wedding

Feb022010

Dress Dilemma

I am having a bit of a dilemma right now. Y’all all know that I want a new dress. This weekend is the Brides Against Breast Cancer dress sale here in Raleigh. They have hundreds of dresses vastly discounted AND each purchase is for a good cause.

My dilemma… do I continue to hold onto the existing dress? Or do I go to the dress sale and try on and possibly buy another dress? Or do I just donate the dress to them as a tax write off for my 2010 taxes? OK, well, the choices aren’t exactly all stand alone. Liiike, I could go to the dress sale and look, but not buy. Or I could buy and donate. Or I could just say screw it and do nothing.

By the way, my weight loss plan? Yeah, it’s non-existant at this point. Due to the massive amounts of snow we just had, I sprained my ankle. I also fell on my butt in a different incident 2 days after the ankle sprain. Yeah, I know, I’m amazing like that. I was shut up in the house for 3 days because I refused to venture out in the ice and snow in my car. Not just any car, but my 10 days old car.

Oh yeah, I got a new car! She’s super cute and I love her. I’ve named her Luna and she’s a Hyundai Elantra Touring Wagon. Yes, Hyundai. I was shocked as well, but she’s got some of the highest ratings I’ve seen in a long time and I’m planning for the future. As in, the future with babies and children and all the stuff that involves raising them. Luna has a massive storage area and plenty of room for 2 or 3 car seats.

spacer
Jan192010

Married Name Email Address

apparently rebecca fletcher, & most all variations of it, are taken on gmail. #marriedname

whatcha think: ribfletcher, beccafletcher10 or fletcher.becca for my #marriedname email addy? currently is becca.benaim

beccafletcher42 is also available

beccafletcher42 it is..

I have always identified with my name. Not the “duh” statement that it sounds like, but because my father named me after him. That is, he gave me his initials: RIB. And in just shy of 9 months, I will be losing my awesome initials. I made the decision not to hyphenate and to just have 2 middle names. My mom did it, but uses her maiden name on legal documents instead of both. I just don’t feel right saddling our kids with a huge last name just to keep mine. I am thrilled to be taking on Steve’s last name.

However, I will go from being 100% unique to quite common. Every time I Google my name, I know I will be every one of the results. I was told a few months ago by a friend that I will be the third Rebecca Fletcher on her facebook page after I change my name. Utterly common. But hey, my name will be easy to spell and pronounce!

This morning a twitter friend mentioned securing her married name’s email address. I tried so many different combinations before finally landing on benaimfletcher42. My maiden, my married, and the “Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.” 42 is also the binary number of our wedding date. Oh yes, I went there. I admit to my geekiness!

42 is also something I’ve been contemplating for my next tattoo…

spacer
Jan162010

Ring Dishes & Ketubah!

i’m totally getting these for Steve’s and my mama’s for the wedding! http://bit.ly/8D37Ry

I was perusing etsy tonight and flipping through my favorites. And saw these little ring dishes. How adorable are they?! Oh, I’m totally getting one for myself as well. I’m thinking of this dish: http://bit.ly/4zQjB9 either keeping the claddagh or replacing it with a 4-leaf clover or something Celtic. I have no idea why, but I’m totally drawn to Irish/ Celtic things. Maybe my grandmother was Irish. I like to think she was. I mean really, we’re all freckled with blue eyes. A girl can pretend, right? 😉

Have you purchased ring dishes? What did you use it for or did you just hang it on the wall? I’m picturing ours hanging near (probably underneath) our beautiful ketubah.

And on that note…

packed up the ketubah paper & the deposit and will be sending it to @swoonoverit on Monday! it’s really happening!!! #wedding

It’s going out on Monday! I cracked open the paper package tonight for the first time. It’s beautiful and thick white paper. The hardest part was finding something to ship the paper to Amanda totally flat. I ended up finally finding a scrapbooking paper keeper and putting thick cardboard on either side of the 15 sheets in the keeper. So exciting!!

spacer
Jan152010

Weighty Journay

according to excel**, i need to lose 30lbs to be where i was when i bought my wedding dress. not as much as i thought. have 9 months to go.

So this was amazing to figure out. I actually don’t have all that much to lose to be the weight I was when I bought the dress. 30 pounds in 9 months? That’s only 3 pounds a month if my math is correct. And, well, since the wedding is less than 9 months and I might need dress alterations, we’ll say 6 months to lose 30 pounds. That still works out to be only 5 pounds per month. Oh, plus a whole lot of jiggly arm fat reducing exercises. Since my dress is strapless. And cuz it looks gross.

I think I might actually [try] stay up at 6:30am after Steve leaves for work and I walk Lola. That extra 90 minutes of sleep, while amazing, makes me feel like I hit a wall and it takes me forever to get back out of bed. Perhaps it’s the snuggly puppy curled against me and the warm covers, but whatever it is, it sucks. And I do have a decent amount of energy after our brisk walk in the sub-freezing temperatures. I could *gasp* do a workout DVD then take my time getting ready for work. I could actually make breakfast instead of grabbing a yogurt and swinging by Starbucks for either a bagel or spinach feta wrap and a Venti chai. Sure, I’ll miss my chai, but it may help me lose weight to not drink so many of them!

This is kinda my accountability. I figure if I write about it and have a goal in mind, I may do it. I’m just so lazy! No, not lazy, would rather sit and knit then sweat and exercise. And don’t say pool, cuz me and bathing suits have a long history of mutual hatred. =)

Inspiration. And not even the smallest I’ve been in my adult life.

**Yes, I tracked my weight watchers journey in excel… what of it? 😉

spacer
Jan122010

it’s another “TweetMyWedding” post =)

Since I haven’t figured out how to feed my twitter into here, I decided to do another @TweetMyWedding type post. So here’s a few tweets from today, both wedding and not wedding related.  OK, more not wedding..

how random, a former co-worker that despises me (told another former co-worker) reads my blog semi regularly… interesting.

This one just flat out amused the shit out of me. Yes, I have tracking on my blog for a reason… reasons like this! A few friends had theories on it, but whatever, it’s not my business what she does, nor do I care enough.  It was just good for a laugh this morning when I checked my blog stats.

possible #MBA class ring. whatcha think? http://bit.ly/4rdAv8 oh and it’s $125

contemplating for MBA ring: “persistence pays” “a long time coming” “no regrets” “make the fam proud” “be a success” all totally apply! 🙂

Yeah, so I’m not sure why I want a class ring so badly. Maybe because I didn’t get one from UF, the school I truly identify with. Maybe because my high school ring was stolen. Maybe because it’s tangible as opposed to the $75K piece of paper hanging on my wall. Either way, the link above is really similar to my gorgeous wedding ring. I have 2 other possibilities with huge center stones, but this one is my favorite. And the purple and gold are ECU’s colors.

As far as the engraving tweet, I decided that since my name will be changing 5 months after graduation, I don’t want it on there. Sure, the diploma will have my maiden name, but whatever. I want something that reminds me of why I spent 5 years and $75K pursuing my MBA and why I didn’t give up all those times I was frustrated with classes or professors or classmates.

My leading favorite is “Persistence Pays.” Which one do you like and do you have other suggestions? Oh, I’m limited to 18 characters.

sweet! both the main & business graduation ceremonies are the same day. no need for 2 nights at the hotel #MBA

So, last week I booked 2 hotel rooms in Greenville for graduation. I emailed my wonderful and amazing adviser yesterday to ask when the College of Business graduation ceremony is to see if it was also on May 7th. When she replied, she didn’t know and suggested I book Friday as well. I held off, but luckily I got an email from COB this afternoon stating it was at 5pm on Friday! Main ECU graduation is at 10am on Friday.

Now I just need to decide if I’m going to attend both ceremonies or just the COB one. If I only attend the COB ceremony and we’re still living in NC, I can probably cancel the hotel altogether and just drive to Greenville Friday morning. It’s the main ceremony that requires the hotel room since it’s at 10am.

The COB ceremony is when I have my Master’s hood, umm, presented to me by a faculty member of my choosing. I already know who I want to ask to present mine. He was my professor a few semesters ago and has been really helpful whenever I had a question about my MIS concentration – he’s the Assistant Dean and Associate Professor of the MIS program. Yeah, he’s awesome.

seems like the dress gods (& y’all’s comments!) are telling me to keep the dress. 4 more months on the boards, then will start alterations.

After posting on facebook, twitter, here and livejournal, the response was overwhelming to keep the dress. This is going to be a lot of hard work (on me) and most likely a lot of money (on the dress) to be able to wear it in Vegas this October.

Wow, I can’t believe that the wedding is “this” anything. One of my co-workers pointed out that on Sunday it was exactly 9 months away. Umm, wasn’t it just like 13 months away yesterday?? Time is F-L-Y-I-N-G!

in royal, which? http://bit.ly/84fGJt or http://bit.ly/4nmtdC

I currently own the first linked pair of shoes. I am also still on the Zappos mailing list for any new Annie shoes that they stock. The second link appeared in my email this afternoon. The first pair is almost plastic material – I can’t really describe it. The second pair is satin and I can’t tell if they’ll be more comfortable. Which do you think? Keep in mind that they’re for October in Vegas.


can you get a ring engraved in most jewelry stores? even if it’s titanium? we didn’t engrave wedding rings when they were made 🙁

I think this is self-explanatory… I started thinking about it again when I was looking for engravings for the grad ring. Any local (Triangle area, NC) readers know jewelers that engrave on titanium?

i seriously hope Gary puts Amber in her place. Love Catelyn & Tyler. think Farrah needs to focus on sophia. & hope Ryan grows up for Maci.

why yes, my name is Rebecca, i’m 33… and am addicted to #TeenMom

It’s true, I love the hell out of this show. Have you seen it yet?

spacer
Jan112010

dress hack job

ok so I’m a total dork and put together this hack job of adding legs to the shortened dress.

thoughts?

spacer
Jan112010

You don’t alter Vera to fit you, you alter yourself to fit Vera

It’s not a Vera by any stretch of the imagination, but I just love that quote for it’s complete asinine-ness.

My dress situation is weird. When we got engaged in April 08, I ran out and bought the dress I’d tried on all 3 times I’d gone dress shopping and was crazy in love with it. A little less than a year later, we completely changed our wedding plans from big family and friends bash in Miami to tiny vacation week with a few family and friends in Vegas.

Most of you know that I’ve been trying to sell the dress. What you might not know is that it’s been on wedding boards since May. Realizing a sale may not happen, at least for the amount ($400 + shipping) that I want to recoup, I’m debating hacking up the dress. Yes, I said it, hacking it up.

I figure that one year on the classifieds boards will tell me the feasibility of selling it. Therefore, I am giving myself until May for it to sell. As in 4 months from now and around the time of graduation. This also gives me time to alter myself. Sad as it is, and for a very happy reason, I have gained a ridiculous amount of weight since purchasing the dress. Sure, the dress DOES have a corset back and DOES allow considerable loosening or tightening. But just how much do I need to drop to feel good wearing it again? That is the true question.

   
Clearly, I took these pictures 🙂

My question to you, my lovely blog friends… do you think this would look good at knee length or slightly longer? With maybe a dark blue petticoat underneath?

Sure, I don’t want to spend any more money on it, but as Meri pointed out, I will be spending money on a replacement dress. So if I can manage to alter it to my liking for about $200, the max I was planning on spending for a replacement, can I really complain?

spacer
Jan102010

Dress LOVE

Oh wow oh wow ohwowohwow… I am in LOVE with these dresses!

Wait, back up and rewind. I was scrolling through my RSS reader and catching up on the eleventy-twelve feeds I read, including about 50 wedding blogs. Yes, I have an addiction! I was scrolling through the 200+ entries on WeddingBee and clicking on the interesting titled ones, I saw “Closing the Book on the Dress Search” and *click*…

Instant love.

I knew I wanted a knee-length or tea-length dress and have been drawn more and more to the fuller skirts. Oh yes, OffBeatBride makes me drool with the multi colored petticoats and mmm, love it.

Seriously, how super cute and flirty are these dresses?! And best yet, they’re totally customizable for the fabrics!  Oh yes, I could see myself wearing these dresses over and over again.

More pretty pictures! And more along the lines of what I’d like mine to look like. <3 What do you think?

spacer