Name and/or LJ userID: Kelly/Blueirisheyez
Wedding Date: Undecided - looking at late spring/early summer 2011
Bride/Groom/Other (please specify): I am the bride - Jeff is the groom
Age: 39 (and not counting)
City/State/Country you live in: Chicago
City/State/Country you're getting married in (if different): Chicago but half the family is leaning toward Vegas
Your song/First Dance song: Undecided
Wedding Colors: Undecided
Formality: Semi
Theme (if you have one): Hey let's get married!
Number of guests: 100-125
How'd you meet your fiance?: Eharmony
How long have you been together?: 10 months
Do you have a personal wedding website?: Nope not yet
Have you read the community rules before posting this survey? Yes
Anything else you'd like to tell us?: I have been a member of this community for a few years. I found it when helping my friend plan her wedding and stuck around to assist other friends and family in party planning. Jeff completely blew me away by proposing last night. I don't have alot of ideas - as I never expected this to happen but I will be posting quite a bit more than I have in the past.

My wedding ring arrived yesterday, on Christmas Eve. It's gorgeous...

( Picture! )

FH and I got engaged in the beginning of August, and we're getting married on Halloween 2010. When we got engaged, his mom (FMIL) and Nana (FNIL) wanted to throw us an engagement party. Since we're about 3.5 hours away, we thought it'd be no problem to coordinate and whatever, and we said that early January would be awesome.

Well, strike that plan. FH and I are moving from Florida to Maryland in three days (OMG OMG FREAKING OUT), and January just won't work anymore since we're spending so much money on the move and it'd be hard to fly down so soon. Fortunately, nothing has been planned yet. :) We'd still like an engagement party, but we're afraid of having it too close to the wedding -- we were okay with 10 months, but everything now just seems too close to our wedding.

So for all of you who had engagement parties: When did you have them, and how far out were they from your wedding date? What do you think would be the least amount of time between said party and wedding would be appropriate (i.e. number of months, weeks, days...)?

Happy holidays, fellow WPers!

I know I've posted before about being engaged without a ring...FH and I are still still still saving up, and I am still ringless, months later. It hasn't really bothered me (disclaimer - I have a cheap, cheesy CZ I wear sometimes, just to have a little sparkle, but FH has promised a real diamond in the indeterminate future, but with teh economy, etc...ya know how tough it can be!). Well, the conversation of my ringless engagement came up over Christmas dinner, and apparently, my great-aunt has an emerald that she got as an engagement ring, and offered it to FH to give to me. So generous of her! However, it has a seriously HORRIBLE setting (think yellow gold with ribbons of metal fanning out around the base - I wish I had a picture to do it justice.) So two questions:
1) did anyone get an engagement ring that wasn't a diamond (especially if you're like me who had her heart set on a diamond), and what were your thoughts about it? (was that what you wanted, was it a surprise, etc?)
2)did anyone get a ring from a relative that had a terrible setting, and needed to be reset? How did you approach the issue? did you talk to them about it first? What were their reactions?

Thanks a million!

From memory there was a girl on here who was having a vaguely unicorn themed wedding but I can't find a post by her on which to comment. I just saw this and found it somehow appropriate. ( Picture under here )


ETA:  By the way I just thought it was interesting.  I didn't post it to be offensive.  I actually think it is quite cute, something a little different.

With the recent what-did-you-not-do-that-you-wish-you-had question, I noticed a few people had said something about videography, and now I'm curious.

We didn't have a camcorder growing up so I have some dance recital videos and that's about it... and I never watch them, they've just been in storage forever.  So when it came to wedding planning I didn't even consider video footage because I figured it'd be the same thing--watch it once after the event and then it'd go in a box in the basement and never see daylight again. 

So I'm wondering-- brides who had videographers or at least had a relative videotape your wedding:  did you watch the tape afterward?  Do you think you'll watch it again?  Do you feel it was worth the expense?

I have a bridesmaid dilemma.

( The played-out drama here! )

Has anyone else ever been through an issue like this? Advice?

I got the Nina shoes in the mail today so I thought I'd do a side by side comparison here, since there seemed to be quite a few of you that seemed interested in at least one of the them.

Height
Both shoes have 4" heels. The platform on the Gracious look slightly higher, but only slightly. I'm talking millimeters here.

Comfort
The Gracious feels a little bit more comfortable because it is a little cushier (which I think accounts for the slight difference in platform height), but I think they make heel insoles these days, so you could conceivably go with that for the Electra. Also, the Electra has extra support in the back of the shoe instead of the straps. Both shoes are reasonably comfortable, especially considering the height.

Looks
The Electra looks like it could be a copy of the Gracious, but who cares: they're still really nice. The Gracious has pretty criss-cross straps on the back, while the Electra has a plain enclosed back with the strap running through the top. The Gracious's bow is a little more elegant and sleek, but the Electra comes in lots of pretty colors while the Gracious only comes in white, ivory, and eggplant. The satin on the Gracious is very shiny, which surprised me (not in a good way) because you wouldn't have guessed that from the Zappos pictures. Based on those pictures, I also expected the bow to be more angular than it looks in person. The satin on the Electra is softer and more what I would expect.

Price
I bought them both at Zappos for...
Electra: $89.95 Gracious: $325
Yeah, a pretty big difference. A lot of it has to do with designer name.
( pictures and what I ended up choosing )

So here's the scoop:  Ben and I were dating for month(me in ungrad, him in grad school) when we were sitting in my dorm room talking.  All of sudden he says, "Will you marry me?"  I said, "Yes!".  A little over 5 years later we are just now starting to plan our wedding.  He proposed spontaneously, and didn't do it with a ring.  Well today, he got down on one knee with a little box and said again, "Will you marry me, Lex?"  I said, "Yes!" and he opened the box and inside was the most beautiful ring I've ever seen!  I am sooo happy with it!  I keep walking around going, how does it sparkle in THIS light?  How does it sparkle in THIS light?  OMG, I feel like I'm playing dress up it's so pretty!  You must squee with me! 
( Read more... )

P.S. I really want to thank everyone for their comments on yesterday's post about my officiant dilemma. You are all so helpful and sweet! It's so nice to have a community of women going through the experience of planning a wedding where we can share trial, tribulations and squees!

Hey everybody, and have a happy whatever you celebrate at this time of year!

Now, down to business. Me and my fellow mod rhymeswithway are both going to be offline until the 26th of December in our different timezones. This is just an update to let anyone know that if you submit a proposal or question or divorce request to us, we won't be answering them until then. As I write this, somebody has just sent me a message about a username change for their marriage, of course. That'll be the last granted 'til the 26th. Sorry for all those wishing to propose on Christmas day but we live busy lives away from the internet, if you can believe it.

Have a wonderful week, stay alive and have fun!