I am officially a bride...

now that I have my dress. Yes, today I went in for my third and final fitting at Amy Kuschel's flagship store in San Francisco. She is so beautiful, but was actually a tad imperfect when I tried her on. The only embellishment on it was put in the wrong spot. However, since they make all their dresses on the floor above their showroom, it was just a short 10 minute wait for me to have my dress to take home.

Fifth floor showroom and sixth floor design studio
(credit Uplift Photography)

I cannot stress how pleasant this whole process has been. The staff there are just impeccable. I felt like I was special (without having my butt kissed) throughout the whole process... trying on, buying, and all the fittings. I have found that it is super common for wedding people to treat you great right up until after you sign your contract and then all bets are off. Not here.

This was by far my biggest wedding splurge thanks to my wonderful parents. And in the end, I think I got a deal of a lifetime. Honestly, the price can't be beat considering the dress is made in San Fransisco with wonderful natural materials, and fits my shorty self to a "T".

So now, she is hanging in my closet, which is now off limits to the Gaia Monster. Check her out...

how do you like that name?

This is all you get of the final product until D-day

Thanks mom and dad!!!!!

Unsettled thoughts

Most of our friends are still struggling graduate students or at the beginning of their careers. And as the majority of them live in other states and even other countries, we anticipated that making such a trip to our wedding would be difficult in terms of their time commitments and monetary restrictions. However, what I did not expect (and I say I because dear Ralph is not surprised in the least) was that several of my family members are choosing not to come. Some hurt more than others. It probably bothers me so much because the biggest reason Ralph and I are even doing this whole thing is to formally celebrate our happiness with our families.

What I am conflicted most with is how to convey how distraught I am at what I perceive as my (yes, they are all from mine) family members' lack of caring. I honestly don't know how to let them know other than being formal with my thank you note... "thank you...... we wish you could have been there... yada yada yada..." Very unsettled indeed.

However, be rest assured that I am looking on the bright side of things.

I gave in to the DIY world of weddings

I told myself that I would try to keep things simple, but man, I got sucked in. I told myself that I did not have to print on a piece of paper what was going on during our ceremony (aka The Ceremony Programs), that it was a waste of paper. I mean, certainly people have been to a wedding before and generally know what is going on. But then, I thought, hmmmm... there are an awful lot of women here, people are going to wonder who is who, and for that matter, who is that girl reading that poetry, and what is she reading? And I thought, that some of those moms might want a keepsake from the wedding. And then I thought, well it is just one more thing, it won't take long to make. Hmph!

I also told myself that a decorated aisle runner was totally unnecessary. I mean, what do you do with it when you are done? Then I met our DOC a few weeks ago and I broke the news to her.... (a) we are using basic banquet chairs without chair covers (shutter), (b) we are not having an arch, (c) we are not decorating anything for the ceremony, and finally (d) that includes the aisle runner.

See, look how pretty our ceremony site is without decorations and stuff.

It was only D that made her slightly downtrodden. So, since I had already made an emergency flight back to Miami to take care of wedding business, I decided to decorate that damn aisle runner the morning of my flight home back to CA.

And so, here are my instructions for other brides that don't feel like shelling out $80+ on one...

(1) Make your design. I used powerpoint to make this...

(2) Measure the width of your aisle runner to determine the size of your finished monogram. At first, I thought it should be 1/2 the width of the aisle runner - WRONG. That was way too small. I would say about 2/3 the width is good.

(3) Resize your design in your program. For Powerpoint, go to File --> Page Setup and enter your correct dimensions. It should automatically resize everything to scale. I then saved the file as a PNG file (I really don't know why, but I did)

(4) Get it to a printer friendly program. For me, that was Excel. I went to Insert --> Picture and inserted that PNG file into there. Then I printed in grayscale. It will print in mulitple pages (I couldn't get Powerpoint to do this).

(5) Cut the pages, align, and tape them together

This is the smaller version that I ended up scrapping

(6) Place the taped pages under the runner and secure well with tape that you have predetermined to be removedable without damaging the runner.

(7) Using a toothpick, outline the runner with your paint. I used craft paint from Michael's. This is kinda nessesary to have a nice finished edge.

(8) Fill in with a brush, if you have a steady hand. Otherwise fill in with the toothpick. I luckily have a steady hand.

The finished product

(9) DO NOT SPILL IT ON THE RUNNER! If so, we found that blotting with concetrated all purpose cleaner (Mrs. Meyers) and then LIGHTLY painting over it with Whiteout worked ok.

We fixed it pretty well

(10) Remove the paper from underneath the runner. The question really should be when should you do this. We waited until the paint was dry to the soft touch, however, the paper stuck to the aisle runner and was a pain to remove. If you remove it while it was wet, I am afraid that the paint will stain anything else that is left underneath it while it dries.

(11) If you are like me... thank you mom profusely. Between the two of us it took us a good 4.5 hours to outline, paint, and then figure out how to fix our boo boos.

Total cost was $16....~$11 for the runner, $2.25 for paint (which I already owned but was in CA), $2.00 for a thin brush, and, of course, the bonding time with mom was priceless. I also got all these supplies at Michael's when they had 40% off coupons (the trick is that you print out multiple ones and make your family come with you).

So what will do with this thing? Well I decided that we will have a little decor in there. How about a few rose petals down the sides of the aisle. Sorta like this.....

Yes, I am a total sucker!

Very unwedding related...

but when oh when will I be able to share these pictures with you? So today the course went to Cesky Krumlov, a town quite close to where I am staying (Cesky Budejovice). There is a chateau there dating back to 1253. Rulers switched hands a few times and the city grew... yada yada yada and this is the modern day version (and a UNESCO site).

The flower in the center of the shield is found all over the place.

A great view of the town and castle

Surronding the castle is a moat without water, but is home to 2 bears. They are hibernating right now, so this is as good as you get.

They take their beer (or pivo) very seriously. The Budwiser sign refers to the real Budwiser beer that is brewed in Cesky Budejovice. The American Budwiser stole the name, and the Czech version is not allowed to be distributed it in the US.


The brewery in Krumlov is the Eggenberg. I am told that it sucks because they switched to the American form of beermaking.


A marrionette and wood toy shop. Soo cute!


Just because.

Where we ate lunch. I am told that these are typical resturants here. BTW, this is no region for vegetarians!


The Vltava River which surrounds the city. We were supposed to cross it, but it was a bit dodgey, don't you think?

Oh and all the interiors of the castle were closed, since it is, you know, its freezing out - seriously you should have seen the layers I had on to be touring outside in 32 degree weather. But this is the second most visiting spot in the Czech Republic (first being Prague Castle).

I am a sucker for contests

I entered another "contest" for free Day of Coordination (DOC) services. This one isn't a popularity contest thankfully. I really really hope we win, because the latest mess from our venue is very upsetting. It is far too complicated to blog completely about it, but to summarize....

(1) Our original coordinator left. In getting a new coordinator we found that....
(2) Our 25% off catering discount was never put through. In getting a new contract to reflect the promised discount, we found that...
(3) They weren't sure what our wedding date is (I'M NOT KIDDING)
(4) The Plan B in case of bad weather was not reserved for us.
(5) The ceremony site was listed as the incorrect location.
(6) The reception site was listed as the incorrect location.

Now you might be thinking... did we even bother to read our original signed contract? Of course we did and the original one was perfect and had all the right details in it. I have NO idea, where all the confusion came in when drafting the new contract.

Sooooo.... I have little faith in our new coordinator (apparently she can't read a contract), so a DOC would be great to insure everything goes as planned the day of (and if it doesn't, she'll fix it and never let me know). Check here on January 25th to see if we win her services.

Oh and I am flying directly to Miami upon leaving Europe. We got a mess on our hands that requires more than emails and unanswered phonecalls! In the meantime, Ralph is trying to get me revved up to get me to go all bridezilla on them. He thinks that is the only way to get them to do anything right. I think he might be right.

Second dress fitting sneakpeak

My awesome friend at Uplift Photography took these amazing shots at my second fitting. I wish I could share all of them, but I don't want to ruin any surprises. I just had to post these, though. She is so talented!!!!

(credit)

(credit)

Invite Sneakpeek

This is all you get....