first, i started by coming up with the most amazing indie-rock-wedding-goodness for the reception playlist. THEN, i found my processional music….you know…the whole “i now pronounce you wifey and hub-bub”, “kiss the bride”, “everyone walk back down the isle” song. “cannon in d” or some other traditional song might rock the face off some couples, but for bailey and i, it just wasn’t going to cut it.

to preface a bit, when we first started dating we were surprised at how much of the same random music we both loved! one of the first things i did when i was in his car for the first time was snatch up his ipod to make sure he was good enough for me (yes, music is THAT important to me…and it turns out, to him)…and when i saw the old 97’s, ghostland observatory, AND hall & oates…well, there’s no nice way to put it…i nearly shit my pants!

after seeing the movie 500 days of summer, we both loved the movie and the soundtrack. we also loved how genius it was to pair a bunch of indie rock songs with the greatness that is hall & oates! this video is a crappy youtube quality of one of my favorite scenes of the movie. if you live under a rock and haven’t seen it yet, i’m gonna go ahead and spoil it for you….this AWESOME scene takes place the morning after tom (joseph gordon-levitt) seals the deal with summer (my ultimate girl-crush, zooey deschanel)…

and there you have it! our totally “us” processional song! i want it to start playing exactly when we kiss, and i think with enough pre-nuptial champagne we might even all kinda shimmy back down the isle

now, if only i could narrow it down to THE song i’m walking down the isle to…

first off…i’m a very busy gal, and so are my awesome girlfriends. i’m also not the type to make my super busy girlfriends drop everything to come and “ooooh” and “aaaah” over me while i try on dress after dress that’s i’m not so sure about. needless to say, my very first dress shopping experience was all by myself. i figured i would narrow it down to a few dresses, and then wrangle in the girls to go and see them. first, i went to the most amazing bridal shop ever, elizabeth’s bridal, in hurst, tx. elizabeth herself helped me on that first day and i absolutely fell in love with her (i later met kathy, her mother, and loved her just as much)! at that point i thought i was planning a vegas wedding so i stuck to trying on gowns that were very minimal with little “poof” since i would be stuffing it into a bag and flying across the country with it. i tried on a few gowns that were all nice, but i still kept eye-balling a GORGEOUS brand new maggie sottero gown that was hanging up. at first i didn’t even want to try it on because when i looked at it, the gown didn’t say “vegas” to me…it said “LUXOFABULICIOUS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”. finally, i decided SCREW IT! let’s try on the luxofabulicious gown and hopefully i’ll see that is it NOTHING BUT WRONG for me and it will be out of my head. so i did. and it was UH-MAAAAZING! even though it was a gazzillion sizes too big, i didn’t want to take it off! but, i just kept telling myself that this dress deserved something far grander than a vegas strip wedding. this dress deserved a ballroom or something spectacular! so, i took it off and went home that night to pour myself into the maggie site to find all of the things i loved about that gown in a slimmer, more “vegas”, gown. i knew i wanted a one shoulder look with diagonal/criss-crossy pleats. that, my friends, is what brought me to the vegas dress that i was in love with!

Well, once we axed the vegas wedding idea and decided to get married here in Fort Worth at Thistle Hill, I decided that perhaps the LUXOFABULICIOUS dress would do! So, without further ado….here she is…the FIORELLA by maggie sottero!

isn’t she BREATH-TAKING?! i feel like i should name my first born after her! and she is going to look absolutely amazing on this staircase…

do you see the similarities between the vegas dress and the luxofabulicious dress?

i don’t have photos of me in the fiorella yet since the sample was so big, but my actually gown should arrive in mid march. i just KNOW that i’m going to love it! and hopefully, my mom will come around to loving it, too

after burning through a $40 flat iron from sally’s every 6 months or so for the past few years, i finally caved and bought my very first chi! isn’t she pretty?

we went to deep ellum in dallas to take our engagement photos on halloween day. words cannot express how much i DESPISE having my picture taken, but this was actually a lot of fun!

and since we met in a bar…it was only fitting….

the vegas wedding was getting TOTALLY out of hand, and after lots of thought, consideration, and maybe a little hair pulling, we decided to get married here after all. ladies and gents…this is our wedding venue :

and we are TOTALLY using a carriage ride for our big send off!

just look at this staircase we’ll be saying “i do” on…

i got together with my mom, and my future mothers in law (yup, i get two of them and they’re both awesome!) to go and view the house and we all loved it so much that i went back the next day to book it! they even had our awesome 10/10/10 date available still!

however… i will also be choosing a different gown. the whole “slit up the thigh” thing of the other dress was perfect for vegas…but here, not a chance!

i’m really going to try and make more of an effort to post here so that i’ll have something i can look back on after this is all said and done. i have less than a year and LOTS of planning to do. so far, we’ve booked the venue, the photographer, and the cake. that still leaves music, food, booze, flowers, bridesmaid dresses, and figuring out what the boys will wear. i’m not crazy about matching bridesmaids at all. as a matter of fact, i think that the one thing i’m most sure of about our wedding is that i absolutely do NOT want matching bridesmaid dresses at all. i want them each in a style that is flattering to them and each in a different jewel tone color. as adamant as i am about the bridesmaid dresses, is it terrible that i’m kind of indifferent about what the guys will be wearing?

so, when bailey proposed with the pet rock he told me i could either leave the stone set as a solitaire, or i could reset it any way i liked. i was originally in love with the tiffany legacy setting, however once i saw my pet rock on my hand, i thought it would be TOO much to put a bunch of diamonds around it and down the band.

fast forward a month and a half later and i’m on the hunt for the perfectly unique wedding band to go with my perfectly classic engagement ring. now, i LOVE sapphires…as a matter of fact, i want to plan my future child(ren?) to be born in september so that i can have a beautiful sapphire mother’s ring one day. till then, i’ve decided that i MUST have sapphires on my wedding band.  so tonight, while searching for sapphire and diamond wedding bands, i came across this engagement ring…

isn’t she BEAUTIFUL!? don’t you want to be friends with her? i sure do! i wasn’t even searching for engagement rings…i was searching for wedding BANDS, and there she was on google images, just begging for me to click on her! it’s almost like we were meant to be together! i mean, i bet she even knows how to pronounce my name correctly!

so, even though bailey doesn’t give a rat’s ass what i do to my ring, i still feel a little apprehensive about resetting the ring he PROPOSED MARRIAGE with, ya know?

should i RUN, not walk, to my jeweler with a photo of this ring…or should i cherish the ring on my hand just the way it is? thoughts? opinions?

a little over a week ago was the maggie sottero trunk show that i was soooo excited about. normally when i get excited about things, everything that i was excited about falls through and i’m left completely disappointed. as a matter of fact, sometimes i find myself wondering if i just have terrible luck or hell, maybe i’m a little psychic?! it’s like i KNOW that the simple act of being excited makes things all go to crap. well, this was not one of those days. the day before the trunk show i got a call from the bridal shop telling me that the dresses for the trunk show had just arrived and not only was every single dress in my size, they had the exact dress i was hoping to try on, in the exact color i was hoping to see a sample of! we arrived and i went ahead and picked out a few others to try on, you know…because i was just waiting for this seemingly perfect chain of events to all fall apart.  but, they absolutely didn’t! i put on the melanie gown and instantly KNEW it was to be MY wedding dress! even my mommy, who wasn’t a fan of the dress from the photo she’d seen, knew it was THE ONE! so, i present to you….THE ONE!

the ladies at the bridal shop were nice enough to let us take photos, but i’ll only post one here…

this is the “light gold” color that i plan on ordering my gown in…isn’t it perfect for me?! all i’ll need is some hemming across the front of the gown, and the shoulder strap taken in! also, you can see my mommy to the left in that photo

another thing that i LOVE about this dress is that there is a slit up the left thigh…it’s described on the website’s description, yet they didn’t show it in the photo…well the slit MAKES the dress! and it’s absolutely a VEGAS dress with that little touch the only thing that sucks is that i was totally planning on wearing comfy shoes, but now seeing the slit, i’m forced to pick out a pair of rockin shoes for my big day. poor me, i know.

also, some of my friends were a little surprised that bailey has seen the dress. in fact, he helped pick it out! well, to clarify…as i sat night after night on the couch next to him pouring through bridal magazines and dress designer’s websites asking his opinion on this or that, the melanie was one of the few dresses that actually took his attention away from sportscenter long enough to tell me that he really loved it. some people might think it’s bad luck if he knows what the dress looks like before the wedding…and to that i say “to each their own…” because with as much love as we have, i feel no need for luck.

yesterday my mommy and i were in dallas and decided to check out terry costa, since they carry both maggie sottero and mori lee gowns. everybody there was super friendly, especially konnie they even told us we could take photos of the dresses i was trying on! in most bridal shops, that’s a huge no-no. neither one of us had a camera with us, but my mom got a few with her iphone.  anyhow…on to the dresses!

they had a dress similar to the melanie style that i got to try on called fredricka. i liked it a lot, but it was not THE dress, ya know?

here is fredricka…

and here is fredricka on me…

*pardon the lovely cell phone quality. also, the picture is of my reflection in the mirror, so that’s why the shoulder strap is opposite of the other photo.

let me just take a moment to explain what it’s like to try on wedding gowns when you’re 5′2″ and a size 4 on a fat day…it sucks. most sample dresses are size 8 and up, and are the longest length that the designer offers. the ladies at most bridal shops will clip the dress in the back so that you can see, at least from the front, what the dress will look like when it fits you. even then, sometimes it’s hard to ignore the fact that the dress slinks down into a puddle of fabric at your feet. also, since i don’t plan on wearing ginormous heals on my wedding day, it limits me to styles that don’t look silly once you cut off a half a foot or more from the bottom of the dress.

next we have gatsby…

the sample dress for gatsby was a size 10 so even with the corset fully laced and clipped tight in the back, it was impossible to get it to “fit” without making my torso look like a barrel!  to give you some perspective…the ribbon around my waist was about 2-3 inches below my hipbones. GORGEOUS gown, but not for me.

next i tried on a gorgeous gown from the sottero-midgley line. it was dress ASM3156….

i REALLY loved this one, but i’d like to see it in a size closer to my own. it doesn’t have a corset back so we had to make it fit with just clips and we still couldn’t get all the fabric into the clips in the back. and the back….i LOVE the back. it goes down so low and i love my back so that’s a good thing the only thing i’m not so sure of is all that poof…any dress i do pick, i’ll be having to pack to travel to vegas. also, i can’t imagine bustling that train and having it still look good.

tomorrow morning is the maggie trunk show and april, my best friend since i was NINE, is in town to come along!! a lady from the bridal shop called today to tell me that the melanie gown that i love so much in pictures will be at the show and that the sample is a size 6!! wooohooo! i am DEFINITELY bringing a camera along tomorrow, just in case they let us take photos!

because we’re ENGAGED!!!

i swear i will start updating this more…

we’ve been engaged for exactly three weeks today and it feels like only 5 minutes! we’ve set our date as 10/10/10 in las vegas, nevada. we plan on having a small wedding with our family and closest friends who are up for making the trip

i’m pretty sure i’ve cleaned out the entire dfw area of bridal magazines, and then cleaned out those magazines! i’ve been tearing out the pages of anything that i see that i love or inspires me and i’m going to put it all together in a book to help me plan. coincidentally, the dfw bridal show was the very day after b. popped the question, so my mommy and i went to that together. biggest. waste. of. time. EVER! pretty much the only thing i got from that show was junk mail and the idea in my head that i have GOT to start charging more for my photography! we’re going to a maggie sottero trunk show next friday and i’m really hoping they will have this dress there for me to try on :

Melanie

i absolutely LOVE the criss-cross pleats and corset back! my mom’s not too crazy about the dress just from the picture, but pictures never do dresses their justice. for example…out of all of the dresses i’ve tried on so far, this one is the one i love the most :

this dress is by mori lee, and i have to be honest…i didn’t even want to try this dress on, but the owner of the dress shop insisted that i try it on and OH. MY. GOD. it fit amazingly! on the hanger, and in that photo, it does nothing for me….on my body, i am in LOVE! so…i guess i’ve decided on this dress so far, but i still want to see a few others on me to help solidify my choice

things i’ve loved since we last met :

turbojam!

my very own homemade veggie soup

shannaleighimages.com

abita strawberry harvest lager

kings of leon – only by the night

she & him -volume one

bon iver

facebook

my new apartment

versaspa

gossip girl

the tudors

bailey (still going strong over ten months later<3)

the japanese gardens in fort worth…seriously…how dreamy is this?