Vegas Vows

Aug112009

Booking the Wedding and a Lola Picture

I was just checking out SLVW as I do… frequently.. and noticed a little disclaimer on their front page. All package prices will be increasing as of September 1, 2009. However, wedding booked prior to September 1 are not affected. Guess what I’ll be doing as soon as I get my student loan excess funds in 2 weeks? That’s right… booking the wedding and paying the deposit!

Yes, I have the “go ahead” to do so. Not for the above reason, but for other reasons, but I’m sure mentioning the rise in prices will only help push it along. =) We’re pressed for funds as is, hence Vegas in the first place, and with a total trip budget of $1500, we’re not taking chances on going over said budget.

In amusing.. news.. I am taking an Illustrator class this summer.

<---- This is my latest project. I had to use the pencil tool to write my name, or in this case, Lola's name. Then outline a subject from a photo and colorize it however we wanted. I picked our poochie, cuz she's the cutest little thing. No reason for posting this other than I wanted to show off my lack of Illustrator skills. Gotta get up to speed since I’m designing all the invites, favor labels, etc for us.

Aug102009

Wedding Dress Woes

I am giving my dress until April 1 to sell. If it doesn’t sell by then, I will start on alterations to be able to wear it in Vegas in October. I’m unhappy with this decision only because I really am regretting my decision to buy it so soon. I love the dress. LOVE IT. But… where it would have been wonderful to stick in a car and drive to Miami, and have time to hang and get the wrinkles out, it will not be wonderful to cram into a bag, fly across the country and wear the next day in Vegas.

I’m wondering just how short I can have the seamstress make it and still look good and just how much it’s going to cost. Steve really doesn’t want me to sell it. He knows how much I love the dress and that it pains me to sell it. I really wish we had made more plans before I rushed out and bought a $700 dress. Grrrr.

Oh well. I’m clearly not alone with dress regrets. I’ve seen brides all over my blogs buying 2 dresses, or even 3 because they can’t decide what they want. Well, I know the style I want for Vegas and it’s decidedly cheaper then I initially spent. And honestly, it’s not about money in this case. It’s about changed tastes and venues.

The dress is currently listed on BravoBride.com with over 1000 views. I tried CraigsList, but that was a bust. I kept renewing the ad but never even got a nibble. Ebay costs too much for the probable no bids that it’ll get. Even with a reserve price, I’m not guaranteed a purchase. A girlfriend of mine bought her dress and 2 months later listed it on Ebay when she bought another and got no bids the 3 or 4 times she kept relisting it. Annoying!

What other sites should I be listing it on? Help?

EDITed to add: Apparently PreOwnedWeddingDress.com finally got a clue and opened up their Sell a Dress form to include sizes over, like, 12. When I checked in May, I couldn’t list my dress due to it being larger than their listings. It will be listed as soon as the lovely manager from the Raleigh David’s Bridal store mails me a copy of my receipt. She is amazing and I love her, without ever having met her. She dug into their system from 16 months ago to find my receipt and is mailing it to me.

Image courtesy of iStockPhoto

Aug062009

Booking the Wedding

I just spent a good chunk of my lunch break trying to convince Steve that we should book our date with SLVW already. He doesn’t see the point seeing as it is over a year away and things could still change. Plus, he wants to get Rosetta Stone so we can both become bilingual (Spanish) to improve chances of getting higher pay. The wedding/ photographer/ flowers/ limo/ minister/ everything else costs the same as the full Rosetta Stone package. Great! He can buy RS, and I’ll pay for the wedding. Win-win, right? 😉

I will continue to work on the booking after work. Especially because he tipped the waiter $10.10 “in honor of our wedding date.” Yeah buddy, I know that’s our date, but can’t we make it official? Not that I have the 35% down payment yet, but I will in a few weeks! After all, it’s less than $175 to guarantee the date and time we want to be forever tied to one another.

I love my crazy fiance.

Jul312009

Random Wedding Related Stuff

There was much to discuss last night in the Benaim-Fletcher household. And discuss we did! He doesn’t think he’s cynical, just a realist. He knows I am nothing like his ex’s, and that I am so totally different from them. I am different from every woman he has ever dated. He is different than any man I have ever dated.

We discussed the wedding events, time frame and more. We also discussed the wedding I am in at the end of August. While he is obviously invited to it, he doesn’t want to wear a suit (but really, what man does?) since it is in August and hot and and and. I assured him that for our wedding, he can wear flip flops and shorts for all I care, but for this wedding, he needs to have a jacket and tie be a part of his wardrobe. Sadly, that’s a big reason why he doesn’t want to go. But I do know a thing or 2 about being unhappy to be forced to wear something I dislike. I’ve been in tons of weddings and haven’t always liked my bridesmaids gowns.

<--- the dress for the August wedding. Hopefully it looks normal on your screen and not squat like it does on mine!

A friend of mine tweeted me a link from the Church of the Flowers website. They are apparently casting for a new TV show about Vegas weddings (go figure):

Happily Ever Faster – Casting Questionnaire: Happily Every Faster is a new wedding series on TLC that documents the love stories of different couples and their journey to matrimony at the Chapel of the Flowers.

Any other vegas brides out there? And really is anyone actually reading this thing?

Jul282009

Wedding Info Dump from my Journal

Evening my lovelies!

So I have had an online journal for many many years, but it’s locked down tight since I discuss everything in the world on it – good, bad and very ugly. There is a good chunk of stuff on it that relates to the wedding, and I’ve decided to pull all that out and put it into this blog. Prepare for an influx of ideas! 🙂

since getting engaged in April 2008, we have discussed getting married in port before a cruise (honeymoon) sails, getting married on an island mid-cruise in the Caribbean, getting married in Miami, Chapel Hill, and Vegas; having a big 100++ person bash or having a handful of people in either Vegas or Miami and the reception for 100++ later; eloping to the JoP. in all this discussion, the date just kept getting pushed back and back and back. i think we’ve actually settled on 10-10-10 finally. we needed a memorable date for Steve – his mind is great with math, but not numbers, whereas i can still remember my first ever cell phone number but am terrible at math.

my wedding ring was ordered on April 22, 2009. Steve’s ring arrived on May 27, 2009. mine was ordered through Etsy seller: JewelryByJohan, and his was ordered through Etsy seller TitaniumKnights.

apparently loads of discussion culminated in a definite Vegas wedding on February 17, 2009, according to my other journal. 🙂

We went to Miami to visit my [entire] family and for Steve to meet them. he asked my dad, very non-nonchalantly!, if he could marry me. dad, of course, said yes since everyone loves Steve! April 5, 2009 from my journal:
daddy said yes. no surprise there though. my older brother likes him. younger one seems to as well. and of course mom and dad do too. pretty much everyone he met this weekend thinks he’s awesome and that we’re awesome together.

my darling bridesmaids bouquets consist of…

1 stick of red/ orange orchids – palaneopsis i think, 2 bunches mini white Calla Lilies, 3 sticks of Stephanotis (with pearls in the center), 2 things of grass for more green.
the stems are wrapped up and pinned tightly with a dark blue ribbon and a sheer white with silver stars ribbon overlay.

no clue what mine will look like. probably the same flowers with a few deep orange large Calla Lilies. we shall see.

Jul272009

More Vegas Stuff

i was reading one of my favorite wedding blogs this morning, Help Me Pay for my Wedding, and came across this post about tacky weddings. why on earth do people feel they can dictate what is tacky and simply not their taste? The article she has linked actually disgusts me.

we are going to Vegas next October with about 10-15 friends and my brother and his girlfriend. that’s it. whenever we can afford the big party, that’s when we’ll have it, complete with a mock ceremony for my parents, aunts, uncles, grandmother, and the other 150 people that i simply don’t want mucking up our amazing wedding day. i have been getting grief from lots of people already. i already know that i will catch a load of crap from ummm most people for going to Vegas. “ugh, how tacky, why didn’t they just have a nice wedding?”

i personally think there is nothing wrong with Vegas or a Sunday brunch or an adult-only affair. this is our wedding and we *really* don’t want to get married in Miami (where the party will be) simply because that is where the majority of the family is and where we have a free location at my parents 8-acre home. thanks, but no. call us tacky all you want, but i will be having the wedding i want. and at 33 and 39 on our wedding day, we don’t need big and lavish anymore. we want pictures along the Strip, tours of the Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam, and, oh yeah… Vegas for 5 days!

we are already having people exclaim how cool it is that we’re going to Vegas. a few have said that if they knew when, they’d be there in a second. so apparently it’s not just large “traditional” weddings that have self-invited guests. as it is, Steve and i started working on the guest list a few nights ago. we have 10 definite and 25 possible guests. the definites are bridesmaids and spouses, my brother and his girlfriend, and a few others. the maybes are our immediate families and a handful of other friends.

and because the wedding is in the desert and we love our guests, these are the potential wedding favors. they are stainless steel water bottles from World Market and are currently on sale for $5 each! They have green, blue, orange and silver and we’ll probably get an assortment of colors. I am currently thinking of buying caribeaners (sp?) and making some sort of “hey thanks for coming to our wedding” tag to attach to each bottle.

whatcha think?

Jul272009

Buy my Wedding Dress? Please!

When we got engaged in April 2008, I foolishly went out and bought a wedding dress. I only say foolishly because we had no idea what kind of wedding we were going to have, where it would be held, if we’d need to travel, etc etc etc.

Now, with a Vegas wedding, a long plane ride with layovers each way, and Steve not wanting to see my dress, I need to sell it. If we’re lucky enough to arrive on a morning flight into Vegas the day before the wedding, there will not be enough time to fix the dress back to the perfection that it deserves. This of course assumes that I am allowed to carry the dress on to the plane with us. The bottom is so poofy that it’s seriously like carrying a dead body. We will probably have to buy a seat for it. OY.

Don’t get me wrong, the dress is the most gorgeous dress I tried on and made me feel like a complete princess in it. I went to David’s Bridal 3 times and all 3 times I tried it on, loving it to pieces. I took picture after picture; posting them all on a secret website to hide from Steve.

Here is my beautiful gown, in all her glory, listed on BravoBride.com, just itching for a new owner to love it as much as I do. I could stare at it all day long if I could keep Steve from seeing it.

The only reason I am not posting a picture of it here is in case Steve decides to start reading. He might flip out if he does see it and I don’t want to do that to him!

I would love to wear a dress like

this:

or even this:

dog image courtesy of: Spoilurpets.com
dress images courtesy of: bridalonlinestore.com

Jul242009

Vegas Anyone?

There is a very high, like 85%, chance that our wedding will be held in Las Vegas.

I was given the name of a company called Scenic Las Vegas Weddings that performed my friend Jody’s wedding last year. I have been in contact with SLVW multiple times and perused their website incessantly. They are an amazing company with loads of wedding packages. We are currently deciding between the $399 and $499 Vegas Strip packages. The only real difference is the number of locations for photographs; 2 versus 3.

What I need from you is locations for the pictures. So send them my way! What are the best, most amazing locations for pictures – wedding or otherwise – and including the Vegas sign, neon graveyard, hotels, landmarks, etc? Once I gather all the info, I’ll post a poll to see what everyone thinks. Of course, the final decision will be up to Steve and I. 🙂

Hit us with your locations!

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