Wedding Dress Wednesday - A Little Splash of Color

I know I just said I don't want a strapless dress. But I keep coming back to the David's Bridal website to look at this dress:

(David's Bridal)

I'm generally fairly traditional, so it had never occurred to me to get married in anything but all white. But there's just something about this dress and the way the accented details pop that I can't help but love.

What do you think? Is getting married in a dress with color too far out there?

Uncle Gerard's Wedding

In case you weren't aware of just how cool I am, it's necessary to point you to my other blog, You Are Where You Came From, my genealogy/family history blog. As much as I could just tell you how cool genealogy is and leave it at that (as I often do), instead, I'm going to draw wedding planning inspiration from my family history!

I've occasionally posted about my grandmother's Uncle Gerard's wedding, and here I'll share a picture of the wedding between Gerard Mulcahy and Ann Danaher, in 1937, at the St. George Hotel, Brooklyn, NY.

The bride and groom are to the right; My great-grandfather is seated at the "head" of the table, with my great-grandmother to his right.

But if you want to hear more about them, you'll have to visit my nerdier blog.

I'm hear to talk about the table. Ever since I first saw this picture, long before I was thinking about weddings, I was enamored of the ferns on the table. Simple, yet elegant, don't you think? I don't think a similar design would work on a round table - not enough room room to show them off - but maybe, if we were married during fern season (when are ferns in season, exactly?), and used ferns in our flower arrangements, ferns like this would be a nice accent on a head table.

Who ever said boys don't get excited about wedding planning?

Talking about reception venues:

3:12 PM Ben: do you want me to send e-mails to some of these places asking about prices?

I feel like otherwise we can't narrow it down

3:13 PM me: I feel like we're not even in the narrowing it down stage yet

we're in the expanding our options stage

3:14 PM Ben: right

me: we can spend a week or two seeing what kind of places we like

then get some actual information on them

Ben: ok

that's probably a good idea

me: at which point, I think we'll need a spreadsheet

want to be the spreadsheet guy?

Ben: yes!

I love spreadsheets!

me: I know!

Nothing like a spreadsheet to get Ben excited!

Wedding Dress Wednesday - Dalmacia by Pronovias

For the first several weeks of our engagement, I was so busy that the closest I got to planning or even thinking about weddings was furtively sneaking peeks at wedding dresses online while I was supposed to be studying. As a result, I've already developed something of a collection of links to and pictures of wedding dresses online, which I'll share with you in a feature I'm calling "Wedding Dress Wednesday." (I worry the attempt at alliteration is going to backfire if I ever want to start another weekly feature, considering that "Wedding anything" is going to require the use of a Wednesday for alliteration . . . but so be it.)

I adore this dress. I love it, I love it, I love it. I haven't been able to find the original image source, but it seems it from the 2008 Pronovias St. Patrick line. It's being discontinued almost immediately, I've heard, and while we're not far enough along to have set ourselves a budget for things like dresses, the $1,700 price I saw is really just far more than I think I'd be comfortable paying for *1* piece of clothing that I will wear *1* time on *1* day. It would seem unconscionable. There are starving children in Africa, after all.

But that doesn't mean we can't at least talk about the dress, right? I love the lace. I love the sleeves. I love the lace sleeves. I'd love to get married in a dress with sleeves - I've always been partial to lace sleeves - and they're a bit hard to find. I was worried that if I insisted on sleeves, I'd end up looking frumpy or old-fashioned. I may want sleeves, but I don't want to compromise. This was the first dress I found that really proved that "sleeved" and "frumpy" can be downright antithetical at times. So though it's out of reach, I keep coming back to it and drooling a bit.

First Steps

I never really wrapped my mind around the concept of a wedding. Kathleen and I had been planning on getting engaged for quite a while before it actually happened, but in my mind, the process would be "we get engaged, then we get married"...for some reason I guess I forgot that there was a wedding that had to take place.

So, I guess I was a little surprised when we got to New York and I found out that the O'Haras had already looked at a few reception locations. Wait a sec, hadn't I proposed like 2 weeks ago? And weren't we getting married in 2011?

I tried to at least do something concrete this week. I basically asked our house from senior year at Georgetown to be my groomsmen. Frank agreed to be my best man, and Pete and Chris agreed to be my groomsmen. Ali, a friend from high school will also be a groomsman. Woo hoo! I did something!

Throughout the week, I think we must have been asked if we had set a date at least a dozen times. Once or twice I joked, "yep, 2011". I'm also finding that I'm not exactly cut out for wedding planning. What kind of flowers? What kind of centerpieces? What should the invitations look like? And this is just for the wedding. Little did I know that there are tons of other things that come in between. Engagement parties, bridal parties, bachelor/bahelorette parties, meetings with the priest, pre cana, etc. etc. etc. This is starting to sound very overwhelming. I guess "getting married" is actually quite complicated. Good thing I've got a great girl to go through it with.

Pictures

After looking at the grounds of a possible venue, Ben, my cousin Jamie, and I went to Long Pond Ironworks State Park to continue our outdoorsy day, where Jamie, a talented photographer, took what I believe are the first pictures of us together since we got engaged.

Photograph by Jamie Vitale.

Ben and I at the NJ Botanical Gardens.

Photograph by Jamie Vitale.

Ben and I at Long Pond Ironworks State Park.

After that, they asked what I want in a dress. That's another post entirely.

Welcome to our Wedding Blog

Okay, here's where we stand: We don't know when we're getting married. We don't know where we're getting married. We just know we're getting married. We know we want to document the process. We hope you'll follow us on our journey.