the wedding : the guys

11:16 AM | by Meg
Brian and I had very strong feelings against black tuxes, which most of our family disagreed with up until the day of the wedding! I did not want the guys to look like waiters or, even worse, like they were going to their high school prom. I also just didn't feel like black tuxes were appropriate or would look right for our outdoor wedding in the middle of summer.


I originally just wanted them to wear suits, but quickly realized that this would be pretty expensive for them, since none of them owned suits to begin with! Fortunately, Men's Wearhouse informed me in January (after I had been complaining about how black tuxes looked too formal and brown ones were just ugly) that they would be carrying a grey tux starting in the spring. They didn't have a picture or a sample, but they promised they would be very nice looking.


 
I left all of the choices to Brian for this one, and he did a great job! Brian wore a purple vest and tie, while the rest of the guys wore navy blue. They looked AWESOME.




We decided that our dads should stand out a little, so we put them in in black tuxes with grey vests and ties. Neither of us had seen our dads in tuxes before, and they looked so dashing! My uncle (the officiant) wore a black tux that he already owned.


0 comments

the wedding : details (shoes, jewelry, hair, & makeup)

11:07 AM | by Meg



 
All four of us bought dye-to-match Lela Rose shoes at Payless. They were cheap and stylish and, while not super-comfortable, had more colors available than the store where I bought my dress. I dyed my heels a kiwi green (and bought a pair of Kelly & Katie purple flip-flops at DSW, which I wore for the reception) and the girls dyed theirs a lovely grey. The chances that any of us will wear them again is slim, but they only cost $40!


 
I wore very little jewelry for the wedding. I chose to not wear a necklace because my dress had such a lovely neckline. I have multiple ear piercings, so I wore small diamond studs that I already owned and wear every day and Brian gave me a beautiful pair of pearls with tiny diamonds. I bought the comb in my hair at Britex - it was the first official wedding purchase we made! 
 

 
I gave my bridesmaids custom wishbone necklaces I bought on from Lu's Boutique on Etsy. Each one had a small pearl and rhinestone in one of the wedding colors (purple, green, and blue). They say they get compliments on them everywhere they go!
 

 
The girls and I had our hair done at Shear Elegance in Los Altos by Elayne (she cuts my mom's hair). She opened the shop early on Sunday morning just for us and did a wonderful job. We all did our own makeup. The girls wore beaded bobby pins in their hair from Claire's. Seriously.
0 comments

the wedding : bridesmaid dresses

10:48 AM | by Meg
We decided to make the bridesmaids dresses ourselves. I liked the idea of having the girls wear whatever dress they wanted, but I also was drawn to the idea of having all of them in the same color.



We compromised by letting them design their own dress (we bought a $9 pattern that had about 6 different bodices and 3 different skirts that could all be mixed-and-matched) and my mom made each dress out of the same deep purple silk shantung (bought at Britex in SF).



I heard from several people pre-wedding that a color that dark was "unusual" for a summer wedding. Whatever. If I had put them in green, the dresses would have been ugly and the girls would have looked like they were seasick (especially Brian's white-blonde, super-pale sister). I had my vision and I turned out to be right.

Bethany: Straight skirt, ruched waist-band, square neck


 Carrie: full skirt, flat waist-band, "strap-less" neck with added wide straps


Lindy: full skirt, flat waistband, sweetheart neckline

They were GORGEOUS and all three said that since they each had a design that they loved and were comfortable with, and since the fabric was not "bridesmaid," they were definitely dresses that they could wear again. We probably made all 3 dresses for under $200.
0 comments

the wedding: my dress (!!)

6:43 AM | by Meg


Oh, my dress...



The original plan was that my mom wanted to make my dress. We spent several frustrating afternoons over Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks looking at pattern books at fabric stores, but the truth of the matter was that I had never really imagined my wedding before, and I certainly had never thought about what kind of dress I would wear. For this reason, we made our way to a Big Box Bridal Store so I could try on some dresses and figure out if I wanted a strapless, halter, mermaid, sheath, A-line, blah blah blah type dress. I asked the consultant to bring me a couple of different dresses of differing styles, and was considerably underwhelmed. The fabric was cheap, the dresses didn't seem to fit well, and I felt like I was playing dress-up. I'm not a particularly romantic or sentimental girl and, despite the general cultural emphasis, I did not really even WANT to look like a "princess" or whatever on my wedding day. I wanted to look like me, just the best I could look on probably the only day in my life when literally everyone in attendance would be paying attention to what I was wearing (which made me really nervous, believe it or not).



As I stood there awkwardly in a gauzy halter dress with fake-looking fake crystal pins at the neckline, I briefly considered wearing a bridesmaid dress, or a department store dress, or even a nice pair of pants or something. My mom could tell I was getting irritated and the consultant could tell she was about to lose a sale (that she wasn't going to make anyway since I wasn't planning to buy anything in the first place), so she told me wait while she grabbed a dress she thought would be perfect for me. I rolled my eyes at my mom as I headed back into the dressing room, tripping on the ridiculously long train in the high heels they asked me to wear that were 2 sizes too big.




As it turns out, the consultant actually knew what she was talking about. She brought out a form-fitting, cap-sleeved, V-neck dress in champagne silk and ivory lace with seed pearl embroidery on the lace, inverted pleats and a modest train. The lace almost looked antique against the silk and my mom started crying. As the consultant walked away, I asked my mom, "So, can you make this?" She said no, or at least not for less than what the actual dress I had on was going to cost. So, I spent $800 on my wedding dress and $0 on alterations since my mom hemmed the skirt, shortened the shoulder straps, and bustled the train herself. She even made me a matching clutch! My mom is so awesome.



The joke that my mom gets great joy out of telling is that prior to wedding dress shopping I had said that under no circumstances would I wear a dress that was A) backless, B) glittered or bedazzled in any way, and C) had a train. Of course, I ended up with all three!



Over the course of this summer, I have seen at least 5 brides in weddings that my friends have attended or were in wearing the exact same dress. Is this surprising, since it came from a Big Box Bridal Store but doesn't look like a Big Box Bridal Store dress? Of course not. Does it matter to me in the slightest? Nope. I'm glad so many other girls got to wear such a beautiful and affordable dress!



0 comments

the wedding: paper products

11:52 AM | by Meg
The first thing my mom and I decided to do was DIY the Save the Dates. We bought super inexpensive blank cards at Michael's and a pretty floral stamp and Kiwi green ink through Stamp it Up. This ended up being a recurring motif on all of our paper goods, because after we did the entire invitation suite, we just decided to DIY ALL of the paper products.



We bought blank wedding stationary (from Anna Griffin) sets at Michael's and used the same stamp and font family for the formal invitations, response cards, and announcements. My mom calligraphed all of the envelopes herself. We got everything we needed for invites, response cards, and save the dates for under $50.



I originally did not want favors as Brian and I were planning to make a donation in our guest's name to the Global AIDS Alliance, but mom got so carried away with paper products that before I knew it she had made 100 triangular favor boxes, stamped and initialed, with tiny tags detailing the donation we were making. One of our friends bought several pounds of purple and green Jelly Belly jelly beans (Brian's favorite candy) to fill them with - so then we had favors!



We also made the programs, "Reserved" signs for the tables and ceremony seats, and all other signage and paper products.





Aside from the invitations from Michael's, all of the paper was bought at Paper Source.

{Pictures from Kali}
0 comments

the wedding: commence!

6:58 AM | by Meg
We got our pictures and, as promised, wedding posts will now commence! I will try to keep the chat to a minimum and the pictures to a maximum (because honestly, the pictures are freaking amazing).

We did not make a conscious decision to DIY our wedding. It was more just assumed that the majority of the projects would be completed by my mother and myself because we are crafty ladies. We also did not set a conscious budget for our wedding - we just tried to save money where we could and keep in mind that this was only ONE DAY, and Brian and I (and our parents!) did not want to be broke after July 28! I'm sure someone somewhere has a final price tag - my mom did keep very detailed records. But I don't know what that price tag is, nor do I think it's all that important. You could pull off a wedding like ours for under $5,000 or you could pull off a wedding like ours and spend $50,000. it just depends on what you are willing to (and can afford to!) spend on individual things. We didn't want our wedding to officially "look" DIY. We wanted it to look like a classy affair that just happened to have been DIYed. I think we pulled it off.

Here are some lovey-dovey pictures before we get into details:















{All photos by Kali, that rockstar.}
0 comments

happy day

5:08 PM | by Meg
We celebrated 3 glorious months of marriage a few weeks ago. ¼ of a year down! We are on a roll!

But seriously, being married is one of the coolest, if not THE coolest things I have ever done. And now that we are three months in, I’m ready to talk about it.

Everyone told me that “your wedding is the most important day of your life.” This is crap. Your wedding is simply the first of a whole lot of important days that you spend with the person that you think is the most awesome person you have every met. Is that first day important? Yeah, I guess so, in the sense that it’s the FIRST day. But I think all the days that follow are MORE important. Your wedding is about saying you are going to spend the rest of your life with someone. It’s the “rest of your life” part that’s the big deal because so many people don’t get it right. So yeah, I guess my wedding itself was big. Like, I wore an expensive dress and everybody there was looking at me (ok, at US) and we spent a whole crap-load of money but… it’s just a day.

That being said, the wedding WAS very cool and it was really great to have all of the people that we love and respect there in one place to hear us tell one another how cool we think the other person is and how totally nerdy and in love we are. That’s special, to be surrounded by witnesses who love you and care about you and want to share in something deeply meaningful with you.

Our honeymoon was ridiculous. We did so many fun things and hiked so many cool mountains (and VOLCANOES) and ate a lot of great food and watched Shark Week. Then we hung out with my parents! It was basically the greatest vacation ever and all other vacations for the rest of our lives will pale in comparison to the super-vacation that was our honeymoon.

After you are married, people who are not married ask you “What’s marriage like?” a LOT. This is a really hard question to answer because it’s almost impossible to explain marriage to people who are not married (this is why married people never ask you this question – because they already know!). How do you explain how awesome it is to spend the rest of your life with someone to a person who has never met a person they want to spend the rest of their life with? It’s complicated, but it’s like I told Brian right after we started dating and I realized that I liked him a whole lot – it’s like being “home.” And really, you either understand that, or you don’t. And if you don’t, I hope that someday you will because it’s freaking awesome.

Living together is neat too. Brian is the best roommate I’ve ever had. He does the dishes and helps clean the bathroom (when I ask him to). He also leaves me alone when I want to read a book or watch Grey’s Anatomy. It’s fun to come home from work and see him (or wait for him to come home, usually) and work out together or cook dinner together. Sometimes he follows me around like a puppy and tries to hug me while I’m chopping onions or grabs me and picks me up while I’m sorting laundry, but aside from that, he’s a pretty great roommate.

There's been a lot of talk in the blogs lately about being a wife, and what the word wife means, and reclaiming the word wife, and blah blah blah. Seriously? Being a wife just means you are a woman who is married. It doesn't change who you are as a person. I am not suddently a mini-van driving, dinner-cooking, sock-folding zombie. I am still Megan, just married. And it's cool.
0 comments
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)