I don't have pics of the dresses on the models, but here is me trying on one of the styles that I chose for the bridesmaids (I had a strapless, sweetheart neckline style in the same material picked out for the co-matron's of honor). Keep in mind this was 6 sizes too big, and in the wrong color.
Now, picture the above dress in this color....
Would have been so rich and perfect!
This is what we ended up with... girls are beautiful....dresses, not so much!
Ok, enough of my dress sob-story. To add to my wedding "drama," my first bachelorette party was in the middle of September located in Las Vegas, of course! I had a combination of my family, friends, and my almost in-laws. Now considering the rule of "what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas," I can't give too many details. But I will say that many, many memories were made that weekend - most of them good and hysterically unforgettable, with a few not-so-good memories as well. Let's just say that I ended up driving home by myself on the last day at 4am because I just needed to get away, and as a result of some of the events of the weekend I felt it was best to cancel my own bridal shower that was to be held a few weeks later. So I started my new job, then had bach party #1, then came the dress fiasco - at this point I am "over it!" I even asked Alex if we could just elope and forget the whole thing, lol. In October, the reception planner let me know that she was now working with a new baker so we were going to have to go and do cake tasting all over again, and very soon of course since the wedding was around the corner. At this point, nothing surprised me. With the timing of everything, I ended up going while Alex was on his way to his bachelor party in San Diego. Luckily, he trusted me making the decisions. I was very pleased with the new baker and actually didn't mind the inconvenience since I felt she was better than the original baker. And she was voted best in the Greater Orange County on TheKnot.com. Then came my trial run of hair and makeup. Mitch was nice enough to come to this with me for some input. I hired a real pro for this task as both were super important to me for the big day. I loved everything she did and was happy I did the trial so that on the day of, I was not concerned with how they would turn out. That evening was my bachelorette party #2 at Diana's house hosted buy D, Angela, and Sandra. These girls are crazy and hired a stripper, and had a lot of fun games planned. I seriously had a BLAST with friends that I've met through Alex, and with my almost in-laws. It was a drama free night! I am still so touched that they threw me a separate party since they couldn't make it to Vegas.
The following weekends leading up to the wedding were full of last minute details, meetings with vendors, coordinating with the wedding party, and attending our church retreat - yes, we attended this requirement just TWO weeks before the wedding. In my defense, the church gave me a lot of wrong information before they finally gave me the right information. I was a great tool in helping them refine their checklists to help future bride and groom accomplish everything that they required. And they required A LOT! It was stressful attending so many classes through the church, but when we finished all of them, we were truly grateful for the experiences and for everything that we had learned. We even met two awesome couples around the same age as us at the weekend retreat. Someone from each couple had also gone to Bishop Amat, Alex's high school alma mater - I swear, those Lancers are everywhere!! :) One couple we have grown very close to, and they ended up attending our reception since my friend and his wife were unable to attend at the last minute. Raymond had emailed me on the day of wishing us luck on our big day, I checked my emails in the car from the site we took pictures at to the church. I was so happy to hear from him and invited them to take the place of my friends. They got ready and were there the whole time. We were so touched. And it was easy for them to remember our wedding date since on the first day of the retreat, one person from every couple had to get up and introduce themselves and tell everyone (100 people) where and when we are getting married. Of course everyone was getting married 6 months later or more, except us! And we were the last couple to introduce ourselves so when I said "our wedding is in two weeks" I was laughing, and so did everyone else. We were known as "Two Weeks" the rest of the weekend.
The weekend before the wedding, I asked my Nina (a professional photographer) to take pictures of my dress and accessories so that I didn't have to worry about it on the day of, plus her house in Friendly Hills had much more to offer than mine for pictures. We hung the dress up on a tree outside, my uncle helped us. My Nina and I watched him hang the dress very carefully, then I see my Nina walk up to the dress with a puzzled look on her face and I knew something was wrong. Well, it turns out that my uncle didn't know he had just cut himself on something right before he touched the dress and sure enough, there was a spot of blood on it - right on the boob! My heart sank and we grabbed the dress and drove to the closest dry cleaner - I've NEVER seen my Nina drive that fast, lol. We get there and they did a quick spot cleaning. You couldn't see any blood at all..... however a watermark was starting to slowly appear, and that set me over the edge. We went back to her house and watched to watermark get worse and worse. Finally, I wanted to take it to a different dry cleaner and she just felt horrible. She started calling Davids Bridal to see if they could help, but since we had already taken it somewhere else, they could not be liable. Then she started asking if they could replace the dress in a week and she would pay any cost to get it done. I made her hang up, as I was not going to let her do that. We went to two more dry-cleaners, but none of them had any ideas. I finally had to move on, that day was packed with last minute things that needed to be done, including my very labor some place card idea. I was planning on having my aunt Dodie help me with that project, so I went to her house sobbing with my dress. She decided to let it air dry and hang it up in her room. We started the project and a couple hours later I went to look at the dress and the watermark was gone! I was so grateful! But then we realized that the place card idea was going to take a very LONG time. We should have known since just a couple of weeks before, she had to meet me at Michaels because the poster boards I bought were too big to fit in my car, lol. And the night before, Alex and I were at Kinko's until midnight cutting up the posters for the project, and her husband Steven was cutting up the poster into the small pieces that I needed. Dodie was kind enough to finish the project throughout the week and it was literally ready just the day before the wedding! I'm so lucky she wasn't working at that time.
Rehearsal was on Thursday night and it went well - G-Mom and I ran all over Southern California that day running wedding errands and getting groomed, and I barely made it to the church on time. Dinner was a taco man hosted at Monica and Victor's house. I was still wrapping presents and filling out cards that I never even ate. I had a short dance rehearsal planned for the wedding party to learn and to perform as a surprise at the beginning of the reception, but we simply ran out of time - I was really bummed! Then my brother decided he would help me out and take my G-Mom home for me. Well, I forgot to give him the keys to my car which was at her house in order for him to come home, and my phone was on silent from being in the church. I happened to check my phone just in time to realize that neither of us had thought of that small, yet very important detail. So, Alex and I drove up to G-Ma's house after all to get my brother home. We did a lot of last minute planning on the way up, and when we returned home after midnight, with only one day left before the wedding. The newest task at hand: We had to find a new place to take our pictures since we had just found out that it was going to be pouring on the day of the wedding. And it sure did pour...all day long! They say it's good luck, I say it's just "my luck!" Alex found a great place, and though it didn't compare to the beautiful park I had chosen initially, it worked out. We let the wedding party know where and at what time to meet for pictures with less than 24 hours notice, and they all showed up - we were very lucky. Shannon stayed at my house most of the week leading up to the wedding, and she helped me so very much. Alex had a work trip that he couldn't get out of that week, of course! And I didn't have much vacation time since I had just started, so I only took the two days off before the wedding. I needed all the help I could get, and we were all literally working up until after midnight the night before.
There were many tears in the last three months leading up to the wedding, Alex was very supportive! Between the dresses, the bach party drama, a very flaky reception planner, putting on too much weight at my final dress fitting (after alterations), blood on the dress, the news of the rain, and my good friend telling me the day before my wedding that he couldn't make the reception - I was ready all cried out and just ready to get the day here and over with already! But with all the stress of the last 6 weeks, I managed to lose enough weight for the dress to zip up and fit just right, and everything fell into place - for the most part. We were very Blessed with all the help and support we received from our loved ones during the stressful time of wedding planning.
