Complications...

Not everything always goes according to the plan. This is true also in wedding planning. When we have a mix of planning a wedding, an unconventional pride who can´t make up her mind and a hubby who has little to say about his mind, we have all the ingredients to have some upsidaisy -moments. This happened with no other than my wedding dress.

I am not sure what really happened there. I think it has to have had something to do with misunderstanding between me and the dressmaker about the ending result. Also I know I had trouble making a decision what elements to include in the dress and dressmaker didn´t really think my ideas in a critical way. Also dressmaker maybe thought she could do thing that actually were not in her best skill level (mainly about the colors in this case). This all ending up to the point, that I ordered a dress from eBay.

Yes, you heard me right. I will have a wedding dress from eBay. It is quite difficult to grasp, since the dress costed no more than 20 euros and arrived in a week from ordering. I ordered the new dress only a day later from trying on the dress my dressmaker had been working on. Was it a hasty decision? Maybe. Was it the right decision? I actually feel I can say with all my heart, Yes.

I tried on the dress on Monday (2nd of May) and I still haven´t lost the smile from my face the dress gave me. I love it! I feel like sharing already pictures of me in the dress and I would love to wear it at the house all times! This time around I went with what just feels and looks like me. It is not trying to look like a fusion of my style and wedding. No, it is a dress in which I am getting married to the man I love. No more and no less. Main point is, that I feel good about myself in it and it makes me feel pretty and hopefully Mr. J will like also how I look in it.

 The next difficult action to make was to actually talk with the dressmaker about the future of the dress she was making. Since I have already put money in the fabrics and she has done working hours to get the dress to the point it already was, I couldn´t just leave the project. We talked on the phone and I gave her an option to try to still convince me of her vision how the dress would look at the end before wondering other options. She made a quick drawing of the dress and took an image drying to make the fabrics and dress present the vision. I still wasn´t convinced or even getting a lovely vibe out of it. So I had to make a decision. Would I have her make a new skirt to the dress (the skirt being the biggest problem in the wedding dress), or could we do her idea of “fixing” it or try to get out of ass little workhours as possible, so this dress that would not be THE DRESS wouldn´t cost much more extra.

I went with trying to save rest of my money as much as possible. This means, we will try to make the top-part usable, since it had only few problems and most of the expensive fabric. Hopefully I can figure some use for it in the future. The skirt part we will forget. I don´t want her to spend any more hours in it, since I don´t see myself using it. She will also try to check if she can help with few small details to fix in the new dress, since it is a bit too loose from the top.

All in all, it was a difficult decision to admit, that money might have been wasted and to tell it also to the dressmaker. On the other hand, I have now a dress I can call The Dress! and it can be used after the wedding also (, which is like putting money in the bank, right?).

Meeting with my bridesmaids

On a better tone. We had another meeting with my lovely bridesmaids. Mainly we ate some delicious cheese and talked about the programs in a more detailed level. I really love my bridesmaids and I think they complete each other and it seems to me that they get a long really well even though they haven´t know before. I feel we all had a great time talking and putting everything together. We assigned some tasks to handle, mainly the programs and things like music, decoration details and road signs.

We also finally have our wedding-dance music. I remember how at one of my first blogs (in the old blog site) I wrote how I was worried about the dance. I think this time we are going with what feels good for us and natural. I said that dancing some wedding dance in a chair doesn´t really feel like us. When I and Mr. J go to dance, it is bar dancing. That is something I can do from a chair, but a lovely slow dance... it is not really our best expertise to do without me driving over Mr. J: s toes or trying to lead. With the new dress we might have chance to make our dance more comfortable in that matter.

I think this is all for now. I will end this post with finally the pictures of the wedding invitations, which hopefully have reached everyone or at least most people. This is the Finnish text version. We did also make a Dutch text for our Belgium guests and a big applause to Mr. J for making the poem in his own words and I think it might even be better than this one. In non-poem way this Finnish one goes:

We met in the PlayStation,
Don´t know how we managed to fit in there.

We moved under one roof,
in our hearts we trusted.

Now it is time of marriage,
together to experience
the forever loves magic.

What to say?

I have been feeling for days a need to write this blog, but now that I finally am here in front of the computer… I don´t know what to write. I think the problem right now is, that quite a lot has been decided, but I don´t want to ruin the surprises of details, decorations etc., by telling too much about them here.

Today we decided on a band. Yes, there will be some live music! We actually have had a band in mind for quite some time, but today we arranged to hear them live during their practice. We were positively impressed. It is a small band and this will be their first performance for an audience, but I have great faith in them. I love their style of music and this was budget friendly. I feel it is a win-win situation, since they get more experience when getting to play to an audience and we get a nice program and music with a reasonable price.

Also we spend a nice time last weekend trying to translate the Finnish invitation text to Dutch and then fitting it to the same design as the Finnish. It worked nicely and Mr J. did an excellent job on a poem that couldn´t be translated quite so easily. He is a poet soul secretly in his heart!

Invitations arrived this week and next operation is finding everyones address and sending them off. To our Belgium family and friends, you have to be more patient, since the invitations will have to travel some distance and Mr J´s lovely mother will be helping us to work as a mailman (Maybe Mr Indy can give some tips on that!). This kinda evens the levels between Finnish and Belgian guests, since Belgium got their Save the date -cards about half year earlier then the Finnish. So a week or so hopefully is not too long to wait.

We have been busy in these last few weeks, since we got the invitations done, cake maker has been found (thanks to my lovely bridesmaid), Wedding dress had a fitting and next week will be another fitting with the actual fabrics (EEEKK!!), table decorations have gotten forward, we have some type of questbook and hopefully groomsmen have found some green for their clothing.

Talking about Green

In the wedding invitation, there will be a mentioned about the dress code. To give some idea, belowe will be some photos as an example. Main point really just is, that the point is not to have long evening-gown type of dress, nor really short cocktail dress. I like to call it something nice for a summer wedding. So don´t stress too much, dress code is to help you guest to figure out how to not feel uncomfortable in a too fancy or too casual. I am not going to judge your clothing. In my own experience I have felt it is nice to have a dress code, to know proximately how fancy clothing to wear.

Also what is not said in the invitations, but what we have been thinking, is for people to wear some green or orange, if they so feel like. It can be only a handbag, tie, shoes etc. or even a green dress. It is not necessary, but it would bring a nice look to the whole party if people would also take part in the wedding colors.

Some examples:

By the way... Chek out the to-do list from page top navigation bar! We are doing great with that list too! ( I do have a longer list in my wedding planning notebook tough.. but this is much more optimistic list right now!)