Wedding dress: done. Bridesmaid dresses: done. Now it’s time for the tuxes.

Some tux time took place the Tuesday before last when Michael and I made a trip to the Men’s Wearhouse. Shortly after we arrived, we sat down with an employee who started asking questions about our wedding. I explained that my bridesmaids were ordering their dresses from David’s Bridal in the color mermaid. The employee replied, “That’s great. We actually work with David’s Bridal to coordinate color choices so we should have that exact color.” I was excited…and then dismayed as he pulled out the only mermaid vest pattern available. Mermaid looked stunning on the satin sheen of the bridesmaid dresses, but on the patterned material for the groomsmen vests it looked…like seaweed-colored sandpaper.

I could hear Michael not-saying, “Are we really going to make the groomsmen dress like this?” We decided to consider other shades of blue and drove to David’s Bridal (one plaza over) to compare swatches. Michael liked pool, a color I agreed looked sharp on vest and dress alike.

I hedged. I didn’t want to doom the groomsmen to seaweed sandpaper, but I knew that my bridesmaid Angela had already ordered and received her dress in mermaid. Luckily, the David’s Bridal employee explained that there’s be no penalty  or fee for the switch–all Angela had to do was return the dress. I called her offering apologies and bribes for chocolate, and Angela said that it’d be no problem. Bridesmaids are such good friends, aren’t they? Well, I guess that’s the point.

Anyway, Michael and I left the Men’s Wearhouse in  high spirits. Very high on his part, since he was surprised at how fun shopping was. He’s not sold on the Men’s Wearhouse yet (it doesn’t hurt to shop around a bit more), but we’re sold on pool.

Michael had ordered our save-the-dates and I had x’ed them from my mind when I received a save-the-date from my friend Rachael. Thing is, I found it in my inbox rather than my mailbox and it was titled “instead of save-the-dates.” I clicked open the message to an e-save-the-date with a link at the bottom to Rachael’s wedding web site. I checked out the site, sponsored by WeddingChannel.com,  and was immediately impressed. It had info about the proposal (pics included!), the ceremony, the reception–there were even driving directions! I forwarded the message along to Michael knowing he’d be excited about anything that put “wedding” and “web site” in the same sentence.

Little did I know how excited, or that Michael would call me  within 3 hours to tell me that we had a wedding web site of our own. Within that same day, our site was finished.

We ended up deciding to send e-save-the-dates like Rachael. They appeal both to the businessman in Michael and the tree-hugger in me. Another plus is that the wedding web site keeps things so organized. I’ve already had to re-do the guest list TWICE because it got lost in my computer files or email, so I’m (figuratively) jumping for joy that I can put it online.

Here’s our wedding web site. Check it out: http://nataliemichael.ourwedding.com/.

While I’ve been engaged, I’ve noticed that the wedding planning tends to be done by the fiancée rather than the fiancé. In fact, the wedding itself seems to be centered on the bride rather than the couple. Ever hear the saying: “the wedding is for the woman, the honeymoon is for the man”?  So far, Michael and I have been guilty of following this formula.

From the venue to the flowers to the save-the-dates, we tend to follow the same steps: 1) I brainstorm the project, 2) I research it, 3) I pitch my ideas to Michael, 4) we discuss it, 5) we make a decision.  Recently, Michael spoke up about how he’d like to be more involved in the planning process. I enthusiastically agreed. After the conversation, we learned 2 things. 1: I had been taking care of things because I thought that Michael just didn’t care about them. 2: Michael hadn’t been taking care of things because he thought that I’d care if they weren’t done my way.

Eager for Michael to be more involved, I suggested that we scrap my save-the-date idea (which, after all, was my idea) and let him have free reign to make the decisions. Michael decided to browse Vistaprint.com and ended up choosing this post-card style design:

The save-the-dates are now DIYs for a different reason, and I love it.

Confession: Last week I spent well over an hour online looking for a cutting board to add to our Amazon registry. The search results had me caught between plastic vs. wood, maple vs. bamboo, grooved vs. non-grooved, a single cutting board vs. a set of 3…anyway, you get the idea.

Confession: I didn’t make a decision.

Last Sunday I took my mom’s advice to look at the merchandise in person, to hold it before I have it. Michael and I showed up at Macy’s, were armed with a scan gun, and were sent out amongst the aisles of fine china and bed linens to browse. Let me tell you, it was much easier to make a choice when I had 10 options instead of 1,000. We started in household appliances, me uploading things to the Macy’s registry with the scan gun and Michael uploading them to the Amazon registry with his iphone. Yep, there’s an app for that. We chose from microwaves, crock pots, toasters, and (my personal favorite) fondue sets.

Michael and I spent well over an hour making decisions before we returned the scan gun and realized—we hadn’t even made it to bedding, let alone finished the kitchen stuff (since we were still minus dishes, cutlery, stemware, etc.). I could tell that making the registry was going to require several trips. We plan on making another one today. This time, I’m choosing a cutting board.

With the new year comes new things, so Michael and I are attempting our first Do-It-Yourself project. Here’s how it happened…

Flashback

Michael explains that he’s just about finished with his side of the guest list, so I make a mental plan to have our save-the-dates sent out before the end of the month. I start brainstorming about the save-the-dates the same way I start most projects: by turning to Google.  I type “save the dates” into Google and press “search.” 0.16 seconds  and 16,600,000 results later, I’m a bit overwhelmed. Mostly, I’m not sure which save-the-dates are  ”us.”  I take a break to take a call from my friend Sarah and end up explaining it to her. Sarah sketches out what she would do if she were me….and I love it! She suggests doing magnet save-the-dates in turquoise and pink, and I’m hooked. I think magnets make great save-the-dates because 1) people will be less likely to lose them and 2) people can keep them after the wedding as a memento.

Now for the DIY part. I do some research and realize that it’s surprisingly costly to order 150 personalized save-the-date magnets. I do more research and realize that it’s surprisingly easy to make them. The DIY consists of 3 steps. Step 1: design the save-the-date in Photoshop (or whatever program works), which involves choosing a picture and adding text (info about the when and where of the wedding). Michael’s IT skills will be handy here. Step 2: buy photo magnet paper and print them out. Again, likely Michael’s department. Step 3: Mail them out.

Flashforward

I’m psyched and on board for our first DIY project. I’m sure that the steps seem much easier than they are–particularly “mail them out,” which I know will involve several rounds of stuffing envelopes, addressing them, and carting them to the post office. Even so, I’m looking forward to some hands-on wedding planning.

Happy New Year! For me 2011 brings the new year but also my wedding year.  The wedding is still 6 months away, but writing “2011” rather than “2010” when I sign my checks makes it just a little more real for me.Winter break was great because after I wrote my last final essay, graded my last final project, and submitted my last Ph.D. application, I was able to focus on wedding planning again. I traveled back to Lowell for the holiday to shop for two things: Christmas presents and wedding florists.

I mentioned before that I was set on stargazer lilies, so I just needed to figure out how to make it happen. Some of the florists I spoke with on the phone suggested that I bring in pictures, so I came to my appointment armed with a page of Google images. This turned out well: rather than spending the meeting flipping through page after page of wedding flowers, we skipped the books and talked about what I wanted and what the florist could do.  I learned that the stargazer bouquets I was envisioning would be no problem, but that the lilies wouldn’t work out as boutonnieres or corsages.

Stargazers are big blooms, the florist explained, so a boutonniere would end up looking like a clown flower. She suggested that I substitute roses and then integrate roses into my bridal bouquet to match. I’d still prefer all stargazers, but I’ve seen some gorgeous bouquets with roses so I think that’s probably the best option.

We discussed centerpieces as well. The Avalon provides fish-bowl vases set on mirror bases, so my idea was to float a single stargazer bloom in water in each vase. In this case, the size of the bloom fit perfectly with my plans.

Bride’s dress. Check. Bridesmaids’ dresses. Check!

In my last post about bridesmaids dresses, I was split between two. I decided to go with David’s Bridal style number 83707 in the color mermaid.

This was one of the trickier decisions I’ve made as a bride. I was pretty—let’s be honest, very—choosy when it came to my own dress, but picking out something for a friend to wear was a different story. Multiplying that by seven didn’t make the equation any easier, especially when that equation factored in tan and freckled, 5′10 and 5′2, hipster and princess, and just about everything in between.  I solved the problem by giving my bridesmaids the option of first five and then two dresses, and asking for their feedback. Some were neutral (either because they wanted to support any decision I made or because they honestly didn’t have a preference) and some were a bit more opinionated. I took all this advice into account along with my pictures/memories of each bridesmaid in the dresses and my mental image of what I want the wedding to look like.

This dress ranked #1 in all three categories. It was the majority favorite (at four likes, two  neutrals, and one dislike) and, in my opinion, the most flattering all around. I like that it resonates with my wedding dress since it, too, is strapless and that, compared to the other bridesmaid dress, this one seems less like a wedding uniform.

Bride’s dress. Check. Bridesmaids’ dresses. Check. Now for the shoes…

Thursday, October 21st marked the one-year anniversary since Michael and I have been engaged and the five-year anniversary since we’ve been together. While celebrating amidst flowers and fondue at The Melting Pot, we realized we were celebrating our last anniversary on this date. I, for one, am excited.

No offense to those with October anniversaries (including my parents—who just celebrated their 21st!), but October is not the month I would have chosen. First of all, it’s too cold in October for me. I can vividly recall several year’s worth of goose bumps when I decided to wear a nice dress out to our anniversary dinners in Illinois. Granted, winter doesn’t come quite as quickly—or coldly—in Florida. In fact, we even thought to take advantage of our latitude by going on a camping trip this weekend…that is, before the weather forecast gave us a reality check. At as low as 50 degrees at night, October was 1 (or should I say 5?) and we were 0. Along with the cold, October brings Halloween. Now, I don’t have anything against Halloween. Halloween is fun. But Halloween—between the ghosts and the ghouls and the blood—is not very anniversary-y.  For these reasons, I celebrated our last October anniversary without regret.

When booking our wedding for July 1st, I thought of it not just as a convenient day to host our ceremony and reception, but as the date of our anniversary.  It made sense for Michael and I to pick July since we’re both summer people (in case you couldn’t tell already). The 1st is fitting as well—symbolic seeing as our wedding will be a union of two people. I also like that it’s near the 4th of July. I can’t help thinking ahead to anniversaries celebrated with fireworks rather than jack-o-lanterns.

First things first. I want to apologize to those who felt a blog-shaped hole—one that can only be filled by (semi) regular updates about my wedding planning progress— in their hearts this past month. The semester hit hard and I switched gears from writing blogs to writing proposals, presentations, papers, and other time-consuming “p” terms. Though it’s still in the 80s here in Tally, summer is definitely over.  Between being a student and a teacher, however, I have had some time to be a fiancée—which is why Michael and I recently created our wedding registry.

So far wedding planning has been a series of realizations, of “oh, I’m getting married” moments. The latest of these occurred when I struggled to pick out things for our registry. Michael and I chose to create our registry through Amazon since it doesn’t limit us to one store. After faithfully reading its how-to guides on choosing houseware, I set off to do just that and…got stuck.  Stuck between earthenware and stoneware, Kitchenaid and Cuisinart. I kept thinking that I’m too young to know what cutting board and knife set I want for the next 20 years, that I should wait until I’m grown up to decide. And that’s when my “I’m getting married” moment struck, though it came more in the form of “oh, I am grown up.”

Since Michael and I moved to Tallahassee, we’ve tried not to accumulate too many things worth moving again. The furniture, appliances, even the dishes we use were all handed down from the guy whose apartment we sub-leased the first summer. After starting the registry it occurred to me that on July 1^st we’ll be trading in our hodgepodge of hand-me-downs for houseware that’s our own.  When it comes to the registry I’m still stuck, but now I’m something else too: excited.

I can think of 10 reasons why Michael and I can’t plan our honeymoon right now. Right now, I’m applying to 10 different Ph.D. programs in 10 different cities in anticipation of my graduation from FSU this spring. Since we won’t know until February where we’ll need to be in August (and moving to in July), our post-wedding plans are pretty hazy.

Somehow, none of this stops us from contemplating different honeymoon spots. My #1 honeymoon fantasy is Greece. I’m a bona fide Grecophile and find nothing more romantic than spending a week on the shores of Santorini, Mykonos, Oia. However, Michael isn’t too keen on leaving the country. In some ways, I sympathize. I’m not a fan of having jet lag on my honeymoon or spending it struggling with a language that’s (yes, pun intended) all Greek to me. Plus we’ve already been to Greece (me twice, Michael once) and I think that since weddings mark a beginning, honeymoons are a chance to go somewhere new.

Michael and I started looking into honeymoon places in the United States. Problem is, we already live in Florida and I’m a bigger fan of jet lag than honeymooning in the state where I already live. I began researching the Florida Keys as a compromise when Michael came up with a good idea.

A cruise! I’d initially crossed cruises off the list because when we first started dating, Michael told me he hated boats ever since he watched Jaws. Luckily, this is no longer an issue since Michael assured me (even after we watched Jaws 2 this week) that a cruise sounded fun. We researched cruises and the more we learned, the more we liked.

So far we’re leaning toward a cruise in the Caribbean. Of course, we’re not thinking about our honeymoon yet or anything. There are 10 reasons why we shouldn’t.