Boots boots boots boots!

I wanted to make sure I detailed the accessories I have for the dress, and correct my earlier statement about the cost of my bra.  The bra was 59.99 total - 53.00 plus 6.99 shipping through a seller on Amazon.com.  The exact same bra, the Satin Torsolette strapless bra, through David's Bridal would have been 75.95 total - 69.00 plus 6.95 for shipping.  So I saved almost $20.00 by shopping around!

I touched on this a little bit in my last post, but I wanted to explain my footwear choice.  I really wanted to have a low-key, country style wedding.  One of my bridesmaids is from Texas, and even though I've never even been to the South, she has be saying things like "Oh bless her heart" and "Ah Lawd"...so through my newfound southern-belle-ness, I have also fallen in love with cowboy boots.

I also love weddings where something unexpected happens, or you can't help yourself from saying or thinking "OMG how cute!"  When I saw these boots, that's exactly what I thought.  Even though the colors for the wedding are browns and greens, I also really love purple and I'm going to try to incorporate just a little here and there to keep it from being too overwhelmingly girly....thus the boots.  And they look so perfect with my country-chic lace dress!

<LOVE>

The Dress!

Aaaahhhh, the all-important decision of the perfect dress....

I didn't give this one as much thought or care as most brides for three reasons:
1.)  My fiance would find me sexy in a white bed sheet.  Seriously.  That's how I know it's love - he finds me attractive (and tells me constantly) in sweats just as much as when I'm all dolled up;
2.)  As previously stated, I'm getting married on the side of a mountain - therefore, whatever I'm wearing will most likely end up muddy and a little worse-for-wear by the end of the night.  AND I'm doing "trash-the-dress" photos in the week after the wedding (more on that later);
3.)  I'm wearing it for 4-8 hours max.  I refuse to spend more than I make in a week on something that will be worn once and probably end up destroyed anyway.

I went back and forth between ordering something online and having someone tailor it for me, and being able to try on multiple dresses in a store and buy something in-person.  I don't have any bridesmaids or family withing a 5 hour drive of me, so I was really fortunate to have some great coworkers take me to a nearby bigger town where there is a David's Bridal.

I knew I wanted a lace dress or something with a flowy chiffon overlay at the least, but I was dead set against anything strapless or poufy (inspiration photos below). 

Long story short, I ended by first trip to the dress shop nearly in tears.  I am a 5 foot 5 size 4 with a, shall we say, ample bust.  It seemed like every dress there was a v-neck or low cut, and I am so large in the chest that they were putting me in size 8 dresses.  So my entire body was swamped in a too-big dress with my chest hanging out on top - I continually looked like Stripper Bride Barbie.  Trip no. 1: Complete Failure.

I decided to schedule a trip to Portland when a whole bunch of my family, extended and immediate, would be in town for spring break.  This way, I could have my mom, several aunts and female cousins, and some friends available to help me.  And you know what?  I was in and out of a David's Bridal in less than an hour with my dream dress in hand (see below).  Yes it's lace, and yes it's a sheath style.  But it's also strapless and has a gorgeous little lace train....and I couldn't be happier.  And my price?  $449.00, plus $10 for a garment bag.  I also made sure to look at the tag for the strapless bra they had me use when trying it on, and I found the exact same one through Amazon.com for $35.00 instead of the $55.00 they were charging.

Admittedly, the dress does not yet fit.  I still had to get a size 8 because of my bust, but already it's too big because I've lost some weight.  I'm going to Montana for Memorial Day, and am going to meet with my high school Home Ec teacher, who is also the woman that taught me to design and sew my own clothes, to get the dress altered.  She has been a tailor and clothing designer for a long time, and designed and made gorgeous wedding dresses for a lot of my friends back home, so she is really the only person (other than my family members) that I trust to alter my dress.  Because my dress is lace and has beading, I would have had to pay more than $200.00 at David's Bridal for the fitting (up front no less, so if they completely destroyed my dress I'd be S.O.L.), so I'm excited to save money AND have someone I fully trust handling the alterations!

**A note about the picture above - I don't get her shoes.  Yuck.  I guess some may think the same of me when they see my footwear choice - I'm wearing lavender cowboy boots under my dress! :)  I like simple little unexpected surprises!

Invitations

My fiance and I didn't want to send out Save the Dates, because we had so many guests coming from out of town that we wanted to make sure they had ALL the information they needed as far in advance as possible.  So with that in mind, we decided to order the invitations in January and we started sending them out in February. 
And instead of putting a ton of details into the invitations like wedding registry lists, we put a business card-size insert in that matched the invites directing them to our free wedding website that we created through www.weddingchannel.com.  We were able to link our wedding registries and create complete pages about our wedding on there, including lodging info, attire details, pictures, our story, and even stories about our wedding party!  And creating the website is completely FREE!
We decided to go through www.vistaprint.com for our wedding invitations.  We ordered 250 invitations with plain white envelopes and 250 RSVP cards with plain white envelopes - the entire order for everything came to $188.23.  Now, I know what some of you are thinking - 250?!?!  Is she crazy?!?!  Well, I know I over-ordered (our guest list is around 200 with all the relatives and their kids, so we really only needed about 150 invites), but I kept this in mind:  for some reason, the town we live in has HORRIBLE USPS service.  It can take anywhere from 2 days to a week for a piece of mail to get to PORTLAND - which is only a 5 hour drive from here.  We discovered this around Christmas time, when the gifts we sent out AND the gifts arriving from our family were all late getting here and there.  We sent something UPS Ground to the Midwest, and it made it there faster than our priority mail package to the same area mailed around the same time.
Long story short, I had a feeling that mail was going to go missing, and it did - we have had to resend approximately 25% of our invitations.  This is extremely frustrating, but at least I know we will never be short of replacements!  And the difference in cost between 150 and 250 invitations was only about $30.
A bit of advice with using www.vistaprint.com - sign up for their mailing list, and sign up for the free bridal kit.  By doing so, you will start getting emails and postcards in the mail with discount codes for anywhere from 10-30% off your entire order - can't beat that!
I've attached the censored version of our invitation and the RSVP below - I love the green!  And I love the personalized tree with the first initial of my and my fiance's names!

Next time:  the dress!

Welcome!

Hello!  This blog is just what it claims to be - a guide to every step of my wedding planning, prices and all.  My fiance and I are hoping to spend no more than $5000 on EVERYTHING, and I hope to share my tricks and deals with other brides looking to create an equally unforgettable day with a tight budget!  I encourage any and all brides who come across this blog to steal every single detail I share and claim it as your own - otherwise, why the heck would I put this on the Internets for all to read???

I am getting married July 30, 2011 in the mountains in Montana.  My fiance and I live in Oregon, so pretty much all of our planning is being done through the internet!  We are getting married at my dad's house in a very very very small town right smack in the middle of the amazing Rocky Mountains.  He is in the process of building his house, a gorgeous log cabin on the side of the mountain with views that will take your breath away and air that will cure any ailment!

I can pretty much sum up what kind of vibe we are going for with our wedding in three words - natural, recycled, chic.  I'm not a hippie, per se - more of a conservationist and frugalista.  I really like to reuse anything glass or shiny, and my fiance and I both love the colors green and brown and anything to do with nature.  So what better way to have a wedding that incorporates all of those things in a rustic, down-home, woodsy-feeling ceremony?

I've already completed a few details for the wedding, of which I will share each in individual future posts until we are all caught up....but with this, I'm intending to post a bunch of photos below to show anyone out there in the world what served as my inspiration and guides for my planning, just so you can get an idea of what I'm going for.  And remember - everything I do and post will be as low-cost or discounted as I can find, and I will share every single detail of my purchases and dealings.  By the time my fiance and I say "I do", you will know every penny I have spent and every detail I have arranged as well as I will.  So enjoy, comment, and make suggestions - I welcome any and all!