July '08 NEWLYWEDS chat!

amy, i have two fittings scheduled. the one where they pin everything according to how it should fit, and then the second is the day that if everything looks fine when i come and try it on, i can bring it home.

however, i dont have to pay up front, and i am positive the reason why is that i went to a hole in the wall shop in the mexican neighborhood, which doesnt follow the standard bridal shop rules at all. my alterations to have the length taken up a bit and a bustle done were quoted at $87 (my gown has pickups in the satin skirt). the only other thing that might need to be done is if i dont lose a smidge more weight, i may have her let the seam in the bust out just a half inch on each side. this would probably push my alterations closer to $125-$150 because the bust area is all lace with some beading. the person who actually does the alterations at this shop i go to are a grandma/grandpa team from mexico who are the shopowners parents.

i think obviously though that my situation is nowhere near typical for alterations. my dress was about $500 and then the alterations arent that bad. i think i have heard from most of my friends who went to actual popular bridal salons (and by default payed a shit ton of money for their gowns, like my best friend had a monique lhullier dress that was around $4K on sale from a trunk show) also paid a lot for their alterations.

definitely take your mom with you when you go pick up the dress. if anything is wrong or they want to charge you more, she will be there to hold down the fort for you

AHHHHHHHHH! OMG my ticker says 2 months exactly today! FREAK OUT!!

at least i've gotten a few more things done for at home wedding.

yesterday i went to moms and we cut and sewed 15- 2 foot squares of this great fabric i found on sale ($2.99 a yard!) last week at Joann Fabrics, it's the perfect shade of aqua, Tiffany blue, and it's linen-look, so like a poly-cotton blend and so much easier to work with than linen!

anyways, we machine sewed a straight line all around about 1 inch in, then we are fraying the edges all around, with the stitch being where the fraying stops. these are going to be like table toppers, on top of the white table linens but under the centerpiece vase. i was going to do some sort of organza, but it was just gonna be too hard to work with. i really wanted to add more wedding color to the room where our reception is, and figured this would work fine. i have a pic of the little sample one we made, but it's a home so i'll post later.

ha! and i still have NO clue what we are even doing for the centerpieces, but at least we have something to put them on top of! oh well

oh and i'm almost done with the TY tags for our favors (yay!), the 5oz Tapatio's, which we also ordered from Albertson's on friday. they gave us a $1 per case discount, so with 144 bottles, it is about $1.12 per favor, plus since we did the order thru the grocery store instead of the website, we didnt have to pay shipping. right on!

we are going to put our monogram stickers (Sarah's design, on zazzle stickers) on the neck, and tie the TY tag to the neck with leftover twine from our MIB i'll do pics when we get those done, but at least we ordered them!

I had a few free moments at work Friday afternoon, so I took it upon myself to contact the building manager who would have to approve our use of the rooftop deck for the civil ceremony.

Here's his response:

"I would love to say yes, but I am hesitant. My best "guesstimate" is that the rooftop decks will be open sometime mid-late June, but that is still a very movable target. We have just gotten our specifications back for the engineers doing the new elevated walkway system. It will not be going out to bid until next week.

So, I feel a bit uneasy about promising the deck for something so important as a wedding without knowing for sure that it will be done. I'm not sure how long you can hold off on making plans, but if you would like to check back in about 2 weeks, I hope to have a better feel for the project. "

ughhhh so disappointed because i was really just hoping to get a yes and go on to the next thing i need to plan (food and cake).

so i have to wait 2-3 weeks now before we will know for sure whether or not we can use the rooftop terrace i wrote back and told him that i needed to know for sure by the end of the first week in june so that if we couldnt use it we could still have enough time to make other arrangements. jose wants to do it either on our private terrace, but theres not really enough room because our terrace is long and narrow (30 ft by 4 ft) and would be awkward to seat the 5 guests. we would have to seat them 2 by 2 and one behind... and sorry but i feel weird about that because then one set of parents gets to sit in front and not the other which i dont think is fair. our other option is our living room... abbie since youve seen the living room, what do you think? we'd move the coffee table out into the bedroom for the day. at least that way everyone could sit?

i have another idea which totally depends on the weather, but theres a park a block away that is right on the river. the reason i'm suggesting it is because it has a decent skyline view and also when jose and i first started dating, we used to go to a coffee shop right near there and then walk through the park and sit and talk on the benches. i just dont know how that would work in advance though since its a public park (though usually mostly only busy in the morning and afternoon, not really around the 7 pm timeframe, but i HATE lookyloos)....

i kinda wish we had just not told our parents about the civil ceremony and just done it with the two of us and the officiant. the whole reason i am stressing about this civil ceremony now is because jose's mom is kinda judgmental and i dont want her to say or even think one thing is bad because i am putting this together all myself.

for our cabo wedding, she's changed certain details we chose because she didnt like them and/or said they were "naco" -- just last night she was arguing with jose that his choice of flan for dessert is inappropriate for a wedding and what are all the guests going to think (by that she means her friends). so it ended up that fine we can serve flan but we have to have a big wedding cake too. jose doesnt like cake so thats why we were only going to serve flan. i mean i love cake and i wanted cake, but i let him pick and he picked flan, which i was ok with.

maur, i think your living room would be large enough, esp with the coffee table moved out. that really sucks about the rooftop tho, it would be perfect! and i agree your "private" terrace would be too narrow, for exactly the reasons you stated.

what about down below? what is in the center courtyard? it was too dark and i dont remember. if there was a little yard/garden area down there it would be ok, and hopefully some daylight would reach all the way down there still at 7pm in july. altho the sun sets earlier, civil twilight isn't over until like after 9:30pm.

i dont really like the park idea for the lookyloo reason. it's just way too public, plus, wouldn't you need a permit? i'm assuming your civil ceremony is going to be long enough that you could draw a crowd, since you mentioned seating, but if not, it might be ok if the weather is good. you could just walk over, do the ceremony, and then be done before too many people might notice.

oh yah, chicago. i forgot about july heat, from last year. we almost died, that was the month we tore apart trevors kitchen that you sort of saw. it was so sticky hot, no a/c, and plaster and horsehair dust EVERYWHERE! that makes me for sure want to tell you to just forget it all and transform your lovely little living room into a wedding oasis. i mean really, if you can do the rooftop, then of course, do it, but if not, just do the living room. it will be absolutely fine. and less walking/standing for papa.