Dresses..

The dresses arrived today! Very exciting! The quality and workmanship is excellent. I cannot fault the quality or the amount of effort that has gone into the construction. The only things "wrong" are little things that are generally my fault.. I ordered a "standard" size 4 for the flower girl dress, but it's long enough to fit an 8 year old! Even held up against my almost 5 year old, it would skim the floor! But aside from the length, the bodice fits perfectly, and she looks like an angel with the dress floating all around her! And atleast it's easier to take something up than it is to have it too short.

My dress will fit perfectly when I lose a few more kilos. It looks ok, but my decolletage would look better once I lose more centimetres in the bust! It also buckles a little at the hips, but again, once I lose some more weight we're pretty sure it will sit almost perfectly. Still, it doesn't look entirely ridiculous.. the colour is amazing and the style is generally flattering.. I need to buy some new support undies though - having lost 10kg, my current control garments are less controlling than they used to be!

It could also have been that the dress needed to be pressed after having been folded for posting, but it looked a little like I have a pot belly with the dress on.. so that's another great reason to buy new control garments that reshape my "problem" areas!

I'm also impatient to lose the rest of the weight, Ziph promised to buy me $1000 worth of clothes when I've lost another 14kg (my "healthy weight range").. and losing the weight is clearly imperitive now that I have the dress! (And if I don't lose it, I'll look moderately ridiculous!)

The veil didn't have the hair comb attached, but after laying it out, one of my girlfriends and I decided that it was probably a little bit *too* long anyway, and might look better if we turned it into a 2 tier veil (which we trialled by folding it, and it will look pretty nice).. but then I'll have to change my hairstyle.. I think I'll have to consider a half up style instead of just an all down, straightened hairstyle. It's just not going to work with the dress & the veil. So back to my wedding ideas file/scrapbook to have another look at hairstyles that I like.

It did help to crystallise the jewelry ideas though.. I definitely only want a single strand of white pearls. Anything else will be overkill and will detract from the overall look. Just need to go hunting for a strand of pearls now.

MY dress!

This is what my dress is going to be styled on.. the very beautiful Maggie Sottero 'Ericka' gown in a lovely, warm cream colour. I think I already mentioned that I will be wearing a cathedral length mantilla veil with matching lacework. I think the bridesmaid dresses will compliment it very nicely.. and the flowergirl dress will be made in the same colour cream with a waist sash & bow in the sapphire green to match the bridesmaids.

Ticking Boxes..

Clearly I'm not so great at keeping this updates, but let me say that until this last week I hadn't been moving particularly fast with the whole wedding planning thing anyway!

BUT, as per the title, I have some boxes that I can finally check! So we already know that I have the ceremony venue, the cake, the makeup and the bridesmaids sorted out.. but now I can also say that I have:

* Booked our reception venue - we decided to go with Tides of Geraldton.. Ziph decided that he was prepared to "take my word for it" if I was sure that I liked it,. I also found out that they're doing some renovations next month, so I'm sure that will only make it even better! We went through their wedding prospectus which lists their different menu options and at this stage we think we'll go with the set menu with the tapas entree option. The only difficulty will be deciding *which* items to choose because they all sound so yummy!

* Booked our florist - after meeting with Chantelle from Flowers in Love I was pretty sure that she was the perfect person to do our flowers.. the first quote left me feeling lukewarm (flower choices turned out to be rather temperamental if not handled *just so*), so I emailed her back and told her how I was feeling and asked if we could go with something simpler. Chantelle reassured me that there was nothing boring with my "simple" choice and sent through another quote for the new flowers. I was much happier second time around, and the whole experience served to convince me that my initial impression of Chantelle was right and that she was the perfect person for the job.. I know I won't have to worry about how my flowers will turn out! Sent through the confirmation, just have to post the booking form and pay the deposit.

* Organised to have MY wedding ring made. Years ago, before I had children I used to work in the jewelry industry, so I made use of some of my previous connections and have arranged for Bill at Exclusive Gold Jewellers to design and make my wedding ring. As I'm having something designed to fit around my engagement ring, I've had to surrender it temporarily which left me feeling rather naked! I ended up putting another ring on my finger to make me feel better while I wait! But I'm very excited to see how my ring turns out..

* Picked my wedding dress. I'm having it made by Topspartner and it will be in the style of Maggie Sottero's Ericka dress. They're also going to make a matching cathedral length mantilla veil, and a flower girl dress in the same fabric for my little possum. I'm currently considering getting them to make the bridesmaids dresses as well, but we haven't found a style that we love yet.

We still need to sort out the photography, invitations, bombonniere, ceremony/reception decorations, grooms party attire (and finalise the groomsmen, I think.. Ziph has the best man sorted but seems to be dragging his feet when it comes to asking the other person, so I'm not sure if he's sure, IYKWIM?) and a couple of other bits and pieces.. but atleast if all else fails we now have somewhere to get married, somewhere to party afterwards, cake to eat and I'll have something to wear, my flowers and my wedding ring - all the important stuff, right?

Oh, and there's the eBridal wedding expo this weekend, which I won a $100 voucher to use at any of their exhibitors, so cross your fingers that I might find something worth spending my money on!!