“There’s no need to go overboard” were the last words I heard from my husband as I began researching our wedding. If his hopes for me were to take a relaxed approach to event planning then he didn’t stand a chance. Before the ring was on my finger I had already researched so many different aspects of the wedding and there was such a limited amount of time to get my “razzle dazzle” on.

One of the areas that I knew I wanted to stand out was with the invitation. In my opinion the invitation was the gateway piece to the wedding and should be treated just as importantly as the wedding itself. Besides the Save-The-Date, it was the first official extension of the wedding that entered people’s homes and invited them to attend the event and if I wasn’t going to half-ass the wedding then I wasn’t going to half-ass the debut!

During my research I stumbled on a cute blog called Red Prairie Press and fell in love with their DIY wedding invite. (In fact if you look down in the comment section I was one of the 50 people asking how they did it!).

Without any response I made it my mission to make my own cartoon invitation which would be similar, but include a touch of Katie sparkle. I wanted my wedding to be “an experience” from the get go. And what better way to do that then providing entertainment from the start?

I went searching on Etsy.com for a DIYer to help me assemble a DVD case invitation to house the wedding details and DVD. I stumbled upon the PictoonCards shop who hand creates DVD cases. I knew that with the right direction we would be able to transform her hand-made cases into the perfect invitation. And we did!

Once the invitation design was in place I knew I had to go through with making the cartoon. I spent a few days on it and after almost 50 slides I hit play and only had about 45 seconds of video. I showed the beginning of it to my friend Nicole and said, “Well, at least I know I can do it. But I’m done with this project it is going to take too long.”

Her response was something along the lines of “The hell you are.. you will finish this cartoon because it is too damn cool for you not to!”… I slowly went back to the computer and kept working away. I guess I was past the turn around point.

In the end I developed a four-minute production (387 slides) using computer paper, colored pencils, a scanner and Mac iMovie starring Joe, Myself and our lovely 17 pound cat Dexter

Dexter our cat.. isn't he so cute?!?

*Sidebar: iMovie is the most amazing free application that comes standard on a Mac. By inserting a sequence of cartoon clips and setting the run-time speed of each clip  less than 1/2 a second iMovie played each slide so fast that it made the cartoon move (i.e. come to life). I also believe Windows Live Movie Maker does the same thing.

So sit back and enjoy. Lights, Camera… ACTION!

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All eyes are on you on the day of your wedding… no pressure right? So when it comes to picking the wedding dress it is important to take time to ensure you find the dress that will make you feel like you belong on the red carpet’s Best Dressed List and not under the headline of What the Heck Was She Thinking?

My pops and I walking down the aisle before we both started bawling like babies!

As some of you may have read in my most recent post, I almost fell into the latter and bought a dress that was beautiful, but all wrong for my body shape (pause for dramatic effect). But Don’t Cry for Me Argentina, I was lucky enough to correct my first fashion faux pas and find a replacement dress that made me feel like a million dolla dolla bills on my big day. Here are few things that I learned need to be considered before shopping for the MOST IMPORTANT DRESS OF YOUR LIFE… again no pressure.

The hardest part about picking out the wedding dress are the time restraints that require a bride to order their dresses early, before many other details of the wedding have been determined.

So basically, before you have time to plan anything, you need to get your dressed purchased so you can actually get it in and altered before you big day… oh what was that? You don’t even have an idea of what type of wedding, theme, look or feel you plan on having? Not the dress shops problem, you have to get the dress now, or strut your birthday suit down the aisle (talk about taking the “casual wedding” theme to the extreme). If there isn’t a lot of time to plan the wedding this could be a huge headache for a bride.

In addition, some brides may have already created a clear mental picture of the perfect wedding dress in their head since they were five. To this particular bride; before your precious dreaming-heart breaks because your five-year-old imagined dress lets you down, I want to predispose you to a little reality check. At age five some of you didn’t envision yourself struttin’ your Apple Bottom Jeans or packing in the “lovely lady lumps” that you developed after puberty.  Also, although I can’t believe it either, Madonna’s Like a Virgin Lace fingerless gloves are no longer “radical dude”…and for that matter saying “radical dude” is no longer radical…dude.

In other words- you may have a clear idea of what you want to look like on your wedding day, and some of you fashionistas may already make your “child bearing hips” not lie like Shakira, but be sure to still do your research before walking in cold turkey because the last thing you want to do is feel frustrated and lost when shopping for your gown.

The important thing is to chillax and remember your dress is out there and you will find it.

After all, your man was out there and you found him, which can be challenging enough!

Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail 

You need to give yourself time to generate a plan of attack to finding your perfect dress. It is always good to peruse the web and pull a few photos of dresses that you envision yourself in before actually stepping foot in the dress shop. Keep an open mind and find dresses in different shapes and styles to see if something may surprise you.

Before you begin your quest to find the Holy Grail, know your budget, any important details (i.e. grandma thinks bare arms are the devil or the venue doesn’t have a fire permit, so no lights or hidden firework shooters in the bustle) and have a general idea of how traditional you want your dress to be.

Most boutiques also require that you schedule an appointment to try on dresses so it is important to determine who you want in your shopping posse to be present and what their schedules are like when booking your appointments.

Bustin’ Out The Benjamins

Know your budget before your start looking at dresses!

Do not under any circumstances put on a dress that doesn’t fall within your budget.

If you do this you will begin to rationalize ridiculous cost saving measures in your head in order to purchase your dress. Trust me, it is not okay to serve pizza rolls instead of chicken and no you’re Aunt Millie shouldn’t be allowed to perform at the reception over paying for a DJ. Your guests can’t bump and grind to the Love Boat… although I would love to see someone try.

The rule of thumb says (sidebar: who in the world invents these stupid sayings?  Is anyone else imaging a dictator face drawn on a thumb, shaking it’s turned down eyebrows at you telling you the rules you are to obey. And then weirdly enough we listen to him saying, “Oh yes I must follow the “rules of thumb” for he is wise and knows all”.)

12-15% of the wedding budget should be set aside for the wedding gown, accessories, alterations and undergarments.

When meeting with the bridal consultant for the first time you should make it clear what your price range includes. If you are only have $1000 to spend on the entire ensemble then your consultant needs to know that you are including the slip, veil and alterations so that they don’t begin pulling $1,000 dresses.

A great way to save money on a gown is to check out sample sales and trunk show promotions and discounts as well. Adding beading, trims, broaches, or special family heirlooms can take an off-the-rack sample gown and make it unique.

Dress Posse

It is up to you on who you should invite with you to go dress shopping. Keep in mind differing personalities and make an executive decision on whose advice you think will really help you come to the right conclusion when the going gets tough. Never go by yourself because you do want to be sure to have another opinion aside from the consultants. Bring someone who will enjoy sharing this experience with you and will also be honest yet respectful.

Sometimes the opinions of large entourages will only distract from the opinion that matters, the brides.

Although, bridal entourages do make for good Reality TV. My favorite episodes of Say Yes to the Dress usually involve a dress posse member who is pouting because the bride didn’t like the dress they picked out—ridiculous people are awesome, but not when it involves you.

Let Me Pencil You In

You have packed your binder full of your essential shopping blueprints and gathered the crew. Your budget has been set and you have developed an overall idea of what you would like to look like on your wedding day. Time to get that appointment scheduled!

Another rule from the wise man they call “thumb” is your dress should be ordered six months before your wedding.

Ideally you should begin shopping for your dress about nine months or more before your wedding.

If you are not working with that kind of time (basically you are one of those crazy brides who can plan your wedding under six months… I bow at your feet) you may run into extra rush charges so it would be good to extra money budgeted to be safe. In my case there wasn’t even enough time for rush shipping so I actually had to take a dress off the store floor. I was able to negotiate a cheaper price and had the dress professionally cleaned and tailored before receiving it.

Are We There Yet?

There are many things you need to expect from the bridal shop before going to your appointment. Most bridal boutiques require appointments so they can ensure that you will get the personal attention of the bridal consultant. Some bridal consultants do work on commission so be very honest with them if you are not planning on buying that day and hopefully they will be honest with you and not push the more expensive gown over the most flattering.

Don’t try to squeeze your appointment in over your lunch hour. This isn’t a dentist appointment after all (although Julie Roberts did teach us you should never neglect our gums). It does take time to put the dresses on and take it off along with looking through the racks. Plan on being at the appointment for at least two hours.

Once you arrive for your appointment you will be taken to a dressing room and your Dress Posse will be giving a line of chairs for their viewing pleasure.

The first step is to talk about your wedding plans with the consultant so that they can help choose dresses based of off your tastes. Bringing pictures from books and magazines will definitely help along with providing a clear outline of a budget. If you know the information at the time of your appointment it would be helpful to share the location, theme and your vision for the wedding.

If you have the shoes you plan on wearing the day of the wedding then I would also bring them with you.  Usually this won’t be a problem until you begin the dress fitting process, but for those who on wavering between a standard sized dress and a tall, the heel of your shoe may determine what gown you need to order.

The number one thing that took me off guard and pushed me into my first dress was the discounts that were offered by the boutiques on my first appointment. Basically I was told that if I put the deposit down on my dress within 24 hours of my first appointment I would save 20% off the cost of the dress and 50% off the cost of in-house alterations.

Your brain goes into “LaLa Land” when you are searching for your dress and you begin to rationalize ridiculous things like- if I can save 20% then I can go up to more expensive dresses and still meet within my budget, etc…

In addition to that promotion I found out that if I also purchased my bridesmaid dresses from there then I would get 20% off each bridesmaids dress and then I would get 30% off my dress. If I took it a step further I would get 20% off of my tuxes as well! Of course all of this had to be committed within 24 hours of my appointment, giving me no time to stew over my decision.

I was not able to pay for all of bridesmaid dresses but I knew I wanted to pay a part of them. The idea that I could help save them 20% more was very enticing. This put my shopping brain in overdrive and ended up having me commit to the dress.

Be prepared for incentives and do not let them influence you decision.

You will regret purchasing a dress if it isn’t the right one. I am a great example of this because six months after purchasing my first dress I threw budget out the window and ended up spending more to get the right dress to help correct my original mistake.

Whispering Words Of Wisdom

Do not take shopping for you wedding dress lightly, but do not take it so seriously that you can’t enjoy the experience. After all the plan is to only have one wedding in your life (unless it’s a publicity stunt like Kim Kardashian.. in which case, I’m totally honored that you are reading this blog post you crazy Kardashian.. I’m a huge fan of all that is bootilicious and off it’s rocker).

One thing I took away from the wedding experience is that not only is the big day memorable, but the preparations and moments that lead up to that day only happen once as well. You don’t want to look back on shopping for your dress and remember tears of frustration.

Have fun and relish the moment.

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Depending on how you look at it, I may not be the best person to give advise on choosing the wedding gown (considering I purchased a different dress at last minute), but I’m still going to give it a go and hope my shopping faux pas can help you find your dream gown.

The first order of business is to clear the air on why I had a last minute dress swap (as in less than two months before the big day). The truth is I wasn’t ready to purchase my first dress when I did. At the time I had only been engaged for a few weeks and had got caught up in the theatrics of being in a wedding dress for the first time. I hadn’t really done any research when I went to my first dress appointment, and although the dress was BEAUTIFUL (my mom shed a tear when she found out that I was later changing dresses), it wasn’t the dress for me.

How did this happen? Well after getting engaged one of the first things I did was schedule a dress shopping appointment. I had never been wedding dress shopping before (obviously) and so I just thought I would go to a few different appointments and take my time and make a decision within the next few months. I didn’t realize all the factors that come into play when you are at your appointment.

The first thing that shook my decision making was that the boutiques only offered 20% off of the dress along with 20% off each bridesmaid dress if you bought your wedding dress within 24 hours of your appointment. This gave me some anxiety, because I was planning on paying only some of the bridesmaid dresses and if I could help them save an additional 20% I definitely wanted to do that.

At my first appointment I was put into a dress that I wasn’t expecting to like. It was a ballgown and normally I go for more form fitting dresses. I was surprised how much I liked it, but there were a few features of the dress that I didn’t care for (I think at one point I called the top material “casket ruching”) but the boutique said we could alter everything I was looking to change. All of a sudden I liked a style I normally wouldn’t select, but found out I was going to have over $500 in alterations. One of my friends (who was with me at the time) said, if you have $500 in alterations to change your dress, then this isn’t your dress. She immediately called and got me in for a last minute appointment that afternoon with David’s Bridal (even though I wasn’t planning on shopping there) to see if there was anything in their inventory that caught my eye that day (since we were on a deadline with the first boutique to buy the dress within 24 hours to get all of the deals).

Right when we walked in there was a strapless ballgown on the front maniquin. It had almost ALL of the features I was looking for in the first dress and didn’t require any alterations. I put it on and was very excited to find it was also $200 less then the original one I was looking at (not including the $500 worth of alterations). Everyone in my dress posse agreed it was a beautiful dress and so I rang the little wedding dress bell and off we were!

About four months later my dress came in and I tried it on and it was beautiful, but I didn’t get the same feeling of excitement that I had when I first had it on. I even drove straight from the bridal shop to my friend’s house to try it on for her and not because I couldn’t wait to put it back on, but because I needed to have the reassurance it was the right dress.

Another problem was that when I bought the dress I didn’t have an idea of what my wedding was going to look like and now four months after my initial purchase the only thing that didn’t match the wedding was the dress. It didn’t correlate with the vintage glam theme I had going and I no longer liked the dress.

I think the excitement I had the day of purchasing my first dress was that I found a dress with all the alterations I was looking for in the original gown I put on. The excitement wasn’t from finding my actual wedding dress. Also, for me, I never have liked the weight of ball gowns and because I have a smaller waist, they tend to hide my best feature, but because I had been pleasantly surprised by the first ball gown I looked at I thought that I had found the one. However, i’m so tall that once I took a step back and saw myself in the ball gown, it was too much dress for me. Without research and an idea of what my wedding was going to look like, making the hasty decision to buy a dress that day was bound to be a disaster.

The original wedding dress which was purchased without enough consideration. It was later replaced with something that was more flattering to my body type- however this is the first dress that found me cleavage- Where did those come from?

The worst part about it was that I am an avid fan of “Say Yes to the Dress” and for years I was constantly yelling at my TV set when brides would return to the store to “get a different gown”. How is that possible? How do you make such an important purchase without being sure? And here I was a few months before my wedding convincing myself that I made the right choice, when in reality I was looking for a reason to re-ad”dress” (pun totally intended) the dress aspect of my wedding.

Although I may have been digging a bit, the opportunity for a dress exchange appeared two months prior to the wedding. While doing my usual Facebook stalking I stumbled upon an old classmates wedding album (mind you I’m from a very small town that wearing the same wedding dress would be noticeable and if given the choice shouldn’t be done) and about eight photos into the album it hits me, she is wearing the wedding dress I had originally selected!

Okay, yes, it took me almost eight photos to realize the dresses were the same, and her wedding was over a year prior to mine (in fact I even commented on a photo over a year ago telling her I loved her dress, which I did.. on her, not me) but isn’t that saying something? Why did I not notice it right away and why was I relieved to find an excuse to go dress shopping again? I should have been heartbroken that someone had worn the dress prior to me, but instead I felt optimistic that I may have a leg to stand on when negotiating a dress exchange. That’s when it all sank in; I had made a mistake when selecting my wedding gown.

My Official Dress- The image I saw online that gave me hope that I would find a replacement dress!

Luckily for me, David’s Bridal worked with me and allowed me to exchange the dress for one of theirs for equal or greater value (this included the slip and veil that I purchased to go with the dress as well). The only problem was that I would have to find a dress on their store floor the day of my appointment since there wouldn’t be enough time to order one in and get the alterations done in time. It was a wonderful yet stressful feeling. I had already made a mistake with the first gown, and now I had the pressure to find a dress that day without any other options.

This time, I did my research. I perused through their web site and printed out every option I liked. I realized that although it may look good on the model and someone else, it will look totally different on me. I knew I had to try many different dresses and styles (even if I wasn’t a fan of them on the rack) to ensure I found the dress that best fit my body type. One thing I had going for me was that Vera Wang had just released a line for David’s Bridal a few months prior and there were about four dresses that appeared to work well with my body type.

After regrouping my wedding dress posse, we went dress shopping (for the second time) and the first dress I selected to try on I fell in LOVE with! I almost had a nervous breakdown thinking something was wrong with me! Did I not learn my lesson? I get in one dress and again I’m ready to hit the cash register! But as I tried on more and more dresses that day, I couldn’t get the first one I had tried on out of my head.

The second I saw it on the web site I wanted to get to my appointment to try it on, and when I saw they had it in the store just two sizes bigger then I needed (so it was able to be altered) I got really excited. It did have all the features that I would want in a dress. It was simple and classic, yet it had a subtle uniqueness to it. It was very vintage glam and it flattered my shape.

It took me a while, but I realized that this time it wasn’t me jumping into a dress, it was me finally finding the one I wanted and it was easy to do because of the research and consideration I put into it before my appointment.

On the day of the wedding I couldn’t wait to put it on, it was definitely the dress I wanted to be in when I married Joe.