The Dress

As I mentioned earlier, the dress was one of the most important things to me. I've always been interested in fashion, and I like to look good, so I wanted to be really happy with my dress.

When my sister got married in 2003 (she was living in Utah at the time) she had this really great seamstress who did her dress for about $500 and each of her bridesmaid's dresses for about $100-$150 each. She also made ties for the groomsmen. MaryClaire (my sister) was able to take a picture from a magazine bring it to the seamstress (Dani) and say I want this. And guess what? Dani made it! Beautifully. Now, I know this was in Utah and prices are cheaper there, but basically what I'm getting at is I knew that seamstresses like this exist.

They might not have an "official" business or "studio", but they have talent.

Another thing is that I had two very difficult parameters for my wedding dress. It had to be long (I am 6' 2") and it had to be modest. I went to a shop (Montclair Bridal in Santa Monica) which was great, but there were just too many alterations that would have had to be done. I knew I needed someone who could make my dream dress from scratch. For. a. reasonable. price. (The challenge). I searched tailors online, sent descriptions of what I wanted, and received quotes of anywhere from $1500-$3500. No. Thank you. My budget for my dress was $800, not a bit more.

So, then came my craigslist angel, Traci Williams. I found Traci on craigslist one afternoon, went to her house in Santa Monica one evening, looked at some past work she had done, and decided she would be great. The truly confirming moment was when she showed me the fabric she wanted to use for my dress. It was perfect and I knew she knew what she was doing. Not only was her price right, but she treated me (and my dress) like royalty. So accommodating and overall, wonderful to work with. I even went with her one Saturday to the fabric district downtown to pick out the lace for my dress.

Below is the story of my dress in pictures.

These are the pictures I found for inspiration:

These are the sketches I drew:

And this dress is what gave me inspiration for the neckline I ended up going with:

And here are pictures of the finished product:

I loved the final result because I felt like it was classy with a little bit of flair and fun. Most importantly, I felt comfortable in it all day. The fabric Traci used for it had a little bit of stretch in it which was so, so, so, so, so, so nice. I loved it and I love that it was made with love and I had a role in creating it.

Resources

There were a few resources I relied on heavily while planning.

1. The Knot Magazine (print version): The most important thing to me was my dress, so pretty soon after I was engaged I picked up a copy of The Knot magazine. I think they do an issue every year that features hundreds of pictures, page after page of different dresses. The dress was one of the most important things to me and I wanted to start early with looking at every possibility and getting inspiration for my own dress. I think it's important and helpful to be able to look at images of things in actual print instead of on a computer screen.

This was so helpful as I dog-eared several pages of dresses or elements of dresses that I love.

2. HereComesTheGuide.com: I mostly used this to find a location. They have very helpful reviews of many reception sites and this is how we found our location (which is the hardest part of the process), The Summit House.

3. Wedding Blogs: I have several wedding blogs listed on my sidebar which are all helpful, but the one I ended up browsing the most was GreenWeddingShoes.com. This is especially helpful for brides in the Southern California area. Snippetandink.com is also another favorite of mine. I didn't so much use blogs for actual, concrete recommendations, but more for inspiration. It was fun to get my daily fix of wedding-ness bliss while I was engaged. A guilty pleasure of sorts.

4. TheKnot.com: All brides should join theknot.com as early as possible in the wedding planning process. They send weekly emails to you based on the date of your wedding suggesting things like a "1-month checklist" if your wedding is a month away. There is also a Knot Wedding Shop where they can personalize almost anything you can think of. They also offer lots of great ideas for favors, party decorations, and bridesmaid/groomsmen gifts, if you choose to do that.

Recap

It's been just over 9 months since the big day. I still think it was the most perfect day and I'm so grateful for the way everything turned out. For the first four months after the wedding, I would probably a spend at least a good 30 minutes everyday looking at our wedding pictures, re-living the moments in my head. And then when my brother gave us the video he made, I watched that over and over and over.

I am going to try to recap the wedding and do my best to remember all the details of planning before the big day.

A few things I will try to address:

Budget (yes, we did stay within our budget of $10,000.)

Location

Flowers

Dress (my favorite!)

Priorities

Photographer

Attitude (both when planning the wedding and on the actual wedding day)

Photos of the Final Day!

Honeymoon, maybe :)

Good Resources

Fans and Parasols

Trying to think of a way to incorporate two of my favorite things, fans and parasols in a November wedding.

These are on sale at The Knot wedding shop for $1.09 and $4.99 each.

Hmmm....

DIY Flowers

I don't know if I could actually do the flowers by myself, but this looks like a good resource for that.  I want to spend some more time searching around the site.  Looks interesting.

http://www.theflowerexchange.com/Scripts/defaultn.asp

Update

The thing about planning a wedding in 4 months is you don't have much time to sit down and write about every little detail. The truth is, I've really been enjoying this process. My fiancé is the perfect kind of supportive. Wants to know the details, gives his opinion, but in the end, lets me make all the final decisions. We've really been enjoying this time of being engaged.

I nailed down all my bridesmaids and I'm so stoked. We are definitely having our reception at the Summit House. I just found these incredibly adorable flower girl dresses. A very talented family friend is going to shoot our wedding. And another family friend is (hopefully) gonna be our deejay.

I'm really excited about involving such close friends in the important wedding details. It seems right. I want to keep the environment intimate and personal. It also helps to have talented friends.

Mrs. Fishback

I just found this cute site, and think it'd be so cute to get undies that say "Mrs. Fishback" on the bum, for the honeymoon.

Trashy? Come on, it's the honeymoon!