the row of dancers, empire dresses flowing, and I felt that it had all been worth it, thanks to our planning or in spite of our planning, with God's blessing.

One Year Ago

This day one year ago (Friday, July 24),

was a day of preparing,

 and practicing, 

moments,

and matching, 

friendship, 

and feasting.

And it was the last night of our lives when saying "goodnight" meant saying "goodbye." :-)

POW - The Cake

Mom found a neat series of shorts from Martha Stewart's TV show, all on weddings, at our local library.  They were lots of fun to watch!  Our favorite sections were the sections devoted to flowers and cakes. 

The cake episode opened with the camera panning the cake in the above picture, with soft music playing in the background and Martha's voice saying something like, "Why must a bride have only one towering wedding cake?  Why not a whole tree?"  Well, I was sold.  I wasn't set on having a cake tree, but I thought it was pretty neat.

It helped when we found a picture of the same cake in one of Martha's wedding books (whence the above picture comes!).  Mom and I started looking for plant stands like the one in the picture everywhere we could think of--from garden centers to Pier 1.  Nothing seemed even remotely similar. 

Then, Mom brought the videos over to my Uncle Bill, who agreed to make one for us!  And it really came out exactly like.  I was thrilled, and painted it with two coats of a similar pale green sometime in April.  Now for the cakes.  And the flowers.

My mom actually has made several beautiful wedding cakes, but a wedding cake is such a long and intense project (at least for us) that we realized it would be better if we commissioned someone else to do it.  So, we met up with Robin, a lady from my grandmother's church, who has made cakes for years and can do just about anything.  We showed her with a picture and settled on 10 10" rounds, all in different designs of her choosing.  She let us taste some delightful Swiss meringue icing which she said would hold up well in the heat.  It's made with loads of butter (no shortening).  She also makes all her cakes from scratch.  I asked for some chocolate cakes, with almond-flavored icing in the middle, and some white cakes with lemon curd.  John wasn't around, but he loves both chocolate and lemon, so I figured we couldn't go wrong.  :-)

Only the flowers remained, and we had some difficulty in figuring out how to arrange the flowers so that each bed was sufficiently stable to hold up a 10" cake.  We asked around a lot, and finally found a friendly florist in Price Chopper who was willing to sell us the little plastic oasis trays they use there.  Oasis was pretty hard to find, too, but we ended up buying a big block of it from a garden shop in downtown Saratoga. 

On the day before the wedding, two of my aunts helped Mom with arranging the flowers themselves.  Aunt Andrea brought hydrangeas from her garden, and they picked wild sweet peas from our property.  They filled in with some kind of fern and draped the whole tree with vines.  The result was perhaps a bit wilder than Martha Stewart's cake tree, but it was cool.

 And that one bite of lemon-filled cake which John and I each got on our wedding day was delightful.  :-)

POW - The Bride's Accessories

That title sounds rather awkward, but nothing better was coming to me a moment ago, so there it stands.  I wanted to share how we procured my veil, jewelry, etc. 

Jewelry was simple!  I've known since I was five years old that I would wear the strand of five pearls given to me by Aunt Melanie.  It came out of Mom and Dad's lock box once for my high school yearbook pictures and once for my wedding day . . . and, to be honest, Mom opened the lock box a few extra times during my growing up years to peek at it.  :-)  I wore simple pearl earrings which I already had.  John had taken one of them to the jeweler to be fixed, along with our wedding bands to be engraved and my engagement ring to be cleaned sometime during the week before the wedding.  I got my engagement ring back at the wedding rehearsal, but didn't manage to get the earring until the day of the wedding . . . at the church . . . after this picture was taken!  (Thank you, Marissa, for saving the day on that one!)  What a hectic morning it was. 

I was thoroughly shocked by how expensive veils were at the boutiques where we tried on gowns.  Even a very simple one was over $100!  There was a consignment shop near the church (now closed) where I tried on a short, ivory veil for much less (maybe $15-$30; it's been a long time since then!), but I'd always envisioned wearing a long veil, longer, even than the dress itself!  When the sales-lady understood why I was vacillating, she exclaimed, "Don't any of you sew?"  Of course! 

Mom and I each brought 40% off coupons to Joann's fabric and purchased a pattern, comb, ivory-colored tulle, and some narrow ribbon for the edge.  The neat part of the story is that I used money which my Grandma Smith had given me as a graduation gift to buy these things, so, in a way, Grandma really gave me my veil.  :-)  My sweet, humble mother proclaimed how honored she felt to make it herself, and she did a beautiful job.  She even sewed a ribbon covering over the comb by hand.  When all was finished, I had the very long, ribbon-edged, ivory veil with a built-in second tier which I'd dreamed of.  I'm a traditionalist and definitely wanted to walk down the aisle with it over my face.

Besides the veil, I wished to wear fresh roses in my hair, so our florist wired the stems of several ivory spray roses and actually delivered them to the hairdresser on the morning of the wedding.

Shoes.  I was planning on wearing satin ballet flats, hands down.  They would be comfortable, practical, and in keeping with the time period of my dress.  I bought a pair of butter-colored flats at Marshalls in January or February.  I wasn't thrilled about the little bow on them and they were a bit tight, but they were a good deal! 

Then, in about April, we discovered Treasures, a consignment shop which had just opened in Saratoga.  At the time, they had a whole stock of brand new formal shoes.  Apparently, a shoe shop which had gone out of business had donated its inventory.  And I found these:

Quite possibly the prettiest shoes I had ever seen!  The box said the original price was something like $90, but by the time I found them, they had been marked all the way down to the lowest consignment level and were under $15, for sure.  As a bonus, the heel made me just tall enough not to need my dress hemmed.  Another money saver there.  And, thanks to being attached to John's arm just about all day, I didn't even trip.  :-D  Yet another little detail gifted from God.

POW - Dressing the Men

I was pretty sure I didn't want the groomsmen and young boys in our wedding party to wear the same purple as the bridesmaids.  I was thinking of something more neutral, but wasn't sure what . . .

Then, one day sometime after Easter when Mom and I were in J.C.Penney, we found quite a stock of gold-colored ties for young boys.  They were heavily discounted; maybe $2 a piece?  I was really excited that there were enough to go around in a color that could work!  We would have liked to have bought all zip-ties, since they're so easy to use.  There were only three left, however, so we bought three zips, one regular tie for our older young groomsman, and one clip-on.  I knew from Sunday School class that our little ring bearer could handle a clip-on.  :-) 

We asked the little boys all to wear dark suits and white shirts.  They did even better than that and all wore black suits and looked stunning.  :-)  When John and I went to pick out tuxes for him and his men, we brought one of the little boys' ties and were excited to find a perfect color match!  Hence, gold became our wedding's other color.  It ended up working really well, because the dress my mom had fallen in love with was gold, and John's Mom was planning to wear the same plum as the bridesmaids. 

POW - Food

From the start, we had decided to have a hot, catered dinner served at our wedding reception.  We decided to save a little money, however, by not having the hors d'oeuvre catered.  In fact, instead of a cocktail hour, we really had a cookies-and-punch hour.  During my college years, I'd heard that it was a tradition in Western Pennsylvania to serve cookies before the main food at a wedding, and I thought that following this tradition would be a sweet way of acknowledging the influence those four years had on my life.  The "mounds of cookies" I envisioned were brought to life by many women of our church who graciously baked for us.

We interviewed two different caterers for the rest of the meal.  Both were reported to have excellent food and relatively lower prices.  After comparing estimates and interviews, we chose Marcella's without hesitation!  We liked the very detailed estimate sheet they gave us, with tips and tax included, and we liked that they charged per tray of food instead of per person.  The other caterer quoted us a price per person, and it seemed like a made-up number.  Plus, we loved working with Patrie, the (owner?  manager?) of Marcella's.  She seemed to know exactly what we had in mind, had lots of helpful ideas, and wasn't pushy.

A few months later, however, Marcella's contacted us to let us know that two of their staff had left and they wouldn't be able to provide servers for our wedding.  Thankfully, the second caterers were willing to serve for us even though they weren't cooking.

We still had to figure out beverages.  The second caterers' estimate had included a few dollars extra per person for beverages and we thought we could get a far better deal just rounding up beverages ourselves.  We decided to keep things simple and just offer water or sprite with dinner, plus have a coffee station for those interested.  Mom went to BJ's and picked up a big bag of coffee and plenty of half and half and sugar.  In the few days before the wedding, I was still visiting all the local grocery stores and buying out their store-brand lemon-lime soda!  I have to admit that I was a bit frustrated when we arrived at the reception and all the glasses were filled with water.  I'd wanted the servers to circulate and offer people a choice, and there were many bottles of store-brand lemon-lime soda left over for our own enjoyment.  The time I could have saved . . .

Anyway.  We also wanted to offer a toast, and my parents pointed out the wisdom of having a non-alcoholic toast.  It was a few weeks before the wedding when Mom was calling the local stores to inquire about sparkling grape juice and cider.  Most had a very limited number in stock and seemed to charge a minimum of $3 a bottle for store-brand, and more for national brands.  One afternoon I checked out Ocean State Job Lot and almost fell on my knees in the store with gratitude.  They had a couple of cases of Welch's sparkling white grape juice for $1.50 a bottle!  A nice brand, enough for everyone to have the same, and even a pretty champagne color at the best price ever!  I praise God for helping us even in the little details.

For those interested, I did eat at my own wedding.  :-)  I knew I'd be hungry later and really wanted to try all the scrumptious dishes we'd picked out--chicken marsala, tortellini with broccoli and garlic, roast beef, roasted potatoes, and Marcella's awesome eggplant parmesan.  MMM.  :-D

POW - Renting Stuff

Because we were having a doing-it-ourselves reception, there were a lot of items to borrow or rent.  We could have gone to Allerdice Party and rented everything in one fell swoop, but we decided to try to do some deal-hunting first.

The Tent
Lorna, our hostess, had recommended Belmonte for a tent and tables.  Mom called around a few places just to be sure, and found that they did have better prices on tents than Allerdice or Clifton Park Rental.  We were very happy with their service, too. 

Tables
We used tables from a mish-mash of places.  Lorna had a few, we borrowed a few from church, and we rented the rest from Belmonte.  We wanted to use mostly round tables, but did use a few rectangular ones.  Our servers recommended that we push the rectangulars together in pairs to make squares.  That worked well, especially for a few larger families.  We figured that families that would otherwise fill or nearly fill an eight-person round might like to sit with other people for conversation during dinner.

Chairs
I loved the look of wooden chairs, and my grandmother's church had a whole bunch which they lent us entirely for free.  Very kind people.  Of course, someone had to deliver and retrieve them, and I think my Uncle Marshall was responsible for that . . . the only problem with borrowing stuff is that you're making extra work for people!  We did have to rent about half of our chairs, and we just used plain white ones from Belmonte.


Linens
Lorna suggested that we buy yards and yards of cheap white fabric at Wal-mart and sew our own table cloths.  She had a pattern and we (Mom) initially planned on taking this advice.  We had seen a picture of an outdoor reception in a Martha Stewart wedding book from the library, and in it the tables were dressed with long white underskirts and square champagne cloths on top.  This was our goal, but with many, many tables, it was going to be a lot of sewing!  When our caterers suggested that we rent linens through them, we compared prices and found that it was definitely worth-while to rent!  It was cheaper and saved a lot of time.  The caterers proclaimed the white and champagne combination "normal" and had no problem simply adding to their weekly linen request from Morgan Linen.  I don't know if Morgan had fancier fabrics to choose from like Allerdice did, but renting from an industrial linen company was definitely more economical than renting from a party company, and even more economical than making our own.

Dishes
Our original plan was to use high-quality disposable dishes, cups and flatware, but we thought we'd price china just to gather information.  Our discovery was surprising; they were about equal in cost.  My advice?  Definitely compare prices, just to make sure!  China would be classier and wouldn't blow away in the wind, and it seemed better than throwing all that plastic away.  With this decision, however, came a hidden cost.  Our servers decided to inflate their prices once they heard that they'd have to clear, rinse and stack plates instead of just throwing them away.  Prepare for hidden costs!  We rented china from Allerdice, and they offered to drop off and pick it up for an additional $40.  My parents decided to save us the $40 and do it themselves, but looking back, it would have been very worth $40 for someone else to do all that grunt-work the day before and a few days after the wedding. 

Other Stuff
We rented a "deluxe" porta potty from who knows where and borrowed pitchers, bread baskets and chafing dishes from church.  It was a bit of extra work to load all that stuff up and bring it all back, but it was worth it . . . and I'm certainly thankful that people were so willing to lend us stuff!

Planning Our Wedding - Flower Girls' Dresses

Some of the flower girls proceeding to the wedding.  Where are their bows?!

After seeing Wives and Daughters while I was in college, I decided that young Molly's dress in the opening scenes would be an ideal flower-girl dress.  (There's an image or two way down the page at earthlydelights.com.au.)  I was thrilled a couple of years later when Sense and Sensibility Patterns introduced a girls' regency dress pattern.  As my mom and I started hashing out wedding details in maybe November or so, she volunteered to sew the dresses for our five flower girls, and I ordered said pattern.

The next step was to find dotted Swiss, and it was a bit harder than I'd expected!  We looked, and then asked, at Joann's, and they told us to come back when the Spring fabrics were out.  In February or so, we looked again, but didn't find a fine dotted Swiss among all the eyelets they had to offer. 

Snow days are just as wonderful as a teacher as they were as a student!  On more than one such day, Mom and I took the opportunity to drive to the Albany area to work on wedding stuff.  I'd gotten a lead about an independent fabric shop in Latham, and we drove up and down Route 5 in search of it.  We didn't find exactly what we were looking for, but we did find an upholstery shop . . . which was closed.  We returned on another day to browse samples of lightweight curtain fabric which was almost what we were looking for.

Finally, we found the last, lone Alfred's in Albany which had one last, lone bolt of dotted Swiss!  The man (Mr. Alfred?) told us dotted Swiss was not commonly manufactured anymore, maybe because of asbestos concerns--I don't remember details.  But we were very excited and thankful to find it.  Mom bought nearly the whole bolt. 

The only problem was that it was white and my dress was ivory.  I definitely didn't want to appear as if I wasn't wearing white on my own wedding day.  But the dotted Swiss itself was very sheer, actually a bit dressier than the soft cotton I'd been expecting, and we chose a nice champagne lining which ended up working out beautifully. 

Mom was a bit hesitant to cut into our precious fabric and decided to try the pattern out first.  She found a gorgeous burgundy taffeta full-length ladies' skirt at a consignment shop and cut it up for a trial dress.  She made it to fit our little niece as a Valentine's Day dress, and with a black velvet ribbon at the empire waist, it was a darling!  I do wish we had a picture of it.  With new-found confidence in that great little pattern, Mom started sewing away . . . and all their little dresses were just as precious as could be.  :-)

I had pictured bare-legged little nymphs with wreaths in their curls, and one of my aunts suggested that they all wear ballet slippers.  Perfect. 

Planning Our Wedding - Bridesmaids Dresses

For years, my sister lived in dread of my wedding day, in dread that I would make her wear a pink, puffy-sleeved "pregnancy dress."  :-)  Personally, I do love pink, but I wasn't set on using it for our wedding color.  As the date became real, I assured her that we could compromise.  The empire waist was a must, but the sleeves could go.  As I looked through magazines, I initially settled on a soft--but warm--violet for my other friends and a slightly deeper shade for her.

I must have scrolled through hundreds of thumbnails of bridesmaids' dresses online.  Make that thousands.  Heidi first tried on a dress at David's that looked promising in a picture but wasn't as flattering in person.  Finally, I found a couple of dresses I liked from Eden and we discovered that Jocelynn's in Clifton Park had them on the floor.  It helped, too, that Eden had gotten good ratings in Bridal Bargains for quality and that both the dresses we looked at were around the $125 max I was planning on. 

Heidi tried them both on and we chose our favorite of the two, but before going ahead and ordering them, we decided to learn from our experiences with my dress and have Dad give us his man's-point-of-view assessment of its modesty.  Mom and I met him at the mall one day after work. 

Unfortunately, the dress wouldn't pass without some "help."  The seamstress in residence offered to order extra fabric to widen the straps and heighten the front and back, but we realized that every little thing she did would add to the cost of the dresses.  A little jacket was another option, but I wasn't going to ask my friends to shell out another $70 for a jacket that I didn't even think was very cute. 

Plan B.  Mom found a McCall's pattern that I loved and we decided to have the dresses made by a seamstress.  Though we couldn't find the same light violet that the Eden dresses came in, we opted for a darker eggplant in the same color family from Joann's line of special occasion fabrics.  We had to go to the Joann's in Albany to order the yardage we needed for five gowns, but the man who helped us was so kind that he let us use 40% off coupons on both the crepe base and chiffon overdress material!  I was also excited that we could trim the empire waists with matching velvet ribbon, just like my dress!  Having gowns made also meant that one of my friends, who is skilled at the sewing machine herself, could make her own dress and save some money. 

Finding a seamstress for everyone else's gowns was harder than I anticipated.  Several people gave me leads, but everyone I called couldn't do it for some reason or other.  We were told that fabric shops often recommended seamstresses, so the next time we were at Joann's, we asked about that.  They didn't recommend particular people, but they did keep a file of cards left by seamstresses, quilters, etc.  Mom took down all the promising phone numbers and I sat down one day to make phone calls.  No success.  The numbers were disconnected, or the seamstresses only did alterations, etc.  One lady was encouraging at first, but tried to convince me that having "custom" dresses made would cost at least $200 a piece for labor alone.  I didn't see what was so "custom" about following a pattern, personally . . .

So, Mom tried the Joann's in Glens Falls.  Once again I started my series of unanswered/discouraging phone calls.  But finally one of the seamstresses called me back.  Yes, she sewed dresses.  Yes, she was within our price range.  And she lived less than ten minutes from Mom and Dad's house!

I was so excited that I wrote off all other possibilities, even though I later regretted it when we ran into some glitches with her.  But we were so thankful to find someone, finally, and thankful for her location, too.  It was February when we first met with her and I e-mailed all my faraway friends with requests to send in their measurements.  Now we just had to wait on four girls with busy, busy schedules. 

Communication was key with our seamstress.  If we hadn't been vigiliant, I think that we would have had very different-looking dresses from the ones I envisioned!  Her early assurances that she didn't need a pattern, just a picture, had convinced us of her skill, but I didn't realize until later that she wasn't planning to follow the pattern!  Thankfully, our earnest request for "modest" did come across, and even though her dresses were slightly different from the one my friend was making for herself, if anything they were a little more modest. 

I definitely learned through it all that not everything will be perfect.  Little mistakes meant that our seamstress had to fix two of the dresses in the day or two before the wedding itself.  So much for planning ahead!  But at the end of the day, my bridesmaids didn't have to walk down the aisle naked, as I'd jokingly bewailed at my most frustrated times.  On the contrary, they looked gorgeous in their flowing empire gowns.  :-)

Planning Our Wedding - Invitations

As our months of wedding-planning progressed, I started getting the sense that we were doing a lot of things "the hard way."  By that, I mean that it seemed like we were making a lot more work for ourselves than most people do.  Still, in many aspects, like the invitations, I think it was worth it.  :-)

Budget-wise, we did save money by not sending Save-The-Date cards.  Those are cool, but I'd read in a magazine that they're only really necessary if your wedding is around a major holiday or if people need to know in advance to make travel arrangements.  Christmas was approaching and I was feeling overwhelmed with the wedding, play-season and preparations for Christmas itself, so it was easier just to skip them.  I did mention our wedding date in my Christmas cards to my friends who were far away.  But, as money is concerned, we definitely went over-budget on the invitations themselves!

A friend from church who also lives just down the road from my parents is a graphic designer (Susan) and volunteered to design our invitations.  John and I met with her one afternoon in November or December at an adorable paper shop in Saratoga called Paper Dolls.  We looked through books and brainstormed so that she could have somewhere to start.  Ultimately, she took away "toile," "calligraphy" and the Latin text of the song "Non Nobis Domine" which I was determined to incorporate into the wedding somehow. 

In the mean-time, I started working painstakingly on the wording.  For inspiration, our pastor's wife had let me borrow a fat envelope full of all the wedding invitations they've received for years.  Dad was definitely in favor of starting it off traditionally with my parents' names, but I wanted to work both sets of parents' names in, so I did.  I also decided to include "in the year of our Lord" before "2009" and the word "joyfully" in the first line. 

The next time we met with our designer friend, she had a prototype ready, and it was beautiful.  Though I'd originally asked her to keep things soft, we decided to deepen the colors into the eggplant purple of the bridesmaids' dresses.  We also made it harder on her by changing the shape of the invitation!  Mom knows that I love squares (nerd), but since square envelopes cost more to mail, I'd requested a standard 5.5"x8" invitation.  But now Mom was encouraging us to go for the square . . .

Several meetings and tweakings later, we were ready to find a printer!  Susan got us an insane quote from Paper Dolls, and we checked out Kinkos.  Kinkos would have actually been a pretty good choice if we'd gone with the standard 5.5"x8", since two invitations could be printed on a single page with one cut down the middle.  But our invitation was a 6" square (4 cuts) and on three layers.  That meant there were 3 sheets and 12 cuts per invitation instead of 1 sheet and 1 cut per 2 invitations!  That's to say nothing of the reply card.  We hadn't foreseen how much our design would inflate printing costs. 

Then Susan contacted a printer friend of hers who offered to beat Kinkos' quote and include envelopes.  Her product was even a bit nicer, so we went with her.  Finally, finally they were finished and printed, a bit later than we'd wanted to get them out in the mail. 

As I might have mentioned earlier, John's brother was getting married just about a month before we were, and they'd sent their invitations in pretty green pocket-folds instead of inner envelopes.  John loved this idea, so I researched pocket folds online and ordered several samples.  We decided on a deep, shimmery eggplant one from cardsandpockets.com and ordered enough for our A-list to start with, since they were kind of pricey. 

We also had to attach the three main invitation layers somehow, so we picked up some spools of narrow ribbon from A.C. Moore in an off-gold color.  Gold was evolving into our wedding's secondary color.  :-)  I spent one evening with Susan and her daughter in front of a movie tying all those invitations together with ribbon.  We anticipated many more evenings of addressing . . .

But!  Happy word.  My mom-in-law-to-be came through on this one.  She and my dad-in-law actually found and purchased the font which Susan had used for the invitation itself and ran every single reply card envelope and almost every single outer envelope (twice) through her ink-jet printer.  I don't think that was an easy mail-merge, since the list of addresses I'd given her was in an Access database.  All I know is that I stopped at their home after school on a Friday and the work was all done.  :-)

There were two more steps:  postage and some means of holding the pocket-folds together.  A magazine article I'd read advised bringing a fully packed invitation to the post office to get weighed before buying 180 wedding stamps, so I did.  Not only did the square cost more to mail, but the three-layer invitation and sturdy pocket-fold had made it heavy.  Wow.  I needed to purchase a 60-something cent stamp and a regular 44 cent stamp for each one, plus regular stamps for all the reply card envelopes.  I was just happy that they had pretty wedding stamps in both denominations. 

John's brother's invitation had a pretty pink ribbon slider holding their pocket-folds, but we didn't want to totally copy them and I was hoping to find a more economical means of holding all of them together.  I researched stickers and faux wax seals on-line.  One day when Mom and I were looking at similar items in A.C.Moore, we saw good old-fashioned gold sealing wax and just decided to go for it.  It was no more expensive than fake wax seals and it was real.  Once all the invitations were assembled, with a pressed violet tucked into each one, Derek helped us with the careful art of sealing up all those pocket-folds.  I carried them to the post office in boxes.  :-)

Planning Our Wedding - The Dress - parte duo

I left off at our first visit to Something Bleu, where we were dazzled by an ivory Regency gown with a champagne sash . . . We selected a few dresses to try on, but the lady who helped us handed me the Regency gown first, probably because she knew it would be my favorite and nothing else would compare.  She helped me slide it over my head, then straightened the little train and I swept across the carpet back into the main room where Mom waited beside the mirror. 

Those sales-ladies are cunning.  Once you step in front of the mirror, they stick a veil on your head, and suddenly you are no longer a shopper, but a bride.  Tears spring to your eyes.  They shower you with sparkling adjective phrases and let you linger long over your reflection.  I knew that the tears didn't necessarily mean we had found "the dress," because they did the same thing at Lily, minus a few of the sparkling adjectives!  But this dress was, undoubtedly, the most beautiful I had seen so far, and the most like the dress I had dreamed of.  It was just way, way too expensive.

The owner of the shop offered to come down on the price as long as we bought that dress off the floor, so we put it away in our minds.  It was still too much, though.  We had another potential iron in the fire to pursue.

I had actually begun my dress-search online. I'd heard that our pastor's daughter bought her gorgeous wedding gown from a Mormon company. While I'm definitely anti-Mormon in doctrine, I was encouraged to hear that some people are still making and selling modest wedding dresses! My search led me to Eternity Gowns, where I did find a very pretty Regency-style dress layered in Alcenon lace. I love lace. The only problem was we didn't know the price and the nearest store that carried Eternity was in Boston. We started making some phone calls.

The shop in Boston told us that they did not have this gown on the floor, but they could order it if I put a $100 deposit on it.  The dress itself was at the upper end of my price range.  Tough decisions!  Meanwhile, I found a very pretty Regency-style formal gown in chiffon from the same company which looked like a great candidate for a bridesmaid's dress.  It might be worth the risk and the trip if we found all our dresses on the same day.  But after further inquiry, we learned that the bridesmaid's dress was over $200, and I felt that I couldn't ask my friends to pay more than $125 apiece. 

After a week or two of meditation on all these factors, the owner of Something Bleu called us back.  She was willing to come down yet another $200.  I was excited!  We learned that it's good to wait it out!  Perhaps this was a sign.  When Mom offered to contribute to the dress herself, it was an easy decision.  We'd stay local and purchase that beautiful Regency gown.  Interestingly, the ladies at Something Bleu were not quite as nice to us after we'd actually handed them a check.

In conclusion . . . I was happy with my beautiful wedding gown, but if I had it to do over, I might have gone the Boston-route.  "Signs" aren't always from God.  Dad's first opinion of the dress, after we'd purchased it, was that it showed a lot of skin.  I'd advise a bride with a Christian Dad to have him check a dress out before purchasing it!  I spent some of the next several months worrying that I'd bought an immodest wedding gown, and on the morning of the wedding, we threw some lace into the bodice with stick-on velcro to cover just a little bit more.  Money-wise, I could have put my Mom's contribution toward the expensive bridesmaid dresses in Boston and saved ourselves some stress in that area, too, but that's a story for another day.  :-)

Planning Our Wedding - The Dress

Dress shopping was certainly one of the most fun parts of wedding-planning. :-) It did have it's frustrations, though, and Mom and I learned a lot! I was probably a more difficult bride than most because I already knew that my dream dress would be in the Regency style, with an empire waist like the dresses in Pride and Prejudice. We were also determined to find a dress that was modest.

One thing we learned was that Saturdays are the busiest days for bridal boutiques. Mom and I ended up doing the bulk of our shopping on Veteran's Day, which was a great choice! Another thing we learned was that you have to make an appointment at nearly every bridal shop. Thankfully, some places we stopped in told us to come back in an hour or two, so we were still able to make the most of our day, even though we were a little ignorant of how the appointment thing worked.

The first place we visited was David's Bridal. Our Pastor's wife had lent us a book called Bridal Bargains which was a great source of information for all areas of wedding planning. It contains reviews and ratings of various dress designers. David's didn't get a very high score, which surprised me initially because they seem so popular! But we soon learned why.

Walking into David's, our first sight was a giant room filled with dresses of all kinds! Girls in makeshift updos nervously bustled about various racks or stood on blocks in front of rows of mirrors. The lady who helped us seemed a little ornery at my specific request for "modest," but she handed my sister and me each a scratchy-looking corset (with an $80 price tag) and wandered off in pursuit of dresses with "a little more coverage" within the price range I had told her.

We definitely did not find "the dress" there. As I understand, when you buy a dress from David's, you always buy one off the floor (i.e. tried on by other people). Other boutiques will sell dresses off the floor but also offer you the option of ordering one from the designer. One of the dresses I tried on was already losing its beading - a bit concerning. I despised the corset, too, and half the dresses the lady brought me were strapless, despite my request. They said that they could add little snap-on caps. But I remember looking at myself in the mirror and feeling naked.

The next place we visited was Danielle's Bridal in Wilton. Danielle's is a smaller shop which I had often eyed with keen interest as we drove by. The lady inside was polite and waved her hand toward the racks of plastic-wrapped dresses, after inquiring about our wedding date. (They actually all did that, to make sure that we weren't just shopping for fun, I suppose.) Danielle's carried a number of popular designers, like Alfred Angelo. Most of them had gotten mediocre ratings in Bridal Bargains for quality, and most of them were still very pricey. "The dress" was not there.

Stop #3 was Lily of Saratoga, where we received a gracious welcome. The shop itself was beautiful, with dresses hanging freely about sweeping drapes and oak floors. At Lily, we learned not to avoid the finer boutiques because of our budget concerns. Yes, we saw some of the priciest dresses so far there, but the lady who helped us was very gracious and willing to work within our budget. She showed us an elegant silk sheath well within our range and pulled out two gorgeous ballgowns which were extremely reduced because they were the previous year's designs. For fun, she let me try on some of the very expensive dresses, too! Interestingly, all of these dresses (except the silk sheath, which was really 100% silk), had enough structure to them to lend a corset completely unnecessary. The modesty issue would have been anwered with a little jacket, and she had a couple for me to try. But none of them were "the dress," perhaps to my mother's chagrin. :-)

Our last stop was at Something Bleu, previously called Immortal Beloved, and also right in town in Saratoga. Oh, that shop was gorgeous, as well, and the lady who helped us led us about racks of gowns from France, from Spain, from England, and made in America. Exquisite lace detailing was accentuated by the soft light and the white carpets. They had a 50% off rack, as well, but some of those dresses were so expensive to start with that 50% off was still way out of our price range! The most exciting thing about Something Bleu, however, was that some of the dresses had sleeves. Mom's eyes alighted upon an ivory Regency gown with a champagne-colored velvet ribbon at the empire waist.  It looked lacy, but the outer layer was actually tulle which was embroidered and delicately beaded.  Exciting . . .

To be continued . . .

Planning Our Wedding - Ceremony Accessories

One great bit of advice we received at some point was that you can get regular 40% off (and occasionally 50% off) coupons for AC Moore, Michael's and Joann's.  They are each valid for one regularly-priced item per visit.  All you have to do is sign up for their mailing lists, which I did on their websites.  AC Moore will actually e-mail you links to printable coupons every week.  You can only use one per customer per visit , but the great thing is that you can print as many as you want.  Sometimes my mom and I would each carry a coupon into the store and buy items with separate transactions, and sometimes I would keep printing coupons and visit a store more than once a week. 

Another great thing we learned is that the stores will accept each others' coupons, but only sale-flier coupons.  So, I regularly received e-mail coupons from AC Moore and sale-flier coupons in the mail from Joann's and used the Joann's coupons either for Joann's or Michael's.  It worked great.  :-)

These craft stores all have ceremony accessories like guest books, flower girl baskets, ring-bearer pillows, and unity candles in different styles.  They're all pretty, but for what they are, I think they are definitely over-priced.  Still, if that's what you're going for, I would definitely buy them at a craft store with coupons. 

At the end of the day, I did not end up using any of their accessories. We were planning on having five flower girls, and even with coupons, five of those little polyester-satin baskets would have been kind of expensive.  And our wedding wasn't going to have shiny satin and tulle; I was going for a different feel.  Instead, my mom and I found five little wicker baskets at the Christmas Tree Shop in Albany for only a dollar or two apiece, and I covered over the handles with some grosgrain ribbon and hot glue.  They still looked a little plain, so I glued on some dried lavender sprigs, but not all of them withstood the playing of little girls.  :-)    Still, I was quite happy with the overall effect. 

Instead of a pillow for the ring-bearer, I wanted to use a box, partly because I really wanted little John to actually carry the rings.  I'm not into pretending.  And he did!!  We used a little wooden box which my grandparents gave me years ago, and my John cut some of the velvet from the box the rings came in to fit inside.  Our little ring-bearer was just adorable, especially at the rehearsal where he cupped his hands the whole way up the aisle, carrying a pretend box.  :-) 

Neither John nor I was particularly attached to the idea of unity candles, so we skipped that entirely.  And for a guest book, I chose a little leather journal which my sister gave me a few years ago.  I don't think people minded.  On ceremony accessories, we most definitely saved money. 

Planning Our Wedding, part 1

Last year at this time, we were in the thick of wedding-planning.  I've thought for a while about doing a series on wedding-planning, partly to help me remember that busy, happy time, and partly for anyone interested.  Maybe someone else can glean some ideas, or at least benefit from our experience! 

To begin, from the beginning of our engagement, we were sure of a few things.  We would get married in Ballston Lake at the church we both grew up in, by our pastor.  We were hoping for an outdoor reception somewhere, and we wanted to invite everybody.  Even if it meant eating on paper plates, I wanted to serve a full hot meal.  I also wanted to have that meal catered so that all our friends and family could relax and enjoy the day. 

I had lots of visions for details, as well.  Our engagement was 9.5 months long out of practicality; I needed to finish the school year before moving 700 miles away, and John's brother was getting married the same spring, so we needed to put a little space between the weddings.  Though it seemed like a long time at the outset, we needed all those months!   One thing we learned was how helpful it was to have my mom not working during the day at this time.  If we hadn't had someone working on the wedding full-time toward the end, we simply could not have pulled it off.  So, I'd tell a working bride-to-be that she needs someone else helping to plan her wedding full-time.  If there is no one available, she might need to decide to have a simple wedding or to hire a wedding planner, if possible.

At the end of the day, to my disappointment, we couldn't invite quite everyone.  The limiting factor was the size of the sanctuary, so we made rough "A" and "B" lists, hoping that only about 200 of the A list would come, and secretly hoping that we could send out late invitations to the others.

Thanks to living at home for the past couple of years, I'd saved enough of my teacher's salary to give us a decent wedding budget, though John paid for a few things himself and my parents helped us out some, too.  I used a wedding planning budget template for Excel as well as recommendations from theknot.com as a financial guide, and both were helpful.  The knot has a tool which will take your overall budget, the number in your wedding party and the expected number of guests and calculated about how much you should spend on everything. 

Instead of buying a pretty wedding planning book like they sell at Barnes & Noble, my mom and I checked books out of the library and made our own planning binder, using a time line one of the books recommended.  We got a lot of fun ideas from those books, as well, though we didn't use many!  There were ways that we definitely saved money and other ways that we splurged.  I'm looking forward to reminiscing about it all as I share some more in the weeks ahead!