A Wedding Weekend

We dedicated last weekend to our house. Now this weekend will be dedicated to wedding stuff.

Today we're meeting with the church musician to pick out our ceremony songs. I already have a pretty good list, but I'm eager to hear what else the musician suggests.

This also got me thinking of reception songs. I'm putting together a dinner playlist. I have a good handle on it, but would greatly appreciate any recommendations.

Saturday night we'll be doing some work on Fiance's cabin -- the scene of our country casual rehearsal dinner hoedown. Sometimes I think that party might actually be more fun than the wedding.

Then on Sunday we're taking engagement pics. I didn't particularly want to do this, but it's part of our wedding photography package. Plus the photographer wants to work with us prior to the wedding so everybody is comfortable on the big day.

I'll admit, I'm not taking the photo shoot too seriously. We're just planning to have some fun with it. Weather permitting, we might even paddle around in Fiance's canoe instead of traditional studio shots. I've yet to ride in his canoe, so this could be interesting.

At some point, I'm also hoping to squeeze in time to research things we must see and do while we're on our honeymoon in Hawaii. I've heard you have to book some things prior to arriving on the island, so I don't want to miss any opportunities.

Has anybody ever been to Maui? I'd appreciate any advice, recommendations, travel tips, etc.

So I need dinner song recommendations and Hawaii advice. Ready, go!

It fits!

I had my first dress fitting last night! So exciting.

Recently, I've been watching a little too much Say Yes to the Dress. They always end with some sort of drama downstairs in alterations. So now I have a fear of alterations gone wrong. Needless to say, it was a major relief to see that the alterations were really minor.

I'm quite tall, 5'10 give or take, which is tall enough that my dress doesn't even need to be hemmed. In fact, I plan to wear flats (for numerous reasons, my clumsy nature one of them), but if I had wanted to wear heels, they would have had to lengthen my dress when it was being made.

The good news is it doesn't need to be taken in at all. The even better news is that it doesn't need to be let out. They really only have to shorten the halter strap a little bit and add a bustle.

Apparently that bustle is critical for the reception. As the alterations lady said, "you don't want somebody to step on your dress while you're dancing and rip the entire thing right off." Yes, it would be good if we could avoid that scenario.

How many days until Sept 25? I'm getting really excited!

Colors. Colors. Colors.

Every bride knows they’re a critical part to the wedding planning. But what if you’re indecisive and don’t really care?

I thought I had that figured out – let my bridesmaids pick their own dresses and they’ll indirectly make the color decision for me.

Fooled me. Sister and Cousin selected an absolutely gorgeous, fitted dress with an empire waist and a cap sleeve. And they decided to order it in taupe. Just like that I was back to square one.

Not letting her off the hook that easily, I went out for coffee with Sister (& moh) to discuss wedding colors. We were just sitting down at Starbucks when the Komodo Dragon Blend caught our eye. The packaging incorporated deep shades of purple and red. Definitely wouldn’t have come up with that on my own, but absolutely loved the idea.

If you’re in the same boat – just look around for inspiration. There are examples of excellent color palates – and not so excellent ones – absolutely everywhere.

I got even more excited when I was in New York with two my college friends and saw an orchid with a purple center. Then everything started coming together. The orchids for my bouquet. And variety of dark purple and red flowers for my bridesmaids, which should be pretty dramatic against their taupe dresses.

Excited!