First off, I think I'm pretty close to the oppositie of "high maintenance" and not the type of
girl who’s had their wedding planned out since 2nd grade. My clothing style is pretty casual and I mostly wear varying shades of grey and black. My favorite outfit is well-worn blue jeans paired with a Star Wars t-shirt and flip-flops. Though I love pedicures, I've never had a manicure at a salon and I cut my own hair half the time (some call this "frugal", others may refer to me as being a "cheap a$$"). I like nice things but I also like to keep things more on the simple spectrum and less towards "foo-foo".
As far as previous relationship status, I hadn't been married before or even been (seriously) asked. Though I was in my 30s and I’d had
other long-term(ish) relationships - even lived with someone for a while - it
never worked out. Joe and I started dating towards the end of August 2005 and
things were so perfect from the get-go that I never felt concerned about throwing
a wedding into the mix. Fast-forward to 2011 and we joyfully brought a
beautiful baby boy into the world. All of a sudden, I’ve become a “baby mama”
and have a different last name than my charming child and his darling daddy.
We had evolved from “couple” to “family” and somehow I started to feel that
maybe the marriage thing had something to it. Neither of us strives to be overly
traditional (and Joe might not realize it) but I felt that it wasn’t my place to do the proposing. I’m all for gender equality yet for whatever reason I didn't want to budge on this tiny detail. On August 14,
2012, our 7th anniversary of smooching in a field at a mutual friend’s party (what
a first date!), Joe finally asked me to marry him and gave me a
gorgeous, shiny bauble for a very important finger.
Initially, I may have suggested
that we (please!!!) just get married at the courthouse since I’m not a fan of
being the center of attention. (Hello, clumsy girl here, who has a habit of tripping over her own feet!!) I had also heard the rumor that weddings were really
expensive (TRUE!) and we had plenty of other things to put money towards (house, car payments, Joe's grad school loans, diapers, etc) but ultimately, we felt that our families might feel a little miffed if they weren’t
included in the festivities. And if we were going to do this thing, let's do it right. So the planning began. Neither of us really had much
experience with weddings – we’d been to some weddings and I was even the maid
of honor at my sister’s wedding but really hadn’t paid any attention to the details (I flew across country just for the wedding, didn’t help much with planning).
I knew there needed to be food, music, cake, and a pretty dress. Easy,
right?! Ha!STEP ONE - VENUE.
I was originally from Washington State and met my husband while living in Pennsylvania, he lived in the Erie area most of his life, save for the college years spent in State College, PA. We’d only been living in the Charleston, South Carolina area since 2009, yet I don’t think we even considered having the wedding any other place than Charleston. While we don’t love every aspect of living here, the area is absolutely amazingly gorgeous and has such a rich and varied history so we really wanted to share that with friends and family. We figured our wedding would be the perfect excuse for people to see all that Charleston has to offer. It was determined that we’d like to have the wedding in 2013… maybe in the Spring? That’s a nice time of year in Charleston. We quickly discovered that Spring may be a little too soon planning-wise and some other friends of friends were getting married earlier in the year so we decided that late Summer/Fall would be a good option. In order to pick a date, of course we needed a venue! So, the venue hunt began.
We didn’t want a typical, boring, run-of-the-mill place to get hitched. BO-RING. Joe’s dad was working as a salesperson for a fireworks company and Joe is a licensed pyrotechnician so we were originally trying to find a venue that allowed fireworks. My first thought was that a wedding on the beach sounded fantastic but I didn’t know how one accomplished such a thing with a guest list that had the potential to get fairly large. And what if it rained?!? We also wanted to have the ceremony and reception at the same place to save our guests travel time, neither of us were a fan of that lull in between from weddings we’d been to that had the reception at a different location. It could probably be noted here that I did most of the research for the wedding via my computer and did most of my communicating via email. I detest talking on the phone (and trying to keep track of who-said-what) plus I loved that I could keep my emails organized and compiled in spreadsheets. We found the only hotel on the beach and proceeded to find out that it would be really expensive to have our shindig there and it would’ve been pricey for our out-of-town guests to stay there as well. So we moved on. A plantation sounded like a neat option but historic places don’t tend to want explosives near their very old, priceless structures so we talked to a lady in charge of a very nice golf course that was right on the water. We didn’t end up picking it – in hindsight, it would’ve probably been a lot easier if we had, as it was mostly all-inclusive. And we could’ve had fireworks. But, we figured that if people were going to bother to travel to see us, we wanted to provide something special. Enter our venue: Old Wide Awake Plantation. A big old southern home with wrap-around porches, surrounded by ancient oak trees and tucked away from the hustle and bustle… this place was just oozing charm and relaxation. After weighing the pros and cons – with a spreadsheet, of course – we determined that it was THE place to get married and have our reception. Even though we knew August 31st promised to be hot and humid, and both the ceremony and reception would be held outdoors, there was no turning back.
Advice: Go with your head, but also go with your gut. You’re only doing this once! By the way, rain was a factor that I was terrified of (not because I think I’d melt if I got wet, rain often means thunder and lightning); we had a back-up plan to get married under the porches if we had to but I really wanted to be married in an area under trees. I did get my wish and it didn’t rain (yay!!) but the heat and humidity were pretty oppressive for a lot of our Northern friends and family (and everyone else too, if we're being honest!!). So maybe a venue with a climate-controlled indoor option would’ve been a good idea… A couple of other pesky nuisances at our venue were that everyone ended up being so spread out and you couldn’t hear the music at all when you were downstairs by the bar. I still love where we got married though, we had a great time there and absolutely LOVE how our professional photos turned out!
DRESS.
Next step for me was to start looking at dresses. Even though I consider myself low-maintenance, I really wanted something special in the way of the wedding gown. Trying on dresses was a little nerve-wrecking as I had managed to pack on about 60lbs while pregnant and still hadn’t lost it all a year later. In preparation for dress hunting, I did a bunch of lurking through magazines and websites; as result, I printed out a bunch of dresses I liked. We have a David’s Bridal in town and while I thought some of the dresses online were pretty, not exactly sure why but I was always under the impression that their dresses were of a lesser quality since some people had mentioned how they got their dress for $99 at David’s. My plan was just to go in to get an idea of what type of color/material/style would suit me and if I found something reasonably priced and pretty – all the better, but I didn’t have my hopes up. I arrived, armed with a good friend, print-outs of dress photos I liked, and a clear budget in mind. I talked to the nice girl who was tasked with helping me at the appointment and while she went to grab some dresses for me, the assistant manager glanced at the printouts, gave me a once-over and ran to grab this over-the-top dress that I was like “yeah, right, that thing looks heavy and BUSY”. I tried it on first thing anyhow, you know, in order to rule it out, and was completely blown away by how much I loved it. Hold on... you’re not supposed to love the first dress you try on… until I looked at the price tag. $1250!!? That’s over triple my budget and it would still need to be hemmed, if nothing else!! So I ruled that one out and tried on a couple other options. We determined that ivory was better than any of the shades of white on my pasty skin, we determined that “tea length” wasn’t the best option for me, and that I really liked the first dress. I walked out feeling slightly defeated but I continued my online search for dresses now that I had an idea of color and style that works for me (and started counting calories). I found a consignment shop in Scottsdale, AZ that had a gorgeous dress in my size that I liked a lot so made an appointment to see it when I was visiting my parents in Phoenix over Christmas time. My mom and cousin joined me for the appointment and it turned out that the dress I wanted was mismarked by 4 sizes smaller (more that I wanted to count on losing weight before the wedding for) and obviously didn’t fit. I had also been eyeing up another dress from that shop and tried it on, it looked pretty decent and had a lace up back so had the potential to fit even better once I dropped a couple more pounds. The gown was also within my self-imposed $400 budget, so I figured I should probably just get it. My mom swooped in at the last moment with her credit card and bought it for me. Oh no. What if I don’t love this dress by the time the big day comes around? I felt rushed into buying it and though I hate wasting money, wasting my money isn’t as bad as wasting my mom’s and I really hate feeling obligated. So with some twinges of regret, I walked out of the store with the wedding dress. We got it home and it lurked in my closet, I’d go visit it and try to talk myself into it being THE dress but never was terribly excited about it. I was trying to be practical about something that just wasn’t working for me.
Shortly after trying on that fated dress at David’s originally, I had created a saved-search on Ebay with the model number of the dress and didn’t think too much about it after that. One day, months later, a notification popped up that one was available, brand-new, in the size and color I wanted for about half the original tag price. I had dropped 25lbs since Christmas time and went to try the dress on at David’s again to verify that it was indeed the right size. Even though it was still over my budget (and even though I had a perfectly good dress in my closet), I deliberated for a couple days, called my mom and explained how much I loved this other dress, and then bit the bullet and pressed the Buy It Now button. It arrived well-packed, in a box originally used to ship a bicycle – to give you an idea of how much material the dress was made of!! Upon initial inspection, I was horrified to note that there were makeup stains on the inside of the dress and deodorant stains on the armpits. Was this even a new dress? It did have a tag attached to it but that could’ve been tucked in during wear… or it was purchased off the rack and 80 sweaty girls had already tried it on?? Either way, I was freaking out. Nobody wants pit stains on their wedding dress! Long story short, David’s Bridal took care of the deodorant marks when I brought it in to be altered. And the alterations ended up costing an arm and a leg. Original budget was $400, price I ended up paying for the dress with alterations was around $1000. 12 bustles to keep the train up for the reception, eek! But, I wouldn’t have been as happy in the other dress so I definitely made the right decision. Though heavy, THE gown is just amazing and I got lots of compliments on its beauty and uniqueness. I’m glad that’s the dress I’m wearing in all the lovely pictures we’ll have to cherish for a lifetime too.
Advice: Make sure your budget has been established before anyone lets you try on dresses and be a little lenient if you’re able; this is a splurge that you will have photographic proof of for a really long time. Don’t buy a dress unless you’re really, REALLY sure about it. And if you look good in just any old thing, I might hate you a teensy bit :)
By the way, I made an attempt at wearing something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue. My something old was a vintage necklace purchased from ebay, my borrowed and blue were a gorgeous pair of blue sapphire earrings my mom lent me, and my new items were the dress, shoes and headband!
Stay tuned for the next installment...
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