Playing dress-up, part 2

At the end of my first dress shopping experience, I decided I wanted to look for dresses with a mermaid or trumpet skirt, but I still didn't know where I would end up finding a dress like that. Most of the dresses I had seen at Michelle's were a-line or ball gowns, so that option was out, and I didn't have much confidence in the other local shops. So I decided I'd look iat shops in the Chicago suburbs in July when my mom was coming to visit.

In the meantime, I was scouring the internet for some dresses in the mermaid style. I came across this dress by Watters that I absolutely loved. I've always adored the beachy casual feel of Watters dresses, but never thought I'd find one appropriate for our formal wedding. However, this dress, in my opinion was just perfect. Unfortunately, it was part of their newest line and wasn't in shops yet. I made plans to see the dress at a Watters trunk show in August at Michelle's, but in the meantime, I was shopping with my mom!



The first place we headed to was the House of Brides in Schaumburg. We had gone there to look at bridesmaids' dresses for my sister's wedding, so we knew they had a lot of dresses at a variety of price ranges. For those of you who don't know about House of Brides it's sort of like an upscale warehouse environment. Sort of like a David's Bridal with more variety of dresses. Our experience there was like a lot of girls' experiences at David's. We had a consultant, but she wasn't really around. She kept leaving us, meaning my sister had to get me in and out of the dresses, then scolding us when she got back and saw the makeshift jobs we'd done of clamping up the dresses in the back. It was a little obnoxious, but didn't bother me too much. It was sort of fun to just have a free-for-all with the dresses, not worried about the consultant being too pushy or bossy.

I did find some dresses I liked at House of Brides, but nothing that I absolutely had to buy right that second. One thing that is really nice about House of Brides is that they have such a great variety. If you're looking to try on a lot of different shapes or styles, House of Brides might just be the place for you.

Here's one dress that we snapped a quick picture of in the dressing rooms.

This dress only cost $399! That alone almost made me buy it!

We left House of Brides that day knowing we had another appointment the next day at Wolsfelt's Victorian Bridal. Little did we know, that would be my last dress shopping stop! Stay tuned for THE dress, coming up next!

Let's start at the very beginning...

This Monday a new season of The Bachelor started on ABC. Unfortunately, I've got to admit that I watch it every year, despite fully realizing it's pretty much a wasted hour of every week. I love to see them fall in love...even if it is a short-lived TV sort of love. Also, this weekend, one of Mr. Chickadee and I's good friends went on a date set-up by a popular dating website.

Together, these two facts have got me thinking about ways to meet significant others. Mr. Chickadee and I have an unoriginal story, as we went to high school together. However, our relationship really took off after talking a LOT online. It was really a way for me to get to know shy Mr. Chickadee before we started dating.

So, what's your dating story? Did you meet in any interesting circumstances? Any internet set-ups out there? Tell me how your love story started!

Playing Dress Up

So I have to admit, I love playing dress up. Always have, probably always will. And getting a wedding dress is pretty much like playing dress up for grown-ups. Needless to say, trying on wedding dresses has pretty much been my very favorite thing in wedding planning so far.

The very first time I went dress shopping was a mere 2 days after getting engaged. I was finally “allowed” to go do it and I couldn’t wait. However, that day was more of a fun time with my girls than anything else. There was only one dress that I liked that day: Maggie Sottero’s Grace, but it definitely didn’t give me the “this is it” feeling.

Fast forward a couple of months. I had graduated from college and gotten settled in my new apartment when my FMIL suggested we go dress shopping. So we drove down to Michelle’s Bridal Shoppe in Urbana because we’d heard it was the best in downstate Illinois and it’s just an hour down the road from my in-laws’ house.

Going into dress shopping I wanted pick-ups. Maybe not the crazy huge cupcake look of some dresses, but subtle pick-ups like on my bridesmaid's dress for my sister's wedding. Our assistant Melissa, picked up a new Alfred Angelo bridal gown in the same style. I was so excited, but proceeded to pick up a good 20 other dresses to check out just in case. They’re all so pretty, I couldn’t resist! At first Melissa seemed appalled I would want to try on that many, but I figured if I was going to pay a thousand dollars for a dress, I was going to at least try on every other one in the county.

I tried on the Alfred Angelo dress and decided right away it was just not the one for me. I’m awfully petite, and the dress just seemed to swallow me whole. Disappointed, I kept plugging away through the rest of the dresses. Despite my desire to have something drastically different from my sister’s dress (she’s getting married this October, I’m getting married next June) most of the dresses were simple ball gowns or a-lines. That’s not to say they weren’t gorgeous; they even looked pretty good on me, but none of them gave me that certain feeling.

These are the three that I ended up liking the best:





In the end I liked the third one the best with it's gorgeous train and even convinced myself that it could be the dress I get married in, but I just couldn’t shake the feeling that something was missing.

But here’s where things get interesting:

The one dress I tried on that differed from the a-line ball gown type dress, was a mermaid shaped Maggie Sottero gown. I didn’t actually like the dress itself (something about the beading just seemed strange to me) but I kept coming back to the picture of myself in the dress. Finally my little sister pointed out that though the dress was just so-so, the shape of it looked fantastic on me! It was at that point that I decided I needed to switch gears and stop looking at dresses with pick-ups and focus more on the mermaid shape. It would give that little bit of something unique without a skirt so big that it overwhelmed me.

The dress that started it all:


I did have a great time at Michelle's and I'd recommend it to anyone, but there just wasn't anything there for me.

One Ring to Rule Them All

(couldn't resist a little Lord of the Rings reference)

Mrs. Bell Pepper's most recent post about ring holders really got me thinking.... How often do you take off your engagement/wedding ring?

I eat, sleep, shower, swim, cook, and craft with my engagement ring. In fact, the only time I take off my ring is to get it cleaned or when I'm making meatballs (for which I use my hands, and I'm afraid to get meat bacteria all stuck up in my ring).

On the other hand, my sister never sleeps or showers with her engagement ring on. She waits until she's walking out the door to work to slip it back on after a whole night of being ring-less. I can't do this because I'm afraid I'd forget it all the time, and my left ring finger just feels naked without it!

So where do you ladies fall in this spectrum? Do you take your ring off for specific activities or leave it on all the time?

If a picture's worth a thousand words...

...how many bajillion words will our wedding photography be worth?

In my "real life" (you know, the pre-wedding planning frenzy life) I'm pretty crazy about taking pictures. My little digital elph camera is always tucked into my purse, ready to make an appearance at the first sign of something cute/interesting/embarrassing. I've been known to take hundreds of pictures in a night of hanging out with my friends, and once, on a three week cruise with Mr. Chickadee, we managed to take 3,000 pictures.

So, you can imagine how important wedding photography is to me.

Prior to getting engaged, I thought I knew exactly who my wedding photographer would be. You see, when I was a senior in high school I had my pictures taken by David Lee. David Lee was the best around and back then everyone went to him for senior pics. When we got the pictures back, I was amazed! It was the first time I ever felt really pretty in pictures and I was convinced it was all due to David Lee's great skills.

So the first thing I did upon getting engaged was buying up all the wedding magazines at Barnes & Noble, but the second thing was calling David Lee. However, I was devastated when I found out he didn't do weddings! Apparently I had just overlooked the fact that there was no "wedding" link on his website. What? It could happen to anyone!

So I turned to my local wedding planning webpage to find the names of some other photographers. If you're feeling stumped about some of your own vendors, try seeing if there's a local board out there with suggestions. You can also turn to your local Knot board if it's at all active. Living outside of any one metropolitan area, though, I've never really found a "home" on the Knot boards. If you really can't find a photographer up to your standards, don't settle! Many awesome photographers will travel to your location for a pretty reasonable fee.

I narrowed my search down to three photographers in the Bloomington-Normal area:
1. Schilling Photography: This was one of the very first photographers I found that seemed to capture what I envisioned. My love affair with Schilling Photography was short lived though. After e-mailing them and finding out about their packages I was a little disappointed. One of my major concerns was that they shot in film, so the pictures were limited to (what I thought) was a pretty low number. I'm not that photogenic so I figured we would need unlimited pictures in order to get enough where both Mr. Chickadee and I were looking fabulous.

2. Bruer Photography: I still look at Bruer Photography's website and ooh and ahh over their pictures. I think they have a really beautiful and artistic style. Unfortunately, my attempts to contact them were wildly unsuccessful. I ended up e-mailing them twice and when I didn't receive a response within a few weeks, I started calling....like once or twice a day (I am persistent). No one ever picked up the phone, although I did eventually get a response from the emails I sent. I was already in contact with another photographer by this point (see below) but I did email them back to get some pricing information and see if we could meet. I didn't hear back from them until several months later when I had already signed a contract with another photographer. In my opinion, if a vendor cannot even return emails or phone calls, I will not feel comfortable working with them for something so important.

3. (Ok, so I saved the best for last!) Mark Romine: Mark is another photographer I found through the Bloomington-Normal wedding page. I contacted him almost immediately and was so excited to see an email back from him the next day! He's wonderful about responding to all my long and obnoxious emails . In the first couple emails we exchanged, Mark shared with me some of his photo album designs which really sealed the deal for me. Mr. Chickadee, his mom, and I met with Mark and his wife Susan last Spring and we clicked really well. I figured we would walk in, be handed some information about pricing, and be asked if we had any questions. Instead, we went to their gorgeous studio and chatted for over and hour. We saw albums & proof books of weddings, engagements, and family pictures. One thing I really liked about Mark was the vibrancy of his shots. Mr. Chickadee, on the other hand, was satisfied to hear that Mark had shot the wedding of one of his favorite U of I basketball players. If he was good enough for Robert Archibald, he was good enough for us!

Below are some samples of Mark Romine's work. All the copyright belongs to him, so please don't take and reproduce or anything.














Mr. Chickadee and I are planning an engagement session in October, so I'll keep you all updated on how it goes! Feel free to contact me if you have any other questions about Mark. He's also got a portrait site, if you're like me and love to look through all the cute pictures of kids.

Diamonds are a girl's best friend

This, my friends, is the obligatory ring post. Come on, you knew it was coming eventually, right? So here it is...

I'm not sure when it was exactly that Mr. Chickadee expressed his desire to go ring shopping with me, but I'd known for a while that we would do it together and I was all for this idea. I wanted to have some input on the ring I would wear every day of my life and he didn't want the pressure of picking out a ring on his own. So it was the perfect arrangement. Last summer we started looking at rings, and I knew almost immediately what I wanted.

The story of my own engagement ring starts on a day in September with my sister. It was just barely over a year ago that my older sister turned 23 years old. But that's not all: that afternoon I got a call from my mom explaining that my dad was in the hospital and would be going into emergency open heart surgery. Everything sort of crumbled around me and I was still numb later that afternoon when my older sister called and let me know she was flying down to Texas to be with the family. And then, right before she hung, in this uncharacteristically quiet voice, she told me she had gotten engaged.

Hours later, when Mr. Chickadee and I arrived at the DFW airport and my sister rushed us to the hospital, I almost forgot to ask to see the ring. My jaw dropped when I saw it: she had my ring! Princess cut, three stones, pave band. Yep, you know the one. It seems like everyone who got engaged last year has that same style. But not me, oh no, I wasn't about to get the same style of ring as my older sister.

Slightly disappointed by the change in plans, the search for the perfect ring continued. Mr. Chickadee liked the look of the solitaires but I always felt strange when I tried them on. I have tiny little hands and they just seemed to stick up sooo far from my finger. I felt like it was some sort of weapon, not a piece of jewelry! So what else was there? I was ring shopping at the places in the mall, and I felt like their designs were uninspired; a diamond atop a piece of metal and that's it. Additionally, these other kinds of ring seemed considerably more expensive than the three stone style we'd originally liked. Keep in mind, too, that we were just a couple of college students whose bank accounts were less padded than we would have liked.

So we plodded along, knowing we had a while before we got engaged, stopping into jewelry stores whenever I could drag him to the mall. And then one day it happened. I just got the "this is it" feeling that I would later get with my dress and those cuter-than-cute Kate Spade shoes (which I am still hoping will fall into my possession miraculously for less than $100). The lady at the shop was quick to point out the dazed expression I was wearing upon seeing the ring and even asked if she needed to take me over to Starbucks for a while.

We declined the offer, but both agreed that the ring was quite perfect for me. It was so in proportion to my hand. The band is so slim, unlike so many of the others I tried on that seemed to take up way too much space. The setting made it seem nice and big on my little finger without overwhelming me. And, my favorite part was the way it looked from the side. It's hard to describe, but the band splits into two and the top part swoops up to meet the side of the diamonds, so there's none of that weapon-like pointiness sitting atop my hand. Perfect!

So I left the store that day empty-handed but cheered by the thought that someday that ring would be on my finger. And sure enough, a few months later, it was, looking perfectly shiny and sparkly (and a perfect fit to boot!). I look at my ring every day and couldn't be happier. I've seen a lot of rings over the last few months of being engaged, some bigger, some shinier, but I still haven't found one I like better than my own!

So, I know what you're thinking, let's see it already! Well, your wish is my command. One thing, though, engagement rings seem notoriously hard to photograph, so these are less than ideal photos.

Central Illinois Bridal Show

I just got an e-mail from my FMIL letting me know about a bridal show coming next weekend to Bloomington-Normal. I'm not sure how many Weddingbee readers would be interested, but here's the information just in case:

When: Sunday, September 23rd from 11:00 to 3:00
Where: Doubletree Hotel in Bloomington, Illinois
Admission: Free!

There will be various vendors to talk to, prize giveaways, and fashion shows!

Visit the Your Dream Wedding Website for more information!

Sister Sister

First, I wanted to let you ladies know that there isn't really a way to reply to directly to specific comments, so if you've asked me a question in the comments, keep watching them and I'll always try to respond!

This weekend Mr. Chickadee went camping with the boys so I hopped up to the Chicago suburbs to help my older sister with some of her wedding plans. She's getting married October 7th, so she's getting down to that frantic time when all of a sudden she's remembering all the things she's forgotten to do.

I thought I'd share some of the things we've done for her wedding, as my own DIY projects are mostly in the conceptual phase at the moment.

To begin, this is my dress, finally altered. It's still wrinkly and I'm looking rather bedraggled, but you get the idea. I had my alterations done at Wee Sew in Bloomington, Illinois. They were inexpensive and really quick (it was done the next day!) so I'd recommend them to anyone in the area.

(It's Alfred Angelo, style 6495, in Clover bought from Bridesmart in Schaumburg)

The favors are going to be little bags of green, pink, and white jelly beans. We're going to attach these little tags to each favor. I designed a logo, then uploaded it to Design Your Own Card.com and a week later I had our custom stamp in my hands. I used VersaColor ink in Sage for the stamping. You can see the final result (prior to attaching it to the bag) below:


We also worked up an emergency kit for the bride and a bathroom basket for the reception. Included in the basket is clear fingernail polish, lotion, bobby pins, kleenex, mints, medicines, and a sewing kit, among other things. We also included a little poem, adapted from the one Mrs. Bee wrote about here. The card was made with the help of Martha Stewart...we used both her paper punch and her 18"x18" cardstock in evergreen. In fact, we bought all the evergreen paper Michael's had in stock, as I'm using it to make menus & escort cards. At Mrs. Snow Pea's recommendation, we used the Making Memories Tool Kit to score and fold the card.


We also worked hard on writing up very specific schedules for various members of the bridal party, family, and vendors. We also bought petals from Michael's for the flower girls and a shawl from Von Maur because my sister is always cold.

One of the biggest projects we had slated for the weekend was to get a make-up trial. It doesn't sound like a huge undertaking, you just sit there and get your make-up done right? Right...unless you're the Maid of Honor and have been charged with the task of actually recreating said make-up for the day of. For some reason Sister Chickadee finds me capable of doing things that only trained professionals ought to be doing.

So we went to the Clinique counter at the Carson's in Charlestowne Mall and worked with Ursula. In the end the make-up looked absolutely gorgeous. I have to admit, though, for a while there I thought it would be like the time in high school when my sister tried to get her hair cut like Ashley Judd and ended up with a mullet. It may have been the first time I had to give an emergency hair cut over the bathtub, but it certainly wasn't the last!

Luckily, it was not necessary to do any emergency make-up rescue because it ended up really gorgeous! She purchased gobs of Clinique make-up and the responsibilty to re-create the look is now all on my shoulders! Haha, I'll have to let you know how that little endeavor goes in a couple weeks.



So, I know my sister's not the only one getting married this October. How are the rest of you preparing in your last month?

Color palette frenzy (part 2)

So, as you probably remember from my previous post, I was a little stuck on colors. I liked all the combinations I was coming up with, but something was just missing...there was no spark, nothing to really bring the wedding together. I guess I just felt like a purple and gold wedding would only take me so far and more likely than not, I'd end up with a discombobulated mess without any unity.

Then I stumbled across the Knot bio of springchic and everything started to change. Sure, she had a pretty color scheme but it was really more than that, it was a feeling, a tone that ran throughout her entire bio. It was the feel I was going for, in fact.

Previously I had seen bits and pieces of weddings that seemed absolutely perfect, but not perfect for us. I love rustic outdoorsy weddings. I love sweet beachy themes. I love my sister's grassy green dresses...but none of those things seemed to scream Mr. Chickadee and I and the day we wanted to have. I would later have this same problem with dresses, but that's a post (or three) for another day!

What springchic managed to do at her wedding was take the classic color combination of black and white and give it that extra pop of color from the yellow. It was sophisticated and classy, but also fun!

So I've got to admit, I decided to copy it. Part of me wanted to emulate it right down to the smallest detail, but that would just be silly, right? Um, right. I did decide to use a brocade pattern (as opposed to her floral pattern) to tie everything together, which lends a more traditional feel to everything, I think.

As I started looking around for more ideas, I found yellow cropping up more and more in the magazines and my favorite wedding sites, which was exciting. When the Inspiration Contest came up on Style Me Pretty I knew I had to enter. I had folders upon folders on my computer with pictures of things I loved and I'm a bit of a Photoshop junkie. Plus, I knew it would be the kick in the butt I needed to final unify many of my ideas.

I have to admit, while I was making my inspiration board, I wasn't too concerned with crediting every single one of my pictures. I've dug up as many sources as I could for the board (and it was hard work! This little Chickadee has learned her less about that one) but if you know where any of these pictures came from that aren't credited, please let me know!

Without further ado, my Inspiration Board:

(click to see it larger)

Top (from left): Little black dress by Ramona Keveza; assorted martinis; Kate Spade’s Nuptials; Gift wrap from Carolyne Roehm
Top Middle: Earrings from Nordstrom; Room at the Viceroy Palm Springs; Littlest members of the wedding party from the Cox/Brantley wedding photographed by Paul Johnson; Cake by April Reed
Bottom Middle: Yellow orchids and calla lilies; Dress by Ramona Keveza; White and yellow tulips Hairstyle from Knottie MrsPDXbride06
Bottom: Lemon display by Martha Stewart Weddings; Save the Date by me!

Making an inspiration board was certainly not the first I think did upon getting engaged, but maybe it should have been. It really helped me focus in on what I wanted out of my wedding, not just what looked great on the pages of Modern Bride.

If you're interested in making an Inspiration Board but don't know where to start check out these helpful posts by Mrs. Lemon and Abby at Style Me Pretty.

I'm dying to hear about your own Inspiration Boards!

Color palette frenzy

The first few weeks after getting engaged I was completely inundated by the ideas in one magazine after another. Everywhere I looked I found a new theme or color scheme that seemed absolutely perfect. Well, at first...

Some people have a hard time choosing colors. I'm not one of them. In fact, I'm great at putting colors together. I'm just bad at sticking with them. I'm pretty resolute about most decisions, but THE color scheme? Well, it's been a bumpy road.

1. First, I wanted Tiffany blue. I would have settled for David's Bridal Pool (shown below). I'm not really sure where this idea came from, but it didn't take long after getting engaged to change my mind. Maybe I didn't see enough Tiffany blue in the magazines? That must have been the culprit.


2. Next I wanted purple with bright green accents. This was inspired by my experimenting with Photoshop. I came up with this adorable Save the Date, which I still am quite fond of, even if the concept has changed completely. My mom wasn't exactly sold on this, probably because it was so non-traditional. I should note that I made this STD mock-up prior to actually choosing a date. I just looked at the calendar and found a Saturday in June, but I liked the look of it so much that it became my first choice for our wedding date!


3. From there I turned to my favorite color: pink. More specifically light light pink. I had already fallen in love with the pink and gold color scheme in Martha's Winter Wedding Mag but one ad from David's Bridal really had me hooked (well, temporarily that is). As it turns out, I can't find the light pink dress I loved anywhere on David's Bridal's website...I guess the wedding industry is just as fickle as I am! In the end I decided the light pink was too sweet and sugary for the type I wedding I wanted. I wanted something dark, bold, and a little trendier.

4. Next was a short lived affair with navy blue and fuschia. This was inspired by The Knot magazine from last Fall where they featured a darling pink and blue striped tie and other preppy details. I spent a lot of time playing in Photoshop & Illustrator with these colors. Mr. Chickadee thought the colors were nice ("I like blue" he would say) but my little sister (and MOH) was of a different opinion. This was one of the monogram options I came up with while making up pretend invites:


5. I also had a brief stint with hot pink and light pink, but I could never make it look more grown up than a 12 year old's birthday party. It's just not even worth a picture. :)

6. This was about the time we came back to dark purple. I just found myself drawn to the color, specifically the shade "aubergine" by Dessy which is sooo pretty in person. I decided I couldn't go back to the bright green color of before, and instead decided to pair it with gold, which would lend a more sophisticated air to the event. I still love the thought of purple and gold and if it wasn't for one really amazing Knot bio, I'm sure I would still be doing the color scheme. This is one invitation I saw on Finestationary.com that nearly sealed the deal:


So what did I decide? Well, I think I'll save my final color choice (oh gosh, I hope it's really final!) for another day. It deserves a post unto itself, I think!

So how did you ladies pick your colors? Did you use an online palette generator? Go with your favorite colors? Center the colors around a specific fabric or scrapbook paper? Did you choose colors at the recommendation of Martha Stewart's fabulous magazine editors? Anyone go through the same crazy color indecision as me? I'd love to hear about it!

One excited little Chickadee

Hello Weddingbee readers! I've been reading Weddingbee for quite some time now and could not be more ecstatic to join the team here at Weddingbee.com! I think I'll start by telling you a little bit about me and the hubby-to-be.

Mr. Chickadee and I are high school sweethearts, of a sort. We started dating at the end of high school, in time for the senior prom, but too late to go to the same college, as we had long since decided on where we'd be going to school. We spent an amazing summer together, but when it ended we headed to opposite edges of the state for college. Thus began our long distance relationship...and four years of getting to know Interstate 74 very well!

In February Mr. Chickadee proposed and the wedding planning officially began. In May we each graduated from our respective colleges, me with a degree in English and him with Mechanical Engineering. Soon after graduating we moved to Peoria, Illinois, an hour away from our hometown of Bloomington and, funnily enough, right in the middle of our two colleges! We had always lived in separate spheres with two separate groups of friends and we're really enjoying having those worlds collide here in Peoria.

Admittedly, wedding planning has somewhat consumed my life lately. In addition to planning my own wedding I'm helping my older sister finish up all the DIY details of her October 7th wedding. Needless to say, I've pretty much taken to traveling with an arsenal of Martha Stewart Wedding magazines!

I can't wait to share some of my completed projects with you as well as get some great ideas for my upcoming wedding!

And, (because who doesn't love picture posts?) to end, I'd like to leave you with a couple of pictures:


Mr. Chickadee and I before prom in 2003. He looks nervous doesn't he?



And Mr. Chickadee and I about a week after getting engaged.

Mini Bio for Hover Cloud

Miss Chickadee, Bloomington, IL
Age & Occupation: 22, Freelance advertising
Fiance's Age & Occupation: 22, Mechanical engineer
Engagement Date: February 10, 2007
Wedding Date: June 2008
Venue: Wesley United Methodist Church/Crestwicke Country Club
About Me:

My parents always said I should wait until graduating college before getting married…Mr. Chickadee and I finally graduated this past spring and we didn’t waste any time getting straight down to business. It’s been four long years, but the wedding planning is finally underway!

When I’m not thinking about weddings, I love reading, writing, cooking and crafting. On the weekends, you’ll often find me donning orange and watching sports in support of Mr. Chickadee’s alma mater, University of Illinois. In exchange, I make him watch marathons of “Who’s Wedding Is It Anyways?” What can I say, we know how to compromise!