Wedding

 

I'm just chilling at home today, doing some work but also dreaming about my wedding and making plans. I can't help it, planning events is my jam and I haven't done it in so long!

I've started making a to do list and feel like we've got a lot of things checked off already.

This whole experience has been a lesson in just believing that things are going to fall into place and stop trying to control everything. I couldn't find a place to hold the ceremony and reception and was stressing and then, suddenly, the perfect place practically landed in my lap and we both loved it and there was no need to look any further.

I started to feel the same sort of stress about picking out a wedding dress. I wanted something unique, didn't want to be a typical bride but still wanted to FEEL like a bride. I also didn't want to spend a whole lot of money on something I would never wear again. I watch a lot of Say Yes To The Dress and I cringe at the outrageous amounts of money spent on wedding dresses and I wasn't going to do that. Heck, I'd rather spend that money on a honeymoon.

So after a few false starts (thank goodness you can return dresses ordered online) I found THE dress on a website. Yes, I would have loved to have the experience of going to a bridal shop and trying on dresses with my nearest and dearest cheering me on but I don't really have any friends or family close by so ordering online and trying the dress on in private seemed like the way to go.

The perfect dress took 4 weeks to arrive and when I got the notice that it had been delivered to my office I was so happy except that no package  had been delivered. Yikes! My boss suggested maybe it had been delivered to the wrong office suite, our office is in the back and sometimes things get dropped off at the completely different company in the front. Sure enough, that's what happened so I finally had the package in my hands. Whew.

But then I had to wait until I got home to try it on and that was a bit of torture. All the waiting was worth it because the dress fits perfectly and it's lovely and I feel like a bride. I actually got teary when trying it on, I had my Say Yes To The Dress moment even if I was all by myself.

And no, I'm not going to post pictures of the whole dress, that little tease up there is all you get. It's lace, off the shoulders, shows my tattoos and I'm wearing a favorite hat from Carmel with it.

Finding my perfect dress after stressing over it was a relief but finding my perfect shoes was easy peasy. I knew I didn't want high heels because I'm a total klutz and I don't want to worry about falling on my wedding day so I figured some sort of flat sandal would be perfect. On a whim I googled skull sandals because we're having a Halloween wedding and we both love skulls and I found these. The original picture showed them in black which was ok with me but then I clicked around and found them in white and "click" I had those babies ordered. I'm not a big fan of bling, there is none on my dress, but I can live with blingy little skulls on my feet! They don't arrive for another month so I have to be patient (I hate being patient) but I know the wait will be worth it.

The next thing I was stressing over was finding some rental houses for our families for the wedding weekend. Plus one of the houses will host our after party. I knew I wanted to rent the house next to my old house for my family so I wanted to find 2 more houses nearby for Chris's extended family and our family. I looked at over a hundred houses last year just trying to find something perfect and got so frustrated that I decided to give it a rest. I told myself that the perfect venue and the perfect dress had presented themselves so the same thing would happen with the houses.

And damned if it didn't happen exactly that way. Last week I started looking again and within an hour I had 3 houses all within walking distance of each other. The house for our family which will also host the after party is decorated with a theme that is just perfect for Chris; it's like it was made for him. It's going to be an awesome after party! Plus it will fit our little family just right. Each adult kid will have their own room and the 2 little kids and our grandson have plenty of room too. There is a pool, hot tub, pool table, air hockey and foosball so it will be a fun and relaxed party after the slightly more formal feel of the ceremony and reception.

Since we have the little kids for that whole week, there won't be a romantic wedding night or honeymoon right away. The best I'm hoping for is that we can ask everybody to stay in the house that night and let us have the hot tub to ourselves for a little while. We'll just enjoy hanging out with all the kids for a day or two, get the littles back to school for the week and then leave on our honeymoon the following week.

We have ideas of where to go on a honeymoon and I've started doing a little planning. More on that later!