THE dress!

Well, here it is folks, the final dress installment. No pics here, because E can't see them, nor will I describe THE dress in the least. What I will say, though, is that it's gorgeous and fun, and I can't wait to wear it, and even baby Elle (of A&E Wedding Planners, Inc.) gave it a ringing endorsement when she saw it!

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me tell you all about how THE dress came to be discovered. I was staying with the 'rents and flipping through a bridal magazine when I came across a line of dresses I'd never seen before. I flipped to the back of the book to see where they sold them and it said they were available at Lucille's Bridal in Orange. So I called Lucille's and made an appointment for that afternoon. My mom and I drove over, somewhat skeptical that this would the place for THE dress because we hadn't planned to go there and didn't know anything about it, and when we arrived, it was a tiny store, so unobtrusive that you might not have noticed it just driving by.

But we went inside, and there we met Theresa, and it was then I knew that at this place I would buy THE dress. Theresa is a little woman, smaller than me in all regards, who probably is in her 60s and from Italy. She is effusive and honest and thoroughly charming, with a thick Italian accent and an ability to run about the store carrying dresses that must weigh more than she does. We bought the very first dress she picked out for me, though not until I'd tried several others and obsessed over the choice for two weeks. (I'm enclosing a picture of one of the competitors, but it's not THE dress.)

On our way out from that first visit, we met the owner of the store, a big burly Italian man who reminded me of may of my relatives. He was very sweet on the inside and kind of like a big teddy bear. We also had wonderful help from Jen, who kept assuring me that alterations could be done and everything would fit well, and I had nothing to worry about. Plus, overall I felt great about buying the dress from a small boutique and not a behemoth like Kleinfeld's or Pronovias. It just seemed like a better, more ethical place to go somehow.

Without doubt, Lucille's had the best customer service and the most knowledgeable staff of any place we went, and Theresa was great about allowing me to come back several times and try THE dress on before I committed! For some reason, unlike other girls, I didn't try THE dress on and just know it was the one. I was very uncertain initially that this was THE dress, though my mom and bridesmaid Dawn were both sure from the moment they saw it on! (Dawn even went so far as to say that she couldn't understand why I'd even try anything else.)

What convinced me? Well, when I went back and thought of all the dresses I'd loved to have on--the one at Bridal Reflections and the Kleinfeld's one--I realized that what I'd loved about each of these thoroughly overpriced dresses was that they had a hoop, which kept layers of fabric away from my legs and made it much easier to move around. So then I thought, "I wonder if they sell hoops anywhere?" Thanks to handy dandy Internet, I discovered they did--so many varieties of hoops to choose from!--and for 35 dollars, yours truly ordered a giant Scarlett O'Hara styled hoop! I went back to Lucille's, tried the hoop on with my thoroughly reasonably priced dress, and voila--it was like my under 1,000 dollar dress had turned into the 10,000 dollar Kleinfeld's dress all for 35 bucks! Talk about a great investment! When I looked at myself in the mirror, knowing that when I took a step I wouldn't be touching layers of crinoline and that my hoop would make an excellent table top (should one be needed), it honestly made me giggle, and I felt like Deborah Kerr in The King and I. I had to laugh--I, who had sworn I would never, ever look like a "meringue" in my wedding dress--had somehow morphed into the greatest meringue of them all. And you know what, I couldn't be happier!



Not THE dress, but a contender from Lucille's!

Kleinfeld's!

Okay, so this blog post is slightly out of order. The truth is that we found The Dress before we went to Kleinfeld's, but because I had to make an appointment months in advance to get in, and they would have charged me 100 dollars if I didn't show up, we figured we ought to go. After all, Julie said it's a "stop on the train to your wedding dress destination!"

So on a cold March day, I went to the famous Kleinfeld's with some very special guests: Julie, baby Elle, Amanda (who works at the church where our ceremony will be), my mom, and Lisa Beth, who drove all the way from Boston just for this! She totally deserves an award for that trek!



(Here's me, Julie, and baby Elle standing outside of Kleinfeld's!)

Now, having never seen "Say Yes to the Dress," I had no idea what Kleinfeld's was all about, so it was great that Lisa Beth was there--she knew who all the bridal consultants were and everything! That made her a great asset in dress shopping--she knew all the right questions to ask and had a great eye for the dresses! She even knew one of the designers, who'd appeared on the show and was having a trunk show that day. The designer's name was Pnina Tourne, and she came to talk with me directly about a dress I had on (as she walked over, Lisa Beth was so excited: "I can't believe you're going to talk to Pnina Tourne!" she said. And I'm going, "Who?"). Now, let me tell you about that dress: like the one at Bridal Reflections, it had a hoop. But the hoop was EMUNGOUS (that enormous and humongous lumped together)! It was so huge I could barely get through the door, and I had to squeeze the hoop to get through the frame! That said, the dress was really fun to have on, and I loved wearing it. The problem: the 10,000 dollar price tag!

Since the dress was, uh, a bit out of my price range, it wasn't The Dress, but we did sneak some pictures so it would be immortalized. Here is the dress and baby Elle's reaction to it. Baby Elle, by the way, was probably the biggest hit at Kleinfeld's, way more memorable than any of the dresses, which just goes to show: it's the people, and not the dress, that make the wedding!

Bridal Reflections and Pronovias

My mom and I took a day trip to NYC to see Elle and Aidan and try on some dresses back during the quest. The trip began with a trip to Bridal Reflections, an upscale boutique downtown where the lowest priced dresses were at the very top of our price range. We saw dresses for 14,000 dollars and veils for over a thousand. Needless to say, we didn't buy any of them! But I did fall in love with this taffeta dress. While not particularly interesting to look at, it was a joy to move around in, and it was the first dress that made me laugh and giggle. I loved how light the material was and how the hoop kept the crinoline off of my legs. But perhaps the best part of our trip to Bridal Reflections was that my friend Deborah made an impromptu trip to join us for lunch and shopping. She actually took the picture below!



(Note the channeling-my-inner-Sarah-Palin hair; the lady helping us with dresses put it like that!)



Later that day, my mom and I went to Pronovias, a store that looked like it had great dresses online. We met my mom's friend Michelle, my Aunt Stephanie, my cousin Caryl, and my MOH Julie at their boutique off of 5th Avenue. We didn't wind up getting a dress there because they didn't make petite sizes and the two dresses I liked didn't seem like they would be alterable. Anyway, here is one of the contenders from Pronovias (the other one, which I don't have a picture of, was an slim A-line dress with a gauze jacket. When I tried it on, my mom's friend Michelle exclaimed, "This looks just like the dress I got married in!" That made me smile). Anyway, This dress and its unphotographed cousin were the front runners until the day when I found THE dress....




Probably the best part of that day dress shopping in NYC was seeing my family, my friends and my mom's all together, laughing and giggling and sharing this special time in my life. After dress shopping at Pronovias, we all went to dinner at La Bonne Soupe, where we had crepes, yummy salads, and fondue for dessert and rehashed all the details of the day, and I think we all went home happy!

Valentine's Day and Our First Easter Brunch

It’s Valentine’s Day in April! Since E and I didn’t get to celebrate on February 14 because I was in Boston and he was in Milwaukee, we had a belated Valentine’s Day yesterday. We started the day by going to one of our favorite restaurants in downtown Boston: UFood. UFood is a healthy fast food restaurant with super yummy baked un-fries! We both ordered new things this time—E got a salmon sandwich and I had the salmon caprese salad. We split the un-fries! Then we walked down the block to my gym, where we went to a vinyasa yoga class and went swimming. Both of us worked on the butterfly—aka, we made giant splashes in the water and hoped we reached the other side of the pool! I also worked on my crawl and breast strokes while E worked on swimming down the lane and back in one breath.

After some chilling in the minty steam room and showering, we headed off to Hynes Convention Center where there was an anime convention E wanted to see. It was quite the sight—tons of teenagers and young adults dressed up in every variety of costume imaginable. Our favorite was a guy dressed in black carrying a cross covered in white over one shoulder while lighting a cigarette! We kept thinking, “All of downtown Boston must be so confused about why all these wildly dressed people are on the T!”

From there we walked to The Melting Pot, a fondue chain restaurant. E and I split the classic swiss cheese fondue, lettuce wraps, and an entrée called The French Quarter. It came with shrimp, chicken, steak, and andouille sausage (which was my fave—E liked the steak). It was also accompanied by broccoli, mushroom caps, and red potatoes that you could cook in the trans-fat free canola oil with herbs. Along with all of this was a slew of flavor combinations—there was a tempura batter and a sesame batter you could dip your meat/veggies in before you put them in the oil (I had this mission to make a tempura broccoli throughout our entire meal. My Aunt Donna used to make them when I was little, and they were my fave. I can’t say these were as good—especially the first one where the oil wasn’t hot enough and all the tempura just slid off—but they brought back happy memories, and by the end, I did manage to make one respectable specimen.) Anyway, there was tempura and sesame and then a bunch of dipping sauces—a curry yogurt, a teriyaki, a Thai chili, a gorgonzola blue cheese, and an herb and cream cheese one. Our waitress recommended stuffing the mushroom with the herb and cream cheese and then dipping it in the tempura. I was too busy perfecting my broccoli, but E tried it and loved it!

Then for dessert we split a small amaretto disarrono dark chocolate fondue that came with strawberries, two kinds of marshmallows (one dipped in graham cracker and one dipped in Oreos), cheesecake, rice krispy treats, bananas, brownie, and pound cake. It was absolutely delicious! We capped off the night with a trip to Trinity Copley Square to ring in Easter! (For my church friends: They did a terrific job with the vigil—they used “Go Down Moses” instead of the reading about the Exodus and said “The Word of the Lord” when it was done. Oh, and theu used Ghanaian drums when they said Easter was here! And they had people in the congregation with bells, so when they rang in Easter, the bell players chimed every few stanzas; it was really cool!) So that was Valentine’s Day. It was pretty special to have our very own holiday. It felt fun and secretive—after all, we were the only people in the world, probably, celebrating St. Valentine on April 3!

But we are one of millions celebrating Easter, and it’s a very special Easter for us because we hosted our first Easter brunch! Our friends Tasi and Kristen came over after church for waffles in our new waffle maker (thanks Koffler family!), rosemary bacon, fruit salad, and Peeps for dessert!

Tasi and E break out the new waffle maker!

The batter for our first set of waffles was a Norwegian recipe I got while visiting a family in Bergen, Norway, while studying abroad (that was the same trip where I first met E). Since waffles are the national treat of Norway, I had several while there. They are cardamom-flavored and usually accompanied by lingonberry preserves, which we made sure to have.


Our first Easter brunch!

Picking out colors

Prior to getting engaged, I had no idea that people had color schemes for their weddings, so this was one of the things I was totally unprepared for. I flipped through a couple of Martha Stewart wedding magazines and surfed the net, but since I'm not a very visual person, I was at a loss.

And then the answer came to me: my fearless bridesmaids! They are here for help and support, to find solutions to the difficult questions one faces when planning a wedding. Not to mention the fact that they need to wear the colors in their dresses!

So I sent them an e-mail with this awesome link to a website with color schemes. A flurry of e-mail then erupted and within two hours, we had our color scheme settled!

P.S. Feel free to go through the website and weigh in with your opinions of what our colors should have been! Maybe you'll find out you were right!

The Quest for the Dress Part 2!

Wow, I am so sorry it’s taken so long to update our blog! There is so much to tell! First off, the quest for the dress part deux!

As you know, one’s Maid of Honor (MOH, for short) is key to the quest for the dress. Not only do you want her support in the search for your dress, but you definitely want to make sure that she looks glamorous (and not awful) in hers. My MOH, Meri, joined me for dress shopping at Manhattan Bridal in Dedham, near both our homes in Boston. The woman we met was kind of awesome—she had this very systematic way of choosing a dress. I got to wander around the boutique and then choose all the dresses I liked. I would put each on and she would say, “Do you like this one more than the last one?” And if I said that I did, then that dress was the new favorite. I was only allowed one favorite at a time.

What was kind of funny about the whole experience is that while she had me pick out the dresses I liked first, she kept interspersing them with so-called ‘different’ dresses. Let me pass my executive, bride-to-be, dress shopping expert opinion on so-called ‘different’ or ‘unique’ gowns. They are awful! Or, I should say, at least they’re awful on me! I can’t tell you the number of dress consultants who tried to sell me on the mermaid look, which is great for someone who’s tall and whose curves match those of the mermaid dress. But for a 5’2 chick with a tiny waist and disproportional hips, it is an egotistical nightmare! Every time I put one on, I was transported back to high school, when I was convinced (like many other high schoolers) that my entire self-identity rested on the size of my hips! So for all you small waist, big hip women out there, do not, I repeat, do not try on the mermaid dresses! Save them for Ariel and the tall folks out there!
The one tragedy at Manhattan Bridal is that we were only allowed to take one picture, so I’ve attached it below. We later return to Manhattan Bridal to pick out Meri’s MOH dress!

The Quest for the Dress!

Well, this is the blog post many of you have been waiting for…

The Quest for the Dress!

Like many other brides-to-be, I was so excited to begin my quest for the perfect dress, and I did my best to make the most of it! Armed with my mom and fearless friends, I tried on dresses ranging in price from 100 dollars to 10,000 dollars (and yes, that was, um, a bit out of the price range!) and went everywhere from David’s Bridal to the famed Kleinfeld store in New York City! I can’t wait to share the adventures and some dress pictures with you! Of course, THE dress will not be shown in this blog post, but I hope you’ll get a kick out of some of the dresses we considered as well as some of the, well, more memorable rejects!

Our quest for the perfect bridal dress began the Friday after I got engaged. Eric had just left to go back to Milwaukee, and I was staying with Julie, Quinn and babies Elle and Aidan in New York City. Since my mom was planning to come and meet the twins that day, Elle and Aidan (of A&E Wedding Planners, Inc.) decided that it would be a great idea to surprise her with dress shopping at Saks Fifth Avenue! So when she got to the city, A&E got into their strollers, and Julie, my mom, and I all went down to Saks! There we met Katerina, our first bridal consultant, who showed me a variety of styles of dresses.

Now, essential to the quest for the wedding dress is my feeling towards what I affectionately call “meringue” dresses. Ever since I saw Four Weddings and a Funeral at the age of 10, I have been deeply skeptical of what I call the “meringue” look. (To learn more, click on the link and go to minute 5:50.)

I have always sworn away from the “meringue” look, thinking it was just a bit too poofy—okay, a lot too poofy—and that it was a silly thing to wear on one’s wedding day. Should you be elegant and refined at your wedding? So being anti-meringue, I imagined I’d probably wear a nice, elegant A-line dress. Though perhaps imagine is too strong of a word. The truth is that I never gave much thought to what wedding dress I’d wear because I was busy thinking about what music would be performed at the ceremony, who would give the homily, etc. Hallmarks of a priest-to-be, I guess. But this would turn out to be much to my detriment in wedding dress world, because I quickly discovered there are all sorts of things you need to know about your dress: do you want to wear silk or taffeta? Do you prefer crinoline or a hoop? Do you want your dress to have box pleats or shirring? On day one, I didn’t know what any of these things even were. All I could explain to Katerina is that I did not want to look like a meringue on my wedding day. So here are some of the dresses she brought out:

And here’s Wedding Planner Aidan’s take on the situation:

"I like it, but it's not THE dress."

Next Katerina brought out an A-line dress with wider flare. Behold the back of the dress and Wedding Planner Aidan’s opinion:

"That's better, Aunt D, but still not it."

Next Katerina, despite my objections, suggested I try on something with a bit more of a princess-styled skirt. Here she is fastening the clips to the back of the gown, and I have to say that the second I saw myself in it, a miraculous transformation happened....

The sugary poof of the skirt made me smile and giggle! And though this was not to be THE dress, I had gone from being a skeptic of the meringue to a lover of the meringue in under 30 seconds. It was fun and, yes, maybe it was a bit goofy, but I understood the allure now: I felt so happy in my meringue dress! For whatever reason, I just wanted to giggle all the time! And after all, barring a career as Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty, when else in life was I going to get to wear a dress like this? Baby Aidan was a fan too; he gave the dress a bit smile.

Finally, we rounded off our trip to Saks with a dress that my mom saw another bride try on. Unaware of the 10,000 dollar price tag, she asked if we could try the dress on. Baby Elle, who had been thoroughly unimpressed by all the other dress options, perked up when I emerged in this dress: she smiled and cooed and giggled! Sadly, it was, uh, a bit out of our price range!

The 10,000 dollar dress.

Aidan seems proud of everything we accomplished at Saks. But I think Elle is pretty disappointed I didn't go for the dress of her dreams! Maybe she'll buy it and do some alterations for her flowergirl dress!

Though our visit to Saks didn’t yield any dress decisions, it did help us narrow down our dress style, which was really helpful when we went to our second destination: David’s Bridal. As Julie described David’s Bridal, it was “a stop on the train to the dress destination that every bride should take.” And I would agree with that. My personal opinion was that a lot of the dresses that looked good in the catalogue weren’t made of very high quality fabric in real life, and that you could get better quality dresses at similar prices from other companies. Nonetheless, it was a good place to go for comparison shopping, and one of the places where I discovered how friendly brides-to-be are! There were 3 or 4 other brides trying on dresses with me, and they would say, “Ooh! I like that one!” or “Oh no, the other one was better!” We also met a lovely girl who was there all by herself, so she adopted me and my mom (no one should go dress shopping alone) for added support!

Some serious meringue at David's Bridal!

So at the close of the Quest for the Dress Week 1, no dress was purchased, but much was learned. We learned the difference between taffeta and silk, between silk and satin, between sheering and boxed pleats, between mermaid and meringue, but we were still dress-less. But like any good quest, the search for the dress is as much about learning as it is about reaching the final destination! So here’s a summary of what we discovered so far:

Stores visited: 2
Companions on dress quest: 4
Dresses tried on: approximately 16
Dresses purchased: 0

Stay tuned next time for when Meri, Maid of Honor extraordinaire, becomes involved in the quest for the dress and for a special appearance by a historic dress….

P.S. Please pardon any font inconsistencies; blame blogger, not us!