Inspiration for wedding look-feel

The right side of this is from an inspiration board I found on a different website, and the left side reflects many little images I found which inspire the theme of my wedding.

I recommend browsing as many wedding magazines and websites as possible to get a feel for the colors, styles, and images that appeal to you. It's also helpful to have these kinds of pictures and sketches to bring with you as you order your wedding cake, invitations, flowers, and rentals (tablecloths, dinnerware, etc.).

First things first - bridal attire

So the very 2nd time I went to try on dresses (the 1st time wasn't so great - I went to a place where I couldn't find a single decent dress and the sample sizes I had to put on where at least 8 sizes too big for me. I'm sorry I don't remember the name of the place) I found my dream dress. Unfortunately the dream dress came with a heavy price tag which I just couldn't reconcile with my budget. Unfortunately, the store didn't allow pictures (pretty common practice with these places) so I don't have a picture of myself in the dress.

By the way, this whole wedding business is quite a racket. The lack of transparency is incredible. Not only are cameras banned from the dress stores, but often times the price tags are hidden or non-existent and it's pretty much impossible to return your purchase, even if you don't end up wearing it. Not your typical American shopping experience.

So of course I'm not going to put my dress up on this site, as it is a secret, but once the wedding transpires you might get a glimpse. I will say where I ended up purchasing the item - The Running of the Brides event at Filene's Basement in Tyson's Corner. I got there a few hours after the initial madness of the early AM opening. 3 of my lady friends helped me pick out and put on dresses, and after 2 hours I finally settled on a nice dress for 1/10 the price of the dream dress pictured. Of course, all sales are final at this event, and you take the dress just as it is - in my case, with a few mysterious black marks that should come out after spot cleaning, and with a much too large bust that will also be fixed by the time of the wedding.

If you want to see some bridal madness, check out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVtisU3yFj0.

First things first - wedding attire

I thought that since I'm not super-busy at this moment in time, I could do something perhaps useful to society by taking all of the stuff I've found and learned since I started planning my wedding in January of 2008. I hadn't really given my "ideal" wedding a thought before my fiance proposed early this year. But since, I have spent countless hours thinking/ planning/ collaborating with my many helpers (my friends and family members).

The first thing I did was choose bridal attire to set the overall theme, tone, and formality for the wedding. I choose this tactic because all of those things determine other very important elements such as the time of day and budget for the event, which play into pretty much every decision you will make about your wedding.

I spent pretty much all of February and March looking online at hundreds of wedding gowns and bridesmaids dresses. I got my Donna Ricco bridesmaids' dresses at Nordstrom - they're cocktail length, simple, elegant purple dresses. The best part is the color. The quality of the fabric isn't too high (it's a little itchy), but they really go with my vision of the color scheme. The maids will wear silver strappy shoes.

I choose 3 lovely bridesmaids, but the sad thing is that one of them is probably not going to make it to the wedding after all. So I will probably have my youngest brother, 22, sub as the "bridesman."