Hairspiration

I'm actually having someone do my hair for the wedding. Unlike my makeup, I don't trust myself enough to do something fabulous with my hair. Also, unlike my face, I like to have my hair played with and pinned up. It makes me happy, euphoric even. I find it very relaxing.

I have a hair trial with Amy in a few weeks and I'm a little stuck on what I want to do. I have a veil and a hair flower to wear:

(Hair flower picture from http://www.davidsbridal.com/, Veil from http://www.weddingbedazzled.com/)

I thought that I had everything figured out hair wise, I'm in love with messy bun type styles:

(Not sure where this image is from, I saved it to my computer when I found it months ago, probably a result of Google "low messy bun updo")

But my dress would really work well with a more vintage finger curl updo like so:

                  (Source)

I can't post my dress on here because Mr. Tal frequents my blog and I would have to hurt him if he saw my dress before the big day. My dress would work with any updo really. I don't know if it's really that big of a deal, I like all sorts of updos, I like having my hair done and just seeing how pretty it is. We'll see how I feel on the day of my trial and take some pictures, see how looks and go from there.

Anyone have any opinons? Share please.

Tune in next time for more tales from a DIY bride.

Makeup your mind

Again like many things with the big day, I decided early on to do my own makeup. I do not enjoy people touching my face and the two or so times I've had my makeup done I didn't really like it. I haven't really thought to much about products until recently, figuring I would hit up the local Sephora and see what they said. I ended up going in twice, once just before Christmas and last week. Each time I asked for suggestions, noting that I would need all day coverage and makeup that would look good in pictures. The first time, they were way too busy to give me any helpful information, the second time I got some really good info all written out for me. When I got home I decided to price out everything that was suggested to me and boom, I was hit with over $280 worth of product. That's all well and good and if we weren't on a tight budget I wouldn't have a problem with paying that much for some high quality makeup. As it is we are on a budget, and I can't justify spending that much money on makeup. I've been wavering back and forth for weeks, Mr. Tal, God bless him, isn't helping much because he wants me to have everything I want. So what's a girl to do?

Play with some drugstore makeup of course! I went in and studied some of the products at the drugstore and also did some online research and here is what I think I will end up doing. I will probably use a more expensive primer, foundation, and setting powder. As for the rest of the products, I can use the drugstore products for my blush, eyeshadow, eye liner, lipstick and mascara. I played with it last night and it looked really good, so I think it will work well. As soon as I purchase some of the more expensive products I will post pictures on how the look pulls together.

If anyone has some suggestions on products I would love to hear them.

Tune in next time for more tales from a DIY bride.

@%#$#%@!!! (Or, Our DIY Invites)

As with many of our wedding decisions, the invites were easy to decide on. Obviously we were on a tight budget, so we figured we would do them ourselves. We did hit up a few bridal show vendors and also one invite store, but nothing just struck us me. I mean I really like pocket folds but with a printer, so not in our budget, at all. I'm also a big fan of simple, which didn't seem to be options in any of the 10-15 invitation books we saw. So like with many things we decided to go the DIY route. Again, that was easy peasy, I walked into Michael's and BAM, we found an invitation kit that was perfect. The BRIDES line at Michael's has some pretty great selections including our own invites:

(Source)

Pretty right? Seems pretty simple, the include a website to download the printing templates, so we figured it was an easy job. Right? Right. Wrong. So, so, so, sooooooo freaking wrong. We decided to play with these last week because the invites need to be assembled and sent out soon. In order to save us from screwing up the actual invites, I cut out card stock of the same size. It was a really good idea, because we screwed them up. Well, once we got them to actually print we screwed them up. My printer did not like this project. It took us over 3 hours to figure out how to make the stupid things actually come out of the printer with ink on them. Once we did, everything was off center. It was awful. I wanted to cry. I think I did. I know there was a lot of cursing, from both Mr. Tal and myself. We figured it out eventually and saved, saved, saved everything so that when this week came we could just pop open the templates and print them. Ha. Not so much.

We decided to start assembling last night just to get it out of the way, we were so confident that Mr. Tal suggested I do the invites while he cleaned. Hahaha. Within 5 minutes, I was ready to slam my computer into the wall. Nothing saved, we had to re-calibrate everything. After an hour and a half we figured it out and were on track. But take this as a lesson, once you figure out how to print your invitations, just do it and put them in a box until you are ready to assemble. It will save you a headache and some time. Without further ado, (cue drum roll) here are our invites:

They turned out really great, regardless of what a pain in the butt they were. Would I do my own invites again? In a heartbeat. Even though it was a pain we got to pick exactly what we wanted, at a price that cannot be beat, less than a dollar per invite. I'm really excited (but also kind of sad) to be mailing these puppies out soon. Yikes it's coming up quick.

Anyway, tune in next time for more tales from a DIY bride.

Outfitting the 'Maids

Do you remember my struggle with the bridesmaids dresses? If not you can read about my indecision and struggles here and here. All caught up? Good. Moving on...

So we ended up going with David's Bridal for the girl's dresses and I think it's a good compromise. They all choose their own dresses in a style that suited them, but the purchases weren't officially done until this past Saturday when I trekked my butt down to Columbus to go shopping with soon-to-be-sis and my bestie. So without further ado, here are the dresses my four beautiful, fabulous bridesmaids are wearing and keep in mind, all these dresses will be in the apple red, as seen in sister E and soon-to-be-sis's dresses.

Maid of Honor and Bestie:

(Source)

It's a chiffon material, kind of beach-y feel. She belongs somewhere in Florida bumming on a beach somewhere so it suits her well. The straps have a little bling on 'um and I think she will rock it out with 4 inch heels.

Next up, little sister and 'maid A:

(Source)

This one is a satin material, wrap dress. It's a little off-the-beaten path and a little less traditional like her. The ruffled collar, faux-wrap style is her, plus it gives her breathing room. Important for our star performer at the wedding.

Next up, Littlest sister E's dress:

(Source)

This one is satin, this strapless little number is going to also be little sister's prom dress, which happens to fall the day after the wedding. That curvy girl is going to knock some guy's socks off in this dress.

Last, but certainly not least, soon-to-be-sis L:

(Source)

This dress in a jersey knit and different from the other dresses because it's long. Well, soon-to-be-sis wanted something with a lot of give and some extra fabric because they are expecting! Woot! I am so happy for them. She'll be about 7 months at the wedding and I'm sure looking hot.

So that's it, the long journey of the bridesmaids dresses are done. As for accessories and everything, I said get some silver shoes, I'm taking care of the rest. Which I did, it's done but I refuse to blog about my awesome gifts yet because 1. I'm not done, and 2. I don't want them to know what they are getting!

Tune in next time for more tales from a DIY bride.

The Big "D"

Doubt that is. In my previous post I listed some reasons for my months long absence from blogging, most of those are pretty self-explanatory, at least I think they are. However, number three indicated some doubts had arisen between Mr. Tal and myself. Rest assured these doubt were in no way about us getting married, we are sure about that. No, our doubts stemmed from the big, evil budget.

Our budget is decent, we settled for about $9,500 that we would feel comfortable spending on a single day. I think current weddings are averaging in the $20,000 range, so we felt really good about our own budget. Most of our expenses are fitting well into that budget, but in recent months with my unemployment situation, I felt less and less convinced that spending any money on a wedding was a good idea. Combine my lack of income with some wedding planning stress and voila, a recipe for doubts. Being the level-headed guy that he is, Mr. Tal assured me that we are doing the right thing and if we eloped we would certainly regret it. I never really believed him the days when he said these things but always the next morning, I would agree and we would move on. I still have some concerns but we have done our best to create a beautiful, fabulous wedding on a respectable budget and that's the best I can hope for.

Gah, too much seriousness for me today. Okay, I promise a fun post either tomorrow or Tuesday. Maybe a little post on the final (for real, I promise, they are paid for) bridesmaids dress selections.

Tune in next time for more tales from a DIY bride.

I'm baaack...

A few things happened to spawn my absence:

1. I applied to blog for Weddingbee and got rejected. This diminished the small amount of faith I had in myself as far as blogging goes, so I quit.
2. I was sick again and I'm a medical mystery apparently.
3. Mr. Tal and I experienced some major doubting-tom moments, which I plan to blog about later this week.
4. I hit crunch time with school. Papers, finals, etc.
5. We hit wedding stall---there seems to be a period in between months 6-4 of the wedding countdown in which things kind of just come to a reeeeally slow point.

That's it. Those are my excuses. Take 'um or leave 'um. My soon to be sister-in-law made me realize how much I love blogging and how much I miss it, even if it's erratic at best. I am going to try to post more. For real this time. I re-read some of my old posts today and realized that even if I'm not the best writer, I'm enjoying writing about this process and I'll enjoy re-reading it for years to come. So folks, I'm back.

Tune in next time for more tales from a DIY bride.

Om Nom Nom!

I had an awesome idea to gather all my girlies for some bonding over lunch and dress shopping. So I e-mailed everyone and the moms and set a date for the 26th of September and got excited. My sisters, my mom, Mr. Tal's mom, and soon-to-be-sister-in-law were all able to make it. Unfortunately, my maid of honor and bestie ended up needing to be out of her apartment by the 1st, so she had to move over the weekend of the lunch. I was a little sad, but it still worked out, they'll all meet eventually after all!

The morning of the 26th came around and I was actually pretty giggly and excited. Everyone gathered at our place around noon and we all took off for my former place of employment the Olive Garden. It was scrumptious. We had a great time just chatting and I was so excited that sister-in-law was getting along great with my Mom and my sisters. We ended up taking off for David's Bridal after lunch, which we all agree was the wrong way to do it. Should have went dress shopping first, oh well, hindsight and all that.

Oh, yeah, I bet you're wondering why we went dress shopping when I already had a dress picked out. That fell through. The seller that I was in communication with didn't get back to me for about a month and I decided that while I can understand that she was busy, I didn't want that kind of stress surrounding our wedding. Like I told the ladies at lunch, I want our wedding to be as stress free and fun as possible. Thus, the need to go dress shopping emerged.

Luckily, I made an appointment at David's Bridal since when we walked in the place was packed. It is one of the two bridal stores in Toledo. We checked in and started perusing the dresses, there was one in particular that I wanted all the girls to try on, which we found for each girl. I also told the girls to try a few that they liked on to see if they liked anything else. The dress I had picked out didn't work for everyone, which was fine. I ended up going with my original gut feeling on the whole dress situation and allowed the girls to pick whatever they wanted as long as the dresses were short and red. The consultant that worked with us was so suprised at how laid back we all were, the look of suprise on her face when we told her we were done after a half an hour was priceless.

The whole afternoon was wonderful and went just the way I wanted it. I think I've choosen a great group of girls to be by my side on the big day. They are so wonderful and supportive, I can't wait to see what they decide to pull out of their hat for my Bachelorette party!