Well, to say the least, I’ve been gone for awhile.  Luckily, I’m new so you all haven’t gotten to know me too much which means you haven’t been missing me too badly.  Right?

Anyway, I’m back and I’m hoping to get my contributions to this site into full swing.  The Spring school semester just ended for me which should give me more time to write around here.  That means, if I end up abandoning you all again, I have no excuse.  So, hold me to that.

Just to introduce myself again, I’m Michelle, the Arizona Bloggette.  I live in Flagstaff and I love it here.  My husband and I are already married through the Arizona Justice of Peace but we’re having a Catholic ceremony next year, Fall 2011.  I’ll definitely be posting more as the time gets nearer and as I get more stressed out.  As of right now, everything in the wedding planning category has been quite dubious for us.  We’ve thrown out a lot of ideas between each other and no less than a month later, those same ideas seem ludicrous.  The more and more I learn about the wedding industry, the better my ideas get.  So, the plans I had a few months ago seem so lame to me now.

With that being said, we still have over a year and a half to plan.  This give me time to keep the ideas flowing and gather more and more information.  So, I’ve decided to hold off on the official planning for now (in case I learn something better in the future) and focus on things that a little more immediate.  One of those being…a ring.

Since Matt and I dated for only two months before we randomly decided to get married, we didn’t have time to discuss rings.  And he didn’t have time to get me an official engagement ring which, at the time, was fine by me.  We decided that we’d hold off and get our more official rings into the future as the second ceremony approaches.  The other day, we finally sat down and started discussing what we, or rather “I”, was looking for.  This conversation was hard for me because honestly, I’m not one of those girls who knows exactly what she wants.  And that goes for anything.  I don’t picture myself in any particular dress, ring, color palette, you name it.

The only thing I do know is that I don’t want what everyone else has and that seems to be a solitaire diamond in a round or princess cut on a simple white gold or platinum band.  You know what I’m talking about.  It’s the standard Tiffany solitaire that it seems everyone hopes to duplicate.  Someone suggested to me several months ago to look into antique/vintage styled engagement rings since those usually tend to be different.

This idea was perfect for me because after I did a bit of searching, I was immediately drawn to antique style engagement rings.  I’ve narrowed it down to a few that I like which I hope to take to a private jeweler and have a similar design custom made for me.  Here are some of the styles I’m loving so far:

Do any of you think on of these is better than the other?  I would love opinions!

When I asked one of my best friends to be a member of my bridal party, I gave her this book. I should have given it to all my bridesmaids but I asked her a little later and I wanted to be awesome.

I also bought it for myself.

{$6 Amazon.com}

This past weekend I was in a bridal party as Matron (Maid. I hate the word matron) of Honor. And let me tell you, a few of the bridesmaids were so unhelpful, ungrateful and just overall bitchy. Mostly to me, but I expected that (longstanding issues).

Still though, here a few tips to be a good bridesmaid:

1. Expect to hemorrage money. Don’t get to the wedding and complain about how much money you’re being asked to spend. My friend did the good deed of letting us pick our dresses, and not asking anything from us. So it was a little off putting when two of the bridesmaids left the post-rehearsal dinner happy hour without paying for one or two of the bride and grooms drink and stiffing the rest of us on their own tabs. Being a part of a bridal party is not for the stingy.

2. Don’t forget your dress. Seriously, one of the girls forgot her dress. I don’t know the whole story but my dress was the first thing I packed in my bag because I was deathly afraid of forgetting it. Of course she was driving, so she spent an extra few hours driving back to get it.

3. Don’t be a bitch. Seriously, the day/weekend is not about you or any petty quarrels from the past. It’s about the bride and it’s generally a good thing if you don’t forget that.

4. Don’t complain to the bride. About anything really. My bridesmaids were amazing and helpful and I am forever grateful to that. When i forgot my razor blade at home, one of my gals went to CVS to buy me a new one. Kudos! But complaining about anything from the other bridesmaids, the cost of travel, your hotel, your cab driver, anything really is unnecessary and unbridesmaidly.

5. Be helpful! Bride needs a cigarette? Give her your last one! Bride wants some wine at 10am? Don’t ask questions. Make sure she eats, make sure she doesn’t have to do anything, and make sure that she’s happy, calm and breathing deeply to keep her nerves at ease.

(First, as a follow up to my last post, my wedding site did come back up 24 hours later — the weddingchannel.com was having technical problems.  Let’s all breathe a sigh of relief.)

I mentioned before how I was having doubts about my dress.  Thursday, I finally picked it up from David’s Bridal, brought it home and tried it on.  It was too big, but I liked it.  I thought that maybe it was going to work out after all.  But 15 minutes later, I’m sweating on it, even though I’m inside my apartment, AC blasting.

A wedding during the summer in Rio?  Not exactly something you need extra layers in order to sweat for.  We could have a nudist wedding, and I would still be sweating.

On Friday, I looked at other dresses I had liked, again…  I had not once considered straps when I was first looking, but after seeing pictures of Lacey and her incredible dress, I started looking…  I found this beauty:

And now I can’t help but think that I should at least try it on.  If only to ease my doubts…  I have yet to find a shop around DC that has that dress in stock.  I found tons of sites that sell them, and it’s slightly over $1,000, way more than what my original dress cost, but on pictures it should look spectacular, no?

Anyone else decided to go back shopping after finding the one?

My wedding website, that I had spent HOURS on, is gone.  Not loading.  Nada.

I type in the address, or just try to login to my account, and get a “runtime error.”  It’s hosted by Wedding Channel, and the rest of their site functions as normal.

I’m freaking out, and already emailed them.  All my save the dates are sent.  All had the website printed on them.  The site has EVERYTHING one needs to know about traveling to Rio.  EVERYTHING.  And no, I don’t have a copy of it elsewhere.

Is bursting into tears appropriate during work hours?

If anyone else out there also has a site with them, please check and let me know if yours work.  If I know it’s a general problem, I know they will fix it.  If it’s just me, I doubt I’ll ever get my site back

Remember my post about the rings I got for Karl?  We got them in the mail super fast, he tried them both out, and made his selection.

We then returned one for a refund and sent the other to get engraved.  In less than a week I had them back!

The box awaited for me on Friday, we excitedly ripped open the package, and Karl tried it on.  Of course, I took pictures!  (And yep, I really should have cleaned my e-ring before taking a picture of it!)

I can’t recommend TitaniumKay.com enough — the ring prices were great, and the quality and service was well beyond my expectations.

The bad part?  There’s still 7 months until he could wear that for good.  I loved seeing him with a ring on his finger

Is anyone out there still reading?

I should be getting ALL my engagement pictures next week (yipeeeee!!!), but for now, here is a couple more that got shared with us.  I’m in LOVE with them.  I figured I’ll put them all in a book — any book printing sites you can recommend (I used blurb before and loved it…)

First off the shoes…  Wish they were as comfortable as they are cute.  Said that, I hadn’t noticed the heart on the bottom of the sole before, so seeing this picture was a nice surprise — fits the theme, no?

And I love our shadow on this one — totally by chance, but so adorable:

Has your guest list changed since you first started planning your wedding?

For the most part, you hear of people having to downsize their guest list after their budget is taken into consideration, but I had a different experience, and was able to add more guests than I thought I could.  Not that I even know what the budget is (though I’m learning about individual costs for most things, my parents refuse to tell me how much they’re actually spending).

At first, we put on a long list of guests of EVERYONE I would like to be there.  Then, Karl and I went through it and downsized a LOT.  We told my parents the number of guests we would be inviting.  We sent out our first batch of save the dates ( some of the “we’re definitely inviting list” got missed by that first batch, since we had to reorder cards, and I just got lazy after the initial excitement, but I got to catch up on them in the last week, yay!).  Then I talked to my mom and mentioned how hard it was to invite some of your friends and not other.  Her reaction of “so why don’t you invite them?  That’s not a problem!” made me relieved!  It seemed clear that a couple of dozen more guests would really not make a difference for them.

So now, we re-added all those people that got missed on that first run, and I have finally asked for their addresses today (yay!).  Our total number of invitees are WAY over our expectation of 100-130 guests.  We’re probably at around 200 people being invited now…  (Have I mentioned our small church fits 100 comfortably?)  But since our reception venue can accommodate up to 300, a few more people here and there was not the end of the world.

Of course, I am also counting in a lot of those people not being able to make it since the wedding will be all the way in Rio, after all.  In an ideal world, everyone would have the time off and money to be there with us to celebrate (as we didn’t invite anyone because we felt obligated to — we truly wish everyone could be there, small church aside).  But we know that reality is different.  A dear friend just told me last week that he won’t be able to make it, due to both time and money, since his sister is getting hitched just 2 months before us, and her wedding also requires an out of the country trip.  It saddened me that he couldn’t be there, not just because he’ll be missing our party, but because I know he would LOVE Rio, but I completely understand.

How have your guest list experience been like?

Granted, I have ordered the shoes online, and won’t get them until Monday.  But I’m excited!  I knew I wanted red shoes from the get-go, way before I started reading all these bridal blogs and finding out that colored shoes were the new trend.

I had lovely shoes from Nine West that I’ve worn a few times, and decided I would wear that.  That is, until last week when I realize that wearing old shoes to my wedding would just be boring!  Also, because I saw this baby online…

Long time, no write, y’all.

Things have been uber busy, planning-wise, here in Tennessee, and I’m happy to report that we finally found the bridesmaid dresses.

I have eight bridesmaids, and NO ONE lives in the same town. In fact, I have a bridesmaid on every coast. And I had NO idea what we were going to do until I realized six girls were coming to our engagement party in Memphis a few weekends ago.

Since my cousin and sister were staying together, the three of us and my mom went to a dress shop early Saturday morning to scout out all the gowns I had liked online. Of the twenty of those, we found three that could potentially work for everyone.

That afternoon, once everyone got into town, the six girls, plus me, my mom and W’s mom, headed to the dress shop once again.

The vote was unanimous, and here is the final gown:

{via Alfred Angelo}

Not only is it gorgeous, but it was form-flattering on EVERYONE. And my eight girls are all built differently!

How did y’all decide on your bridesmaid gowns?

When we first started planning our wedding at the beginning of the year, my wedding dress wasn’t really anywhere near the top of my To-Do list. I think mostly because the though of looking for it didn’t excited me AT ALL. Firstly, I have no idea what I want. Secondly, me + shopping = extremely frustrating. Not to mention most wedding dresses that I see online or elsewhere haven’t really tugged at my heartstrings.

Well, now all of the sudden, almost 6 months (!) from our wedding date…people keep asking if I’ve found a dress yet.  My answer “Uh, well I guess I should start looking!”  I know that it’s not early to start looking, but I feel like my taste could change in 2 months (silly, huh?).  Should I just get down to business or what?

So a few questions for our readers:

1. When did you start looking and/or get your wedding dress?
2. Did you find it difficult to shop for a dress when you had an idea of what you wanted in your head?
3. Did you buy your dress online?

Thanks for the input guys, I NEED it!