April wedding thread

[kristalsnow7]

Well, with a little more than a month before we say “I do” I thought I’d resurrect the wedding thread! We decided to go with www.blissink.com for our invitations, and they turned out great! I’d recommend them if you want something a little different/ artsy---they’re perfect for our destination wedding in Kauai. Unfortunately we haven’t been too happy with the Marriott, which is where we’re having the ceremony. I won’t get into specifics, but we decided we absolutely did not want to have our reception there, so we opted for a restaurant in the Poipu Beach area, Plantation Gardens (www.pgrestaurant.com). I hope it looks as nice in person as it does on their Web site!

I don’t think I mentioned in the previous threads that we are now planning TWO weddings: the one in Hawaii in May and a second one (reception only) that my parents are hosting in Ohio mid-July. Initially, we agreed to have a small party in their backyard over the summer, but now they want to go all out and rent a hall, invite tons of people I don’t know, etc. :rolleyes: I guess they have been waiting a LONG time for this (DF and I have dated 10 years) so they’re a little overzealous. I’m trying to be a good sport about this, but it’s SO not what I wanted. :( Planning one wedding is hard enough, but to plan two of them from long distance is not fun.

As for Ohio, there is one piece of good news: we’ve hired Wendy Kromer (www.wendykromer.com) , who used to design cakes for Martha Stewart Living, to make our cake! Lucky for us she left NYC to return to her hometown of Sandusky, Ohio. Here’s a picture of the cake we have in mind.

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid163/pd93194befd1701539da481ddee366045/f49e457c.jpg

But, all of her cakes are gorgeous, so it will be hard to decide!


How are the rest of you brides-to-be coming along? :)

[Pony]

Good luck in the rest of your planning, Kristal. One more month! Enjoy it.

I can't wait to see pictures!

Michelle

[mbrogier]

Cool cake. That will make some of the hassel worthwhile.

My in-laws had to do a reception for us in their town. We really didn't want it, but they insisted. They did plan it all--it wasn't much in the way of food, etc. The reception area was a reception room at the university where they teach. We were going to load up our presents and open them at home (we lived about 40 minutes away) but my MIL insisted we open them there after everyone left. I told her we would wait until the next day to open them, and they could come over.... She wrote down what everyone gave us, but that list was lost. It was a nightmare trying to figure out who gave us what. She had to call everyone. :rolleyes:

They were happy, so I guess it was worth it.

[HejazSunKat]

Originally posted by kristalsnow7
I don’t think I mentioned in the previous threads that we are now planning TWO weddings: the one in Hawaii in May and a second one (reception only) that my parents are hosting in Ohio mid-July. Initially, we agreed to have a small party in their backyard over the summer, but now they want to go all out and rent a hall, invite tons of people I don’t know, etc. :rolleyes: I guess they have been waiting a LONG time for this (DF and I have dated 10 years) so they’re a little overzealous. I’m trying to be a good sport about this, but it’s SO not what I wanted. :( Planning one wedding is hard enough, but to plan two of them from long distance is not fun.

Yes it is hard (I got married 7 years ago and am glad it's working out because I would never want to go through planning another :) ) but how much involvement do you have to have in party #2? If you can hand that over to your Mom to plan and you and future DH just have to show up and accept the kudos (and presents, don't forget the presents) then humor her and let them have their party to show you and their new son-in-law off to their friends - especially if they're paying for both weddings! :D If you ever have a daughter, someday this will be you.

[Shan19]

We have been married for 2 weeks today!!! It is still so hard to get used to. It was an absolutely perfect day! I think it was the best day of my life so far. I just remember feeling this incredible feeling of happiness the whole day. I don't think I quit smiling from the moment I woke up until we fell asleep that night. When my alarm clock went off that morning, our wedding song was playing (Bless the Broken Road by Rascall Flatts) and that seemed to set the tone for the whole day. My hair and makeup turned out perfect and my bridesmaids all looked so beautiful.

I was so stressed out during the planning of this wedding, and I never knew how much fun the actual day would be. Everyone who attended told us that it was a really fun wedding, and I have to give credit to our d.j. for that. He kept everyone dancing for the whole reception. I have never danced so much in my life. He had hats for the YMCA for people to wear, masks for the chicken dance, and tambourines and maracas for people to use. The food was delicious and my aunt did a great job decorating the room.

Some of my favorite parts:
*Brian left me at the unity candle at the church. He was supposed to take my arm and lead me back, but he just walked off without me. The whole wedding party was whispering loudly "You are supposed to take her!" It was really funny.

*Our first dance- we took lessons and had a dance choreographed to our song and it was so incredible to be doing this dance while people stood around the dance floor to watch us.

*Seeing Brian's face when he took off my garter and saw that it was a Dodgers baseball design that I ordered.

*Having my divorced parents (both remarried) at the same table and laughing and talking the whole time.

*The response to our favors- personalized wedding baseball can koozies. Everyone loved them!

*The cake (actually cakes) that a friend made for us. It was beautiful, and so delicious. I have a picture, but I don't know how to post it. Can I scan it and post it somehow?

*The honeymoon in Kauai- that is the most beautiful island! You are going to love it there Krystal!!

*I think the best part of this whole thing was just the pure joy and love that I felt all day. I am sure most brides feel like that on their wedding day, but I have never felt that amazing before.

[CookinMode]

Shan - Thank you for the review of your wedding day! It sounds absolutely wonderful! I know it makes me remember why I'm doing all of this in the first place! :)

Well, a lot has happened recently, some good, some not as good, but I'm rolling with it. I'll start with the most recent, and most major drama.... bridesmaid dresses.

I went shopping for bridesmaid dresses for the first time in Feb. I found one that I liked at the first place I went to and quit looking after that. I had planned on trying to order them from this place that specializes in phone orders because they can offer a better price, and since I'm in MD and all of my bridesmaids are in Kansas City area, I didn't want to order them here. Well, that place tells me they are not carrying that design anymore. Great. My next thought was to order them through a store in KC then, to make it easy on my BMs. I call a place that I know of in KC, and they say they can help me, no problem. A couple of weeks later, I finally tell my BMs to go to this store to get measured. Two of them go the next day and call me from the store saying the dress had been discontinued. It had already been discontinued when I called the store, but they neglected to tell me that. Great. So I pick out dress #2, more expensive but I end up liking this one better anyway. One BM goes to the store the next day to try it on, gets measured and places a deposit. Another BM goes in to try it on, but doesn't place a deposit, why? I'm not sure. So I called last week, two deposits are still needed, so I send off an e-mail to those two BMs. Then yesterday, I get a frantic call from the one BM (that has placed a deposit), turns out the store closed its doors on Monday. Yep! Just up and went out of business. Great. Luckily, the order had not been placed since we were still waiting on two deposits, so we only have to fight to get one deposit back which should be easy to do. But I am still faced with trying to find a place to order these dang dresses! That is my goal for today! AAHH!! All in all, I think the store closing is a blessing in disguise. Apparently, the customer service was rather lacking, and they could have easily messed up my order big time. I am just so thankful that the wedding is still five months away and I can easily fix this situation!

As for other news, we are going to Wichita this weekend to meet with the event planner at the country club where the reception will be held. So the reception will start taking form soon. We are also finally getting engagement pictures taken, and I still might try to meet with the florist. Invitations are being ordered next week.

The most exciting news though is that we booked our honeymoon! Seven days, six nights in Aruba and the Bucuti Beach Resort! Check it out at their website (http://www.bucuti.com). We are very excited! We chose Aruba because it is out of the hurricane belt, very important for a September honeymoon. I did a lot of research on the resorts there, and we settled on this place because it is away from the high rise section of the beach, they have brand new suites right on the beach, and they cater to honeymooners!

Ok, I better go start making phone calls about those dresses. I'll hopefully have good news later!

Khara

[ktg0930]

Khara,

I'm delurking after reading your horrible bridesmaid dress saga. My friend is in a wedding in a couple of weeks and their dresses are from Aria (I think the website is www.ariadresses.com, but I'm not sure). Anyway, the company has several different styles in a ton of fabric colors, all silk I believe. The nice thing is that each bridesmaid can have a different style but same color. I measured my friend and she ordered the dress size based on her measurements. The dress took about 10 weeks to arrive. I thought maybe this info would be helpful to you are looking for dresses. Good luck!

[oskie]

Since we're doing the longer engagement thing, I'm kinda hoping some newbies will join up and keep me company in the future. Anyone? :D

But things are progressing nicely. So far we've booked the church, reception, photographer, and if DF gets around to it today, the DJ. I did a "dress reconnaissance" trip to get an idea of what I'd like to wear and narrowed it down to a few that I'll show my mom when she comes to visit at the end of the month. We've also finished up our initial meetings with the priest and I have to call about Pre-Cana stuff soon. Not bad, considering the wedding date is April 22, 2006!

I'm having all sorts of fun wedding dreams, though. Last night I had one where it turned out that there was a big misunderstanding about the date and it was actually this April we were getting married. I managed to pull it off, but one of the ladies I work with was yelling at me because it meant I couldn't register for anything if I got married so soon! No more Girl Scout cookies before bed for me!

I have one question for the crowd about Save the Date things. Are they a well-known concept nowadays? Most (ok, all) the guests are coming from out of town, so at some point over the summer I was planning to send out cards with the hotel info, but I'm don't want to confuse anybody and have them think I'm sending out the actual invitation that early. I'm biased at this point, being immersed in bridal world, and I was wondering what the "normals" think. :D

[ChristyMarie]

I think Save the Date cards are pretty well known now - and appreciated! We just avoided a major scheduling problem because we had the save the date card.

[cangoss]

We sent out Save-the-Date cards, and it was very important in our case because the hotels in town are booked the weekend of the wedding. We put "formal invitation to follow" at the bottom, so there was no confusion about it being an invitation. I've seen something to that effect on most of the save-the-date cards I have received.

I had my first wedding nightmare last night - I woke up all sweaty I was so stressed out about it! In the nightmare, we couldn't get our DIY invitations done in time and we were having to order cheap ones from a printer. The result of the nightmare is that I'm finally going to get the supplies ordered today at lunch and get working on them soon!

[ellery]

http://www.imagestation.com/mypictures/

I'm not sure if the link above posted or not - I just figured out how to get my pictures off my digital camera into an album on the computer. Welcome to 2005 Leah!

Another bride checking in, with 5 weeks to go, after lots of drama and several wedding locations. At this point it's settled and things are much calmer - we're getting married in St. Thomas in a morning ceremony, followed by a small reception (probably only about 30 people will be able to make it, which is fine by me), then everyone can break for a few hours. Then we're planning a sunset cruise with food and beverages. Then the next day everyone can go home and DF and I can enjoy our honeymoon. :D

Now that we're in the homestretch, I'm starting to look forward to the wedding much much more, versus all the other emotions I've been through since we got engaged last year. I did the invitations myself, skipped the Save the Dates because we changed our location :p at the sort of last minute (2 months to go), I have my dress hanging 2 feet away from the computer, have all the reservations and stuff done, DF and I have picked out our rings and hopefully will order them today, now all I need are shoes, earrings, and to figure out what I'm going to do with my hair. For shoes I found some really cute flip-flops on-line that I'm probably going to go with, and as for earrings, well that will depend on hair choice which has me a bit flummoxed. Also have to figure out what DF is going to wear.

But this will be a simple thing, no attendants, no registry, just simple and easy. Mostly DF's family, but a few friends, my mom, and that's it. My father has decided to be a horse's a$$ and not attend or even bother to respond to the invite, so I'm not sure who's going to walk me down the aisle, but I'll figure something out.

Okay. That's my contribution to the thread! I'll look forward to hearing about everyone else.

:)

Leah

[pattiarl]

Not getting married but peeked onto this thread!


Kristal, you're lucky that Wendy decided to move back to your area. I think she was also featured in the latest issue of MS Weddings. I think that is her "calico" cake on the cover and I love it. When I saw the issue promo'd in Living I couldn't wait to get the issue and check out the cakes.

Patti

[ellery]

http://www.imagestation.com/picture/sraid164/p17ed4db0cbba371f2458b712d62c8dab/f487d03a.jpg

hmmm... trying this picture posting thing again. Evidently not one of stronger talents. If this doesn't get it, then... :p

:)

Leah

[helios7]

A lurker surfacing to say congrats to all the brides! I'm coming up on my first anniversary this July, and the wedding is one of my favorite memories! You'll have such an amazing time!


So that's what you look like Leah! Your dress is beautiful, I love the flower trim along the bottom. Although, for some reason I pictured you as blond(e?)! But you will absolutely be a beautiful bride. :)

So happy for you!