Karen_and_Andy

Mrs.S2B, did you ever find photos of bouquets with orange or yellow callas? If not, I was just in Facebook and noticed that the florist we used has some really cool orange calla lily bouquets in a photo album on their Facebook page. The link is: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=221461&id=62235714776 If the link doesn't work, their page in Facebook is under SomethingFloral but the florist is Something Spectacular Floral Design in Michigan. They do really nice work. I loved my flowers. They were artificial but they looked exactly like real flowers.

I say go for the fuchsia shoes. I chickened out on wearing colored shoes and ended up wearing basic ivory, and I now regret that decision. Lately I've been noticing a lot of really cute wedding photos where the bride is showing off her colored shoes and I wish I had been able to do that. Our wedding colors were yellow, purple, blue, and green and I could've chosen a really cute style in any of those colors to coordinate with my bridal bouquet. If I had it to do over, I definitely would've chosen something more colorful than my ivory shoes.

That's a great thought and link, SDSteph. I remember checking sunset times on a Sedona wedding website (can't remember which one now though) before scheduling the time for our ceremony.

I take mine off at night before I sleep and during the day when showering or doing anything that might get dirt, food, lotion, or cleaning chemicals on it and under the prongs. My ring is white gold so I'm also cautious not to wear it when I'm handling any types of chemicals or cleaning fluids that might more quickly discolor the gold. This year my parents will celebrate their 60th anniversary and although my mother has taken off her engagement ring for cleaning, she has removed her wedding ring only once since getting married and that was a few year back to have the ring repaired. She wore it consistently for so long that the band became thin and broke through. The jeweler had to add some additional gold to the back of the ring and solder it back together.

We had an outdoor 6 pm wedding in Sedona, Arizona, and our photographer was with us and took photos until just after sunset. The photographer had a wedding before ours so we knew ahead of time that we weren't going to get all the portraits of just the two of us at all the different locations we wanted before sunset so we booked some additional time with her on the following day (late morning and early afternoon) to take more photos in a variety of locations. It was fun dressing back up the next day and going out to several different scenic locations where we could have some fun and take our time for the photos. We were so much more relaxed and not rushed the next day and the photos from that day looked more natural with regard to our poses and smiling. The bright, direct sun lighting was more of a challenge for the photographer on the second day since she was shooting in the morning and afternoon so from a lighting perspective our sunset shots on our actual wedding day were more evenly lit and had a nice warm color to them, but our poses were more relaxed in the poses from the second day. Hope that helps!

Several years before I met my now husband, I was engaged to someone else and we were planning our wedding. I put down a $250 deposit on a sample dress that was discounted down to just over $750 from the original price of nearly $4500. While the dress was in layaway at the bridal salon and I was making monthly payments on it, we broke up and cancelled the wedding. I had $350 invested and had a similar dilemma in that I didn't know whether to finish paying it off and take possession of the dress to resell or to walk away and lose the money already paid. I decided to pay the rest of the money thinking that it wouldn't be too hard to sell a beautiful, size 10, never worn dress, worth nearly $4500 for only $750. Looking back, I wish I had walked away from the deposit. Even after advertising it on several online sites and auction sites, it ended up taking me nearly 5 years to sell a perfect, spotless, popular style gown and I had to reduce the price to $150. Not only that, but the gal I eventually sold it to was a huge pain because she didn't do her research about the difference in street sizing and bridal sizing, ignored the dress measurements I had in the ads and had sent her before she purchased, and she just assumed that the size 10 gown would fit her because that was her street clothes size. Although I advertised it as final sale/no returns and for potential buyers to verify their body measurements against the gown measurements before buying to ensure proper fit, she did nothing but complain to me via email for a month about how she bought a dress (a $4500 dress for only $150, mind you) that didn't fit her. After that experience, I would never try to sell a wedding gown again. They just don't seem to sell very quickly, even when deeply discounted.

I wore a strapless bra on top and corset-like girdle thing to suck in my waist and hips. The skirt on my dress is a full ballgown style but I didn't wear a hoop or any kind of crinoline slip under it because I didn't want it too full. If we had been married in a traditional location I would've puffed out the skirt but since it was an outside destination wedding I didn't want the skirt too large. I had to have the skirt altered shorter since I didn't wear a slip. If I had worn a crinoline slip, the length would've been perfect and I wouldn't have had to pay for alterations because the dress fit me perfectly in every other way than the length.

I'm not in Cleveland but am just NE of Columbus in Newark. We married in Sedona, Arizona in June.

Sedona, Arizona is not one of the pre-created locations in the forum so I created a new thread. Are there any other newlyweds out there who married in Sedona like we did or any brides planning Sedona weddings who need info about the area or what it's like to plan a wedding there. We married there in June so I can provide some info to anyone who needs it.

Something Spectacular Custom Floral Design made the flowers for our wedding, and we absolutely LOVED everything we ordered. It all looked so real. A few of our friends had the same designer create flowers for their weddings so that's how we found out about the company and saw the quality of their work before ordering. They design both fresh and artificial flowers so you have a choice, but they are in Michigan and our wedding was in Arizona so we had all artificial, but the pictures of their fresh weddings look great too. They seem to book up far in advance so you have to reserve them early. After seeing our photos, a coworker just tried to place a small order for October and was told they are already totally booked until 2011. They're not the cheapest out there, but they are definitely one of, if not THE best, and they were worth every penny. I would definitely recommend them. Our bouquets were large and full of flowers so they weren't skimpy like some I saw on other florist websites, they were well constructed and didn't shift or fall apart, and the designer was nice and very accomodating. We were totally satisfied and loved our flowers!

Although the florist I booked designed this using fresh flowers, they said they can duplicate it in silk flowers for me. At this point I'm about 75% sure this is what I want for my bridal bouquet. http://twitpic.com/ind4h Sorry for the link but I don't know how to post photos here yet so I'm posting a link to the photo they have online.

The Style Me Pretty blog is one that found ultimately through Twitter. That's a good blog for ideas. They usually post updates on Twitter whenever they add a new blog post. The link to their Twitter page is Style Me Pretty (stylemepretty) on Twitter Project Wedding is another one I follow on Twitter. Their page is Project Wedding (ProjectWedding) on Twitter

A couple weeks ago I signed up for a Twitter account and started following a variety of wedding planners, photographers, and florists. Many of them post links to their websites and blogs full of photos of past weddings and inspiration boards. Initially I didn't think Twitter would be very helpful but once I started following enough people where I had new info and links popping up all the time on my Twitter home page, I started running across some great stuff.

I totally understand what you are going through. The same thing happened to me back in January. 14 people from my department were cut, including someone I worked closely with for almost 10 years. She and I were the only two who had the same job so not only do I have the pressure of taking on all of her work, but I still feel guilty that the managers chose for me to stay instead of her. A few of us still left in the department had lunch with her last week for the first time since she left. She is 63 years old and encountering severe age discrimination as she attempts to interview for new jobs. I know she would like to retire, but she cannot afford to retire for the lower social security benefit. She is hoping to work until 67 and get the full benefit amount. I feel just terrible about all this.

Hi Erica. We booked the same florist as my friend right after seeing how realistic and well-made her bouquets and other flowers were at her wedding. We actually hired them even before we decided for certain on our wedding location because we knew we wanted to book them before our date was already taken. It's Something Spectacular and their website is SomethingSpectacular.com. I can't remember the exact city they are located in but it's in the Detroit area and when I initially looked it up on Mapquest, it's about a 4 hour drive from the Columbus area where we live. I'd post a photo of the bouquet that I think I want them to design for my bridal bouquet but I'm not sure how to post a photo here. Is there a way to post photos from Facebook or another photo site?