Maggie Sotterro is in the lead...

Woa! What a fun-filled Thanksgiving Weekend! It was truly amazing to be home and spend time with my family for the past 4 days straight! It sparked a whole new round of wedding excitement in me and I feel a little bit back on the bandwagon as far as planning goes. I think the fact that I feel my life will be so much in shambles for the next month with my move to Chris's house, is causing me to actually be super-organized and super on-top of things in an effort to feel like my life isn't spiraling out of control.

So, on to my first dress shopping experience!
Friday night I went to Ann Margaret's Bridal Shop in Palmerton, PA and I went with my mom, dad and sister. This place was adorable, and super quaint. I was the only customer in the entire store and they had two people assisting me with the process. This place paid great personal attention to me and I can tell that they would be great to work with for both the wedding and bridesmaid dresses. My only concern is that she didn't have that large of a selection and even though I really, really wanted to try on dresses other than strapless...I pretty much only tried on strapless. As everyone told me, the strapless were actually really nice and did not look as bad on me as I had imagined. But, I still would like to try other styles! Cap sleeve, halter, straps...anything just to see if those styles are also flattering. (However, the few straps and halters I did try on, did not look good on me) I tried on maybe 9 or 10 dresses that night and left with one definite Maggie Sottero dress that was my favorite.  I love including images in my blogs, but unfortuantely don't want to put up any images of the dresses I try on. I have to leave at least one element a surprise!! Instead...Please enjoy this cute picture of a bumble bee:

Saturday, I went to a new Alfred Angelo store that is really close to my house in PA. This place was immediately different from our experience on Friday night. The place was packed, they were overbooked, there were brides trying on dresses everywhere, there was no privacy, and it was pretty chaotic. They did not have an assistant to help me try on dresses because they were all helping other girls, so my mom had to come in and help me get in and out of these huuuge dresses. That actually ended up being kind of fun and turned into a nice bonding experience anyway...though my mom probably feels differently because she did all the work! I left there liking three dresses. One was a new, flashy, strapless design. The other two were very nice, srapless, ivory, beaded. However, when I came home and looked at the pictures of the Alfred Angelo dresses next to the Maggie Sottero....Maggie just looked so much classier to me.

Things I learned while dress shopping this weekend:

• I like Ivory or champagne colored dresses.
• Strapless is just fine on me.
• While I loooove the grecian style dresses, I'd rather have a dress that's form fitting on top to give me some shape. (Embrace those curves!) I may look for a grecian style dress for my rehearsal dinner.
• I like ruching on the stomach that arcs over to one side.
• Two words: Sweetheart neckline.
• Getting both my mom and my dad's opinion on the dress was super important to me, as well as my sister's! I hope that they can all continue to come looking for dresses with me (only 10 more places I swear!!!.....jk)

So now I have an idea of what I'm looking for and it's very exciting! I'm so glad to have gotten the ball rolling on my dress shopping and can't wait to go home at Christmas to do some more. We plan to go to Bridals By Sandra in Nazareth and Jon's Bridal where my friend Mandy got her wedding dress, so it must be good luck!

Dress shopping begins!

I'm leaving to go wedding dress shopping in 1/2 an hour!! We're going to a bridal salon in downtown Palmerton (GHEETTTO) But I've heard good things about the place, and it's just to start getting ideas:
Ann Margaret's Bridal

Dad just decided he would like to join us as well so the whole fam is venturing out for this!! I'm eager to start the dress shopping experience because I'm honestly hoping it actually sparks my interest in the whole "dress" thing. Call me crazy...I know I'm probably the ONLY engaged girl out there who really can't get that excited by wedding dress shopping. I can look at 20 million different pictures of dresses and still not know what I like and what I want. My only thing that I think I want is "not strapless". Other than that...whichever poor salesperson gets me tonight is going to have a pretty wide range of dresses to choose from when it comes to me. I know once I start trying on dresses...I'll start to realize what I like, what I don't like, what works on me..what doesn't work on me.. etc. etc.

I know this is dramatic...but there's so much pressure on "the dress". Maybe the mere fact that this IS one of the most important aspects of my wedding makes me not want to think or deal with it right now. I'm always so wishy-washy and won't want to pick "the one" too soon for fear that I'll find another one later that I like better.

I have another appointment at an Alfred Angelo store tomorrow afternoon, so I'll have lots to write about tomorrow. Wish me LUCK!

Long Island Weddings

Apparently, Chris and I are on
Long Island Weddings.com! I created an account with them when we got engaged in order to look at the blogs/message boards and for general information. I remember a mention somewhere along the way of entering my information that the website can create a wedding announcement for me...but I just kept clicking and didn't think anything more about it.

Chris had to look something up for his mom today and did a google search with his mom's name. This is what he found.

Thursday, July 23, 2009
Laura and Chris
We are happy to announce the engagement of Laura to Chris and to extend our congratulations to their families. The two: A Patron Associate at the Metropolitan Opera and a Vice President of Capacity Group, both from Queens were engaged on July 23, 2009 at the Atlantis in the Bahamas, "Chris took Laura to the Atlantis Hotel in the Bahamas where he proposed the first night " They look forward to a May 21, 2011 celebration of love at Sandcastle Caterers. We wish them all the best.

How cool!! Haha, I literally had no idea that was on the site, but I'm glad he found it! I wonder how many people actually look through all of these announcements in the first place, but, oh well. My favorite part is the second to last sentence "...celebration of love at Sandcastle Caterers". So there it is..our very first and only "official" announcement!

Brett Matthews

I had a great time in my web design class today! This post will also be my forum to show off some of the things I made in fireworks.

So, yesterday we had our first meeting with a wedding photographer,Brett Matthews. There actually is no "Brett Matthews." Brett and Matthew are the owner's sons' names. Chris and I were really impressed with the place. We met with Rich, and were with him for an hour and a half! I didn't think it would take that long, but it also went really fast. We looked through all the album options they offer, with tons of pictures, and techniques they can do with the pictures: sepia, high-def glossy, oil painitng, etc. etc.

Honestly, I could have sat there all day looking through the photo albums and videos they had. I actually got choked up when he showed us the video montages they can make. It all got me very excited for my big day...well only 1 year and 7 months! This was the first photographer appointment we had so far, so we don't really have any point of reference for comparison, but I will say that we were really impressed with this place. We'll probably look at 3 more to do some comparison shopping with both what is offered and price. But "Operation find a Photographer" is going so far, so good!


In other news, my mom is getting me really excited for the prospect of an engagement party in Schnecksville! I should give props to her co-worker Rae, who I've met once at my mom and dad's birthday party last year and immediately liked her. She apparently just threw an engagement party and wedding for her daughter, so she's gone through all of this and is eager to offer up her services with getting things off the ground! I realize that Schnecksville might be a little bit hard to get to for people in New York, but it will be nice to have something wedding related in PA, since the actual wedding won't be there. This will be a great way for my older family members to be involved and meet my friends and Chris's family, since it might be difficult for them to get to New York.

I also got to work on some monograms today. I like the second one better, but I think the C looks a bit more like a G. Oh well, this was just playing around:

I'm BACK!

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Sorry I've been so MIA lately!! I really want to get back to the blog and posting at least twice a week! Chris and I are desperately trying to wrap our heads around booking a church for the ceremony while also slowly but surely looking at some photographers. However, with everything else going on in the next two months (i.e. moving out of my apt., moving into his basement, moving him out of his room and downstairs, trying to figure out how all our stuff will fit, PLUS Holidays) we've been a little preoccupied. I'm excited to have some days off around the Holidays to hopefully regain my footing on what we need to be doing!

Looking around at some of the blogs today, I found some really interesting ideas for my wedding.
The Anniversary Dance- Found on weddingbee.com:

The anniversary dance is basically a way to honor the couple attending the wedding who has been together the longest. From what I’ve read, usually the MC or DJ announces it, asking all couples (married or not, that’s your call) on to the dance floor for a couples’ dance. After a minute or two, all couples who have been together less than ____ years (you can choose the increments, we’ll probably use 5 or 10 years, depending on the length of the song we choose) are asked to have a seat. After another few seconds, this is repeated using a larger number and so on and so forth until there is only one couple left, the one who has been together the longest. The couple is then presented with the bridal bouquet (this part is optional...).

I think that's a really cute and different idea! I wonder who would be the last standing at my wedding?

I absolutely LOVE this picture:


I randomly was looking up information on obtaining a marriage license. Did you know that in New York, you don’t have to get any type of physical exam or blood work done before getting married? I don’t know why, but I thought that was a standard thing in the “getting married” process…I checked for Pennsylvania and they don’t require any medical exams either!
In fact, the only states that do require some sort of medical exam including blood work are:

Connecticut
(Washington D.C.)
Georgia
Indiana
Massachusetts
Mississippi
Montana
Oklahoma

7 states plus D.C.!! I find this really interesting. Why do these states require it and others don’t? Also of interest, PA has a 3 day wait period from the time you get your license, until your wedding date. New York has a 24 hour wait period. It looks like every state has different “waiting periods” but Wisconsin comes in first place with having a 6 day wait period between marriage license and ceremony, longer than any other state!
This website was very interesting: US Marriage Laws.


(I made this in my web design class and wanted to incorporate it somehow on here!)