THE DRESS!

So it is NO secret that I have expensive taste ("Champagne taste on a beer can budget") so of COURSE after flipping through dozens of bridal magazines and spending hours rolling through Pinterest, I found the dress. I found THE DRESS! And of course the one I find is a Hayley Paige, $5,000+ dress....

AMAZING! If you don't know me, I am not traditional. I like things a little different, a little punky and fun. And this dress was PERFECT. except the price... So I did some research and REALLY liked the idea of having a detachable ceremony skirt so i can have a shorter, easier to wear reception skirt... My family & bridesmaids insisted I go to the bridal salon to try on dresses... I had an idea of what i wanted to do but this is apparently something everyone needs to partake in... So we went in. I found a couple pretty dresses, nothing that excited me or made me cry... And i found I had another problem: my bottom half is a size larger than my top half... Any dress i tried on was either perfect on top and tight on my hips or vice versa, so they all needed to be altered to fit me. Then a lightbulb. I have connections here, I want to find a seamstress. I want to see what it will cost to have someone MAKE the dress of my dreams to FIT ME!

I contacted my older sister (the queen of Humboldt County media connections) and she aimed me towards a seamstress. I contacted Megan Johnson (of Bold Seams) and we met and i showed her my dream Hayley Paige dress. I also asked her about making a detachable skirt for the reception. She pondered my idea and came up with a GENIUS 3-piece dress plan. She measured me. She bought 20 YARDS of ivory striped organza. She sewed. We had fittings. Tears were shed. Smiles hurt my face. THIS was the greatest plan ever.

Megan was the perfect person to hire to make my wedding dress. Although mine was the very first legit wedding dress to be worn at a real wedding (as opposed to plays that she usually made outfits for), she knew exactly what to do. The dress was constructed flawlessly. She actually had to buy 5 more yards of organza (totaling 25 yards of striped organza) to complete the 3 separate pieces of flowing beauty.

She was so easy to contact and kept me posted every step of the way. I'm not sure what my favorite part was, the fact that i got my personalized designer inspired wedding dress, the fact that my stubby little body perfectly fit in the dress, or that my dress is one of a kind. but it all came together. I got my corset. I got my long ceremony skirt (complete with a little train) and I got my shorter, knee length reception skirt, comfortable for moving around and dancing. PERFECT. I would recommend her to anyone :)

<3

THE WEDDING!

So! It has been over a month since our wedding. This evening we JUST got back from our honeymoon, a week in Cancun (thanks Grandma && Grandpa!). On our drive home (8 hour drive home from Portland...), Logan and I were talking and I was thinking how hard it was for me to come up with ideas/plans for our DIY/personalized wedding and that some of the plans we came up with could be shared with other couples to help with planning their wedding? Also, I just had such a blast planning and coordinating our decorations, I just want to share it with everyone :) So I'll have seperate blogs with each of our separate ideas/plans with pictures and directions of what I did. Please let me know if you have ANY questions and I will try and help in anyway possible. I will also (shamelessly) plug any and all of my help that I had from my dress seamstress to my wedding coordinator so please utitilize them as resources and let the know I sent you! Thanks for reading :)