Bridesmaid Dresses

This past Monday, my mom, sister, and I went out shopping for Bridesmaid dresses. We'd looked a bunch online, but it seems like it's really hard to tell what the fit will actually be like and how the color will actually look until you actually see them in person and try them on.

The main criteria I had going in were that I would like a floor-length gown, because I think they're really pretty and flattering and a bit more formal, and I also wanted a bright yellow (not a pastel yellow), because that's the main color of the wedding - it should be bright and fun and spring-y.

Our first appointment was at Flutter Boutique in Minneapolis. Flutter Boutique was really great. They have a really good selection of dresses - lots of designers and lots of styles. I think we were the first appointment of the day, so we were the only customers in the store for the first hour we were there. It's really nice to have the store to yourself to chat and pick things out. They also had a little table with coffee, which was nice. The person who helped us seemed very knowledgeable, too. They have a large room where you can try everything on - my sister tried on everything, and then I re-tried our top seven dresses. (You can tell that we really tried on a lot of dresses, since even after narrowing it down a lot, we still had seven!) Even though we ran a bit over our one-hour appointment time, the person helping us didn't make us feel rushed at all, and even encouraged us to take our time. Once we had our top seven, she hung them all up in a row, and then she wrote out a card for us that had the dress style, fabric, price, and order timeline for each dress, and she made a card with fabric swatches in yellow for each dress. It was a great place to shop.

These were our top seven dresses:

Priscilla of Boston 1612 in Canary Satin Yoryu

Priscilla Classics CL106S-L in Canary Satin

Simple Silhouettes Sweet Pea in Dandelian Silk Shantung

Priscilla Classics CL110S-L in Canary Satin

Priscilla Classics CL110S-L in Canary Satin

Simple Silhouettes Gardenia in Dandelian Silk Shantung (but full length)

After Six 6589 in Irredescent Taffeta (but full length)

Our next stop was at Priscilla of Boston in Edina. We hadn't made an appointment, so we didn't have one specific person assigned to help us, but they let us grab dresses and try them on, which was all we really needed. We found a couple we liked (there were others we liked more, but they didn't come in yellow.) They were:

Priscilla of Boston 1520 in Canary Satin Yoryu

Priscilla of Boston PB445 in Canary Crinkle Chiffon

Before we left, they wrote these down on a card along with pricing information. We also discovered that Priscilla of Boston was having a sale so that all bridesmaids dresses were 15% off through December 30th, which is a pretty good discount.

That meant I really needed to decide quickly. The morning after we went shopping, my mom, sister, and I put all the pictures up on the TV and try to narrow down the options. We looked at what would be flattering, what would have the best color, and what we just liked, in general. I am hoping that the yellow satin is bright enough in real life - I really want it to look like a bright yellow, rather than a pastel yellow. On the other hand, I don't want it to be overpowering. I'm hoping these colors are a good medium. These are the top three we decided on - both on me, and on the model from the Priscilla of Boston website.

Priscilla of Boston 1612 in Canary Satin Yoryu (but without the straps)

 

Priscilla Classics CL106S-L in Canary Satin

 

Priscilla of Boston 1520 in Canary Satin Yoryu

It's basically a coincidence that the top choices were all Priscilla of Boston (though it didn't hurt that they were definitely the most reasonably priced - some of the dresses we tried on were $350 or more - yikes!)

Then on December 29th, I made a final decision to go with Priscilla of Boston 1612 in Canary Satin Yoryu - so that's going to be the dress! All seven bridesmaids will have this same dress, and the two female ushers will have the same style dress, but in onyx instead of canary. This is definitely a huge part of the wedding (at least visually), and it's really crazy to have it all set!

  

All of the girls (except Janet who's out of the country) called in and put down a deposit on December 30th to secure the discount, and now they'll call back soon with measurements, and the order will be put in. So exciting!

Painting for Christmas

Jeff, Tom, and Brian's Christmas present for my parents was to paint their room in the new house - including the attached bathroom and walk-in closet. It was definitely a great idea for a gift.

Before, the room was actually half-painted. The people before us must have had it hunter green, and then started painting it a more neutral color when they were trying to sell it. When my parents looked at the house, the paint job was in-progress - and not like one wall was done and another wasn't - one wall was just half painted.

So now that looks much better.

And now that the painting is done, my parents are able to put in the closet organization system they were planning on, and have their things all settled, which is really nice.

Christmas in Minnesota

Jeff and I fell asleep on a plane in California, and woke up to a very white Christmas in Minnesota. It was about 6:15am when we landed, and my dad picked us up and brought us back to the house. We fell asleep for a few hours, and then woke up at a more reasonable hour to start getting ready!

I spent most of the morning wrapping presents. Amazon really saved me this Christmas - I had ideas about what I wanted to get, but I didn't have much time to shop and kept putting it off. Then I ordered almost all of my gifts on Amazon.com and Thinkgeek.com on December 22nd, and they arrived by December 24th, so when I got home on December 25th, all I had to do was wrap all the boxes that had come in the mail.

By about noon, Brian and Emily had showed up, and so had David, Natalie, Drew, and MacKenzie. We had brunch - one of my favorite meals of the year. My mom makes an egg bake, a cheesy potato bake, sausages, fresh fruit, and Belgian waffles - pretty much everything on the table is a food I love.

After brunch, we opened gifts. Ever since my grandma and grandpa moved to Texas and we started doing Christmas brunch with just our family and my Uncle David's family - each family has mostly just bought gifts for the kids of the other family - so David and Natalie buy gifts for Brian, Katie, and me, and my parents buy gifts for Drew and MacKenzie. I think that made sense when we were in grade school, or even high school, and maybe college. But now that even the youngest (MacKenzie) is in college, and the oldest is married and having his own baby, the parents-kids distinction is getting to seem a bit silly. (I got a nice bottle of wine and a box of chocolates from David and Natalie this year, which was awesome, so I'm definitely not complaining, but logically it does seem that it might be time to change the process a bit.)

In Jeff's family, where they have a similar issue, everybody exchanges names so that each person buys a gift for one other person (with family and significant others involved - everybody who's at the Christmas gathering is in the gift pool). I think this could be a really nice way for us to do things, too - and maybe that way even Mamie and Grandpa could be involved (and we could ship the gifts if they're not going to be in town).

After doing gifts, we played a game, which is another holiday tradition we have. This year my mom bought a new game called "Word on the Street." It's actually a really fun game! You are split into two teams, and the board has a row of letters down the middle. When it's your team's turn, you get a 'category' card, and you have to think of a word that fits in that category. Once you've chosen a word, you move the letters in that word one space closer to your team. Then it's the other team's turn. If you're team moves a letter three spaces toward you (without the other team moving it back on their turn), it goes off the board, and your team has 'captured' that letter. The first team to capture eight letters wins. It was fun to play and it allows for a lot of chatter and discussion - everyone can be involved easily and it's really lively.

David and Natalie and Drew and MacKenzie left in the late afternoon, and then we opened the gifts from the immediate family. For my brother, I went in with my mom and dad to get a bunch of storage boxes he wanted for his house and garage. I got my sister a couple of fashion design books she wanted as well as a book called "NYC Free & Dirt Cheap," which I actually got her last year and she really liked, because a new edition came out in November 2010. I got Emily a box of "Emily" chocolate-covered marshmellows and a lavendar-dark chocolate candy bar. I got Tom a book about unique things to do in NYC. I got my mom a sweater (almost the same one I was wearing) and a gift certificate to a restaurant she had been wanting to try. For my dad, I got George Bush's book, and two books about teaching math - "Hear's looking at Euclid" and "What Successful Math Teachers Do, Research-Based Strategies." I got Jeff a whole bunch of new clothes from Banana Republic. We actually went shopping there together. He's lost a lot of weight in the last few years, and had no idea what size he was anymore. He went into the store wearing pants that were size 36x32, and after some help from the people there, discovered that he was actually a 32x34.

I received really nice gifts from other people, too. From my parents, I mostly got clothes - which is what I asked for. I also got a Caribou Coffee gift card. My brother gave me cash, which is what I said would be best for fixing up our apartment. Katie gave me clothes that she had found in New York. Jeff got me a new point and shoot camera with a really good HD video capability, which I'd really been wanting. Here's a video of us hanging out on Christmas.

After that we all relaxed for a while. We worked on the puzzle for a while, and then most people took a nap, but I started reading Dune and get engrossed in that.

At about 6pm, we went to my Grandma John's house for Christmas dinner. Grandma John's is always fun - my dad is one of five kids, and all of those kids are married and have kids, and some of my cousins have kids too, so it's always a full house. Each year we take a family photo, and it's really fun to look through all the different years.

This year, we also took a photo with just the girls, but then my Uncle Dave jumped in. The camera snaps five pictures in a row, so you can see the action unfold.

After eating dinner, we opened gifts - I think all of the Aunts and Uncles get gifts for my Grandma John, and Grandma John gets gifts for everyone - even Jeff and Tom always get a gift, which is really nice. After gifts, everyone lounges around and chats until it gets late, and then we all head out!

Christmas Eve in California

Jeff's family often does Christmas in California. Usually, it's just a few days and it's not over the actual holiday, so it's relatively easy to coordinate with my family, but this year, they decided to get together over Christmas Eve and Christmas. Christmas is really the big day for my family - we do brunch with my mom's side and dinner with my dad's side, so we definitely wanted to be in Minnesota for that. Our solution was to fly to California on December 23rd, and then take a red-eye back really early (12:30am) on December 25th, so we were there for about 36 hours total. It was a bit crazy, but it actually ended up working really well.

We got to California around 9:30am on December 23rd and went to check-in at the hotel. Apparently Jeff and his family always stay at the same Residence Inn whenever Christmas is in the Long Beach area (which is where Jeff's Mom's grandparents lived). So he has lots of Christmas memories at this place.

The first item on the agenda was a much-needed nap - we'd taken a 7am flight, and since we were in first class (yay, free upgrades!) we stayed awake to have the nice food. Later, Jeff and I made a stop at the mall where we picked up some last-minute things and got Panera for lunch. The mall was a zoo - all of the lines in Target stretched out into the shopping area. That's a serious wait just to get some tissue paper.

In the afternoon, Jeff's parents, brother, and brother's girlfriend got in. We hung around in the room and chatted and ate lots of Christmas snacks (my gift to the family was a collection of Christmas candies and snacks - we opened it early). Jeff's aunts and uncles came over and joined us. Eventually we headed out to 'El Ranchito' for dinner - it was pretty good Mexican food - yum. After dinner, it was back to the hotel room for some mulled wine and chatting, thought Jeff's parents were definitely feeling the three-hour time difference, so we didn't stay up too late.

The next day was Christmas Eve. We decided to spend the morning touring around Long Beach. At the rental place, they had given Jeff and I a jeep, so we took the top down for the morning drive (Dave and Taylor rode with us). It was pretty crazy to be driving along the ocean in a jeep with the top down on Christmas Eve - I realized this is the first time in my life I've ever been outside of Minnesota on Christmas Eve.

We walked down a pier in Long Beach, and actually saw Santa there - he said he had to hurry and get back to the north pole. We had some really good seafood at a restaurant at the base of the pier, and then we headed back to the hotel to get out things together.

For dinner, we met up at Jeff's cousin Rob's house. Rob's mom (Jeff's Aunt Margie) cooked lasagna for dinner. The food was great, and it was nice to have a big Christmas dinner with the family. Margie also took us out for a walk. Rob had happened to move into an apartment that was only a couple blocks from where his parents (Margie and Mark) first met - at a community center dance when they were about 15 years old. So Margie took us there and showed us the building - very cute!

We had the gift exchange - I had Larry, who couldn't make it, but I sent him a Hawaiian shirt in the mail, and he actually received it before Christmas Eve, so I just said hi over the phone. Rob had me in the gift exchange, and he gave me a tiny book called the "book of secrets" with lots of little trivia, and also a game. Jeff's gift is coming from his Auntie Mar, but since she couldn't be there, it's coming in the mail to our place in DC.

Eventually everybody got pretty tired, and then we headed back to the hotel, where we hung out for a little while longer, and then Jeff and I went back to the airport to check-in for our 12:30am flight (first class again - yay, free upgrades!)

Savvi Formal - Groom Tux Preview

There is a tuxedo store in Minnesota called Savvi, which offers a "Groom Free Preview." The idea is that brides spend lots of time trying on different dresses and choosing one, and that the groom should get the opportunity to try things on and think about different styles, too. There is a branch of the store really close to my parent's house, so we headed over there and did some trying. We looked at different tux styles and different combinations of vests and ties.

For tuxedos, the main differences in style come from the number of buttons, the shape of the lapels, and the fabric on the lapels. They said that usually people do two buttons, and that way you get to see a bit more of the vest and tie. As far as the shape of the lapel, notched is the most common. You can do a peak lapel, but it's much more formal. The fabric on the lapel can be either satin, satin lined, or there was another textured fabric they offered, which was a bit less formal. I think in the end, we decided we liked a two-button, notched lapel, that was all satin.

Another thing you have to decide is whether to do bowties or regular, long ties. Apparently, few people do bowties these days, and long ties are more popular, even for relatively formal weddings.

The other things you can vary are the color of the vest, the color of the tie, and the color of the pocket square.  The groom would have white vest, tie, and pocket square.

Yellow vests seemed like an aweful lot of color, especially when the jacket is off, so we were thinking maybe the groomsmen could have black vests and yellow ties and yellow pocket squares.

And the dads could have black vest, tie, and pocketsquare. (Or maybe a yellow pocket square). Not sure yet what the ushers would wear - maybe somethings similar to the dads.

We took lots and lots of pictures. I'm putting some in the blog, but if you want to see all of them, you can look at this album online.