Wedding of Wonders – The Blog

Of course, being the procrastinator that I am, I waited until the last possible second to order my tux just so I could make Katie extremely stressed out and nervous that I wouldn’t have a tuxedo for our trip around the world. We leave in LESS THAN 24 HOURS and my tux just arrived! Once again, thanks to Luping for making an incredible tux and Zhen for being an incredible friend and translator (and thanks to Blue Steel for the inspiration to model it).

::sigh:: but now on to the least fun part of the trip, packing. Katie and I will toss up another blog post this evening detailing our packing adventures (and if you’ve ever traveled with Katie, you know that packing is an adventure). We’ve also been receiving incredible send-offs from our friends and we just can’t wait to tell you about it! Thank you all for you love and support, we’ll talk to you soon and I can’t believe that 24 hours from now we’ll actually be flying around the world!!! I feel like a giddy little fat kid in a candy shop, and for those of you who knew me when I was younger, I know very well, first hand, what that feeling is like

I’ll be honest. The idea of having to pack for 5 weeks away from home is somewhat terrifying. Considering I usually bring a huge suitcase for a weekend in New York (and then subsequently get made fun of by Mike), I have no clue how I’m going to fit my entire life into one bag. Oh yeah, did I mention we are carrying on? Uh, yeah.

So, for the past few months, I have been building a small arsenal of items (clothing, shoes, etc.) that are versatile yet stylish to get me through this terribly difficult time. (Totally kidding…I’m super duper lucky to be going on the trip of a lifetime with the man of my dreams!) Since we will be eating out at some of the best restaurants in the world in between hiking and sightseeing, I needed a few dressy options that I could wear out on the town while still being practical from a packing perspective.  Enter twobirds.  I heard about this dress via one of my favorite wedding blogs, Style Me Pretty and became intrigued by the concept.  One dress that can transform into 10 different dresses?!  Where do I sign up?!  Not only was the dress beautiful, but it would give me 10 different dress options without taking up my entire suitcase.  There was only one problem.  Twobirds typically requires 6 weeks lead time for dresses and we were leaving for our trip in a little over a week.  I decided to chance it and sent an email to Ariane, the talented woman behind the twobirds concept and company.  She got back to me almost right away and told me that they had one black dress in stock that they could ship to me right away.  Score!  4 days later, I was the proud owner of an amazing twobirdsdress.  At first I was skeptical considering the $270 price tag, but after trying on the dress, I am a huge fan of what Ariane has created.  It is flattering, comfortable and extremely versatile (obviously, considering the 10 different options).

Yesterday I had the opportunity to try my hand at a few of the different dress configurations and it was actually a ton of fun!  I never knew that getting dressed could be such a creative process!

When people ask us where we are getting married, our response typically begins with something along the lines of “Funny you should ask…”  We then go through the process of telling them about our trip around the world and our plan to bring my wedding dress and Mike’s tux with us in order to make it as authentic as possible.  Once they have time to digest what we have just said, there are a few common responses: 

1)  Wait…you’re doing what? 

2)  Wow, that’s a really cool idea  

3)  You guys are nuts!

4)  How the heck are you going to bring your wedding dress?!

So, to answer the first few questions once and for all: 

1) Yup.  All the way around the world.  Jealous?

2) Thank you.  We think it is pretty cool ourselves.

3)  Yes, yes we are.

As for question #4, the answer is a little bit more complex, so allow me to elaborate.  When Mike and I got engaged almost 3 years ago (yikes!), I began the hunt for my dream wedding gown.  Like a lot of other brides to be, my dream dress happened to be absurdly expensive:

 [COST OF REEM ACRA WEDDING GOWN = (FIRST BORN CHILD + LIFE SAVINGS) / (2^nd MORTGAGE ON HOUSE + BANKRUPTCY)] *

However, I was willing to approach my dress search in a more economical/realistic way.  Long story short, I found THE dress on Ebay after looking for only a few short months and drove up to Brooklyn, NY to try it on.  Granted the woman who was selling me the dress began to sob hysterically as I stood in her infant daughter’s room in her wedding dress and tiara (that she made me try on with the dress as if I was her Barbie doll), but those 2 hours (yes, she made me go through her wedding albums and watch all of her wedding videos…seriously) were definitely worth the thousands of dollars that I saved in the end.  Since I had no idea back then that we would be travelling all the way around the world to get married, I did not exactly purchase the most compact, travel friendly wedding dress to lug all the way around the globe.  So, after we booked our plane tickets, the search began for a beautiful but inexpensive dress to wear throughout our adventures around the world. 

Since I was working with a somewhat limited budget and even previously owned designer gowns can cost thousands of dollars, I considered purchasing a custom gown from China.  After Mike returned from Shanghai a few months ago with a handful of amazing custom suits for only a few hundred dollars, this seemed liked a viable option for me to pursue.  Unfortunately, a few Google searches later and I reached the conclusion that low cost can easily translate into high stress once you factor in the language barrier and distance involved with such a transaction (especially considering the number of measurements necessary to purchase such a dress). 

This was not the end of the road for me.  During my research, I stumbled upon the blog of a woman by the name of Janet Brooks who owns an online wedding dress company that offers custom gowns for brides looking for BOTH great quality and great value.  The honesty in her blog entries and the testimonials from happy brides on her website sparked my interest, but I still thought that there was a catch.  How could she possibly sell a high quality, CUSTOM wedding gown cut to my exact specifications for less than $400?!  I sent Janet an email, letting her know my concerns about ordering a dress and she quickly calmed my nerves.  Her extreme professionalism, openness and expertise about the gowns sold me almost immediately and I emailed my measurements along with a few pictures of the dress that I wanted.  A little more than 6 weeks later and my custom dress arrived at my door early last week.  All I can say is “Wow.”  Not only does the dress look absolutely amazing, but the quality is unbelievable and the fit is fantastic.  The pictures really do not do the dress justice, but in less than one week, you’ll get a better look at the dress in action as I wear it all the way around the world. 

If anyone ever needs a special occasion dress, I highly recommend Janet’s company since my experience could not have been more perfect (I even ordered a second dress for the dancing portion of our wedding reception in June).  As a side note, I had the opportunity to talk to her on the phone last week and she is pretty much the nicest, most honest person that I have ever spoken to.  Thank you for an absolutely stunning dress, Janet!!!

*This gown estimate may or may not be an extreme exaggeration of the actual cost of a Reem Acra wedding dress. 

For those of you who have not been to China, in my experience it is an amazing place, full of wonderful, extremely nice people who work very hard and take pride in their work… Compared to the US, the level of service is very refreshing. So when I had the opportunity to rent a tuxedo from The Men’s Wear-hurting for $130 (that’s Men’s Warehouse, but the guys I work with like to incorporate the word ‘hurting’ into anything that is not good) or buy one custom-tailored to me for $80. Like any savvy shopper, I chose the best value for my money. Unfortunately there are two problems with ordering a tuxedo from China: the first is that once your tux is finished, it’s still in China; secondly, the people that make your tux speak Chinese, so you need to as well. If you can get past those two obstacles, then it’s a no-brainer.

Let me first say that my Chinese is infantile, so I was not ready to tackle the challenge of explaining to someone in China that I wanted the color ‘charcoal’ (have you ever tried to explain to someone in English what the color ‘charcoal’ is? I still struggle… it’s gray, but it’s kind of black, but not really… you know what I mean). Fortunately I have two connections that are making all of this possible: when I was in Shanghai I found a wonderful clothing shop managed by Luping where I bought a bunch of custom suits and shirts – wonderful work; and my amazing friend Zhen from Duke, without whom I would be completely lost in this whole process. While in Shanghai I was incredibly impressed that Luping would work long hours and stay late to make sure we all got exactly what we wanted, then go to her accounting classes at night – this is the kind of business I gladly support (and if anyone wants her contact information I will gladly provide it).

So when it came time to choose the groomsmen’s outfits for the special day, I knew just who to call. After quite a few Skype conversations, emails, pictures and an enormous amount of Zhen’s help, finally we came to an understanding of sizes, colors and specifications. Luping was extremely patient with my email that she kindly referred to as a “very bad Chinese email” (I’m not being facetious! That really is kind! …Trust me, it’s a terrible work of written communication). But alas, we have closed the communication gap and the tuxes are underway! I’ll let you know how they arrive!

At risk of sounding like Thomas Friedman, author of The World is Flat (a far-too-long book that was about 10 years late on the concept of globalization), I do find it quite amazing that an individual in the US can order directly from a manufacturer in China and receive better products than much more expensive, locally sold ones. But I suppose that’s why I’m in business school, because that kind of thing is interesting. Katie has had her fair share of ordering from China as well and I must say, we’ve both been very impressed.

So thank you again for following-along our blog; I promise it will get MUCH more exciting as we head off on our journey around the world (I know, I didn’t update The Trip page yet). But until then we’ve still got a few tricks up our sleeve – so stay tuned!

So we’re sticking it to the Swine Flu and tacking on 2 days to our San Fran stop to make it an awesome California road trip. Some necessary stops will be Yosemite, Muir Woods, The Golden Gate Bridge, Lake Tahoe, Mono Lake, Eldorado Forest, Napa and Sonoma Wineries (we’ve got our favorites), amazing dinner at The French Laundry in Yountville, and of course, Sprinkles Cupcakes. Thanks to all for your suggestions but unfortunately one of the major deciding factors was the fact that US Airways is the worst airline EVER and they significantly limited our options (even though their policy is to credit you the amount of your ticket affected by Swine Flu). So as much as we wanted to hit up another destination, they wouldn’t let me do much else than remove our flights to/from Cancun and replace them with a single flight to San Francisco. But we’re still excited, it should be an awesome time.

In the meantime, we are LESS THAN TWO WEEKS FROM DEPARTURE! Oh man, it is closing in fast! I’m desperately trying to straighten out what to do in our far-too-short amount of time in each city. I am grabbing an international driver’s license just to make sure we don’t have a problem if Katie and I need to rent a Land Rover in Egypt and drive out to the White Desert, hit up the Blue Mountains in New South Wales Australia or cruise out to Stonehenge in the beautiful English countryside of Wiltshire. I’ve never been restricted from renting a car with a US license before except in Dubai, but I suppose better to be safe than sorry.

I also picked up my final visa today from the Brazilian Consulate; this weekend we bought 90 more liters of wine (to go with the previously purchased 90 liters and the 45 liters of champagne to be bought this coming weekend). Katie placed the flower order; I changed our hotel in Rome to the St. Regis (looks amazing), and we are just checking things off our list left and right… This is finally starting to seem real and I can’t believe how fast it is approaching. Thank you everybody for all your support in helping us pull this together!

Keep your eyes open for a post tomorrow on the many challenges of obtaining wedding clothing and Chinese outsourcing (sorry if outsourcing offends those of you staunch republicans, but you have to admit, sometimes you are just dumb)!

Throughout this whole wedding planning process I have stumbled upon hundreds of fantastic blogs covering topics that range from general wedding style and how-tos to flower arranging and modern décor. At first I thought “hey, I could do that,” but I quickly realized how difficult it really is to craft an interesting blog that people can relate to and actually enjoy reading on a regular basis. Aside from having the willpower and patience to post new entries as frequently as possible, I feel like a great blogger is able to write in a casual, relatable manner that allows readers to feel as if they are talking to a close friend or jumping into an event as if they were actually there. While I certainly do not claim to possess any of these impressive blogging traits (this may have something to do with my excessive perfectionism and lack of free time), but I hope to improve upon these things as our blog continues to grow and evolve throughout our exciting journey.

In the meantime, I would love to share with you a few of my favorite blogs. While some are wedding specific others are just fun reads to pass the time during lunch, before bed or throughout a less than interesting class that may or may not involve crimes involving corporations. (Just sayin…)

If there are any blogs out there that you can’t get enough of that deserve some “blog love,” let us know about them in the comments!!!

Style Me Pretty is an absolutely stunning wedding blog that has given me about a million ideas for our wedding.  Owner/blogger Abby updates constantly throughout the day and features a ton of beautiful real weddings and DIY ideas from readers.  Definitely THE blog for anyone planning a wedding.

Once Wed is another beautiful blog with an overwhelming amount of ideas for wedding favors, decor, etc.  Although blog posts are not as frequent as Style Me Pretty (I think owner Emily is working on a redesign for the site), you can find a lot of good stuff in the archives.

This blog is written by the ladies at Southern Weddings Magazine and it is fantastic.  The posts are frequent and cover pretty much every possible aspect of wedding planning.  I’ve never read the actual magazine, but I hope to get my hands on a copy at some point.

The Ritzy Bee Blog is another gorgeous wedding blog that I stumbled upon recently.  The pictures and ideas are fabulous and they feature a ton of great contests and links to recommended vendors.  There is not much to say beyond this:  Simply Stunning.

As many of you already know, I am absolutely obsessed with our wedding photographer Ian Grant over at Ian Grant Photography.  He and his wife Tanya not only run this fabulous wedding photography business, but they also travel the world constantly visiting national parks and occasionally blog about their adventures.  While their blog focuses a great deal on engagement and wedding photography, there are also a ton of pictures of their travels that will make you want to book a flight RIGHT NOW!

More Than Mary is a brand new blog written by the stylish and always fabulous Mary Rambin.  Mary dishes on everything from “fashion and fitness to food and travel” and she does so with an enormous amount of honesty and integrity.  On a more personal note, I recently sent her an email asking for some advice and she not only wrote back with her take, but she followed up to see how I was doing (did I mention that she was in the middle of moving across the country, launching her new blog and filming episodes of her weekly talk show, TMI Weekly?).  Yeah, she’s pretty much amazing.

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While I frequent a number of other blogs (including the usual suspects Perez Hilton, The Superficial, Gawker, etc.) these are my current obsessions.  Please share your favorites in the comments and we’ll be sure to check them out!!!

Today was my official wedding hair and make-up consultation at Antoinette’s Day Spa in Paoli, PA. I didn’t really know what to expect since 1) I have never been a bride-to-be before 2) I haven’t been to Antoinette’s since high school and 3) the idea of having 2 straight hours of pampering is quite foreign to me considering most of my days look something like this: wake up, class, class, meeting, class, homework, dinner, sleep, nightmares about law school/wedding day disasters, repeat. So, needless to say, I was extremely excited about a fun morning at the spa.

I was lucky enough to have the extremely fabulous Keighley (whose sister coincidentally attends the same law school as me!) work on my hair and she was absolutely fantastic! She didn’t make me feel bad for not really knowing what I wanted going into the appointment and she did her best to feel out what I liked and didn’t like. In the end, I was incredibly happy with the job that she did. Once my hair was finished I moved onto the makeup chair. Selena, the woman that did my makeup was a little more straightforward than I anticipated (“Do you trim your eyebrows?” aka “You NEED to trim your eyebrows,” “Do you exfoliate your skin?” aka “You really REALLY need to exfoliate”), but considering how condescending and judgmental I can be on a regular basis (just ask Taraneh), I guess it was refreshing to have someone just cut to the chase and tell me what I needed to do to beautify myself before the big day. Long story short, she also did a great job of figuring out what I wanted (I mean, aside from stealing Kerri Russell’s complexion, hair and overall perfection) and translating that onto my face through her skillful make-up application.

So, without further ado…the result of my hair and make-up morning at Antoinette’s.

 
My.  Wedding.  Shoes.  Arrived.  Today.  Swoon.