Wedding Wednesday: The Dress

Now that all the girls were ready and we had eaten lunch it was time to put the dress on.  To refresh your memory here are the posts about how I found my dress: Part 1 and Parts 2 and 3.  I absolutely love my dress and have found myself looking back at pictures from the wedding wishing I had an excuse to put it back on but alas I guess that will never happen :)  Anyway here is the story in photograph form of me putting on the dress:

Putting the veil on

The garter (there will be closer shots of it in a later post)

A little refreshment!

Adding some finishing touches:

The final look:

It was then time for the girls to head to the sanctuary for pictures and because that post won't be very long I'm going to post them both today so you get a 2 for 1 Wednesday deal!  I know you are thrilled :)

Wedding Wednesday: The Boys Get Ready

While we were finishing up at the salon the boys all met at the hotel to get ready.  This was the point in the day when our photographers joined the fun so most of these pictures are from them:

Getting Ready and watching football

Cowboy boots

This jersey was a gift from our good friends Justin and Diana.  You can't really tell in the picture but the McGeehon is done just like last names on the back of Cardinals jerseys and the 11 is done just like the back of Cubs jerseys. We decided to have our wedding party sign it and it will make several more appearances in pictures throughout the day.

Once the boys were done getting ready they took some pictures at the hotel and then headed to the church for more pictures.

Tulle and Tutus

Long before I was ever engaged I was perusing a photographer's website and saw pictures from a fabulous wedding.  The whole wedding was beautiful, but there was one thing that caught my eye and I have been in love with ever since.

Flower girl Tutus!  Seriously how darling are those girls? 

So when we got engaged the flower girl attire was a simple decision- she would be sporting a Tutu.

This weekend while my mom and sister were in town for the wedding I took advantage of having them around and pushed through the "wedding wall" and we started making these:

That is Emily's American Girl doll and her very own tutu. In our family we have a tradition of our special dolls sporting matching outfits like Emily and Baby Doll at Christmas:

We also decided that Payton should get a tutu as well so we spent part of the weekend making 3 tutus.  I don't have any pics of Payton and her tutu but this weekend was her 1 month birthday so I thought you might like a picture of her adorableness!

Good News Tuesday!

Today is the 4 month mark till wedding day and as if that wasn't exciting enough, this afternoon I got a fabulous phone call about a month before I expected it.  Bridal and Formal called to tell me my dress was in!  If this wasn't exciting enough they said they would ship me my dress for free.  If you recall I ended up buying my dress from Ohio near where my aunt and uncle live and the plan was to schedule a weekend trip once it was in to pick it up, but unfortunately our weekends have disappeared (I don't think we have a free one from now until the wedding!).  So while I am definitely bummed we no longer have an excuse to make the trek to Ohio before the wedding it is a relief to have one less thing to try and squeeze in.  Now on to my next tasks of figuring out where to put the dress and finding some one to do alterations!

Shoe Obsession Revisited

You may recall way back when in December I wrote this post about my obsession with green shoes.  I have been searching for months and was just about to give into a pair of dyed shoes from Payless.  Don't get me wrong they were cute, but the color wasn't quite right, but I was getting desperate!  That was until I found the perfect shoe on zappos.  After consulting one of my fabulous friends who is much more of a shoe expert than me, I was convinced I had to have those shoes.  Well look what the UPS man brought me this week: 

Even the box is pretty :)

Here is what was inside the box:

Aren't they just perfect? I love the little bows! I took a picture of them on my feet but decided a) I have ugly feet and b) I am in desperate need of a pedicure so those pictures took away from how pretty the shoes are. 

For those of you who are in the cowboy boot camp- have no fear the cowboy boots will also be making an appearance but these pretty little green shoes are the shoes I will be wearing down the aisle. 

Dressing my Momma

When I was on Spring Break a couple weeks ago I had a long list of little wedding tasks that I wanted to get done including helping my mom find her dress.  We had originally planned on her coming to St. Louis because we have a lot more stores to choose from but then I decided that because they would be making so many trips to St. Louis in the next 6 months it only made sense for me to make the trek home.  So bright and early Monday morning my sister and I left her house to drop off my niece at school and pick up my mom for a fun filled day of shopping.

The objective: Find something fun, comfortable, and cute that wasn't too formal and fit into the feel of our wedding.  Nothing about our wedding is turning out to be super formal so it just didn't make sense for her to have a typical "Mother of the Bride Dress" like this:

Side not: Why is it that the models who model "Mother of the Bride Dresses" always look like they are hardly old enough to be brides let alone the mother of one? But anyway I digress... This just really wasn't the look we were going for.  We decided to start at JC Penny's thinking they would have some nice dresses and because my mom shops there often they would probably have somethings in her style.  My sister and I wasted no time pulling lots of dresses off the rack that we wanted her to try and before long I think we had at least 10 dresses for her to try.  Unfortunately I wasn't thinking and didn't take any pictures but here are a couple of the dresses from their website she tried: 

We liked the color of this dress but not the actual print...the flowers were just weird so-VETO

Again loved the color and she said it was really comfortable, but the fit wasn't as flattering as some of the other dresses-VETO

 

This one we paired with a cute cardigan  and we liked the color and cut of this one much better than the previous two but in the end it too got the VETO


It came down to these two dresses in the end:

Both of them looked great and were a good color.  I also felt like both of them would fit in perfectly with what everyone else was wearing.  We decided both of those were definite possibilities but decided to go see what else we could find.  Unfortunately the other stores in that mall had zilch.  We could have drawn out the process and tried to drive all over the world going to little boutiques and other stores but decided that since both of those were such strong contenders and very reasonably priced it just made sense to pick between the two.  In the end we decided to go with the blue dress.  We felt like it would compliment the bridesmaid's dresses well, it was comfortable and she could absolutely wear it again so it was a win-win! 

Shoe Obsession

Shoes have never really been one of those things that I was obsessed with.  I appreciate a pretty shoe, but my collection is pretty basic and not very extensive.  However, recently I have become obsessed!  Long before we were engaged I saw this picture on a photographers blog: 

and I fell in love with the pretty green shoes and just knew I needed some just like it to sport under my dress!

So now that I have a dress I have started my hunt for green shoes and I have failed miserably.  Searching for green shoes yields all sorts of weird things (some of which are not a color I would ever call green!)  I have found a few:

 

The first one's aren't horrible but 4 inch heals might be pushing my luck and I don't like the ankle strap.  The second pair just aren't doing it for me.  I want shoes that make me swoon... like this:

...only in green!  Seriously how gorgeous are those two pairs? But I can't seem to find any that make me nearly as happy as those 2 pairs do.  There are lots of Pinks, Blues and Reds out there but green seems hard to come by.  Any suggestions on where I can find pretty green shoes?

I suppose if I can't find green shoes I could always go with this look:

that would make Nick happy

I know I said outside of the box...

When I said I was intrigued by bridesmaid's dresses that were a little different and possibly outside of the box this is not what I had in mind:

nor was this:

and definitely not this...

While there are some cute dresses on Tony's site, I am really not sure any of them are the look I am going for. 

Next up...Bridesmaid's dresses

Now that I've ordered my dress, I suppose it is time to move on to the other necessary dresses for the day.  

In the midst of wedding dress shopping my sister mentioned that I needed to get on asking my other bridesmaids so they could all start looking at dresses, especially since she is pregnant and will be showing soon.  Which I agreed it will be difficult to picture what a dress would look like minus the baby bump.  So while we waited at Clarice's my mom and Nick's mom were looking at a couple of bridesmaid dress catalogues and spotted a couple they liked.  After I finished trying on dresses, my consultant had a few extra minutes so we decided to make Sarah try on a few dresses.  The first dress she tried on was this cute number:

It obviously would not be in those colors and we would probably ditch the bow but I thought it was cute.

I honestly don't remember what the second dress she tried on looked like, clearly it didn't do it for me.  The third dress she tried on was something different that I wasn't sure that I would like until I saw it on her and now I think I may have a hard time going back to something simple like the one above.  The third dress looked a little something like this:

I am not 100% sold on this yet.  I really want all my bridesmaids to really like the dress and feel comfortable in it and even in a perfect world be able to wear it again so I will wait until we can all decide together before making a final decision, but the idea of something a little outside the box with a print is really growing on me!

The search for the perfect dress- Part 2 and 3

so I have been seriously slacking lately and I apologize, but good news I have a few posts on the way.

First let's start with the continuation of this post on the search for my wedding dress.  Again because both Nick and I have agreed he won't be seeing me in my wedding dress until the wedding I have decided to keep any photos of dresses out of the post even if it isn't THE dress or I'm not in it.  So sorry for the boring lack of photos post (promise the next few posts will be full of pictures).

On to the story:
Halloween weekend my mom, sister, dad, and niece as well as Nick's parents made the trip to St. Louis.  We had a weekend full of wedding fun planned.  Everyone arrived late Friday evening so we could all be up early for shopping on Saturday.  We met at Nick's house early for a good breakfast and then the girls were off to go dress shopping while my dad took my niece to "Boo at the Zoo" and Nick and his dad ran errands.

We arrived at our first stop just as the opened for the day so it was pretty quite.  This store, which shall remain nameless, was a giant BUST!  My consultant had no personality and really just wasn't getting the idea.  I tried on several dresses but didn't even really like any of them let alone were they even close to what I wanted.  I think we were there for less than an hour before we decided it just wasn't happening.  It was still a little too early for lunch so we drove by the church where the ceremony will be.  Unfortunately it was locked but everyone got to see the pretty outside.  Then we enjoyed a lovely lunch at Dewey's, one of my favorite St. Louis restaurants.   After lunch we still had a little bit of time before my next appointment so we stopped by the potential reception site.  The room was in mid set up for what appeared to be another wedding so it was nice to get an idea of how the room could look.  (NOTE: We are still waiting on a few pieces of paperwork from them before it is official and then I will make that big announcement).

Then it was time for my next appointment at Clarice's.  I could tell almost immediately that this store would be better than the last.  The girls were much more friendly and Kelly my consultant got what I wanted immediately.  This store also had the dress that I thought could have been the dress when I went shopping in Ohio so I was excited to try it on again.  Before I showed that dress of to my mom and Nick's mom I wanted to try on some other options as to not cloud anyone's judgment.  The first dress Kelly had me try on was awesome all of the sudden I was all sorts of confused but I wasn't worried because I figured once I tried on the original dress it would all be clear.  So we tried on a few other dresses, some of which I didn't even leave the dressing room in.  I had gotten pretty good at predicting not only what I would like but also what I thought my crew would say about them :).  So then I tried on the original dress and sadly I was still very confused.  Everyone really liked this dress and now we were all a bit torn between this dress and the first dress.  They were very similar dresses, slightly different neckline, embellishments and fabric, but otherwise very similar.  There were things about each dress that I liked and I just couldn't decided.  So I decided to sleep on it.  I left the store thinking I had made up my mind but then every few hours my mind would change.  I think it changed at least 10 times over the weekend.

So Monday morning I decided something had to be done.  I was going to find a 3rd store that carried both dresses, go by myself and try them on and see if that helped.  So Tuesday after work I went to a little dress shop close to my schools.  I walked in the store and was greeted by a little old woman, who had to have been at least 90.  She was very sweet and I told her I wanted to try on 2 dresses and I knew which 2. She told me that Betty was helping someone else but could help me as soon as she was finished.  So I sat a few minutes and waited.  Then out of the dressing room comes another bride in dress #1.  Betty asked me what I was looking for and I said "Well the one she has on and 'The Hunter'. (For some strange reason wedding dresses have names and dress #2's name is "Hunter")  This other girl also had "The Hunter" in the dressing room to try on, but both Betty and the other girl very graciously worked with me while she continued to try on dresses as well.  I wasn't sure how I felt about seeing the dresses on someone else and was worried it would cloud my judgment even more.  After the other girl took off Dress #1 Betty helped me put it on.  It felt just as amazing as it had the first time I tried it on and as I expected without any other voices it was much easier to follow my gut and make my decision.  I still tried on dress #2 just to be sure but in the end I decided the Ohio dress, first dress I fell in love with was the one!

It took me about a week to get my measurements straight but yesterday the dress was officially ordered!  Now I just have to wait 8 months for it to come in so I can put it on again.

The search for the perfect dress- Part 1

side note: sorry for the lack of pictures in this post it is a bit boring, but given the subject matter, pictures on this topic will just have to wait to make an appearance on the blog until after the wedding!

This weekend Nick, my sister, my bro-in-law, my niece and I traveled to Wilmington, Ohio to visit my aunt and uncle.  This annual trip is usually spent going to an interesting Ohio festival (I swear the state has more weird festivals than any other state), shopping, watching football, and relaxing and this year was no exception, the shopping was just a little bit more exciting.

Saturday we left the boys in front of the TV for a day of college football and my aunt, sister and I were off the the Reading Bridal District in Cincinnati.  I had no idea there was such a thing as a bridal district, but alas there is.  My aunt Jennifer bought her dress at Bridal and Formal and had a wonderful experience so that was our first stop.

After I filled out my information card I was greeted by JD, a very friendly young man who explained the layout of the store and the process and then turned me over to a consultant.  The process was to start looking through the dresses and pick out 7 I would like to try on. Then my assigned consultant would take me back to the dressing room and we would start trying them on.  The first thought that went through my head at this point was, "Are you kidding me!  We were in a room with THOUSANDS of dresses and you want ME to dig through these racks and pick out 7??"  In fact I was just a little annoyed.  I thought wedding dress shopping was supposed to consist of my describing what I was looking for and some nice consultant bringing me dresses. But because I am compliant my aunt, sister and I began digging through racks of dresses.  We fairly quickly came up with 7 that looked like they would be worth trying on.  At this point I met Tracie who hauled my 7 dresses into the dressing room.  First she quickly pinned my hair up into a very cute updo and we started helping me into the first dress.  I put it on and immediately hated it!  I have to be honest I was a little worried about dress shopping for this very reason.  Don't get me wrong I was excited to get dressed up like a princess all day but I was worried I would never find the dress.  I had been told by countless brides they bought the first dress they tried on and I hated the first dress I tried on...was I doomed to just finding the dress I could live with?

Luckily I could not have gotten a better consultant.  Tracie agreed completely that it wasn't the dress for me and flipped through the other 6 dresses we had picked out and pretty much said we were completely off base and off she went.  While she was gone we tried the other 6 on agreeing with Tracie that all of them were just wrong!  She came back with a few more dresses that were nothing like what I would have picked out but all the sudden we were on the right track.  I tried on several more dresses and we were getting closer. Tracie was an absolute sport with me and my lack of ability to verbalize what was wrong with each one, except for the disorganized dress that is! 

Side note: I tried on a dress that was well disorganized with lots going on.  My sister and I explained that we didn't like it because it was disorganized.  Apparently they had never heard that term used to describe a dress and everyone was quite amused by us!

Tracie kept bringing me back more dresses and finally I put one on that was just it!  Again it was absolutely nothing like what I had envisioned or would have picked out on my own but it was spectacular!  Tracie then took me over to get some matching jewelery and of course a veil.  It was when she stuck the veil in my hair that an indescribable feeling washed over me and it finally hit me... I'm a bride!

Now I loved this dress but I wasn't 100% sure and not only did I still have another appointment that afternoon, but I also had plans to go shopping with my mom and Nick's mom in St. Louis. So I took off the dress and we headed across the street to another store.  This experience was nothing like my experience at Bridal and Formal but I did end up finding another dress that I also really really liked.  Sarah sneakily took a picture on her phone and we headed back across the street to Bridal and Formal.  I wanted to try on the first dress again and see if they had the dress I liked from the other store so I could try them on in succession. Also in all honestly I missed Tracie!  She was so "tell it like it is" but in a way that made you feel like good about yourself- she really was the perfect consultant (can you tell I can't say enough nice things about her)! Tracie found a dress very similar to the one I tried on at the other store and I tried it on followed by the first dress. This helped a great deal but we shall see.

All in all it was a fabulous day and what they say about putting on wedding dresses really is true...I've never felt like such a princess! I have plans to go shopping again in October with my mom, Nick's mom, and my sister so stay tuned for "The search for the perfect dress- Part 2"