46 days and counting

Wow! I'm getting married in 46 days...

When we got engaged in March 2011, our June 9, 2012 wedding day seemed SO far away.  Not so far away now.  Yesterday I did some last minute things.

• Set up appt to finalize the Rehearsal Dinner plans
• Took Ring Bearer and Dad off tux listing
• Changed tuxes to white shirts, because my dress is not really "ivory" (side note: Do you KNOW how many freaking shades of Ivory there are?  I do now - do your self a favor, make sure you have a swatch of your dress, the bridesmaid dress in your purse at all times! This has been a savior for me sooo many times over the past couple of months!)
• called the caterer and made final appointment to go over quote and finalize everything.
• called some of the people who did not RSVP.

RSVP'ing.  From now on I will ALWAYS RSVP right away, not leave the invite sitting out forever.  This is huge in the planning of your wedding.  We are at about 160 people.  I still have 30 people who have not RSVP'ed.  I hate that and now know how every other bride felt when I called 2 days after the fact or mailed the day of the deadline.  I will not do this any more!

I have 4 more weeks of classes and then I'm done until August.  It will be nice to have a break for a little while. I have been taking 2 classes every week with only a 1 week break in between since Feb 2011.  I graduate in Nov 2013. I'm pretty excited that I will have my bachelors degree in little over a year.  I just need to make some decisions on what I'm going to do once I have my degree.  I really want to go for my masters, so that I can teach and be a counselor, but I don't know that it will be a possibility with the cost of it.  Granted, I'm using loans, but those loans all have to be paid back eventually!

Blended Families

After I'm married we will be what I is called a "blended" family. I already consider us a family - blended or not, as we have been living together for about 5 years now.  My fiance will be come my son's official step-dad when we get married. For us this is not a "real" issue, because all of us (fiance, son & myself) consider him to be my son's step-dad.  But it will be nice for him to officially claim the title.  My son's father has never been supportive of my fiance's and son's relationship - if anything, he has tried to make it harder on my son. There are many issues that can arise from this type of situation, most of them we have dealt with in the past.  Things like my son's father not being happy about my fiance being in my son's life and things like that. 

There are many issues that we seem to have as my son goes back and forth between his father's house and home, but I think that is to be expected.  Especially when there are 2 very different people doing the parenting.  

The issues that I think are real and important, seem to be the ones that I never really expected to happen.  One of those is when my fiance's brother & his wife had a baby.  This in it's self is not the issue, in fact it was a very happy event that we were all looking forward to.  The issue is when that child's grandparents (my fiance's parents) start saying that the baby is their "only" grandchild. 

I thought that my soon-to-be in-laws all thought of my son as their grandchild.  He has been around for over 5 years now, and there have been times when they have referred to themselves as his grandparents, but now I see facebook postings and comments are made about how this new baby is their "only" grandchild.  Another time the comment was made that my son wouldn't be their "grandchild" until my fiance and I were married.

For probably about 2-3 years now, my son has really looked at these people at his grandparents.  It did take some time before he really thought of them as that, rather than my fiance's parents.  Now he hears these comments about the new baby being their only grandchild and how he isn't their grandchild until the wedding.  I would have thought they would be more considerate of the situation, especially since my fiance's parent are divorced and both remarried.

What can you do about this situation besides just accept it and move on? Then I start thinking of things that might make this a bigger issue.  What about when we have children together - are they going to make the same comments?  If so, will they realize how much they hurt my son?

My parents divorced when I was about 11-12 years old.  My father proceeded to have a whole new family with his new girlfriend (eventual wife).  When he did this, there was a large separation between those children and my sister/brother.  The separation wasn't just age or mother - it was the way my father treated, acted and reacted to all of us.  It was very apparent in the way he spoke that he was separating us.  he would call my sister and I "the girls", where as the new children were call "my kids" or "my babies".  That might not seem like much, but to a 14 year old girl whose father no longer lived with her, it was a huge separation between these families.

I don't want my son to ever feel that type of separation, but I don't know how to go about it.  Hopefully as I have more children with my fiance, I will be able to see if my son feels this way or not.

The First Wedding Dress Fitting

I was so excited to go to my first wedding dress fitting! I was also very anxious and worried.  I bought the dress in May 2011, it came in July 2011 and not in April 2012, I was going to have to fit in it!!! Granted, I had been working out and trying to lose/maintain my weight, but I had some major set backs.

When I first got engaged I decided that I wanted to lose at least 20 pounds by my wedding day - I was about 155 pounds! (The biggest that I had ever been!) I started a weight lose program that I basically came up with myself - eating less, and working out alot!  It helped, but I think in an unhealthy way.  Then July 2011 came and we went to MN for a week.  That totally ruined it for me because I ate everything and didn't work out at all.  When we came home I was very not motivated to start working out again and I ended up gaining every single pound back!!  I was 143 when I bought the dress and it pretty much fit me like a glove.

Jan 2012 rolls around and I am 158 pounds - no way is that dress going to fit.  My sister and I decided to do this "Biggest Loser" contest.  We both were fairly committed to it and ended up taking 4 & 5th place.  Yay, us!  We did this by eating more fruits & veggies, working out daily (taking 1 day off a week) - work out would be 30-45 minutes of cardio and any where between 10-30 minutes of weights. This seemed to be a more healthy way of doing it, rather than just cutting calories and being hungry alot.

At my first bridal fitting I was 144 pounds, but my body was definitely different.  My waist line is smaller than it was before.  The corset was perfect in May 2011 - the standard 4 inches apart.  Now it is barely 1 inch apart. 

I am certainly proud of myself that I lost the weight and I'm doing much better.  I decided that I will try to continue to maintain the weight loss until after the wedding and then I can start trying to lose a little more.  Now that the dress is perfect, we don't want to screw that up!!

I was a little worried that my dress would be "too much" or over the top, after it was sitting in a closet for almost a year.  But at the fitting, when I put it on, I was once again sure that I had picked the perfect dress!

Here are some photos.

The back

The Shoes

The Perfect Wedding Dress

I was engaged about a month when we decided on a wedding date.  Then I felt like I needed to start looking for a dress, ceremony & reception site, caterer, photographer and everything else.  I already knew who my bridesmaids were going to be - that was the easiest part!  I started buying magazines to look at dresses and color schemes.

There was one dress that I kept seeing over and over again in the magazines and I fell in love with it. This is that dress...

This dress is the original Disney Belle Dress from Alfred Angelo.  I say original, because there is a new one that came out a few months ago.  I searched all over Iowa for a bridal shop that had these dresses, apparently just becasue the shop carries Alfred Angelo, doesn't mean they carry the Disney Princess Dresses. (click here to see all the dresses!!)

I finally found a bridal shop that was close to me - haha, it was actually in the town that I lived in. I never knew the shop was there, but I saw an advertisement saying they were having a trunk show.  I scheduled my appointment for that weekend!

I went into the bridal shop, knowing that this is a great dress, but it was very unlikely to look great on me, as I'm not a size 4 model. The bridal shop girl, Melissa, was wonderful.  I told her why I really came in, to look at this dress, try it on and just see.  I only took my sister with me, because I didn't want a huge crowd and I knew that she would be the most honest and tell me how I really looked!

I recently went to a wedding where the bride's boobs were popping out of the dress - not just "popping out, they may come out", but popping out so much that my family was taking bets on when it would happen! So I made sure that I could get a HONEST opinion from the person I brought with.  I would recommend to anyone shopping - start with one or two people who are going to tell you the TRUTH, then go back after you have narrowed your choices down with anyone else that you want to feel included in the decision making process.

Melissa gave me 5 purple rings to put on dresses that I liked.  So my sis and I went looking. There were some REALLY awful, some REALLY beautiful and some REALLY expensive dresses.  The max I wanted to spend was $1,000 - that was my live or die limit.  I really wanted to spend about $500 - I mean come on, I will only wear this things once...but then again everyonkept saying - you are only going to get married once too!  So I figured that between $500-1,000 was an o.k. range to spend. 

I choose 5 dresses that were a little similar to the Disney Belle dress - mostly a ball gown type thing that is really frilly and femine.  That is what I thought I would want for sure.  Plus I thought a fit and flare or a-line dress would look horrible on me. (Look at me - talking wedding dress shapes and stuff! Whoo! Totally not something I have ever done before.)  I tried on the Belle dress first.  My sister and Melissa were wowed!  I was shocked at how good I thought it looked.  I was jumping for joy inside - the magazine dress looked good on me and it was a size 8!!! Rock star me, right?? 

Melissa told me that I needed to try on the other dresses - that she wanted me to "KNOW" that was my wedding dress.  I tried on all the others, but none were as special as the Belle dress.  I ended up trying on over 20 dresses that day with Melissa's help - she just kept bring them on - made me try on all types and styles.  I was very happy with Melissa for that, because she helped me make sure the dress I picked was the right one. 

As I'm sure you can tell from how this story is going, the Belle dress was the winner.  There is one that I felt was a good second choice.  I ended up rounding up my sister, mom, soon-to-be mother in law and 3 of the bridesmaids to show them the dress. His aunt was in town, so she joined in the fun too.

I tried on the "other" dress first.  Everyone oooh'ed and awe'ed about it.  Then I tried on the Belle dress. My mom caught sight of me before I came out of the dressing room and just gasped!  Then I came out and everyone was sure this was the dress. There was no mistake about it.  I decided to go ahead and order it.  I got it 25% off, so it was about $800 - over my $500, but under the $1,000. I was pretty happy with the price of the dress.  They told me that it would take up to 6 months for my dress.  I ordered it the 3rd weekend in May. I had it just after the 4th of July!  So it did not take long at all.  After picking up my dress, I took it to my mother's and it has been living there ever since.

My wedding is 2 months away today.  I have my first fitting with the dress on Thursday.  I'm so excited!!

The other dress that I tried on looked a little like this Justin Alexander dress - it did have a little more bling on the corset top...

Happy day to everyone!!

67 days and counting

Wow! I'm actually getting married. Sometimes I look at my life and I'm really surprised at where I am. I never thought I would actually get married. I hoped, of course, but never thought it would happen.

I have decided that I never want to do it again after some of my experiences. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I'm marrying my fiance, but everything that a wedding entails - if I had to do it again, I would probably just go to Vegas or get married on a beach somewhere far away. We have spend over $15,000 so far and will probably spend atleast $5,000 more!!

Background on us: We have been together 5 year as of Jan 2012. We move in together offically in 7-07m but more realistically the end of 4-07. We met on New Year's Eve 06 in a bar. Yes, I am marrying a man that I met in a bar. We actually didn't meet through friends either. He was sitting at the bar with his friends; I walked in with my friends and ended up sitting down next to him. He started talking to me and then the rest was history.

We got engaged in 3-11 on a weekend trip. I'm not really sure how or why we choose to get married in June - partly because neither of us wanted to get married in a church and we both liked the idea of getting married outdoors somewhere.

The first place I wanted to get married was a winery. It was so beautiful and green - it would have been a great place to get married. Sadly, my fiance could not make up his mind and then they told me they were booked for all of June! We couldn't change our wedding date, because that was one of the only weekends we had my son and I could be 100% sure that my son's father wouldn't demand him for the week. I was sooo upset and sad about losing that place that I think my fiance finally realized "yes this wedding is a year away, but we really need to start making decisions and planning, otherwise there won't be many places left to choose from!"

The next place that we saw for the ceremony was the Rose Garden. I was completely in love with this idea (less flowers to purchase, for sure!!!)! A friend of mne proposed it as an alternative to my first love, the winery. It was great, becasue in June (hopefully with a REALLY hard or mild winter and EARLY spring) the roses would be in full bloom. Getting the place was an ordeal. We couldn't reserve it until that same day, one year in advance. My fiance was at their office and I was on the phone - thankfully, we got the place! I was more than a little excited that we got it!