The Shoe Dilemma

Shopping for shoes is about as much fun for me as a root canal. I have wide feet, and although I know what styles I like, I never can find shoes to fit right. So many styles don't come in wide sizes, so I'm forced to decide if I want to buy a shoe that's too long, but finally wide enough, or just squeeze into the medium width size in the right length. In the end, I waste a lot of money on shoes I never wear because they don't fit right and are too painful to make it through a day.

I tried on a lot of wedding shoes. I went to David's and tried on their wide sizes. They were all blah... to me, anyway.

Enter Zappos.com.

Finally, I went online and searched on the zappos.com site. For those of you who haven't been to zappos, it is literally shoe heaven. I had ordered with success from there before, so I figured it was worth a shot. In the end I chose 4 pairs that looked like they might work. I ordered them all (free shipping!), and when they arrived, I tried them all on. One was absolutely perfect, style AND fit. That was my shoe! I sent the rest back. (Free returns!!)

Voila- shoe shopping comes to my living room.

You can't see the detail that well in the picture, but the shoes match the tiny aurora borealis beading along the waistline of the dress. It's like they were made to go together.
For about $50.

Our Hot Little Red Ride

Our budget just didn't allow for a limo. And it wasn't our style, anyway. Luckily, Sean's dad has a slick red Chrysler that he was so generous to loan us for the night. We had a great time zipping around after the reception... we went to Walgreen's (needed contact solution) and cruised around a little.

I recommend going someplace completely public and unexpected... when else are you going to be wearing your wedding attire in public?! We had great reactions from total strangers wishing us luck and love and a lifetime of happiness. I always love to see newly wed couples out and about, so I'm glad we did it!

Mother-of-the-Bride Dress

My mom agonized over her dress for months. She and I live in different cities, so I wasn't able to shop with her. She also wasn't all that computer savvy at the time (although know she "facebooks"- go mom!), so the best we could do was descriptions over the phone. I told her she should wear a dress she loved and felt good in. She went to several bridal salons, but she said everything felt to fancy or matronly. She found her dress at Macy's, on sale, for around $100. And she looked radiant. She got the great silver sandals to go with it, and now she wears those with other things too. Great choice, mom! (You'd never believe she's 62, would you?! And single... ;)

My Girl's Dresses

I've had the honor of being in a number of weddings, which were all wonderful experiences. The one problem is that being IN a wedding can be very expensive if the bride asks the 'maids to buy certain things to create a "look." I wanted my girls to look classy, but I didn't want them to have to worry about expenses, so I asked them all to wear a black dress of their choosing, with black dress sandals. My only request was that the dress be knee-length or below. As a gift, I gave them all antique aurora borealis crysal necklaces. They all looked absolutely beautiful, and I couldn't have been happier with the classy combination. Best of all, they really CAN wear their dresses again if they want. Since they all lived in different cities, there was no need to coordinate the buying of the dresses either!

How we made our bouquets

The sunflower-growing plan worked really well. If you have a garden and can plan ahead, I totally recommend growing your own flowers. We had a crew of my bridesmaids pick the flowers the day before the wedding. We set aside several of the largest, most beautiful flowers for the girls' bouquets, as well as the smaller-sized flowers for boutenniers (sp?) and wrist corsages. These remained untouched in 5-gallon buckets, each with the name of the girl who would hold it.

We didn't have quite enough flowers for all the bouquets, so two of my bridesmaids executed Plan B: They went to the farmer's market and scored 3 beautiful bunches of sunflowers for about $10 apeice. They also picked some wild that were growing along side of the road to fill in the aisle bouquets. (I had the best friends ever, btw.)

We then spent about 2 hours the day before the wedding putting together the flowers for the aisles- We just took two sunflowers, a sprig of greens, and some raffia ribbon and tied them all together. They sat in 5-gallon buckets in the cool basement and were in great shape the next day.

The morning of the wedding, we had two friends who had practiced putting together bouquets, etc, assemble the wedding party flowers. In all, it took them about 2 hours, working from the pre-prepared selections. They used flower wire, flower tape, and raffia ribbon. And everything looked FANTASTIC!










It cost less about $50 total for all the flowers, and they were really special because of the work we put into them and what they represented for me. :)

The Wedding Photo Book

It's been awhile since the wedding, but I am realizing people are still looking at the site for ideas... I'm updating with all the "after-thoughts". Hopefully some will be useful to you!

The first is The Wedding Book. We bought the rights to all our pictures as part of our photo package. If you have ANY desire whatsoever to do anything with your photos yourself, I recommend negotiating this into your deal. We got every image that was taken on CD. We have since been able to make our own slideshow and wedding book. I made the wedding book with great software from my favorite photo book site, blurb.com. If you're not familiar with blurb.com, you download the software, design your book yourself, then upload it to the blurb to be printed. In a couple of weeks, your lovely book arrives at your door. Voila. You can order as many as you want, and their prices are pretty darn reasonable. I think for our layout (the biggest possible) and 80+ pages of the nicest paper, it was about $70 per book.

If you aren't as computer savvy you can hire folks (like me, if you email me- I've done several books now and love doing it.) to put together you book for you. Take a look!

I'll post more day-of-the-wedding pics as well.