Bolero! Ole!

(as Nyla would say) :)

Bonnie Quick of Un de Six and 6prints fame was awesome enough to make a bolero not just for MY wedding, but for my friend from high school Nyla's wedding as well! She did mine off of measurements she did once, and we had one more fitting after that. She did Nyla's from like 500 miles away! Check it out!

awww and this is my other friend from high school, Nan!

I ended up being so warm and... well, I had bridal brain like WHOA the day of my wedding and am ashamed to admit that I forgot to wear my beautiful bolero. :( *tear* It still makes me sad that I didn't wear it. But I DID wear it for our day after shots and I will wear it again! I mean, it is black, and uh, kind of goes with everything, so I really will (I already wore it with a dress on New Year's Eve). Now where else to wear it... happy hour? Doing laundry? Bonnie's rehearsal dinner?? Whatever, I know I'll wear it a million more times! :)

At least I have me in my wedding dress with it on… even if it's not actually on the wedding day.

Thanks Bonnie!

-C

xxx

Nyla's photos are personal photos provided to me from her. Photos of me are from Hughes Fioretti Photography.

Shower/Bachelorette Party Weekend!

Sorry I've been MIA. This whole "moving" thing is cramping my style. I couldn't even go near any wedding projects until a huge chunk of the boxes were unpacked. Mainly because I A- couldn't find them and B- wouldn't have room to work on them anyway! Who wants to make pretty corsages with boxes towering all around them? Not this girl. So, since no wedding projects/planning have been going on, and lots of other stuff going on in my brain, that equals no blog posts. But guess what! My bridal shower/bachelorette party are this weekend!! I honestly cannot believe it's here already. August 7th seemed soooo far away not too long ago. And I don't feel like I've been engaged for almost a year either! Boy, time sure does fly.

As promised, here is a pic of the dress I'll be wearing to my shower this weekend.


And Bonnie came by on Saturday to finish off my hat box! This box used to be a floral hat box my Meamaw had. I really wanted a hat box to carry my hats to my shower in, and decided to use hers, then decided to cover it in green fabric (it was a bit of a "dated" floral pattern, plus I'm not too big into floral patterns... which I'm realizing is funny because my shower dress is floral, lol), then had Bonnie do it for me. :) I promise it's not as neon and stupid looking as my camera makes it out to be. (Yes, I tried with both flash and no flash. Seriously, my camera hates me.)



Here are all the hats I'm bringing to the shower! There are 4 hats in this box - a yellow one in case someone needs one, the black one MOB called dibs on, and the two hats I'm wearing.



My first hat was one of Meamaw's hats. BRIDESMAID AMANDA had the bright idea to add a peacock feather to it. I think Meamaw would approve.



And here's the green one that matches my dress!

Next up - bachelorette party dresses! I know absolutely no details about my bach. party. All I know it's in DC somewhere. I asked that people wear dresses, pretty much just so I could wear one. :) However, I have TWO dress possibilities, and I need your help! Check out the pics below - which one do you like best? Sorry I'm not wearing them. It was another moving-related errands/unpacking/organizing/setting things up sweaty gross day, and I was not about to put any of these dresses on and post pictures of myself looking like that. Oh, yeah, and I didn't want to get them dirty either. So use your imagination for the shape (first is flowy), but I'll tell you that they both look good on me. I'm not one of those "everything looks good on me" type of people, whatsoever, but would I really post two dress options if they didn't both look good on me? Nope. I'd probably just wear the one that does!

Two very different looks - both green (well, the second one is black with different greens in the middle). Come on, would I really not wear a dress without green in it??! :)

So what's your vote?

-C
xxx

Birthday Green

So I was going to blog about something else today, but felt like my birthday post needed to be about something green. Soooo... guess what. I got my shoes AND my jewelry! Yayyyy!

Menbur Febo Platform Slingback

I found my shoes on both endless.com and amazon and ended up buying them off of amazon because there was a $20 off promotion, plus free shipping. When I got them they seemed kind of small, and I still may exchange them for a different size, not sure yet. They are just as bright in person, but totally awesome. I wore them to my dress fitting almost 2 weeks ago and all the people who work in the shop came in to take pics of my shoes! It was hilarious. I don't know what it is about people fussing over something you have like that that makes you love it even more, but it held true for these. Truth be told I was on the fence, but once everybody started squealing with joy and snapping shots of my shoes, I was sold on them. I love love love the hidden platform - it's going to be so comfy day-of! And what I wanted all along was a green peep toe pump with hidden platform - perfect!

Next up - jewelry: After the last post I was actually going to take some of your oh-so-rational advice of buying two pairs (lol). But then I clicked on this pair and in the "seller's other items" saw another pair that I loved even more!

from ellabelleboutique

I love, and I mean LOVE, tarnished gold looking jewelry, but I finally realized that I wanted a little more, I don't know, glam for my wedding. So I asked her if she could do them in silver and she said yes, she had antiqued silver she could use for it. Here they are in silver (I know, super high quality pic):

and here they are on my ears! The stone looks much greener in person, I promise.

THEN I had the genius idea of - "oh, maybe I should ask if she could make me a matching necklace instead of searching and hoping something I find matches the earrings!" Duh. Since her jewelry is handmade and not vintage, she obviously has all of the stones and should have them in a decent quantity. Makes sense, right? So that's what I did. I purchased the earrings to make sure I'd love them before ordering the necklace (because that would be a custom order) aaaand... I do! They're a little smaller than I expected, but nonetheless perfect. Love them! And they were only $15 (necklace will be $25)! Score. As soon as I get the necklace, I'll post pics. Hope you're not getting tired of seeing green jewelry :) I'm not even that worried about the necklace to be honest. If it doesn't turn out the way I want it, or it turns out it's too much (visually, not cost), then I can always just wear the earrings!

And this awesome vintage locket bracelet I bought :)

etsy seller ShabbyDragonfly

-C
xxx

To Dye or Not To Dye?

I often wonder about the possibility of dyeing shoes. If I wanted to wear ivory (or even black for that matter) shoes for my wedding day, I would be allll set. Actually, I probably wouldn't because I'm so indecisive and there are sooo many options out there that I wouldn't be able to pick just one pair! I've seen beautiful green shoes... in pictures (no longer being sold)... on shopping sites (not in my size)... and shady foreign websites that don't even ask you the shoe size of the Louboutins you want and then send you to Paypal to pay and their account is 'suspended'. Yeah. Shady.

I'm having such a hard time finding the perfect shoes (GREEN peep toe pumps with a bow or flower on the toe and hidden platform), in my size, available for purchase, and not $900. I know dyeing shoes is an option, but would like to hear from some people who have done it? If I were having a red, pink, purple, or blue wedding, we wouldn't be having this conversation! Why oh why don't stores do green?? I don't understand! It's only the most beautiful color in the world (not biased at all...). I was in Marks & Spencer's in London this weekend and they had set ups of accessories organized by color. They had feather clips, hats, fascinator headbands - all separated out by color. Pink. Red. Black. Purple. Blue. Turquoise. Green. And, no joke, all but the green had shoes included in their display. What the deuce?? I was really hoping I'd find green shoes on this trip to London Town, so people could be like "OMG where did you get your shoes??" and I could be like "Oh, you know, just London." But nooo. Apparently this green shoe shortage is international.

Oh my god. In my search for "dyed shoes images" I came across this blog. I think this is my bride twin. At least as far as shoes goes. She was looking for green shoes (about a year ago) for her wedding, and was in love with the same BP Posey Pumps from Nordstrom I've been in love with forever, and blogged about the same dilemma - to dye or not to dye??

BP Posey Pumps. This bride got 'em, the rest of us didn't...

Well, my shoe doppleganger ended up dyeing hers and they look gorge. Don't they?

So should I just give in and buy an ivory or white pair and have them dyed the color I want? Or do I keep holding out hope I'll someday (preferably within the next couple months) come across my dream shoes? DSW alone has about 5 or 6 pairs of beautiful ivory styles. Like these beautiful babies:

-C
xxx

Beautiful Bolero... Part Deux!

Who knew there would even be a part deux to this post? Not this girl. But guess what - I'm getting my beautiful bolero!! No, I didn't win. I never win anything.* But I got lucky this past weekend (not like that!) and got an offer I couldn't refuse. The offer? "I can make you a bolero." So I thought long and hard about it... for like a milisecond, and that was only being like "whoa, is she serious??" and the deal was done.

Bridesmaid Amanda, Bonnie & I went to my bridal shop (where I bought my dress) last weekend because they were having a jewelry trunk show. Really all I wanted to do was try my dress on again, with some of the 800 green jewelry options I now have in my possession. My real dress won't be ready until April, but I never got any pictures of me in the sample! Done.

You like? :)

Sorry, the FH reads my blog!

So after that trip is when the infamous offer was made and we decided right then and there that we were taking a (10 minute) roadtrip to go get the fabric for said bolero! Done and done.

The fabulous Bonnie of Un de Six is going to make me my dream bolero. Why? Because she's awesome. Am I friends with a super cool clothing designer who is custom making my dream bolero? Yes. Be jealous. I would be if I were you.

:)

-C
xxx

*I really don't. Seriously, if I counted how many wedding-related contests I've entered (and subsequently not won) in the past 5+ months of being engaged I would probably cry. Ok, maybe not cry, but I'd at least get slightly annoyed.