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the renegade bride

“the wild, wacky adventures of a bridal industry insider +newlywed + new homeowner and (in practice)renovation-maven. Whee!”

May 25, 2010 Bridesmaiding

Ok, so first off– do I have to download some app to be able to update my wordpress on FI’s ipad? I mean seriously. I can title a post but then I can’t do anything else. Help, please.

So, I have a confession to make: I hate talking on the phone. I’d rather email, text, see you in person, carrier pigeon you, send letters, etc etc than have a phone conversation. I think the reason is that in undergrad I was a receptionist at a very busy veterinary hospital. I worked some 40 hours a week and about 39.5 of that time was spent on the phone talking to people about their animals. Since then, I have hated any kind of phone conversation. I think it also may run in my family, because I am pretty sure that my grandmother also hates talking on the phone. Her conversations with everyone are super short and she plays this “tic tac toe” like game with her feet on her kitchen tiles as she talks. That’s so me. I’m busy distracting myself as we talk on the phone (just so you know, if you call me, I may only be half listening) because I am trying to swallow down the hatred for the device. Add to it that my phone, an android touch screen blah blah blah is good for EVERYTHING except talking. I am perpetually hanging up on callers, muting calls, putting people on speakerphone. It’s made me hate it even more. So, i Just don’t answer the thing when it rings.

You may be wondering how this has anything to do with weddings, but I’m getting to it– it does. So, I had to ask people about being in my wedding party.I had originally had this great plan to send them a cute little card or a video message or something, but yeah. That takes time, and I was on a very short supply on that. I saw one of my peeps in a dinner situation and i kind of just awkwardly blurted it out– like, hey, so I’ve got this thing, and I’m kinda of like, getting married, and so…. She said yes, thank God. For my sister, it was via text. She lives in Texas, we always text message, so this seemed suitable. She also said yes. Woo. 2 for 2. I almost called BM no.3 but I was tired and in a grouchy mood, so I wrote her an email with song lyrics of “won’t you be my bridesmaid.” I’m lucky that my friends & sister love me enough to say yes to being a bridesmaid and for putting up with my ridiculousness, because I mean come on— antisocial much?

I figure I’ll make it up to them somehow. I promise, ladies, to not do anything cheesy, ridiculous, or act too much the bridezilla.  I’ll be soooo nice, I promise.

Really!

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May 19, 2010 What’s up with all the anxiety

Current, post, prospective brides: dudes, tell me please– what is up with all the “engaged” anxiety.

In the past few weeks, I’ve dreamed that my ring broke (the metal got soft and broke everywhere), that our church wouldn’t marry us, that my dress (which I don’t even have) fell off, and last night I had a dream that we were on our honeymoon that had these weird shower/bath things and creatures were coming out of the drainage pipes– one of which had razor-sharp spikes & attacked me. Ouch!

I don’t know what is up with the anxiety. I feel like 12 months won’t be enough time to plan (or save the small fortune  for our little shindig), that my colors suck, my ideas suck, and I just want to run and jump off a cliff or get attacked by some spiny creature that will maim my face.  I just don’t know how to cope. I cut down on caffeine (with hopes it would make me less jittery) and now I’m just tired all the time. The more I think about it the more I really want my dream wedding from childhood: a beach wedding with no frills and no fanfare. But like anything, I know that is just wishful thinking, because no wedding is stress free.

So…any advice on how to not be a total anxious basket case in the early development stages of engagement?

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May 17, 2010 Ok! No more hiatuses!

Gah, like when life gets too crazy to blog, you know that life is just tooo crazy. The day I wrote my last blog, with the teaser of “I’m engaged!”  was the day of the beginning of the historic Nashville flooding.  My heart goes out to every person touched by these floods, and you are all in my thoughts & prayers as our brave state marches to recovery.

The past few weeks have most definitely been a wonderful whirlwind. Getting engaged– oh, how lovely. I underestimated how time consuming the simple process of engagement is. First of all, you waste hours upon hours staring lovingly and with stars in your eyes at your ring. It’s an obsessive-compulsive thing. Driving: oy! see ring. It’s so shiny! It’s so distracting. Walking around– ring catches sunlight and is so sparkly. Ahhhh, it’s a beautiful kind of madness, but I’m pretty sure that I’ve lost a good 4-5 days of my life to time spent staring. In addition to stare time, there’s also the fact that you are going out, seeing people, celebrating your engagement. I thought it would be ideal to take at least a month off from wedding planning (After all, I had accomplished quite a bit in the pre-engagement stages) and now I’m like stuck at zero in planning. I am going to hold off for a few more weeks and not really resume until I have a wedding free weekend when I can spend a few quality hours with my planning workbook and be focused on coming up with some stuff.

I’ve also encountered the post-engagement frazzle of how nothing I previously had found dreamy (in terms of decor, etc) is really working for me now. I want to go and change everything, which is so terribly counter-productive but it seems like it’s a normal madding trait of engagement. I want to be focused and sold on the same things I was sold on before, but alas– I’m not. And then there’s the terrible little issue of the budget. It’s an amorphous blob floating around without form, shape, or definition. ARGG!

But, all that being said, I am now going to be back on track with the whole regular blogging thing. Like drinking 8 ounces of water a day and thinking about ways to improve my fitness in the next little over 365 days, I am going to be blogging my little newly engaged heart out. I hope you’ve not run off in frustration from my sad lack of posting 🙂

Ok, friends. More from me soon (and I really do mean it this time!)

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May 1, 2010 I’ve been away a bit but…

Ok, so I was gone for a lil while. Basically, I’ve been spazzing out since April 13, when I was ambushed to be on TLC’s  What Not to Wear. I got back from NYC yesterday with a new attitude and new lease on life, and I can’t wait to share the tale of my journey with you all. But the best thing about my very crazy and incredible week is that it culminated in the most wonderful and unexpected thing: A PROPOSAL!!!

I will be sure to relay the entire story with pictures and everything like that, because OMG comeon, you KNOW you want to read about it. Until then, this is the epic teasers of all teasers. I’m engaged, it’s my dream ring, and I have the BEST FIANCE IN THE WORLD. Period. Shouting it from the rooftops.

And I look freaking amazing too! Stacy and Clinton …xoxo. I am sooo happy right now.

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April 14, 2010 26 days til the big 31

I turn 31 on May 10. You may recall I had high hopes of being engaged by that date, but unfortunately that is probably not going to happen. I have weddings & events every weekend (so no fancy evening out on the town in near future) and there’s no blips on my ring-hunting radar. Obsessed much? Yes, yes I am. Thank you!

When I shared my deadline with FFI he shared with me that this ring of mine is going to not be ready for some time. He did let me know that it was designed & in PRODUCTION, but the design production stuff is pretty time consuming, so I guess I have FALL to look forward to. Sad day. But, I am learning to let go of this sadness and embrace positivity. We’re planning anyway, we booked a photographer, we have things in play for the big day… so I can be patient and wait on my darling ring to be officially engaged. I am so chill and cool with this, can’t you tell? I’m so mature.

Ladies, before you were engaged did you ever find yourself loving looking at your left ring finger with a bit of wistful longing, like “oh my, that finger is so empty. I wish I could bedazzle it to make it feel more full and lovely.” I do find myself doing that a lot. I know it’s “wishful thinking” but I like my wishful thinking. I am taking each day as it comes, and lately it’s been unexpectedly lovely so I can’t really complain about life. I can just face that in 26 days I won’t be officially engaged, and this is me, your dear and darling Renegade Bride, saying she’s cool with it.

Now, off to find a ring finger bedazzler. I’m maybe cool with it, but my that hand does look awfully empty.

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April 14, 2010 For the love of cake

I’ve been easily distracted lately with real life, so I thought I’d post something fun, frivilous, and delicious: cake! Sweets rule, right? I love cake. So does FFI. He thinks cake is really high up there, much like myself.  I was thinking of cake designs and here’s a few that I love. Thank you, Style Me Pretty. I heart you.

I love the ruffly nature of this cake, it has such amazing texture. I also love the pretty little flowers. and the cake stand. BTW my dog seems pretty disgruntled about me moving while I surf the interwebs. He seems to think I was made to be his personal pillow device. Sorry, puppy. Gah.

That’s just a cool cake on a cool stand. It’s not so much my style for the wedding, but I do love this cake–it’s rich, unique, ornate.

This cake just rocks my socks off. The sugar anemones are killer:

I think this one is closest to the idea/motif I want to incorporate. I like the dome-y shape of all the above cakes (not so sure about technical cake terms here), and I know I want to do a butter-yellow tinted fondant. Then, I want to have a piping in a floral chantilly lace motif. I think…

Isn’t that lovely? Now, time to think about flavors….

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April 7, 2010 Stuff I like: The Flashdance

I don’t know what it is about me, but I love Californian Wedding vendors. I have found several So.Cal vendors I’d love to use for our wedding, and one of these is the Flashdance I love the Human Jukebox (the DJ) I’ve spent all morning getting down to the DJ Mixes (they come out every monthish) and they rock). Currently I’m listening to the Broke Ass Bride/Fresh Hubby mix (in particular, track #3 “To Zion”

Music is a huge thing to me, I’m seriously into it. Growing up, I was a member of all sorts of choirs and had entertained the idea of being an opera singer (second soprano) before I came to the realization that I don’t quite have the vocal range needed for such a job. I’m a sing-alonger (you can often find me in my car, jamming out, or walking down the street singing a song). I love music; there’s not really a genre I’m most attached to, and day to day I change from Big Band to 1970s to modern indie rock. One of the first things I adored about FFI was that he seemed to share my interest in a broad range of music– I loved that he had a bazillion songs on his itunes and was always acquiring new tunes.  Music makes me happy, so it made sense that music would make the man I love the most happy, too 😀

In the wedding vendor pursuit, I’ve found that for me and FFI we have a few expectations about what we want– we want to work with amazing vendors to create a truly amazing day. Many of these fabulous people are here in middle tennessee, but some we’re importing in for our day– with so much wedding content out there in the world, it’s easy to see how you could fall in love with someone across the country or beyond.  The main thing I want, as a bride, is to create a day that is unique, innovative, different, amazing– something that’s so memorable in it’s uniqueness that it makes you look back on the day and think, “that was really something.” I’m an overachiever. Go big or go home.

What I like about the Flashdance– well, a few things. One, their philospophy: ” We are not caught up in temporary trends or fashions (though we are fascinated by them!) we are not bogged down by arrogance and ego (we make fun of it!) We like house parties, and good art! We combine a DIY aesthetic with award winning production & design.”  <– love it. And what else I like, from their Music/DJ section:

“I AM NOT going to tell corny jokes on the mic
I AM NOT going to play trance at your wedding!
I AM NOT going to play desperate, crappy disco to try to “Please everyone”
I AM NOT GOING TO PLAY DESPERATE CRAPPY ANYTHING!
I AM NOT going to be an ego driven “artist” and only play what “I” want to hear
I AM NOT going to be a shitty wedding DJ!
I AM NOT going to play thug hip hop at your dinner (unless of course…)
I AM NOT going to play ipods/cds

I AM gonna play VINYL (remember that format?)
I AM going to play the perfect music for the mood of the people in attendance.
I AM going to be able to read the crowd and build the energy accordingly.
I AM going to seemlessly blend from dinner to dance party
I AM going to make you dance your ass off.
I AM going to make you laugh
I AM going to make you cry
I AM going to make your friends jealous.
I AM going to create lifelong memories…”

Too cool. That’s my idea of an awesome DJ: creating a great experience for those in attendance.

I dropped them a line to see what their rates are for travel/coverage of a wedding. We’re torn between a band and a DJ (I’m leaning toward DJ– just because I think a great DJ can keep people on the floor all night long, and I love that). Thoughts?

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April 7, 2010 Ugh. Hello, ugly black boot.

This past weekend, I fell into a hole of sorts. We’ll just summarize with the fact that there was a drainage ditch in a parking lot that someone lovingly covered up with a long, orange-brown rug. It was wedding-appropriate for these peeps wedding, so they covered up this long gaping hole in a parking lot in front of a buffet table with a rug. I was working said wedding and stepped into the hole.  What followed became a poetic-like tragedy: I twisted my ankle.

The pain was intense, but brief. I had work to do assisting FFI as photographers assistant, and I had no time to feel pain. So I bucked up, popped a few advil, and kept on moving. It was within the first 20 minutes of the reception, and we had four hours left, and I had no ability to whine and cry. Besides, I’m admittedly a clumsy person. I’ve twisted my ankle at least a million and ten times. How bad could it be, right?

When I got home, I took off my shoes and admired the swollen goodness of my ankle. It looked like a baseball had crawled beneath my skin. I thought, “self, you walked on this too much!” and then went to bed. I woke up with pain. The kind that comes from a really swollen ankle. But it was Easter, and I had no time for feeling sorry for myself. Just a silly sprained ankle. I bought an ace bandange and put some peas on the swelling and told myself to buck up. This ankle is a perfect representation of what my ankle looks like:

Gross, right?

I hobbled it up to work Monday and tried to hang tough, singing New Kids all day. It kept getting more and more swollen, and more and more painful. I googled sprained ankle. I consumed information like a fiend, reading about how I was doing everything right. I was RICE-ing. I was trying to keep off it as much as possible. I was rocking flip flops instead of tennies (my bloated foot could not fit in it). Monday night I self medicated with whiskey and ginger ale and copious amounts of Advil. Should have done SOMETHING to dull my pain, right? No.

Yesterday, I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to go to the doctor. I figured that he could tell me why I sucked at the ace bandage or something. I arrive, and he wants to do xrays. They have to manhandle the hell out of your foot to take said x-rays. “Ok, now stretch you foot, point your toe, and roll your ankle this way.” Or my favorite, balance yourself on your fingers and step on the film. I got lots of magical pictures taken while exposed to radiology that will most assuredly result in the deformed children I’ll one day have.

Dr. goes to read the x-rays. Let me tell you, I ❤ this doctor. He’s awesome, nice, worked doing some relief work in Haiti. He’s nice, knowledable, whistled at the extent of my swolleness. He asked how I was able to deal w ith the pain. I shrugged. I have a high tolerance.

He comes back. Tells me that there’s a weird spot on the x-ray that makes him think there’s a hairline fracture. Just a little one, not anything to worry too much about. He gets a fancy boot and some ace bandange and gives me a prescription for pain pills and tells me I need crutches. Crutches.

So, today I venture out into the world with crutches and my boot. I’m going to decorate it with some bedazzle-beads, puff paint, and some assorted other things so I feel like a princess instead of a limping hazard to myself. I asked the Dr. if I really needed crutches, because I was afraid I might be too clumsy in them and invariably end up falling and breaking an arm. He didn’t believe I was that clumsy…or maybe I’m just cursed.

Anyway, next little bit I’m pretty much on slowdown mode. Woo.

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April 5, 2010 Dress Shopping: Round One

So… I did a little preliminary dress shopping this past Friday. The reason: Monique Lhullier trunk show. Can you blame me for not being able to resist the sweet, sweet pull of ML herself? No, no you cannot. Her entire Fall 2010 Collection awaited my eager hands. I rounded up my girls (not my girls, girls– those are unofficial & not yet named) and we headed to the best place in the world to look upon loveliness. The day: beautiful. Endless blue skies, no clouds to speak of,  80 degrees of amazingness. I entered into the hallowed halls of the Bride Room with a nervous, eager anticipation, and then the choirs of angels began: Monique, Monique, Monique.

I’ll be honest here: I hate shopping. Generally, the experience is fairly negative, in that I feel pretty awful about myself, my body, and my choice of clothing. What’s so cool about trying on gowns is that you are placed into these lovely gowns and then you are clipped up and made to look perfect within them. Cool, right? Yeah, i know. And there’s just *something* about couture. No mass market cheaply constructed crap materials here. It’s all lace and loveliness.

So, I tried on a variety of awesome. There’s a no-pic rule (bummer, but makes sense) in the store, so I have to rely on my friend, the interwebs, to provide images. The funny thing is that I learned a few things that I thought I’d share:

1. The way the dress looks online/in pictures does not do it justice IRL: I had several gowns I thought would look one way and then when I saw them they were something else entirely.

2. ML makes her bust cup size for a B cup. I totally blasted out of that one. Luckily, she does make a custom bust-fit alteration when you order your gown

3.  Your memory is crap. Write down the dresses you tried on, because now that I’m trying to remember some of them ( I remember the way they looked on me, not the way they look online) I am not sure if they’re exactly what I thought I remembered and my memory is a hazy thing clouded by the sweet euphoria of MONIQUE LHULLIER WEDDING DRESSES.

I’m pretty sure that the first dress I tried on was Agnes. Agnes is a “Ivory re-embroidered lace sheath gown with Juliet neckline, open back and trumpet skirt” I love the sleeves. I love Agnes:

I really felt that the sheath lace dress was going to be “it” for me: i love lace, love the look of it– so I tried on something a lot like Ingrid, pictured below (sans the little hat)


Either way, it was not really for me. It was a gorgeous gown, but I felt like I looked a million years old. I may be 30, but I’m not a million.

The second dress I tried on was “the dress” You know. You see it on Say Yes to The Dress all the time, the zen aha “THIS IS THE MOST AMAZING, WONDERFUL, FANTASTICAL dress ever. I felt that way, I really did. FFI. Stop Reading. I didn’t buy this dress (because I’ll have to sell everything I own) but I don’t want you to know what it is or what it looks like. So, go away.

To further make him go, how about a quick kitten interlude:

Gosh, that was cute. I sometimes think about how darling kittens -as -wedding-centerpieces would look. Yes, they’d eventually move around, but wow…adorable.

Anyway, so the dress. THE DRESS. Let me just say that I have never felt more beautiful, wonderful, fantastic, amazing, happy and elated in an outfit in MY ENTIRE LIFE. and i’ve lived awhile now, 10,950+ days. It was a moment close to what i’d imagine entering into the pearly gates of heaven is like, or maybe the joy I’ll feel on the day I marry FFI.

FFI– you best have gone away now.

The dress, <– you’ll have to click, not going to put the picture on the blog. Duh. Her name is “Edith” If I ever win the lottery, me and edith are going to have a lovely life. She’s going to have a lovely sash in sage green along with some awesometastic bling added. I really, really, really love the lace detail, and as a result– I have made the decision that this pattern, the lace pattern of Edith– is the major cornerstone of the overall design pattern for my wedding. It’s that simple folks. You meet, fall in love, and then Edith is part of your life forever. If I can’t have her, then I’m going to have her memory kept close to my heart.

As my ultimate accessory, I tried on a veil by Tony Federici that is to die for– Chantilly Lace (swoon), gauzy and romantic:
Now, how does one come off this bridal gown high and come back down to earth. I have no idea, and I’m not sure I really want to!

Thanks to style me pretty look book for monique-images 😀

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April 2, 2010 Budget Week: The Pain

When it comes to our budget, one thing I failed to really mention is how painful it is work on. It’s not that I don’t value the cost of every single little nuance of our budget, I do, but it doesn’t make the heft of it hurt any less. I think the main reason that I find it most painful is that we refuse to go into debt over our wedding. I think that may be a lofty goal, but we’re determined to actually do that– as in not go into debt.

Being in the industry, we kind of know how much stuff costs. And while everybody says “weddings are expensive,” we also know that our friends & colleagues are charging prices that they need to charge to pay their bills, feed their families, and keep their lights on, etc– because it’s what we do for a living.  So, to clarify: we’re not balking over the cost of things, it’s just the bottom line that’s making us a bit…well, feeling the burn. The budget burn.

Like yesterday, I just wrote our prospective photographer (whoo-hoo, I danced around the room when I found out that he was available–will wait to post a tribute to my/our love for him once it’s a done deal), and I was looking over packages and I was like, we’ll I’d be crazy not to go with this package (even though I know that FFI is going to shoot me for wanting this package). This package is MORE than a year of car payments.  But it’s worth it. When I rate my priorities, this is how they fall:

– Photographer (gotta be awesome)

– Food & bev (uh, notice the above awesome theme…)

– Decor & Personalization (also, awesome)

– awesome entertainment & fun!

Everything else is kind of secondary. I want it to be a spectacular, wonderful, thrilling party that will go down as a wonderful, thrilling night. A night to remember, so to speak. What’s so wrong with that?

What’s wrong with it is the freaking budget. FFI is probably going to kill me (or break up with me, or not really ask me to marry him) because I’m putting him through hell over this wedding. I want to see statistics on how many people break up because of the stress of the wedding planning process. It’s all well and good when you’re theorizing about getting married. Everything is idealized and wonderful and sweet. It’s a ” one day, when we’re getting married…” and everything is rose colored glasses and  hypothetically great. And then, then you really start planning and you see that it’s really pricey, and you have to have discussions about guest counts, alcohol consumption, and prioritizing figures. Last night, my friend offered some really good advice– she said to look at each person as a figure. Each guest is costing XX dollars. Right now that number is kinda scary. Mostly because our guest list has gotten (somehow) to 211 people. That’s a lot of people.

So, readers, what do you think? Should I go ahead and embrace FFI’s cover charge idea or just deal with the fact that our nuptials are going to be epically expensive and that’s just how it is. OR, should I just go ahead and start whoring myself on the street. FFI could whore too, he’s pretty good looking…

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