Wheelin' and dealin'

The final vendor we needed to book was our limo company. I dreamed of rolling up to the church in a classic Rolls Royce or something similar, but then I remembered that I had an entire bridal party to transport, too. Sigh. Oh well, back to the drawing board.

But to be honest, a limo wasn't something I particularly cared about. I didn't see a need to pay loads of money to get a stretch Hummer or some other bizarre luxury car if my bridal party and I would only be in it for a 20 minute ride.

The first call I made was to a friend of my mother's co-worker, who runs a side business with a small fleet of limos. My matron of honor, Paige, used him for her own wedding based on my mother's recommendation, too, and she really liked him. However, I discovered that the largest vehicle he had was a 10-person limo, and I would need room for 12 to accommodate our entire bridal party. Oh well.

I then called First Class Limo, which John's sister, Suzanne, used for her wedding. I mentioned her name when I called, and they said that they would be happy to give me the Friday rate instead of the Saturday rate since I was using her recommendation. Score! So we booked their 14-person white stretch Lincoln, and it was exactly what we needed on the day: luxurious without being over-the-top ridiculous. And the best part was that our limo driver even gave us a touching champagne toast after the ceremony! Click to read more!

Save the date!

Since spring and summer wedding season can be pretty hectic, John and I thought it would be a nice idea to send out "save-the-date" postcards a year (or so) in advance, just to give everyone a heads-up. Save-the-dates are an opportunity to have a really fun, informal announcement as well, so I enjoyed designing them knowing that the actual invitations would be much more formal later on.

The problem with having so many great engagement photos to choose from was that it was pretty much impossible to pick just one to feature on the save-the-dates!

So, I decided to print three different postcards as our save-the-dates: each would feature a different photo, but the back side with all of the information would be common to all. I created a type treatment for the postcards that matched the boardwalk/rock-and-roll feeling of our photos (with a little... ok a lot of... inspiration from an Elum invite I saw at the National Stationery Show), and I think they looked friggin' awesome.

Version 1: Frog Bog

Version 2: Piggyback

Version 3: Clown

Back side (common to all lots)

Enter VistaPrint. I first heard of this company on The Knot message boards, and brides raved about the fact that if you sign up for their e-newsletters you are guaranteed to receive an offer for 50 free postcards, and all you have to pay for out of pocket is image uploading and shipping. Sure enough, I received the offer and I sort of exploited it, hee hee... I made three separate orders of 50 postcards each, so I ended up paying only $38 for 150 postcards! Not too shabby considering another company quoted me over $650 for 150 postcards!!!! (The expense was due to running small quantities of several different lots, rather than just one big lot.)

The postcards arrived two weeks early and they look even better than I thought they would. A big yay for VistaPrint!

On Saturday, June 28th, I brought my stack of postcards to the Bordentown Post Office so they could be hand-canceled to avoid ugly bar codes and postmarks possibly being printed over our website URL or other information. The clerk at the post office said it wouldn't be a problem, and she took the stack from me and said they would get to it later in the day.

Unfortunately, the following Monday I heard from several recipients of the postcards that the cards were NOT hand-canceled and sure enough, there was ugliness printed all over the backs of my postcards. Sigh.

My advice to brides-to-be: don't be afraid to be a Bridezilla and insist that the clerk hand-cancel all 100 postcards right in front of you!

Interestingly enough, I also heard that some recipients immediately threw the postcards in the trash because they assumed they were jeans ads! Ha ha. It was only after they took a quick second glance that they recognized our names and rescued the cards from the garbage can. I guess that's what happens when your photos look too damn good ;-)
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Engaging images

At our first appointment, our photographer, Jeff Tisman, showed us some examples of engagement portraits he shot with two of his former couples. He also showed us a photo guestbook that he could make out of the engagement pictures and would be put out at the wedding itself. We thought it was a really fun idea, but John wasn't so sure about having an engagement portrait session. For one thing, it would be an additional fee on top of the package we already booked, and for another, he didn't think we would ever look at the photos again.

I, on the other hand, thought it was something we should absolutely do. I thought it would be nice to document our engagement in a formal way before we got completely swamped in projects and planning. Furthermore, John and I didn't really have any super-nice photos from our dating days, and I also thought it would be a great way to get to know Jeff before the actual wedding day. If we got to know each other early, I thought the wedding day itself would be more relaxed and therefore lead to the photos themselves being better.

So, I was able to convince John that engagement portraits were important. After the session, he said that he was very glad that I convinced him to do it and that it was one of the best days we'd ever had together, aww.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In mid-May 2008 I contacted Jeff to see when he would be available for an engagement portrait session. Of course May and June are super-busy months in the wedding industry and Jeff's weekends would no doubt be jam-packed with weddings to shoot, so we agreed to meet on a weekday (John and I both took the day off) in early June on the boardwalk in Seaside Heights, NJ. Jeff asked us to bring at least one change of clothes and not to be overly fussy about things, just to wear something that we would normally wear in our every day lives.

John and I got there early in the morning and we waited on a bench by the Midway Steak House, our meeting spot. It was an absolutely gorgeous day, not too hot, but sunny and lovely. Jeff arrived shortly afterward and introduced us to his assistant, Drew. Only seconds later we were booking it up to the north end of the boardwalk to see if we could shoot near some creepy, giant clown heads that Jeff spied all the way from Midway!

There was just one problem, in that the clown heads were in a fenced-in area of the pier. We asked a security guard if they could let us in just to take a few photos, but the guard wouldn't let us and said that we would have to obtain written permission from the boardwalk's marketing department be granted access. What?! Oh well, whatever, man.

So, instead, Jeff led us to a Frog Bog game and we took the first photos of the day:We had so many people stopping and staring at us while we were shooting the Frog Bog shot! I guess people aren't used to seeing couples straddling near boardwalk attractions? Ha ha. Anyway, Jeff had to ask people to disperse because they kept getting into the background of our shot. If you look at the right side of the image, you can see that we still captured the attention of the wheel attendant in the background!

Then we took some fun shots while John gave me a piggyback ride down the boardwalk:
Jeff kept telling me to really exaggerate my laughing and my smile, and actually say "HA! HA! HA!" as John ran toward him, but I didn't really have to exaggerate because I was so amused anyway!

Our next stop was a nearby arcade, where we shot a series of pictures in front of a fun house mirror. But the funniest thing about the fun house mirror shots is that we had no idea Jeff was shooting us! We thought we were just investigating the mirror:
Me: "I don't get it. It looks like our image should be stretched, but it looks like a normal mirror to me..."Me: "Oh wait! John! I figured it out, you have to crouch down to see it all distorted."Me: "Ha ha ha! How amusing! How silly we look!!"

Hee hee.

After those shots we had a quick wardrobe change, and Jeff spied a really colorful balloon dart game that would make a fun backdrop:
While we were shooting this, the smart alec working at the next booth asked us what we were doing, and John said "Shooting our engagement pictures." To which, the booth attendant replied, "Ah, the beginning of the end, huh?"

When I showed Mom Jeff's website and she saw how creative his shots were, she was concerned that maybe we wouldn't have any plain, facing-the-camera type shots that would be appropriate for an engagement announcement in the newspaper. Jeff kindly obliged:
What? She never said it couldn't have a background of Mario dolls! ;-)
"Get a room!!" - practically everyone on Seaside Heights boardwalk to us.
Aww. But who knew Sonic the Hedgehog and his girlfriend Amy were such voyeurs?
Having a giggle. Some girls decided to walk right up the ramp to the side of the balloon game, completely oblivious to the fact that Jeff and Drew were trying to shoot us, and they walked right in front of the camera like they owned the place. "Excuuuuuse me, Jersey girls!" Jeff said.

We then left our balloon game and headed south. Along the way, Jeff spotted this awesome little alleyway to shoot in:
Not pictured, but also with us in the alley: vomit on the ground (really!), and graffiti that exclaimed "lick my ass!" Ha ha! (And this just might be the only wedding blog on the world-wide web to have that phrase within its posts!)

Jeff also had a great idea for a shot of my ring. He took it from me and very carefully placed it on the boards. John and I then stood over it and strategically cast our shadows:
Understandably, John and I were both very nervous during this shot, ha ha. It didn't help that we were attracting attention again; I worried that one of the passersby would either dive in and snatch my ring, or perhaps knock it down between the slats!! But instead, one of the passersby sarcastically said: "Oh. I get it. It's a HEART." Whatever man, I don't see you with anyone! ;-)

Right next to the area where we did the ring shot was a closed attraction with graffiti all over its metal gate. Awesome. In the first of these shots we are laughing because someone walked by just as we were about to kiss, and shouted out "Whaddya doin', shootin' a soft-core porn or somethin'?!"
We then headed toward John's favorite part of the boardwalk: Flashback Arcade. Nearby was an indoor carousel:
...and a "Test Your Passion Factor" chair:

We then decided to go down onto the beach itself for some shots. We went underneath the pier and were surprised at how, well, picturesque it was! Drew commented that it looked like something straight out of an Indiana Jones movie!
"Why didn't we just do the entire shoot under here?" John joked.
While under the pier we also took some silhouette shots with the Seaside Heights rides in the background:

It was then time to head down towards the water's edge. We drew a heart with our initials in the sand:
We also stuck our handprints in the sand, complete with my engagement ring! Although, truth be told, I just wasn't strong enough to push my hand very far into the packed sand, so John and Jeff had to help me out a bit ;-)
Remember the creepy clown faces Jeff wanted to shoot at the very beginning of the day? Well, we had already been shooting for several hours and we were pretty much wrapping things up, so I suggested to Jeff that John and I jump up onto the restricted part of the pier from the beach. In the worst-case scenario we would be kicked out, but it wouldn't really matter since we pretty much finished our shoot anyway. Jeff agreed that it sounded like a good plan, and that's just what we did:
And we didn't even get yelled at!

Our last shot of the day was taken as we were walking back to the cars. Jeff has a few "signature shots" that you will see throughout his portfolio, and one of them is the bride and/or groom "flipping the bird" with their ring fingers. I knew I wanted that shot for the wedding but I hadn't considered it for the engagement shoot. If I knew we were going to do it, I would have practiced sticking my ring finger up ;-) It's harder than it seems, really!! Nevertheless, we got a great shot out of it:
So all in all, we accomplished all of our goals with the engagement shoot. We got some amazingly wonderful shots of the two of us, we spent the entire day feeling like celebrities (one person asked Jeff what he was doing with us, and Jeff said that he was shooting a fashion spread for Rolling Stone... and the guy believed him!!), but most importantly we got to know Jeff and Drew before the wedding day. It was an amazing day and I wish we could do it all over again!
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Three-ring circus

Choosing the rings that we would wear on our wedding day became a true three-ring circus.

From the second John slipped my engagement ring onto my finger (and watched it dangle upside down since it was way too big at first, ha ha), I wondered what sort of wedding band would look best with it. Since my engagement ring was a solitaire in a classic Tiffany setting, the options for complementary bands were seemingly endless.

I definitely wanted a diamond wedding band since there was already so much platinum showing on my engagement ring. Of course there's not really such a thing as "too much platinum," but I did feel that an all-metal wedding band would have come close; some princess-cut sparkle on my wedding band was definitely needed. I also liked the idea of an eternity band so that I would have LOTS of sparkle =)

So my options were pretty much a prong setting or a channel setting. However I worried about a prong setting, as I thought that the diamonds could be easily lost, or that the prongs themselves would scratch up my engagement ring.

A channel setting it is, then!

The search began in earnest. But the only problem was that I am extremely picky. The edges of my engagement ring's setting are rounded and I found it very difficult to find a channel-set wedding band with the same rounded finish. All of the channel-set bands I found had either straight, square edges, or sharply beveled edges, neither of which looked good paired with the smoother engagement band. I also had problems finding a ring with a good thickness to it; everything seemed either too thin or too thick to coordinate with my engagement ring.

Plus, I had the slow realization that my ultra-thin fingers may not be ultra-thin for the next 60 years. If I had a true eternity band with diamonds encircling the entire ring, there would be no way to resize the ring if my finger ever expanded. I considered adding a small sizing bar to the back of the ring but ultimately decided that it ruined the look of the ring. I then began to think about a half-circle of diamonds instead of a full circle. I had initially resisted this idea because my friends who had half-circle wedding bands often complained that the top-heaviness of the ring caused them to rotate off-center all the time.

But the more I thought about it, the more a half-circle made sense. And besides, what if I could find a wedding band with nine diamonds on it?? Nine is my lucky number, and after all we were getting married on the NINTH day of May in the year two thousand NINE, so it would be symbolic as well.

I went to Marlboro Diamond Castle with John and my mom for what must have been the eighth time (I swear I could hear the saleswomen groan whenever they saw indecisive me coming into the store), and Mom pointed out a band in the case that I hadn't noticed before. It had rounded edges, it was just a hair thicker than my engagement band, and it had ten princess-cut diamonds across the top. It was almost perfect. I asked if the ring could be made with nine diamonds instead, and made of platinum instead of white gold, and the saleswoman said absolutely. Finally! We ordered my ring that day and I am so happy with the way it complements my engagement ring.

Then it was time for John's ring. He was a lot less picky than me. He basically wanted an all-metal band in a white metal to complement my set, but he didn't necessarily want platinum because (1) he thought platinum was too heavy for him, since he wasn't used to wearing jewelry at all, and (2) he felt that he would get it all banged up and scratched at work, so he didn't want such an expensive metal.

That's when we discovered palladium, platinum's lighter, less-expensive sister. John loved the palladium rings by ArtCarved and he chose a band that mimicked the look of my channel-set band, with a "channel" of matte-finished palladium sandwiched between bands of shiny-finished palladium. That was easy!

The third ring of the "three-ring circus" was my right-hand ring. My birthstone is blue topaz so I thought it would be nice to wear a blue topaz ring on my right hand on the wedding day as my "something blue." One day John and I were in Macy's adding things to our registry, when we walked through the jewelry department and I found a lovely blue topaz ring that was on sale. It featured a large cushion-cut blue topaz surrounded by pave diamonds on a white gold band. I loved it because it looked very antique-y and classic. John said "If you really like this ring, I'll buy it for you as your wedding gift, and then you can wear it on the wedding day." Really!? Oh honey, that's so sweet! And that's just what we did.

So, we ended up with three more rings that we really loved, in addition to my engagement ring. Not too shabby for being a year away from the wedding day! My only regret is that I wish we had them engraved. Unfortunately my thin wedding band was too thin for a proper inscription, and it seemed silly to only customize John's, so we skipped it altogether. But if we could have engraved them, we had a few options:

• "Minn Besti Vinur" / "Hverju Sem Dynur" - Icelandic for "My Best Friend" / "Whatever May Happen," which is a lyric in a song by Sigur Ros that I printed on the first page of our wedding programs. I thought it was a nice sentiment for marriage. (We also referenced this in the last line of our wedding vows: "You are my best friend, whatever may happen. I am honored to call you my husband/wife.")
• (in his ring) "PUT IT BACK ON!" Ha ha ha.
  
• "FOR-EV-ER" - One of the best quotes from the classic movie "The Sandlot" ;-)
  
• Or we could have been completely boring and just put our wedding date in there. But it still would have been nice.

Oh well. Maybe we'll look into the engraving thing down the road for an anniversary or something. There's gotta be someone who can engrave on a thinner band, right?
Click to read more!

*click*....

...that would be the sound I heard as florist after florist hung up on me when I told them that my May 2009 wedding would be the day before Mother's Day, lol.

Yes, now that my bridesmaids' dresses were ordered and one of the colors of my wedding palette written in stone, it was time to find a florist. And none of them wanted to do a wedding the day before the mother of all floral days.

Using lists of recommended vendors from Grand Marquis, The Palace at Somerset Park, and Jeff Tisman's website, I probably contacted a good dozen or so florists. Of those only 3 were even willing to discuss a wedding that would be taking place the day before Mother's Day. They were Rose Petals and Lace, Marquis Florals, and Dahlia Floral Concepts.

My first appointment was with Linda at Rose Petals and Lace, which she actually runs out of her home. I came armed with the photos of the lilac and lavender bouquets that I saw in the Spring Wedding Ideas video on The Knot, swatches of the Jim Hjelm honeydew fabric, and photos of my wedding gown and our ceremony site, as well as photos of flowers that I liked for my own bouquet.

Linda seemed nice enough but my mom and I both got the impression that she was a little, shall we say, set in her ways? Our idea at the time was to have each girl carry a monochromatic bouquet featuring a different flower (one girl would carry lavender parrot tulips, one girl would carry lavender anemones, etc) and then my bouquet would have all 5 flower varieties together. But it seemed like Linda wasn't used to getting requests for things that weren't "pink roses and white stephanotis with jeweled centers."

A large percentage of her portfolio was this type of bouquet, and I wanted to gag every time she flipped the page to show me another one. There is no wedding flower I find more boring than roses, especially red/pink/white ones, and ESPECIALLY when paired with jeweled stephanotis (the little star-shaped white flowers you often see in bridal bouquets). A wedding should be a chance to show a little creativity, not to have your bouquet look just like Suzie Q's from down the street.

Nevertheless, Linda said she would e-mail me an estimate to review. To date it is almost a month after my wedding, and a year after I met with Linda, and I still have not received the estimate, ha ha. Oh well, if she wasn't interested in my business, I wasn't interested in hiring her. And besides, I should have known to run for ze hills when she pronounced "anemones" as "AH-moh-neez." (It's "ah-NEH-moh-neez.")

OK, so that florist was a definite "no." I then decided to rethink my bouquet plans. I wasn't so jazzed about the monochromatic, monofloral bouquets anymore, and I didn't think I wanted to carry a colored bouquet myself. So this was the new plan: a bouquet of white anemones (with black centers) for me, and bouquets of lavender anemones, tulips, sweet peas, lilacs, and other non-rose flowers for the girls.

Our next appointment was at Marquis Florals, who was recommended by Grand Marquis. I instantly felt better about my floral situation. They had a pretty showroom and the woman I spoke with (JoAnn, I think) was very nice and had a lot of good ideas, plus a much more varied portfolio than I saw at Rose Petals and Lace. They also had the added benefit of being relatively close to Grand Marquis and being very familiar with the space, since they were recommended vendors. My heart did sink a little when JoAnn admitted that anemones most likely wouldn't be available in May though; she said they were more of a winter bloom. Oh well. Nevertheless, I liked Marquis Florals very much and they were a strong contender. (John was really rooting for them too because they were located directly across the street from Big Ed's BBQ, ha ha.) JoAnn also said that she would e-mail me an estimate, and she did--the next day!

I did have one more appointment though, and I was most excited about this one. Dahlia Floral Concepts was on Jeff Tisman's list of recommended vendors, and my bridesmaid Libby was familiar with their shop since she lived near by. Libby accompanied me for the appointment and we were greeted by Adriene, the shop owner, and her extremely friendly orange cat, Bubbles. The shop was beautiful and so was Adriene's portfolio. When she asked how I found her and I mentioned Jeff, she raved about him and how great he was to work with. I also asked her about the anemones and she said that it was true that they could be hard to come by that late in the spring, but she was confident that if they could be "gotten," her sources would get them. She warned me that we wouldn't have a definite answer until the week of the wedding though, so she recommended that we come up with a "Plan B" that I would love equally as much. Adriene was familiar with both our ceremony and reception sites, and we even discussed some ideas for centerpieces while we were there. She wrote out the estimate there and then for me.

So now I had a tough decision to make. I originally feared that my pre-Mother's Day wedding date would leave me without a florist, and now here I was debating between two great ones. Their prices were pretty comparable too, which made the decision even harder. In the end I chose Dahlia. I figured that I could trust Jeff's recommendation more than Grand Marquis' because he would be the one actually photographing all of the flowers. There's no way he would recommend a florist whose flowers were all yucky, right? Right.

Adriene and the staff at Dahlia were an absolute pleasure to work with. They were very prompt in returning calls and emails and their work was just exquisite. I really couldn't have asked for a better florist.

But did I get my anemones after all? What about the girls' lavender bouquets? Stay tuned to find out ;-)
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Choosing a bridesmaid dress: cue the bridal guilt!

One of the very first questions John and I answered, even before we discussed the "where's" and "when's," was the "who's": who would be in our bridal party? We decided to have five attendants each. I was represented by my best friend, Paige, as Matron of Honor, and four bridesmaids: my friends, Kristen and Libby; and John's sisters, Suzanne and Katherine. On John's side we had his best friend, Scott, as Best Man and four groomsmen: his friends, Gerard and Gerry; his cousin, Andy; and my brother, Bobby.

As soon as I chose my wedding gown, the time came to choose coordinating bridesmaid dresses. Little did I know, this was to become one of the biggest headaches in all of the wedding planning.

After I fell out of love with the wedding gown with the pink sash, I pretty much fell out of love with pink as a wedding color, period. When we first decided to have a spring wedding I imagined a color scheme of ivory, dove grey, and shades of pink, and a cherry blossom motif woven through all of the details of the day. It would have been pretty, but in retrospect, it also wouldn't have been very "me." I'm not a girly-girl by any stretch of the imagination, and I couldn't figure out why I even considered pink at all. Perhaps I was stuck in cliche-wedding mode where I felt that I needed to be surrounded by soft pastels. And besides, cherry blossoms bloom in April, not in May, so the whole concept was flawed from the beginning!

I bounced around a few more ideas for color schemes, but after I saw a video on The Knot regarding Spring Wedding Ideas, I found my inspiration. In the video they featured a gorgeous honeydew green bridesmaid dress by Jim Hjelm. The color was very pretty and the dress featured a ruffle cascading down the left side, which I thought echoed the fluffy layers of my wedding gown. They paired the honeydew dress with some gorgeous lilac and lavender bouquets, and I was hooked. This was our new color scheme! It screamed "spring" but was still a little different and unexpected.I immediately logged onto Jim Hjelm's website to look up the item number of the dress (#5624) and local retailers. I called all of the retailers in my area but their prices were not what I was hoping to hear: they ranged from the mid to high $200's. Bridal guilt immediately set in.

I then tried to find cheaper alternatives, such as ordering them from an online bridesmaid dress shop. The pricing was definitely better, but the disadvantage would have been inconsistent dye lots and not having one person measure all five girls, and I didn't want to risk having such an important part of the wedding get all botched up to save a few bucks.

But I hadn't even seen this dress in person yet. Maybe if I saw it in person, I wouldn't like it, and then I could stop stressing and just find a different dress altogether. I called Bridal Garden in Marlton and asked if they had the dress in stock, and they said they did. I went with my mom to see the dress and try it on myself. I loved it! The color was really unique and I thought that the rouching of the bodice would be flattering on all of my bridesmaids. I was hooked. But it was still so expensive. (Although, that being said, it was one of the more affordable bridesmaid dresses that Bridal Garden carried. Who in their right mind would expect their bridesmaid to pay $300-500 for an Amsale or Vera Wang dress, plus alterations?!)

I then called another shop, Country Way Bridal, that was located in Cherry Hill. It would be a bit of a hike for my bridesmaids, but maybe if the pricing was decent it would be worth it. They told me that they were having a sale on Jim Hjelm dresses, but that the sale would only be going on until the beginning of June. The bridesmaid dress I wanted would still be a little pricier than I hoped, but it was definitely the lowest price I was quoted from a brick-and-mortar store.

Still, bridal guilt was there. I thought that perhaps a better idea would be to go to David's Bridal and find a shade of green similar to Jim Hjelm's "honeydew," and just ask the girls to choose their own dress as long as they were all made of the same material and full-length. It would have been a good plan, but David's shade of "honeydew" was almost a fluorescent green. They didn't have anything that was even remotely close to the shade I fell in love with. Everything was either too bright, too "sage" green, or too "kelly" green. I left David's defeated.

I decided in the end just to go with the Jim Hjelm dress and to order the dresses during the sale. We ordered the dresses from Country Way Bridal in mid-May of 2008, and even though the sales associate told me that the dresses would most likely arrive that summer, I explained that I wouldn't actually need them until January 2009, the same month my gown was due to arrive. The associate said that would be no problem, and that they would order the dresses from Jim Hjelm right away but ask them to hold off on shipping until Country Way called them again to "release" the dresses. Sounded good to me at the time.

Many months later I would come to regret that decision, just like I regretted buying my own wedding gown for a while. It, of course, all worked out in the end, and the girls all looked gorgeous on the day, but it was pretty touch-and-go when January 2009 rolled around. But that's a story for another time!
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To video, or not to video?

OK, so at this point, we've been engaged for only 4-5 months and we already have our ceremony and reception locations, our officiant, my gown, our photographer, our DJ, and our string quartet. So far, so good!

The next vendor on our list was "videographer?". Yep, with a question mark. John and I were both on the fence about whether we wanted our wedding recorded or not. John was pretty much against it, and at first I was too, only because I get very self-conscious when I know I'm being videotaped, and I always feel embarrassed watching the video back.

But, then I started reading some posts from former brides online, and a lot of them said that the single biggest regret of their wedding day was that they tried to pinch pennies by cutting out the videography. With the wedding day going by so quickly, the brides lamented that they would never be able to remember a lot of the details about their ceremonies and receptions. I didn't want that to happen to me. And I don't know if our future children would really care or not, but it could be cool to be able to show them our wedding video if they wanted to see it.

So I thought that maybe just videotaping the ceremony would be the way to go, and John agreed that it was a good idea. (In hindsight I think we just wanted to minimize the potentially embarrassing things that could have been caught at the reception, since neither of us like to dance.)

When I told my plan to my friend and bridesmaid, Kristen, she brought up some good points. She said "Wouldn't you want your first dance videotaped? Or your dance with your dad?" Dammit, I hadn't thought about the "reception events" that we might want to re-live someday. Sigh.

So we bit the bullet and decided to videotape the whole shebang. I figured, in the worst-case scenario, the video will sit on our shelf collecting dust for the next 50 years. But if we never recorded it to begin with, the worst-case scenario in that situation would be 50 years of regret, and that sucks.

I decided to check out the list of recommended vendors on Jeff Tisman's website for some leads. Two of his recommendations, Graphic Planet Cinematography and Reisbord Video, had really nice websites and I requested demo DVDs from each.

Both companies' demo discs were really fabulous and I'm sure that I would have been happy with either one, but in the end I chose Reisbord Video because their packages were better for us and because I actually got choked up watching their demo disc! I thought "Oh man, if I'm getting this emotional watching the wedding of complete strangers, I will be a mess at my own wedding!" I also felt that Reisbord Video's demo was less "gimmicky." I don't need a bunch of fancy transitions or special effects in my wedding video, I just need it shot beautifully and edited well.

At our wedding, we found Mitch Reisbord to be the perfect videographer. He was everywhere but not at all intrusive, and my dad even commented that during our dance together he noticed the spotlight on the top of Mitch's camera but didn't really connect that he was actually being videotaped. Mitch even came up to me and asked "Would you like me to go around to the tables to record messages from your guests?" and I said "Noooooo thanks." Ha ha. As a guest I always feel put-on-the-spot when a videographer asks me to say something to the camera, but I was elated that Mitch thought to ask my permission about it.

Now that our wedding and honeymoon are over, Mitch asked us to mail him photos of ourselves growing up, photos of us together, and also photos from our honeymoon, so that he can add slideshows to the beginning and end of our wedding video. We also need to send him some songs that we want to use as the soundtrack for the short "wedding recap" highlight reel he will be making. We're hoping to have all of that soon, and we can't wait to see the final result!

I do have one tiny regret regarding the videography, in that we opted to not have Mitch document our portrait sessions with Jeff before the ceremony. My reasoning for opting out of this was not only to save money, but also because I was afraid that the video camera would make me self-conscious and that would result in lousy wedding photos. But a lot of fun things happened during the shoots, including the Rutgers soccer team cheering and clapping for John and me as we walked by in our wedding attire, and a random hippy on an acid trip crashing our groomsmen group shot. Unfortunately we will never be able to relive those moments. Oh well.

It isn't realistic to get everything you think you might want for the wedding just out of fear that you will regret not having it someday (it is, after all, this fear that the wedding industry thrives on). The most you can do is just to surround yourself with professionals who will make the things you do opt for the very best they can be, and that's exactly what we did.
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Dress rehearsal

The months of January, February and March of 2008 were spent hunting for my wedding gown. It was a rollercoaster of an ordeal and I began to wonder if I would ever get that elusive "I'm a bride!" or "This is the one!" teary-eyed moment in the bridal salon. I may not have gotten teary-eyed, but I did definitely find the perfect dress for me in the end (although during the alterations process I had major regrets, but that's another story). I tried on many, many, MANY gowns before I found the one I ended up buying, and it just goes to show that you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince... even when it comes to wedding gowns!

I am now going to be EXTREMELY brave and post unflattering pictures of myself in most of my reject gowns. Unfortunately, I do not have pictures of ALL of the gowns I tried on because some salons don't allow pictures to be taken until you actually purchase the gown. But anyway, I hope you all appreciate this, it should be good for a few laughs ;-)

My first stop was David's Bridal and I was accompanied by my MOH, Paige, who chose a David's gown for her own wedding. I figured that David's would be a good place to start since they carried a lot of different styles in a range of sizes. Remember the white satin dress I fell in love with, with the pick-ups and the pink sash? That was the other reason we went there. I was sure that it would be the dress I would end up purchasing, but I still went around the shop and picked out a bunch of different ones just for shits 'n' giggles. I decided to leave the pick-up gown with the pink sash for last.

Pop quiz: What happens when you put a size-4 girl in a dress MUCH smaller than size-4?

Answer:
LOL! Don't ask me why we didn't try it on in my actual size (maybe it wasn't available, or maybe we were still trying to figure out what my "bridal size" was at this point), and I have NO idea what is going on with that bizarre caved-in portion on the front of the dress, but nevertheless, this was the first wedding gown I ever tried on. It was heavy as hell and I was stuffed into that thing like a sausage. I remember thinking, "If all wedding gowns are THIS heavy and uncomfortable, I don't think I want to wear one!"

Still, it did have a nice train and I thought it looked pretty from the back.
Nevertheless, the quest had to continue.

Paige pulled a different pick-up style dress (not the one I had my heart set on) for me to try on, so that was next on deck.
Hmm. A bit too "Belle" from Beauty and the Beast for me. And I don't even think I had the big crinoline under my skirt at this point. Plus I thought the bodice looked too much like lingerie (and it was a corset back, which didn't help).

The search continued. Perhaps I needed to find something a bit more form-fitting.
Um. Hmm. Maybe form-fitting without a bizarre flat panel covering the entire skirt?
This one looked pretty from the back but didn't really do anything for me in the front. Besides, I was hoping for a longer train than this.

Alright, enough pussy-footing around. It was time to get down to business. Bring on the white satin pick-up gown with the pink sash!
Well.... it was ok, I guess. I remember really liking it in the store, but when I got home and looked at it on camera I was a little underwhelmed. First of all, it had NO train. Not even a little sweep train; it literally had no train at all (if you look closely at my reflection in the top-left of the picture, you can sort of see what I mean). What sort of bride doesn't want to have a beautiful train floating behind her as she walks down the aisle? It looked like my instincts were off on this one, and this wouldn't end up being the dress I would wear on my wedding day after all.

Before we left, I noticed a beautiful ivory lace gown on display, and I asked if I could try it on quickly.
I really loved it. It felt antique-y and the pick-ups were soft and subtle, unlike the "Belle" dress before. The ivory color was more flattering against my fair skin, too. Prior to this dress, all of the other dresses I tried on were stark white. But I still felt like it was missing something. We decided to try it on with the shell pink sash from the other dress....
Wow, I loved it. I left the store pretty much convinced that I found my wedding dress. I excitedly brought my camera to my parents' house to show my mom, but she wasn't exactly head-over-heels for this dress. She said that she'd come back to David's Bridal with me a few days later to see the dress in person.

While I was there, I took the opportunity to try on a few more dresses, especially ones that were much different from the other styles I already tried on.
I affectionately referred to this one as "the Tasmanian devil dress" cos it looked like a cyclone, lol. The bottom of it was bizarre too, because the skirt was filled with stuffing like a bubble skirt. Next!
Oh man, Mom loved this one, I guess because it was a more traditional silhouette than some of the others I tried on. But it was HEAVY and pretty boring to boot. It did nothing for me, and that seam going across my waist just cut me in half instead of elongating me. Nah, I hated it.

There were others I tried on during this trip, including the white satin pick-up gown (which I definitely ruled out this time) and my beloved ivory lace gown. Mom admitted that the ivory lace gown was very pretty, but she said that she would prefer me to shop around some more before making any decisions. I felt under a little bit of pressure to buy the lace gown right away because the associate told me it would be on sale until the end of the week (this was before I realized David's Bridal has sales, like, every two months), but I agreed that maybe it was too soon to decide on a gown. After all, I still had 17 months to go until the wedding!

Our next stop was a few weeks later, at Hearts For You in Englishtown. Hearts For You carried a lot of Maggie Sottero gowns, which I had researched online and really liked. Let the games begin!
A lot of the Maggie gowns featured unique details that I really liked, such as the lace peekaboo layer at the bottom of the dress. On my left side was a single pick-up that revealed a triangular panel of lace. I thought it was pretty but overall the silhouette didn't do anything for me. Next!
Meh. And excuse the "veil hair" I've got going on here, ha ha. Next!
I really liked this one, "Sierra," in person. The waist was beaded in an intricate pattern and it had that "peekaboo lace" that I liked about the other dress. But ultimately I felt I looked very "hippy" in dresses like this, and the beaded portion ending right on my hips exaggerated them even more, I think. Maybe it was time to look at some "poofy" dresses again.
OMG, my mom CRIED when she saw me in this one, "Capri." And to date, it is the only wedding dress I've worn that has made her cry, including the one I wore on my actual wedding day, ha ha! I don't know why she liked it so much. I felt like Belle again, and it was HUMONGOUS. Like, I couldn't see how my dad would be able to walk me down the aisle without tripping all over it. It was a pretty dress, don't get me wrong. The color was "diamond white" (a soft ivory) and the beads were pearlized shades of pink. But I didn't think it was practical at all. Back to the form-fitting gowns!
I didn't like this one, "Sandrina," so much in person, but when I looked back at the photos we took, I thought it was very pretty. A little bit boring though, as I felt it didn't have any sort of "wow" factor.

Sadly, we left Hearts For You empty-handed (although I did go back a second time several weeks later to try on three of the gowns again). The staff there were very sweet, so I was sad that I didn't end up purchasing a gown from them.

My next stop was at The Bridal Suite in Hamilton with Paige and my mom. My sister-in-law-to-be purchased her wedding gown from The Bridal Suite but warned me that their customer service was a little, shall we say, lacking? I have to say, after going there myself, that I agreed. It was just a bizarre shopping experience. First of all, there were no changing rooms, just one big "bedroom" sort of thing where I had to change in front of Paige and Mom. It wasn't a big deal, but I felt that having them in the room with me as I got dressed really killed any sort of "ta-da!" moment that I might have had.

Oh well. On to the dresses:
This is another Maggie Sottero dress, "Natalina," that I initially really liked. It had subtle pickups and some lace that I thought was pretty. But when I tried it on again at another bridal salon (see below) I decided I hated it, ha ha.
This was a gown by Lazaro that, I think, I tried on because it had pink beaded details on it. Again, I felt I looked "hippy" in it. But holy cow my ass looked amazing:
KAPOW! Ha ha. I decided not to give my grandmother a heart attack (and not to make John faint from overwhelming happiness), and so I moved on.
Remember the "Capri" pick-up gown that made Mom cry? This is the same gown, just a different version of it, called "Capri Marie," with a different neckline. I still felt "meh" about it, and Mom said that she liked the sweetheart neckline better.

I think I tried the Maggie dress on again before we left. But overall we weren't psyched with The Bridal Suite, and we decided to move on.

A few weeks later we went to Nicole's Boutique in Brick. They had a small collection of wedding gowns and they seemed to primarily deal with proms and special occasion dresses, but nevertheless I found a few that I wanted to try on.
I saw this style of dress in a bunch of shops and in a lot of magazine ads, with a criss-cross of fabric across the bodice. I suspected that I hated it but decided to try it on anyway. And I decided I definitely hated it.

This is that same Maggie "Natalina" dress I tried on at the Bridal Suite. I decided in the end that I didn't like it because it had a bizarre panel of lace on the back of the skirt that just sort of ended (you can see what I mean if you click on the link and check out the back view of the dress). It looked like it was there as an afterthought and the designer didn't know how to transition the lace back into the main material of the dress. I decided I had it with Maggie Sottero dresses. Although overall I think they're quite pretty, they always seemed to have something "off" with them that bothered me. I never tried on another one, and I never looked back.

I looked in the bridal section at Nicole's again and my eye kept going to this very beautiful fit-and-flare gown that was on a mannequin. I asked if it would be too much trouble to try it on, and they gladly took it off the mannequin for me. And woo hoo, it just happened to be in my size! (This is truly a rare thing outside of David's Bridal. Most gown samples are a size-12 so I always needed them clamped in the back. This gown was an exception.)
NOW we were talking! I friggin loved it. It fit like a glove and I thought it was so gorgeous.
And the train!! *swoon* So beautiful. This gown is "Brigit" from Enzoani's 2007 collection, and I just loved it to pieces. But I still wasn't ready to commit to a gown. Although beautiful, the dress was very hard to sit in since it was so fitted through the hips. However, it did open my eyes to Enzoani, a designer I had never heard of before.

When I got home I immediately went on Enzoani's website and drooled over a lot of the dresses. I wrote down the names of a good half-dozen of them, and then clicked on the link to find an Enzoani retailer near me. One of the shops was Enzo Bridal in Englishtown, and I made an appointment to go with Mom.

Now, I don't have pictures of every dress I tried on at Enzo due to their lame "no pictures until you purchase" policy. I gave the sales associate the list of Enzoani dresses I wanted to try on, which included Brigit again. While they didn't have most of the ones I wanted to try on in stock, they did have one from my list that I was very excited about: Arabella, from the 2006 collection.

Arabella was very... different. The skirt and train featured scallop-shaped layers of tulle and it gave the dress a very "fluffy" appearance. When I first looked at myself in the gown I wrinkled my nose and was like "I dunno..." But the more I looked at it in the mirror, particularly at the dramatic cathedral-length train, the more I liked it. I even said to my mom "Call me crazy, but I think I really like this one." She said she really liked it too. I tried on a few more dresses afterwards, including a Justin Alexander that was very pretty, but before we left I tried Arabella on again.

And I loved it.

I made another appointment at Enzo Bridal for the following week so that I could bring Paige for a second opinion. Her opinion wasn't what I was hoping for; she said that it was pretty but that she liked Brigit more. But in the end, I went with my gut, and that day we put a deposit down for Arabella.

Here she is:

Told you the train was dramatic ;-) By the way, in this shot I am holding samples of invitation paper to see whether white or ecru paper would match Arabella (technically an "ivory" gown, although a soft ivory) more closely. Yeah, I'm a bit OCD when it comes to details, so sue me ;-)

And speaking of details, here is the beautiful beading on my bodice.
It was March when we finally put down the deposit, but I told them that my wedding was 14 months away so I wouldn't really need the dress until January 2009. In December 2008 I got the call that the dress had arrived, and I was reunited with my beautiful Arabella.

Now, perhaps you are asking yourself "Lisa, your experience at Enzo Bridal seemed great, you love your dress and you seem very happy with your purchase. Why do you warn us not to give them business on the right-side of your blog?" That is a story for a later time, but let's just say that some bridal shops are all sweetness and light when they're trying to get you to give them your money, and then they treat you like shit after they finally get it from you. And then they try to get MORE money out of you.

But I think it all turned out great in the end....
...don't you agree? ;-)
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