Preserving the bouquet and cleaning the dress

Drying or preserving your bouquet(s): 
I didn't know what to do with my bouquet, or what I'd eventually do with it, but I did know that I wanted to have it dried in case I thought up some idea later on. So I asked my mom to take my bouquet and my sister's bouquet home to hang up to dry. She took the bouquets apart and hung them with ribbon on hangers in the guest room closet, where they dried over the next month.

 

 

 

They are still at my parent's house, but I'm hoping to put the bouquet back together, spray it with some dried floral preservative spray from Hobby Lobby, (which I'm convinced is just hairspray) and leave it in a vase next to a picture from the wedding. 

Source

Cleaning your dress: The last thing we had to think about was getting my dress cleaned. By the end of the wedding, the bottom of my dress was filthy!! My mom was too scared to take it to the dry-cleaner for a few reasons. For one, her friend from work recently went into her closet to get her wedding gown for her newly engaged daughter to try on. When she opened up the garment bag, the entire dress was yellow! It hadn't been preserved very well and she thinks the chemicals from the Dry Cleaner reacted to the dress over the years. Another friend of mine had some damage done to her dress when she took it in for dry-cleaning! After our dry-cleaner recently ruined a white shirt that I had dropped off to them in April my mom said "No WAY am I taking your dress to the dry-cleaner" and she began researching how to clean it yourself. Unfortunately, I don't have any before and after pictures, but let's just say that my mom did a great job of getting the dirt out of the bottom of the dress by gently hand washing it with mild soap and water!


What are/did you doing/do with your bouquet and dress after the wedding?

Wedding Recap: Meet my Dress!

I think it's about time you Meet MY DRESS!! Please welcome my Pronovias dress: Ronda

weddingee.com

ww.smartbrideboutique.com

I tried on over 50 dresses before settling on this one. You may remember my first experience, and then my second time going out. I wasn't feeling any of the dresses, and I thought "Maybe I'm just not a 'this is the one' type person" But then the woman at Bridals By Sandra brought this out and I knew it was it the second I saw it! I loved the lace straps, the lace overlay, the detail..everything. But what I love most about this dress is the back...Oh the back!!

Here I am at my final fitting one month before the wedding.

I don't usually get emotional over clothing, or really care all that much, but I truly love this dress with all my heart. Mistake #2 for my day: I HAD a nice hanger and completely forgot to use it here! :(

 Day of shots:

The Family

With Mom!

With Dad!

  

And with my girls!

 

Where did you find your dress? Did you know it was the one?

Bridesmaid Dress Fitting

What a weekend guys. Seriously, I had the most amazing, crazy, fun weekend and I am absolutely exhausted. I don't think I've ever done so much running around in my life!

I will post about Christina and Adrian's wedding as soon as possible, but let me tell you, their wedding was just incredible! I have never been to a wedding like this before. It was full of lots of vodka drinking, Russian dancing and instruments I've never seen, chanting, traditional songs..etc., etc. Of course, Christina was ASBOLUTELY STUNNING, she was glowing the entire day. I cannot WAIT to post about this wedding.

But before I get to that, I have to share my amazing day Saturday with my bridesmaids, minus Cassie :(. I got into Pennsylvania late Friday night after having way too much fun at Kate's Happy Hour that night. Saturday morning, Smith and Sister Melissa met up at my parent's house so we could carpool together. The other three girls were meeting us at the Dress Fitting.

Smith, Me, Melissa!

From there, we headed out to Bridals by Sandra for our 11:30 appointment. The car ride was great. I was really looking forward to some quality catch-up time with Smith and Melissa, and that's exactly what it was. Molly was there when we arrived, and Mandy and Mal joined us a little later after hitting some major traffic coming from New Jersey. At the dress shop, the girls tried on a sample of the dress so we could see how beautiful they looked in it, and then got measured. Once that was all taken care of, I was finally able to show them my wedding gown!! They didn't think that I would want to show them because I'm keeping it a secret, but I'm not keeping it a secret from them! I was so excited to show them my dress, and to see it again for myself. As the great, and wonderfully trained bridesmaids they are, they all loved it, and "oh'd" and "ah'd" exactly as I had hoped they would, and just enough for me to get giddy and excited about my dress all over again.

That's my dress in the Garment bag to the right!!

Free kiffles and pecan tassies! Can my Bridal Salon get any better??

After the fitting, my mom made a reservation for us at this adorable restaurant in downtown Nazareth called Bistro on Main.

The town was having their Halloween Day parade that day, so we had to park a few blocks away and walk, but it was a beautiful Fall day.

The parade went on the whole time we were in eating our lunch, which was highly entertaining! The food there was good, it was a cute, little restaurant which just had the six of us and this adorable older couple eating there. The woman (who took the picture below) came up to talk to us because she overheard us talking about weddings. It turned out, she and her husband had just gotten married 8 days ago, and they were in town from Florida visiting his daughter! They were a really cute couple and she was so excited to talk to us about weddings and asked me a ton of questions. When they left she told us we made her day, and she wishes me the best of luck. She totally made my day, too!

The restaurant was pretty slow...it took them a loooong time to make our food: which consisted of salads and paninis..I guess they were waiting for the lettuce to grow?? But, I really can't complain because it allowed us to have an extra long chance to hang out. Who knows when we'll all be able to get together again? It may not be until the Bachelorette party, or even the wedding, though I sincerely hope that's not the case. This forced us to just stop, for once, for about 3 hours and just do nothing but catch-up, and honestly it was awesome. I had a whole list of wedding related things I wanted to go over with them, and realized I didn't even get a chance to go over half of my things because we kept going off on so many other tangents and stories! I'll have to email the rest of my bullet points to them this week (I bet they're really excited haha). My only wish for the day is that Cassie was able to join us.

My mom was treating us to lunch, which was such an awesome treat and so generous of her to do! We only have one thing to say to her:

Thanks for an amazing Saturday afternoon Ladies, I love you all, and I'm getting so pumped!

I Found THE Dress!!

Cross one more thing off the good old "to do" list, I have found my dress!!!!

I went home for the day yesterday to go back to Sandra's Bridal in Nazareth, PA. They were having a Casablanca Trunk show. I like the Casablanca dresses I've seen so I wanted to try on some new styles but I mostly wanted to re-try on this Casablanca dress that I had tried on after Christmas.

I loved the cap sleeve and mostly loved the back of the dress, especially the lace extending beyond the satin on the train.

When I put this dress back on yesterday...I hated it. It fit all wrong, it wasn't flattering, and the bow underneath the bust just hung there and looked terrible. I kept saying to myself "Like this dress Laura...like it...this is why you came here today" But I just didn't, and neither did my family. It wasn't how I remembered it at all. I tried not to get discouraged and just kept trying on other dresses that I had picked out. There was one strapless Casablanca dress that we all really liked...but I still was just very concerned about the whole strapless dress. I love strapless dresses, but I'm really not comfortable in strapless, and I just can't see myself in strapless for my wedding day. Then, the woman that was helping me out, Debi, brought me a dress she happened to see in the back that she thought I would like. It was a Pronovias Dress, and I loooved it. I tried it on and we all really really liked it. It's a mermaid style dress, which I honestly hadn't thought I would go for, (and I'll have to really adhere to my wedding diet) but it gives me quite an hourglass figure, and had everything that I was looking for in a dress. It's called "off-white" which I think would probably be considered the same champagne color that is often offered for wedding dresses.  Even though the store was offering a discount on Casablanca dresses for the weekend, she still gave us a 20% discount on this Pronovias dress, coming to what I think of as a very reasonable price for a dress that I LOVE!

It was very exciting to FINALLY settle on a dress and it's amazing how deciding on my dress now sets off so much other planning. i.e. Now I can focus on bridesmaid dresses. What flowers will match the color and material of my dress?  I was in a really good mood after making the decision and ended up spending the rest of the afternoon/evening with my sister, Melissa. We went to Five Guys Burgers for dinner (Way to kick-start that wedding diet, huh?) and then went shopping at Target. It was really great to spend time with Melissa and I honestly can't remember the last time we just hung out like that. It was such a good day and 100% worth going home, even if it was for just a day. I left Melissa's house at around 7:30 and got back home by 9:30!


So...I didn't want to show anyone my dress before the wedding because I want everyone to be surprised, but I love it so much, I decided that's silly and I really should show it to everyone and get some feedback. Here I am modeling it:

I know I know...it's gorgeous right?? I just fell in love with the sleeves.


Haha and you thought I was going to show it to you.

Reception Hall: Check

Church for ceremony: Check

Wedding Dress: Check

P.S. My dad was doing a search of my dress on google and came across this website from China that creates a knock-off dress of any designer/style you like for $278. My dad was right when he said the best sentence was this:

"All the items will be produced after you place the order. And we will improve dress,which will be more simply and easier than the original ones."

 They'll change the dress for you to be more simpler and easier?? Why? What will it look like then? Look,  I'm all about finding a good bargain for your wedding dress. But..this is just Shady McShade Shade:

Dress Times

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!