Good Monday Morning!

Good morning lovelies and welcome to a new week! Hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day weekend filled with fun and some quality family time. My weekend was nice. I was able to relax on Saturday and also spent time with family on Sunday. Had a great time but of course I hit the snooze button a few times this morning. Now if I only had this gorgeous dress to slip into, my work week would be off to a great start :)

What did you all do this weekend?

Images: here and here

Hello Gorgeous

It's been cold and rainy for a few days now but I know that good times are just around the corner. I'm so dreaming of sun & warmth and this dress! Oh how it fuels my current backless obsession. {sigh....}

Images: via FGR

Flower Power

It's only January and I'm already sick of the cold. I'm over my tights, boots and layers and I'm ready to bust out a pretty floral dress like this Missoni one. And wear a long braid. 2 months later and finally my hair is back to it's old length so I think I'm ready to rock one :)

Image: Greg Kadel for Harper's Bazaar

Fancy Fêtes

Happy Monday everyone! Hope you all had a wonderful weekend.

We were jammed pact as usual but we had a good one. I thought things were supposed to slow down after the wedding but that just doesn't seem to be the case for us. So many parties and so little time!

First came a wedding. This past Saturday we went to my cousin Karen's wedding on Long Island. What a great time! My cousin looked gorgeous and was glowing the entire night. And it was really great to have another wedding to go to so soon after ours. This time we just had to show up & have fun. Plus it was nice because we got to catch up with a bunch of family members that we didn't get to spend that much time with on our wedding day. Good times, good times.

And the fun doesn't stop there. This coming Thursday I'm lucky enough to be attending the 25th Annual DreamBall at the Waldorf Astoria. I'm super excited because not only is this a huge beauty industry event that I've been dying to go to for years, but this year the ball is celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the Look Good…Feel Better® Program, a wonderful program created to help individuals with cancer look good, improve their self-esteem and manage their treatment and recovery with greater confidence. I've been a supporter of the program for years, but this year it's even more special to me after watching my best friend succumb to breast cancer this past April.

Like I said, I'm beyond excited about it so I totally jumped at the opportunity to go. No way was I turning this invite down! I did have one problem to deal with though. It's a black tie event so of course I didn't have anything to wear. I have a lot of cocktail dresses and some old gowns that I wore many years ago but nothing that would work now. J jokingly (I hope) suggested that I dye my wedding gown black, but since that would never ever happen, I ended up hitting the shops yesterday to find the perfect dress.

A simple enough task, right? Go to a store and find a dress. Unfortunately that wasn't the case for me. I thought it was gonna be easy. The first dress I tried on was gorgeous and almost perfect...only problem was that it was too big. I wasn't really discouraged though. I had about 10 other dresses in the room to try on. One of them would have to work.

But like I said, that wasn't the case for me. 5 stores 25 dresses and about 3 hours later I was still outta luck. By then I was totally exhausted and irritated and ready to throw in the towel and bail on the ball. Luckily my savior J found one that ended up being the winner. Et voila!

What do you guys think? I wasn't too sure about the color at first. I think it was just my negativity boiling over though because once I tried it on, we knew it was the one. I'm going to wear my wedding shoes again. Loving that I get another opportunity to wear them! I wore them to my cousin's wedding too. I can't get enough of them :)

Now I'm on the desperate search for a clutch. I would love to get the Jimmy ones that match my shoes but there's no way that I'm spending a grand on a clutch. I think I'd be divorced within the next two weeks!

So I guess I need an alternative. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

Under Pressure!

Sorry guys I don't have much today. I'm feeling a bit bogged down with the wedding to do list. It seems like for every item I cross off, 5 more things get added back! I really can't understand why everyone I talk to asks me if I'm all set for the wedding. I tell them no I have a ton to do and they're always surprised to hear that. Is it just me? How is it possible to be all set with a less than a month to go? Isn't that the time that everything has to be finalized???

We had our second dress fittings last night and they went much better than the first. I haven't mentioned this but we've both been second guessing our dresses. J thought her's showed too much boobage and I felt like I looked kinda square. Like my chest looked smaller than it really is and my waist looked bigger. J even started to call me Sponge Dawn Square Dress. lol. Thankfully these fittings went much better. J is much more covered up and I have a waist so we're happy :)

Hopefully I have some more time to fill you in on the happenings tomorrow.

Image: found here

Things Are Lookin Up!

Ok so over the past few weeks J & I have taken turns having MAJOR panic attacks over what's left to do before the wedding. I have to admit that I'm thankful that we've been taking turns and not having them at the same time since one always calms down the other. But getting back to the point I was trying to make, one of the major things we've been panicking about is not having a makeup artist.

Now this is something I really haven't spoken about because everyone who knows me outside of the blogosphere can't believe that I'm having a hard time with this. I mean I've worked in the cosmetics industry for 15 years now. You'd think this would be a piece of cake. But the truth of the matter is that I don't really work with cosmetic artists all that much. I've worked with a few on photoshoots in the past and I have worked on developing some products with Laura Geller a few years ago but I either didn't hold onto their contact info or I didn't really feel all that comfortable asking them to do my wedding day makeup. I don't really know why, but that's the way I felt.

So about a month ago I had a makeup trial with an artist that I had heard rave reviews about. I was really excited about the trial and couldn't wait to go. Unfortunately I absolutely HATED the way it turned out. And I'm not really the type of person to freak or complain much but I totally looked grey and unnatural and really just not like me at all. Many people agreed with me as I'm sure you all would. Not good!

The girl kept saying how I'm so much darker than anyone she's ever worked with before. And I mean, come on, I'm really not all that dark now. I have a tan but big deal. Don't lots of girls?

So I decided not to book her even though I spent around $180 for the trial. And the whole thing was just freaking me out because I didn't have an alternative. I had other options for more trials with other people but how much money would I have to lay out? It was starting to get ridiculous. Especially when you consider that we're two brides so you're looking at around $400 per bride on top of the cost of a trial.

So I decided to turn to my sis for help. I absolutely LOVED how my makeup turned out at her wedding last year. The girl was just fantastic. And none of us, including my sis (she's really brave), even had a trial with her. She just showed up the day of and worked her magic. Just amazing!

Anyway, my sis had been having a hard time tracking this girl down. She only had the salons contact info. The owner is a friend of a friend. And the owners been on vacation for a while. Once she got a hold of her she found out that the makeup artist no longer worked at the salon but that she still does freelance work for them. The owner just had to get in touch with the girl to see if she was available.

So fast forward a few WEEKS (I didn't think it would take so long to find out someones availability!) and MANY panic attacks later...I just found out that she's available to do our makeup for the wedding! I'm beyond thrilled! No trial necessary and she's just amazing! Makeup meltdown avoided! Or at least halted. Whew!!!

Next meltdown I hope to avoid is one tonight at the dress fitting. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Happy Friday!

I'm so happy it's finally Friday. The weeks seem to get more and more hectic the closer we get to the wedding. We're only a little more than 8 weeks away now and I'm starting to feel the noose tighten!

Well the good news is that are invites are in! Our planners sent one over to us in the mail yesterday so hopefully we get to see them later on today. Maybe I'll even post a sneak peak of them next week.

And we finally set up our dress fitting appointments. That's a big relief & a huge stress at the same time. We're so undisciplined about our diets now that the weather is finally nice here. All we want to do is sit outside at a sidewalk cafe and eat & drink all day long. Guess we have to get our butts in gear!

Anyway enough stressing. It's finally the weekend and time to kick back & relax! Hope you all have a great one!!!

Image: found here

Lela Rose Bridal Sample Sale

Calling all NY area brides. Lela Rose is having a sample sale on over 15 different wedding gown styles. Prices range anywhere from $500- $3,000, that's up to 80% off!!! You can't beat that!

What: Lela Rose Wedding
When: July 15-17. Wed.-Fri., 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
Where: 224 W. 30th St., between 7th & 8th Aves., 13th floor.
Contact: 212-947-9204 ext. 11

Making Progress

Happy Monday everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend. We had an extremely eventful and productive one. Firstly, as you can see, I tried my dress on! I decided to let you have a little sneak peak :) It was the first time I had the opportunity to see it since January and I'm happy to say, I still love it. It's very simple, but it's just right for me.

So, like I said, it's been eventful, and I don't want to leave anything out so I'll start from the top. On Saturday we decided to take our flower girl, Ally dress shopping and we just happened to find ourselves shopping at the same bridal salon where we purchased our dresses from. As I mentioned before, my dress came in well over a week ago but I haven't scheduled a fitting yet because I still haven't decided on the shoes. As you could imagine, the suspense was killing me so I just had to try it on shoes or no shoes!

After that excitement, we ventured on to find Ally a dress. I don't remember if I've mentioned this before but Ally is Antoinette's six year old daughter, our best friend who just passed away last month. As I said before, the weekend was eventful and this certainly was an eventful experience. I'm gonna try to keep this short and spare you some of the gorry details.

Well she was a dream child at first. She tried on about seven or eight dresses with no complaints at all. She was having a great time, she was loving every one she tried on and she even did a little dance for us in each one. Everything was going perfectly and we ended up narrowing it down to four dress. There were two that I was absolutely in love with, one that I hated, it was a horrible shade of pink that did not go with our color palette whatsoever and it had a ridiculous amount of beads, and one that I was pretty indifferent about. So naturally what happens is that Ally decides that she LOVES the horrible pink beaded dress that didn't even fit her. The dress that I hated! I couldn't, for the life of me understand why she wanted that one. When she tried the dress on it was actually hurting her because it was too small and the beads were scratching her skin! Why would she want to have that dress? So, as you could imagine, things ended up taking a sharp turn for the ugly. She ended up throwing a fit in the store, hysterical crying, laying down on the floor, refusing to take the dress off. And it killed us to see her so upset because we knew the real reason she was acting out was because she had just lost her mother. It wasn't really about the dress. But there was no way we could make her undestand that. So after about a half hour of antics we gave in and compromised and bought her the dress I was indifferent about, her second choice and my third choice. I wish I had pictures to share but it really wasn't a photo op moment. It's an ivory dress with ivory grosgrain spaghetti straps an a grosgrain bow. It's a little too plain compaired to what I was envisioning so I decided that I'm going to liven it up a little bit. Yesterday I bought a wine colored sash that matches the girls dresses and I think I'm going to see if I can find a light pink chiffon peony and have a seamstress attach it to the sash.

So that was Saturday and the fun filled dress excursion. Yesterday was a better day. We made a lot of progress and now I'm feeling pretty good about things. We went to Bloomies and finalized our invitation design and placed the order. We should have the first proof by the end of the week. I am sooo excited and I can't wait to see what they look like! I think they're going to be absolutely perfect!

After Bloomies, we headed on down to Gracious Home and while we were browsing we found the perfect solution to our cocktail hour table centerpiece dilemma. Aquamarine mercury glass votives!


These aren't the exact ones but you get the idea. I'm can't even tell you how excited I am to cross that task off our list. We've been trying to think of more affordable alternatives to bud vases and I think we came up with the perfect solution. We're going to put two mercury glass votives on each table, they were only $2.99 each! and then have a hurricane with a burgundy pillar candle in the center of the table. Our venue provides the votive candles and clear glass votive holders so we'll probably put a few clear glass ones on each table as well.

So all in all we had a pretty productive weekend. We'll try to get a few more things accomplished over the next few days...shoes & hair trial appointments and then Saturday we're off to sunny St. Thomas for a much needed vacation. Let the countdown begin!

Image: found here

Desperately Seeking

I'm on the hunt for the perfect shoes & the perfect engagement shoot outfit. Watch out! I'm on a mission!

Hope everyone is having a nice weekend :)

Image: found here

My Dress Is In!

OMG I'm sooo excited! Jen just wrote me to let me know that the bridal shop called and my dress is in! I didn't think it would come in this early! I've been stressing about it for months because I couldn't really remember what it looked like. I mean I had an idea but not a crystal clear picture of it. Anyway I want to call and make an appointment for a fitting but I just realized that I need to get my shoes first, don't I? And I don't know where to begin there. I have an idea of what I want but I haven't found the perfect shoe yet. I better get on it right away! Yippeee!!!

Oh and isn't the Galliano dress above just gorgeous? I came across it on Once Wed the other day and have been dreaming about it for days.

Image: Ashley Garmon

I want I want I want!

Long sexy legs so I can rock this dress at the after-party!

Flower Power

I am loving the floral details in these pictures. I have to think of a way to incorporate them into my attire. They make a statement in a soft, feminine way. Absolutely gorgeous!

Images: Chris Nicholls