Its MY wedding, now leave me alone!

Hindsight Confession: If its not your wedding, park your opinions at the door.

(I am writing this for all the brides past, present and future...)

If its not your wedding, be cautious about your opinions. Now wait, that doesnt mean hold them in (ok, sometimes please do), and it doesnt mean lie to us (ok sometimes it does) it just means use discretion!! Its not your wedding, if you have been married, its not your chance to relive it, or to do it over, go renew your vows, thats what those are for. If you havent been married it is NOT about what YOU want. Its the brides day and she has the final say. Feel free to give your opinion, when asked, but Brides are interesting creatures. They are hormonal the closer to the day it gets, they are emotional and sometimes irrational, they want your opinion but then they don't, so tread cautiously... but make sure you get this right... IT IS THEIR DAY, THEY GET WHAT THEY WANT. But "Aunt Mildred should be invited" Bride reserves the right to cut her off the guest list (come on she is 90, in a wheel chair and does not remember you to save her life!). "the dress makes us girls look fat" Bride gets to put you in whatever she wants and you will wear it and LOVE IT. Bride wants you to do a solo spotlight performance of Michael Jackson complete with costume, wig and choreography, then by golly you moonwalk your little heart out! It bugs me when other people (mothers, bridal party, random friends, family) give their opinion too loudly. Nice, lets make the bride feel bad about her wedding decision. Yes we know balloon animals as favors are lame but its her wedding if thats her dream, then let the girl have the dumb balloon animals! Now there is a fine line to this. Obviously the "opinion giver" loves the bride and groom, and wants to give their opinion to save them from wasting money, lots of work, bad memories, or a crappy not fun wedding. And thats all kind and wonderful, but many a time, it comes at the expense of the brides sanity and feelings and in a "I woulda felt awful if I hadn't said anything" mentality. Hmm lots of I's in that statement (remember its not your day). Here us a very common example: All brides know that a friday wedding can be an inconvience to people, but when the wedding is cheaper by doing it this way and you aren't jumping in to pay for a Saturday wedding, then guess what... thats right, Keep. your. mouth. shut! Better yet, when they have already purchased invitations, their dress, flowers, decorations, programs etc there is NOOO opinion giving other than "so cute" or "i love it". Why make the brides suffer through second guessing themselves and, why make yourself the brunt of their loathing for the duration of the engagement? You will do nothing other than piss them off!! Oh and if the bride assigns you a task, it is in your best interest to not have her have to ask you to do the same task twice. Its just bad bad bad if she does! For the duration, the bridal party and family are her slaves. You are there to ease her stress and lighten the mood and reassure her that it will all come out perfectly. Your duty is not done until the last guest leaves the reception... until then, buckle up cause its a bumpy ride!!

What about the groom?? He is a very important accessory that needs to pick the tux, plan the honeymoon and try not to piss off the bride til the day of the wedding (HA good luck with that fellas!!)

Happy Wedding Planning :)

Disclaimer: I wouldnt say I was a Bridezilla (my wedding party can chime in) but I did control A LOT (okay, ALL) of my wedding day elements and I am VERY happy with how the day turned out so poo on you who disagree with this because my method worked! :)

Weddings

So i know i have been slacking. i know. but its tough to write when there isnt much to write about. Well correction, its tough to write when i feel like its bah humbug stuff. No one wants to read depressing blogs. we read for dirt and dishing and cool little tidbits. the last thing someone wants to read is about discouragement and frusteration. But now things are on the up and hopefully my blog tone will reflect that.

Ok so on to my topic.... weddings. Now i fully admit, i am a wedding snob. Yeah i know, im terrible, but the fact that i waited 25 years to get married, I think i have earned the right to critique any and every wedding i attend. And i will preface this by saying, i really do enjoy every wedding i have attended (for the most part). Its a special day for people and I respect that. Well a friend of mine (we shall call her Sophia to protect her identity)just recently went to a wedding and came back and told me details and we were SHOCKED at the similarities between Sophia's wedding and Abby's wedding (the Bride). I don't know, maybe I was reading too much into it when I told Sophia it was rediculous, but the programs were similar, the songs walked down the aisle were the same, the wedding color, the dj, the photographer, even the dessert was similar(ok they were exactly the same). I told Sophia it must have felt like she was at her own wedding. Now am i crazy? isnt it a bit odd? I mean I could understand if Abby hadn't been at Sophias wedding but SHE TOTALLY WAS THERE!!! AND i could understand if Abby had mentioned to Sophia "hey i loved your wedding, im totally taking some of your ideas" BUT COME ON!! to try to pass off all these similarities/exact likenesses as your own, is kinda shadey. Give credit where credit is due, Abby. I say all this because of my wedding snobbery. And like every bride, i feel that my wedding was PER.FECT. ... lol well in my eyes it was. i invited everyone i had wanted, the food was great, the atmosphere was great, the day was overall great. On the flip side, my pet peeve is when brides skimp on their day. Now hold on, i don't mean financially skimp, because not everyone can afford the same budget, but within ones means, to just throw your wedding day together annoys me. This is THE BIGGEST DAY IN YOUR LIFE and to just half-ass it is a slap in the face to weddings everywhere (again its the wedding snobbery coming out - don't hate). Go all out, live your dream out on that one day! And as a last thought to leave you with... next time you are at a wedding, all dressed up, and looking great... lean over to your date and start tearing that wedding apart....HAHA jk, lean over to your date and remember how wonderful your special day was OR how perfect it is going to be!!

Yeah I know, its been a while

Yes, its been a long while since i blogged. im ashamed, but it seems lately i have had a mighty large case of writers block. I just can't come up with anything interesting to write, let alone a good confession! But here i am stuck at work, feeling like i have the flu and thought i could scrounge up some tidbit of information. Plus if the blog sucks i can easily blame it on the fever i most likely have! It seems like after having rung in the new year i have also rung in cold season! I am generally a healthy person. College, a time when most get sick often, i got sick, hmm once maybe! Same thing in grad school. I don't ever recall getting the flu and at the worst i get sick in the winter and then i have seasonal allergies, no biggie. Well this year its been like WHAM cold city! I was sick for 2 weeks around christmas and new years and now sick again. its like what the eff?! Other than that there hasn't been too many things going on. Alfie and I usually end up watching some DVR'd episode, eating dinner then more DVR and then bed. I (thankfully) have started reading again and have a nice 5 book line up (yes 4 of which are the Twilight series).
Even though things seem to be hella slow and quiet, we do get the occasional craziness! Like next week. Alfie and I are both in Josh and Robin's Feb 7th wedding (woop day before my birthday) so that means craziness on Thursday (get the tux and try it on), Friday (rehearsal and dinner) and Saturday (wedding). OOO Confession: I LOVE doing peoples hair. It doesn't matter if its for a real event or just for something fun or just because we are all sitting around bored! And usually i have a good line up of friends who want me to do their hair for weddings they are in (cause i don't charge, but most usually give me a lil something for my time)but when it comes to doing my hair its either pay top dollar OR do it myself, so since i did it myself for christys wedding, i plan on doing it for this one. The dilema comes when its time to figure out what the heck style to do! Because the gown is very simple and elegant, i feel like i should do something sleek like a french twist or sleek down with a simple flip at the ends and clip a side up. Buuuut then part of me thinks i should do a variation of what i wore for christys wedding (all curls but kinda half up half down with the cute lil blump at the top, and i have a cute claw comb thing to put in the back. Ill prob just play around with it the morning of and see what looks good.

ok and thats the best you are gonna get with me feeling like this!

What I would have changed...

This post was inspired by my good friend Emily. Her wedding date of Dec 17th is quickly approaching and in that she gave a critical eye to her wedding day and thought of what she would do differently in the planning. Now little did she know that all the things she posted would not have made one bit of difference to us who attended... it was still a beautiful day and ran very smoothly! So reading her blog made me think of my recent nuptuals and what I would have done differently or what recommendations I would offer brides...by the way, my day went pretty much perfect, there is little I felt needed to change but via things I heard and a tough eye, Ill break it down for ya! lol Here we go....

1. Different bridesmaids dresses. I would have gone strapless. Generally bridesmaids dresses are a direct reflection of the bride and if ANYONE had to pick something that screamed "Kimi" i doubt it would have been that. Long story short, I would have gone with a strapless dress or a vneck one. While the dress did fit well with the wedding, that remains my top "thing I would have changed"

2. I would have had a shorter ceremony. I think ours was about 30 -40 mins, which wasn't bad considering we had 2 song performances but my cousin just got married and it was like BANG 15 mins and it was over, but still very pretty.

3. I would have started projects earlier. towards the wedding date I wanted to keep adding little bits to the day but I just did not have time to complete them (ie individual table questions with info about alfie and i; table numbers;ceremony decor)

4. I wouldn't have ordered a dress up a size. I fully intended to lose weight, it was a goal, but stupid me ordered a size up instead of the size that fit snuggly in order to accommadate my boobs. dumb move. the dress ended up being 3 sizes too big and still about a size too big when they took it in. (but i would still pick that dress, it was so pretty)

5. I should have tried to make the individual wedding cakes work within our budget. I wanted instead of cupcakes, small personal cakes (like 3 bites would have finished it). it would have been so cute, but at first glance was too pricey, i didn't try to make it work and I should have.

6. Gotten a food tasting. We thought our beef was going to be like steak but it was more like a pot roast. still tasty but not as expected.

7. Loretta. enough said. (for those who don't know she was the Bethel assigned wedding host and did a TERRIBLE job at the rehearsal. I wanted things to flow a certain way and she was not about that. oye.)

Now to gush about what I LOVED:

1. My photographers. They were more than I expected to get. I will never forget sitting at Rachels house looking through the pics to pick the ones to go in our coffee table book and being amazed that those were MY wedding pictures. Her and Bethany made it veryyyy easy and fun to be in front of the camera. Especially for someone who doesn't enjoy being in pictures.

2. The Marriott. They were super! They were willing to help me get everything I wanted. I never thought I would ever be able to afford chair covers but they let me use that cost to meet the minimum $ amount for a Sat reception even though it was supposed to be used on food. They were attentive and quick and our steak and scallops were delicious.

3. My aisle runner. I am quite impressed I was able to make something that looked purchased (until you got up reallllll close to it.lol)

4. The groom :)

5. Everything else! lol I can't go ahead and list everything I loved but the whole day was like a dream except I remember it all! It went so smoothly (with the exception of the crazy BANG noise during the ceremony).

Wait, Im supposed to like blogging right?

HOLY CRAP!! can i just vent about how non-user friendly this bloggin thing is? I have tried for the past hour (yeah I shoulda been working) to attempt to change my template to something snazzy. Instead as you can see, frusteration has won out and i am settling on this plain, although chic (black is always chic) background. Yeah ok I guess it will do :)Last night Alfie and I had dinner out with our ever-fun-foursome: Josh and Robin and Luke and Heather at Rio Bamba on Alexander street. Josh used to work there so he knew the headchef and wanted to do a tasting. Well we all ended up doing a tasting which was amazing! A tasting (for those like me who didn't know what it is) is like on Top chef where they do a bunch of courses but in mini 1-2 bite portions. So it started out with the appetizer of mozzerella and tomato salad, then came the ahi tuna with miso broth and soba noodles, then shrimp, bean and spinach followed by veal and ending with a strawberry icecream filled pastry puff. Yum-O. We all definitely left there feeling nice and full! Newlywed confession: I totally love food. No joke, you name it, I would probably try it once. The only food i HATE... brussle sprouts. ICK they are so nasty, all looking like baby cabbage heads. gross. Needless to say the guys were impressed by my eating skills (i totalled kicked the guys butts with finishing the courses first or second)

Anyways.... thank the Lord for long weekends! Considering I just got back from a week long honeymoon, I am more than ready for a few days of sleeping in and doing laundry (much needed) and cleaning the house! Not that I am looking forward to them, it will just be nice when those things get done. I hate having a messy house. :) My big surprise for the weekend was letting Alfie get his new flat screen TV. He has been begging/bugging/hinting/whining about getting a new tv but me being the wonderful pennypincher that I can be has been saying no. I figured certain things take priority (like a bed and some furniture...lol)! But anyways, with the wonderfully generous gifts from the wedding I figured we could treat ourselves to something special, something that will last for a looooooong time (it better!), something like a TV.Well I guess its back to work for me now... 1 more hour :)

Has it already been 2 weeks???

Its hard for me to believe it has already been 2 weeks!! 9 months were spent putting every little detail together and then in 1 day its over! But it truly was the BEST day ever! I was so unbelievable relaxed. No nerves, well ok maybe a bit of nerves, but I had a GREAT wedding party who had the task of keeping me laughing and not nervous and they did wonderful.The ceremony went great, not even one tear fell (i was impressed). It just felt so natural and right to be up there with Alfie that I didn't feel overwhelmed, but rather comfortable knowing he was there. I seriously have some of the most musically talented friends and family! Everyone who participated vocally or instumentally did amazing! Im jealous I do not have a set o' pipes like all the ladies who sang. But thats ok cause in my car I pretend I do...holla! Anyways, as you can see above the lovely teaser photo we got from Bethany, our photographer (Rachel)'s assistant. OMG its amazing! Both ladies have such talent and take great photos! I can't wait to see the rest.In keeping with the confession theme for my new blog, here is my first newlywed confession...drumroll please....my wedding hair was not all mine...GASP...."but it looked so real!" you say! Thats because I had a excellent stylist who made my fake hair blend with my too short real hair! We actually both thought it was human hair, but oopies when we attempted to curl it, it melted. Hello synthetic hair! But thats why you have practice runs!

Soooo I love being married and it is fun having alfie always around at home but boy its a lot of work "keeping house"!! Ofcourse I SHOULD have taken the 9 months of pre wedding planning and moved 99.99% of my stuff to our new house and set everything up but nooo thats too easy! Instead I waited until hmm the week of the wedding to really moved my bazillion shirts, dresses, jeans and shoes! AHHHHH! Next confession... I easily have about 50 pairs of shoes! Is that too many? I tend to think noooo you can never have enough but Im starting to think (with the limited space) that thats maybe a tad too many!! My goals for this long weekend are to sort through my clothing (and shoes) and eliminate quite a few that I don't wear!!Well thats all I have for today.... here is another pic for you to enjoy!!