I've got a venue booked and a caterer that I'm extremely happy with and about to book yet I'm stilling having twinges of nervousness!! Even though I've toured the Ezell House several times and I've met with the caterer, I've still never been to a wedding by either party and that makes a small pit in my stomach.

I know that the Ezell House is an insanely popular wedding location here in Mobile so I shouldn't worry that much, right? And I know the caterer has a good reputation. Even some lady on an airplane in Mobile told my mom he was the way to go! haha.

I'm still really annoyed about the issues with the lights at the Ezell House. I don't understand how 3 strands of lights aren't included. It just seems like a rip off to pay a rental company $250 to put them up. Also, having to hang those lights myself is just another thing I'll have to add to the to do list. And then I wonder if we'll have enough time to do all this before the wedding. I'm hoping that since its the courtyard, I'll be allowed to begin work there much earlier than inside the actual house. Its so overwhelming. The wedding is 10.5 months away, it shouldn't be stressful. I just feel like these are the types of things I need to figure out early so I can talk to my vendors. I feel like if I bring these concerns up now I'll have a much better chance of addresses them when I'm a month out and they can just say "too bad".

Perhaps reading all the bridal bargain books has also just made me cynical of the entire process. I'm somehow convinced that nearly every vendor is out to screw me over in the worst way. I'm afraid that every question I have will be another $500 solution. Its a curse since you must book vendors early since dates are scooped up without warning. Down here in the South, Thanksgiving through New Years is prime time for engagements. So, I expect in January I'll have a whole new slew of brides battling for the same resources. That's just frightening. I don't have my wedding "vision" in place well enough yet to be able to ask the types of meaningful questions that I think I need.

Luckily, thanks to the wonders of email, I can, in fact, email my vendors questions and get responses. At least then, I have a sort of document of what we've talked about in case, down the road, things become an issue again!

Did anyone else have this sort of worry with vendors? What did you do to make sure your day went off without a hitch? Anyone have any advice?

I don't understand this. Why are all these wedding dresses photographed on a white background???

For some reason this has been annoying the crap out of me for the last couple days. I started to find pictures of my dress but half of them are photographed in front of white. How am I supposed to see anything? I don't care that I'd blend into a cloud, that is NOT why I'd buy the dress. Its like blinding to look at these pictures.

This one is even worse! The dress is practically invisible. Instead all I see if a GIANT bouquet and and strange wood nymph head garland. Again, am I buying flowers or the dang dress?

OK, just a quick rant but I thought it was blog worthy because I really don't get it!

I know you're probably thinking, you have 11 months to go, how could you almost have a disaster? Well, I almost had a dress disaster. When my mom, Shanna and I left the bridal salon all we really had was a store receipt. We promptly realized the receipt said nothing about what actual dress I had bought. It has a description but no actual style number or designer. I told my mom I'd call the shop later in the week and get the info.

Meanwhile, I did try to go home and find the dress online. I knew it was a Casablanca and it should be on the link from the bridal shop website. I searched and searched but didn't find my dress online. I was slightly bummed since I wanted to send some more pictures to my bridesmaids. But, I quickly remembered that Carly's Casablanca was never found online either. When Carly found her dress I was with her. It was one of those bitchy bridal salons (its since gone out of business... serves them right) that won't let you take pictures or really ask any questions. We knew it was a Casablanca and I took some illegal pictures while the bridal attendant left us alone. Turned out it was some super secret collection. It was really strange and why we never found her dress is still a mystery to me!

I called back again and said "can you tell me the style number?" They confirmed but I didn't really bother explaining why I was calling. I still had the number right and still couldn't find the dress. So, I finally called again one morning and, by chance, got the store owner. She pulled my file and immediately said "no no no your dress is a Mori Lee. That is a Mori Lee style number." I explain to her that I can't find the dress online and she tells me its definitely a Mori Lee and its one of Mori Lee's best selling dresses. My file says Casablanca with a mori lee style number.

The shop owner assures me that her records show a mori lee has been ordered for me despite this mix up! I then realize that I was definitely measured off the Casablanca size chart and panic begins to ensue. The shop owner was very confused how this whole thing happened but I had her pull both size charts to make sure the size I ordered off one companies chart was still ok! Luckily, it was fine. The measurements for each size at each company were nearly identical! WHEW!

I did make Shanna stop into the bridal store later that day after the phone call to ensure again that everything was ok. The bridal consultant I worked with and the shop owner were very apologetic. But, I finally got it straightened out. I made sure their internal store inventory numbers matched and we were good to go. So, lets hope that the right dress shows up in June! UGH!!!

On a side note, once I learned my dress was Mori Lee I learned its like the most popular dress ever. Its a little disappointing.... I didn't want a white wedding dress and then I end up in like the most cliche one ever. Me and 250 have commented on a thread about this dress in the last year on Wedding Bee. Oh well, it must be popular for a reason, right?

On a side note, I'm thinking about veils. Or more specifically, not wearing one. I'm not a huge fan of veils and I really like sparkly headbands like this one on Etsy! I guess its time to start pondering this next decision, to veil or not to veil. I know so many people feel like the veil really "completes" the look so I'm not sure how this will end up......

Now, as many of you may know, Titanium wedding bands are now becoming popular for men. The other day Andy and I were discussing wedding bands and I brought up titanium as an option. I know our friend Joseph has a titanium band. (Actually, he has two, he lost his first one on the beach. Sorry Joseph!) When I bring this up, Andy tells me his newly married friend Dan was told by the jeweler that they weren't a good idea.

The theory is that titanium is super strong so it can't be cut off your finger in case of an emergency.

Hmm, well that makes sense I guess. Gold is super soft so it must be a heck of a lot easier to cut off. I guess the could cut titanium off but they'd probably destroy your finger in the process.

With this new insight I begin to worry about Joseph's finger and send out a little bridesmaid email. Consensus, its true!

This was a couple weeks ago so I decided tonight to look into this. Turns out its totally and completely false. Now, I'm trying to track down the origin of this urban legend!

This article addresses the question "Can a titanium ring be cut off?" This article suggests that jewelers used this to get people to buy the pricier bands in other metals. It also makes the point, if you can't cut titanium then how on earth do they work with it and make jewelry with it. hmmm. true.

I guess we all fell for it. It made perfect sense at the time but if the rings were really that unsafe why would they even sell them. Guess titanium can go back on the list and I can stop worrying about Joseph's finger.

Just a visual to sum up my feelings from my last post. Click on the thumbnail to blow it up. I'm too tired to figure out how to post it large enough to read otherwise :)

The answer: not as much as Port City Rentals would like me to think.

While my mom was in town we decided to check out a few other vendors, including rental places for chairs, tables and linens.

I'm not doing a full sit down dinner so, in theory, linens should be easy. I have eleven 36" round tables in the courtyard that I want to put tablecloths on. I have a couple more of the same size in the bar. I want to rent a few tall bistro tables and teal tablecloths for these and then white linens for the food serving tables. All and all its a pretty small order, we're looking at 21 teal table clothes and 8 white ones. Want to know what that will cost me? Over $1200! Yep, that's a whopping $40 each. I like teal but there's no way in hell  I'm paying for that. The cost of renting the bistro tables (not included in this price) are one quarter of the tablecloth price. SERIOUSLY?! The tablecloth is more than the table!?

I don't even understand why people would do this. About 4 seconds of google searching leads you to all sorts of online options where I can buy all my tablecloths for under $200. For $6.99 I can get a tablecloth for my courtyard tables.

Now, if the price of tablecloths wasn't enough, my trip to the rental place brought me even more surprises. The Ezell House is decked out in lights for nighttime. All the banisters are wrapped in rope lights and the courtyard area has those italian style lights draped over it. The courtyard is broken into two sections, the main courtyard and the courtyard extension seen in my photo.

When we went to the rental place, they tacked on a $250 lighting charge to our quote so "we wouldn't be surprised later!". Screw being surprised later, I'm surprised now! Apparently, the lights over the courtyard extension aren't part of the venue's lighting, they're strung up by the rental company. All the rest of the lighting, including the italian lighting in the main courtyard are permanent and part of the rental.

Now look at this picture. The wedding taking place when I took the picture had added their own lanterns to the lighting but as you can see there are three strands of lights over the courtyard extension. Three. Apparently, if the lights aren't up, the rental place will string them up for $250. Sometimes they take them down when putting up tents, etc. If they're already up, lucky me, I just pay a $50 usage fee.

This is bullshit. First, why wouldn't the venue own all the lights? Why are 3 strands of lights excluded? Of course, this area will be my dance floor so lights are necessary. Second, the rental company just announced that the lighting fee would be included in the quote. They didn't even take time to tell me what the actual deal with the lights was. I had to email them and the Ezell House back and forth trying to get the scoop. I mean, why are 3 strands of lights now included on my quote? Why can't the venue just own them and deal with them? How confusing?!

So, of course, like linens, I'll do my own. This kind of thing just irritates me to no end! I'm sure this will just be an ongoing annoyance. I'm hoping the Ezell House will be helpful in letting me put up my own lights. All my bridal bargain books warn me of venues being in cahoots with vendors. I sort of feel like this is one of those situations where they're basically tricking brides into throwing down an extra $250.

SO frustrated!

FYI to all you other brides to be:
www.linentablecloth.com
www.cvlinens.com

Cheap! Lacy, another grad student here, just told me she got hers from the first one. Thanks!

After a week without a post, I have big news. I bought a dress! My mom has been in town this week and we've been busy. I took her to the venue, we looked into room blocks and we even priced linens (another story altogether!)

On Saturday I thought it'd be nice to go look at some dresses with my mom and Shanna. As we all know, I have several hangups when it comes to dresses.
1. I don't like white.
2. They cost too much money and its makes me sick.

After combing through back issues of bridal mags, I'd come across some really pretty silver or pale pale robin's egg blue dresses. I spent a lot of time looking into designers that made these shades. I was surprised to find out that many designers make bridesmaid gowns with small trains. In hindsight I'm not sure why I'm surprised since I own a David's bridal bridesmaid dress with a train that I wear to Mardi Gras. Armed with a list of bridal stores in Mobile and all the brands they carry, we headed off to town. Before we left my mom said to Andy that I'd either come back really happy or pissed off. My vote was definitely pissed off.

I randomly selected our first store to visit from my list. I Do bridal. Why do wedding things have to be sooo cheesy. Whatever, I thought to myself, suck it up, be a bride, go look at a freaking dress.

We get into the salon and we're greeted by the obligate ultra perky young salesgirl. She asks me what I'm looking for. I tell her a wedding dress, then I immediately back pedal and say a bridesmaid dress. Finally, I blurt out... I HATE WHITE. And then explain how I am looking for dresses that come in any color other than white. I refrained from telling them I'd stab them if they offered ivory because that's white. If lavendar is purple then ivory is white. Just saying, I know my crayola colors.

After looking around for a few minutes the perky young sales girl tells me that on Saturdays things are by appointment only so normally I couldn't try anything on but she just had a cancellation for a noon appointment. It was about 11:10am. Seriously, I have to kill an hour in this tiny bridal salon before I can even try anything on. Luckily, this hour of staring at dresses paid off. I pulled some lovely bridesmaid dresses that come in silver. I found a teal dress in the mardi gras section that would be lovely for Mardi Gras. We also spent time looking at some of the ugliest dresses I've ever seen. Mardi Gras is a time to wear an insane dresses but some of these dresses for Mardi Gras are like a kindergarten art teacher gone wild.

Once boredom sets in I started looking at wedding dresses. I was starting to get disappointed. I don't dislike wedding dresses, I dislike their color. I wanted the dresses I saw to come in the colors of the bridesmaid dresses. Finally I pull 3 from the rack that are really pretty styles. To my surprise they're also not a billion dollars. We'd seen a few $3000 dresses on the rack so I had started to assume that everything there was outrageous. Apparently when you like plain (and by plain I mean classic, you've not allowed to call a dress plain) dresses they're cheaper. It was coming abundantly clear, I wasn't going to find my teal dress in a bridal shop. If I want a teal dress that looks like a real wedding dress I'll have to have someone custom make it. That's not gonna happen.

Next idea, try on white dresses and figure out a way to add teal. The three I had already  found had potential because all of them had a way I could add teal. I figured I would give them a try. When it was finally time for my appointment, I met Michelle, my bridal consultant. She was older than the perky girl. Her husband is a minister and does weddings all the time and she works there. She was AWESOME! When I told her I really wanted something not white she looked shocked and sort of suggested white gowns. She looked relieved when I told her I had picked out 3 dresses that were white.

I headed into the dressing room for the fun that's trying on gigantic dresses. No article of clothing should be that difficult to put on. The first dress was really nice (made by Casablanca). I was surprised. It had thin straps and sort of wrapped around my waist. It had little sprays of pearls. Now, I'll tell you that dress #2 was the dress I ended up buying but I won't give away too many details since I gotta have a few surprises. One thing I'll tell you is that its a lot more formal than I ever envisioned but it was really nice. The best part is that it does have a removable sash that I can easily swap out. Oh, and it has pockets! The last dress was a full A-line with a flower. It was also pretty. Surprisingly, I liked all 3 dresses. Then, Michelle picked one for me to try on. The shape was to die for but it was very embellished. If that dress would've had half the embellishments it may have ended up as my dress. But, I'm not an embellishment person. Once again... PLAIN. I mean it.

After trying on the dresses I was really overwhelmed. I didn't expect to really like anything. I was also surprised that the dress I liked was as cheap as one at David's Bridal but a fairly well known designer. Since we were ravenously hungry (dress shopping is straining) I decided we should go get some Ruby Tuesday salad bar and think about things.

I still really want a colored dress but I want a real dress that's constructed and has the look of a gown. If dress 2 was in aqua it would've been my favorite thing in the whole world. But it was ivory. But it did have a sash that could add teal. After eating lunch, I decided to do it. I liked the dress. It was a good price. And I didn't want to think about having to buy a dress. I figure the dress has never been high on my priority list. I want to look nice but I don't have a vision in my head the way some girls do. Its a dress and there are a lot of them out there. I refuse to waste my time trudging around Mobile looking at dresses. This dress is nice and it does look really good. I look skinny. Its comfortable and the style is super flattering. I feel like I could try on 100 more dresses and I'm sure more of them would also look really nice. I'm not going to break down and have a Say Yes to the Dress moment, so lets just be practical and get the nice dress at the nice store at a nice price.

So, after lunch we go back to the bridal salon and buy the dress. Michelle keeps asking "do you love it?" My response "I like it. I would love it in teal". And, that's still my response. Hopefully I'll still like it when it comes in in May or June! Yep, that's right. That's how long it'll take. Then the fittings begin. This bridal shop has a flat fee for alterations which works well in my position. I am trying to loose weight so I don't have to worry if I am successful that it'll cost loads of money to make it fix. Plus I know it'll need some significant tweaks to make sure it stays up and in place where I want it. My advice to other brides, make sure you find out alteration prices, you can always go somewhere else but it may be easier to do it there.

Yep, so I have a dress. Its very lovely even if it is a shade of white. I think it'll work very well. My mom, Andy's mom and my bridesmaids love it. Now since its more formal than I originally envisioned I'm rethinking my bridesmaid dresses so I'm leaning towards long dresses for them! I'm very relieved to have this checked off the list. Every vendor always wants to know about your dress and this will really help me. Picking a dress definitely helped cement a vision and look that I'm going for, so I'm excited. Sorry to disappoint you by leaving out pictures but you'll have to wait until I reveal it and all the other ways I will make my wedding teal.

Fair warning, I watched Private Chefs of Beverly Hills and they catered an all pink party where all the food was pink. Just saying... teal mac and cheese... it could happen. I will have my teal.....

P.S. I apologize for no pics of anything. I was only allowed pics of the dress I choose so I can't show you the rejects. Also, its impossible to find them online but if I do, I'll share!

Well, we went to our second wedding since we got engaged. I think I've mentioned before that its funny how much more you pay attention when you've got a wedding of your own to plan :)

Our friend's Natalie and Russell got married at Natalie's aunt's home on a lake in a little town outside Atlanta. Now this was world's apart from the last wedding we went too. This was in the country, smaller and outside. The ceremony took place in the yard and the reception was mostly on the porch and pool area.

I loved how personal their wedding seemed. They had lots of little touches that screamed Natalie and Russell. We parked up the road from the house and walked on the drive around the lake to the house. We arrived to this cute sign that you can't help but say "aw" too.

The ceremony was in the yard surrounded by wonderful flowers, trees, etc. The weather was perfect for the ceremony at 4pm. It was bright and sunny although it did get COLD by the end of the night (note all our tights in this picture. I never wear tights!)

The ceremony was pretty normal (i.e. no strange rituals I've never heard of!). They didn't have any "unity" ceremony (candles, sand, gong!). This was the first without this I've seen in a while.

Also, their theme was rockabilly so all the bridesmaids were in cute black dresses with sweetheart necklines and sporting pin up girl curls. I liked that all the ladies had different dresses. I think that's a nice trend.

They also had a tiny ring bearer and sweet flower girl. Seeing how cute they were makes me jealous that we really don't have any super little kids to fill the role in our own wedding. The flower girl carried a little basket made out of a record that had been melted and molded. These record baskets also lined each table with candles for the reception. We all got to take them home at the end of the night too, so I have a sweet new bowl.

The reception was awesome because it was MEXICAN FOOD! Who doesn't love an enchilada?! It was buffet style, served in the house. Instead of a gazillion tiered wedding cake, they went for a dessert table with creme puffs, cupcakes, mini key lime bites. The "wedding" cake was a pumpkin flavored cake baked in one of those octopus shaped pans! There was also a groom's cake that Natalie made. Russell loves Oatmeal cream pies so she stacked them into a huge rectangle and iced the whole thing so it looked like a sheet cake. Then she took M&M's to decorate it like an original Nintendo controller to pay homage to Russell's love of video games. Russell also had nintendo controller cufflinks so it was all quite quite fitting. For drinks they had sodas, water, sweet tea, boxed wine and a few kegs of beer (that's Lanaya and Randi looking cute at the keg). You'll notice a record hanging on the wall. They'd also written on records in paint pen to label things like the coolers with water, they type of beer and even the types of food on the buffet! CUTE!

Overall, it was Natalie and Russell. They seemed to have a blast. I enjoyed the size of their wedding because I felt like I actually spent a lot of time with them. I think that's very rare at many weddings so that is one giant pro for the smaller backyard wedding. The whole thing was so relaxed that 7 hours flew by when we suddenly realized we were dead tired, cold and full and it was time to go back to the hotel. Part of me wanted to stay all night, it was just fun. I hope after Andy and I's wedding that people say "wow, that was soooo Ali and Andy".

Alright, time for bed. My mom is coming to visit tomorrow. We're going to the Ezell House on Wednesday morning so I can show her my venue! So, I'm sure I'll have tons to report on soon.

Congrats Natalie and Russell! We love you!!