Psssssst!!
Hey! Remember me? I’m that jerk blogger that got overwhelmed and then swept up into the last month and a half of wedding preparations. Hate me if you must… but I have returned with a cleared head and I’m ready to serve up some hot dishes of Laura’s wedding goodness just for you guys… my favorite peoples ever!! Plus, as an added bonus, I’ve already got my pro pics because my photographer is a super hero, so my recaps will be graced with lots of lovely professional photo action for your viewing pleasure!

I hope you can find it in your hearts to forgive me! Life happens and unfortunately mine started to happen when lots of stuffs were going down wedding wise so I’ve got lots to recap for you lovlies!!

Be back later today!

-Laura

PS: Image credit to the stellar allison davis photography!

Have you ever felt like the above picture when wedding planning?

Have you started any comments with this statement:”When I get my life back after the wedding I will… “

Wedding planning can be very tough and take a toll on your lifestyle to say the least. Like as soon as you get home from a long day at work and all you want to do is plop on the sofa and fall asleep but you can’t because you’re up to your ears in wedding stationary, people are calling you asking about this and that wedding related event, including a call to tell you the directions on your shower invitation are wrong and you start to get super overwhelmed… that’s where I am right now.

My fiancee has been super supportive and understanding that our cute new apartment is messy. My bridesmaids have been offering to help me with things, my FMIL has been offering. I am truly lucky that I have so many people surrounding me with their love and extending their help during such a busy time!

Yes, I miss my hobbies… I miss cooking and cuddling up with the boy on the couch without a worry in the world… I miss a lot of things that I’m missing out on right now because of the wedding, but I wouldn’t give up this time for the world because it’s taught me something very important: I am loved. I don’t think I realized how much so and by how many people until I started planning this shindig, and I’m so glad I realize this now. So there is something positive to be found even on the most stressful of wedding planning days.

What have you learned from your wedding planning? Do you have anything that you’re eager to get back to? What have your family and friends done to make you smile when you’re stressing about the wedding?

In a time of a poorly fairing economy; as well as a time with bridesmaids being laid off, college students, getting married, etc… I just couldn’t bear to ask them to pay over $80 for a dress!

Being the researcher I am, I set out on an internet exploration of all that would be wedding worthy! I have to be honest… within my price range, and within stores we could go to in person, there was a lot to be desired as far as teal dresses go! As far as something online goes, there were options, including this beauty from the rose dress.

However, I just didn’t feel comfortable ordering something off of the internet, and risking they not all being the same color, not fitting, having bad fabric… lots of negativity was going through my head about ordering online. I just wasn’t that brave! Being a plus sized girl myself, I know how hard it is to find something that fits right. Regardless if the website says it will fit in its measurement chart or not… sometimes they just don’t fit right! I wasn’t about to put my lovely bridesmaids through that!

My next thought was to enlist the help of my awesome aunt who has some major sewing machine wielding skills… This would have totally been an option but she lives pretty far from my bridesmaids, making fittings tough, therefore we didn’t take that route. While pondering this option, I did find some beautiful, classy dress patters at the craft store, though! Something I loved about the patterns was that most of them have several different options for the dresses, so I could still have that matched, but mismatched look for the BMs that I love! Maybe this could be an option for someone else! If you catch the right sale, you could get bridesmaid dresses for under $20 a piece! Aren’t these delicious?!

After these ideas didn’t pan out, I decided to tweak my guidelines a bit. I had seen some gorgeous black bridesmaid dresses, and I love the idea of them being able to actually use the dress again, so I told the girls to go get a cocktail dress, knee/tea length and black were my only rules, oh, and not to let the boobs hang out too much since you know… this is a classy event, and all.

*enter waiting and non-response here*

Apparently the open ended option wasn’t working for the bridesmaids because I didn’t hear from them after I gave this option and when I called them, they all said, “Well, just let me know what you want me to wear!” or “Pick a dress for me and I’ll wear whatever you want!” Soooo… back to square one.

I hopped online again, how hard could it be to find a LBD? I was actually kind of excited since I knew I would have a lot more options. This time I was looking for a cute black number for my main ladies, and I struck GOLD!! Black gold that is… Having 2 bridesmaids who are plus size, and two bridesmaids who wear a L/XL, I looked at the Lane Bryant website and I found a beautiful, simple, affordable, perfect dress!

Who wouldn’t be able to wear this again? I almost want one myself. lol

So after visiting the dress in person, and confirming the quality, I sent off the info to all the BMs. They each purchased their dress and the bridesmaid dress search was complete! Why didn’t I just think of getting a LBD for a bridesmaid dress before!? Part two – Bringing It All Together, coming soon to a blog near you!

Have you had any details that you were over thinking?

While this is the norm:

There are just too many tasty options out there for me to go this route!

Exhibit A:

Check out these gorgeous pillows from oromono.

Exhibit B:

These are from Llubav

Exhibit C:

Here are some others from etsy that are just to die for!

I’m pretty sure I’m going to DIY my ring pillow, so I’m so glad that I have all of these great ideas to inspire me!

What cool ring pillows have you seen around the webs?

I started out my search for our photographer with low expectations… (great start to this story, huh?!) We are on a tight budget and all of those photographers that I drool over on all of the wedding blogs were all WAAAY out of our price range. I knew finding a photographer worth a snuff would be some HARD WORK and the people I was finding in our $1500-$2,300 range (almost 1/4 of our budget!) were, how do I say this… AWFUL. I mean cheesy craigslist photographer galore. It just didn’t get much worse. There didn’t seem to be any middle ground.

I felt like there was no way that within our budget, we would be getting pictures like these that I had been swooning over in all of my wedding ‘net surfing.

I am such a visual person, and Russell and I agreed we didn’t want the overly posed, glamor shots, overly ‘wedding magazine’ish type photos. We wanted fresh, only posed when they need to be, photo-journalistic, sweet, cool but not too trendy photos.

Enter ALLISON

… only our expectations were blown. away.

Not only are her photos incredible.. but her prices actually fit into our budget. We are getting more than I ever dreamed of for our photography and I feel so lucky that we are going to get to have such a talented artist capturing the memories of our big day. I can’t wait!

Here are a couple of our engagement pictures.

Each and every one of the gorgeous photos in this entry are credit to Allison Davis.