Getting the fit right

I should have posted this a couple of weeks ago, but I have my dress! Trisha's called up in the middle of October to let me know it had arrived, so I went to collect it and brought it home.

I'm not having it altered at Trisha's though. There's a lady who I've known for years, and who knew my dad when he was a teenager, whose name is Pat. She is incredibly talented at dressmaking and she offered to do all the alterations we needed as a present to us.

When I got my dress home I took it to Pat and tried it on. It fits perfectly at the top, but is rather too long, so she's taking it up for me. I've got another fitting tomorrow evening, and then probably one more before the wedding.

Pat has been sorting out my big bridesmaids as well. They both needed turning up and having the straps sewn in properly, and Jenny's dress needed the back panel that goes underneath the lacing sorting out as well, because it wasn't covering the hole well enough and she was showing off her pants!

Something borrowed...

For my something borrowed I turned to my sister-in-law, because I knew she had a pile of really pretty tiaras and hair pins hiding away in her bathroom from her wedding. When I went round to see her a few days after the engagement I had fund looking through her box and trying on different bits and pieces.

To start with a found a very pretty tiara, but when I was looking at it again a few weeks ago I noticed that half of it was silver and half gold - it looked as if the gold plating had rubbed off. It was still very pretty, but I wasn't sure about wearing it, especially as I'd found another tiara when I was looking around for various wedding bits.

I asked sister-in-law to bring her box of bits with her this weekend when I had my hair trial, and I found some very pretty hair pins that reminded me of snowflakes - just right for a winter wedding! I haven't shared anything else about the wedding outfit, but since this is something borrowed I feel as if I can, because it's already been seen before.

So without revealing any details about my hair, these are the hair pins - my 'something borrowed'.

A terrifying moment

I had a really scary moment on Wednesday (11th August) when I was at work.

I was in a training session waiting for it to start and brought my hand up from under the desk. As I was doing that I caught my ring on the metal bar under the desk. The bar hit one part of the claw setting and the aquamarine flew out of the ring and under the desk.

I was completely surprised by how emotional I got when I looked down and realised the stone was gone. I shoved my chair back and disappeared under the desk - to the surprise of the lecturer - and found myself crying as I was grovelling on the floor looking for the stone.

The lecturer was very nice and came to help me search, and after a couple of minutes I found it, safe and un-chipped, lying on the carpet under the desk. I put the stone back into the setting and squished the claw in as tight as possible, but I spent the rest of the day nervously fingering the setting to reassure myself that it was still secure.

I would never have thought that something as relatively unimportant as knocking a stone out - which was quickly recovered - would have made me so upset.

What not to wear

Lovely beardy man has been threatening to wear a boiler suit for the wedding - his reasoning being that since I said he has to wear a new suit, he could use a new boiler suit anyway. We've bougt him a waistcoat now, but he's still threatening to just wear it under the boiler suit!

In return I've told him my dress is a beautiful, huge, pink blancmange of a dress, complete with fairy lights around the bottom. I was bored last night so I Googled 'pink wedding dresses' just to see what would come up. The results were... interesting... :-)

Something old...

I'm quite traditional at heart, and ever since I was little I've been thinking about what I'd wear for my 'something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue'.

I'd considered an old piece of jewellery that I'd had for years and loved. I had a pair of pearl earrings at one point that would have been perfect for a wedding, but sadly they went missing when I moved house. I also wondered about an old ring, if whoever I married gave me a family heirloom or if we used my grandmother's engagement ring which I inherited as my ring.

Then I considered underwear. I'm not talking about really old skanky underwear, just something that I hadn't bought new especially for the wedding. I had a friend who got married who wore an old pair of blue pants for her wedding, along with tights borrowed from her sister and a new dress. But while I'm sure I'd be quite happy wearing comfortable few month old pants from my sock drawer, it's not exactly something I can show people if they want to know what I'm doing for my something old.

I hadn't really thought much about it in the few days after the proposal until my Mom mentioned her wedding dress. She still has it, safely in a box in the loft, so I asked if I could see it. It was a very typical wedding dress of the 1970s, with a high neck, long sleeves, and made of beautiful lace. The underskirt (made of crinoline, I believe) had unfortunately yellowed while it had been in storage, but the lace was still beautifully white. As well as the dress, Mom had kept her veil and cap, and they were both still in beautiful condition too. While we were ooh-ing and ah-ing over the dress, Mom produced several pearl necklaces in case I wanted to wear one of those for the wedding.

I said I wouldn't reveal any secrets in case darling beardy man wants to read this blog, so I'll just leave it that I found my something old out of the selection of beautiful things that Mom showed me, and after the wedding I'll post a picture of what my gorgeous something old was.

Something blue...

My beautiful ring arrived on Wednesday, especially made by Charlotte, a friend of lovely beardy man. It's silver with aquamarine (my birthstone), and Charlotte is going to make our wedding rings as well. It's absolutely gorgeous and I absolutely adore it!

Dressing the big bridesmaids

Almost as urgent as getting my dress ordered was sorting out the big bridesmaids' dresses. I wanted to go shopping quickly because it's the end of prom season and I was hoping we might find something suitable and reduced in prom sales. I also suspected that if we couldn't find anything, we might have to order some in, and then they might need altering.


Last weekend (10th August) I went down to my parents' for the shopping trip because both Jenny and sister-in-law are based in that area. We started our hunt in Erdington, where there is a large bridal shop - The Wedding Centre - and a prom dress shop - Lulaann Prom.

The Wedding Centre was a large shop with lots of wedding dresses, a florist, and a reasonable selection of dresses for little bridesmaids/flower girls, but nothing for big ones. We mooched through the little dresses and made a note of a couple that looked nice, had a quick look at the accessories in the displays, asked about wedding shoes (they don't stock any) and then went.

We headed to Lulaann Prom, which is owned by the same people of a bridal shop two doors down, and we had to go into the bridal shop to ask the staff to open the prom dress shop. There were a lot of dresses in there, but half of them weren't really suitable for bridesmaids. We tried on a few different styles, and there were some that could have done at a push, but a combination of the styles not being quite right, the colours not being right, or the dress not being available in the right sizes or only one being available because they were end of line, meant we didn't get anything.

The next stop was in Boldmere, where there were two more shops - Singular Sensation and Red Rose Bridal. We went into Singular Sensation first, as much because I knew they stocked shoes as because I wanted to look at their dresses. The shoe selection didn't have what I was looking for, so we turned our attention to the dresses.

THE colour! But not the dress :-)

One thing I knew for sure before we started our shopping trip was that I really wanted dark green dresses for the big bridesmaids. I had a backup colour, but dark green was what I was aiming for. Singular Sensation was the first (and only, as it turned out) shop we went into that could do the dresses in the exact colour I was looking for. They had a variety of styles available, all very beautiful, and all able to be ordered in in a range of sizes and colours.

Jen and sister-in-law tried on a few different styles, and Jenny, very annoyingly, looked stunning in every single one! Sister-in-law is more curvy than Jenny though, so it was important to find something that would look good on both of them. We narrowed it down to two that we really liked, made a note of them, and moved on over the road to the next stop.

Red Rose Bridal was a much bigger shop, with its wedding dresses and bridal accessories in an upstairs showroom. I went to have a look at their shoes, and one of the first pairs I looked at was almost exactly what I was looking for. Most importantly, as well as being the right style, it had a low heel - pretty essential as far as I'm concerned if I'm going to be wearing them all day, dancing in them, and want to stay comfortable!

We looked at the bridesmaid dresses after I'd chosen the shoes, and there were a few which were quite nice, but nothing really reached out and grabbed me, and again there was the issue of them not being available in the exact style I wanted. The order time would also have been pushing it to get the dresses in in time, and some of the styles had such low backs they would have caused serious underwear issues!


When we got back to Mom and Dad's for lunch we talked through the various dresses and decided on one of the styles from Singular Sensation, so we measured Jenny and sister-in-law and phoned the shop to order. The lady was very helpful, took all the details, and reassured us that the dresses would be in in plenty of time before the wedding. She did have one concern, asking if 'the tall bridesmaid', aka Jenny, was planning on wearing heels, because the dress might come up too short if she was. Jen had already told me she's planning on wearing flats, so I could reassure the lady, but I was very impressed that she'd noticed that detail and had remembered to mention it to me even though it was almost two hours after we'd left the shop, and they had been busy all morning.

I then had to call Red Rose as well, because I'd left my shoes by the till. They were very nice about it. I blame Bride Brain - the wedding equivalent of baby brain!

Singular Sensation
8 Boldmere Road, Sutton Coldfield, B73 5TD
e: info@singularsensation.co.uk
t: 0121 355 8158
w: www.singularsensation.co.uk

Red Rose Bridal
11-13 Boldmere Road, Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, B73 5UY
e: redrosebridal@btinternet.com
t: 0121 354 6292
w: www.redrosebridal.com
 

A fantastic shop find

As I've been going around Oswestry over the past few weeks I'd noticed a shop window with a beautiful little girl's dress in the window. It was white with a sash around the waist and gorgeous red satin roses on the skirt.

Now in Oswestry there's a project called Footfall, which uses empty shop windows to create displays of art and other items, usually on a theme. I'd assumed this shop window was part of Footfall, because there was bunting in the window to match the colour scheme, flowers, and other pretty bits of decoration, but there was no name above the shop.

The dress in the window had caught my eye though, so I decided to walk up to have a look at the dress and see if it was an advert for a shop or had any clue as to where I might be able to find something similar. I was delighted when I got there and saw an 'open' sign on the door - it actually is a shop!

When I pushed open the door I started grinning - the first thing I saw was a rack of little white dresses, and on the back wall was a sparkling display of tiaras, hair pins and other pretties suitable for accessorising bridesmaids with.

The lady in the shop was sitting at the counter working on a sewing machine, and she smiled at me when I walked in. I had a mooch around, looking through the racks and investigating the sparklies, and then the lady asked me if I was looking for something in particular. When I told her that I was interested in bridesmaids dresses she produced two catalogues full of beautiful girls' dresses in a variety of colour schemes for me to look through, all very reasonably priced and absolutely gorgeous.

The dresses only take a week or two to come in, and when I said the girls all lived quite a long way away she said that was no problem, and that I could take the dresses away to try on and bring them back to order a different size if needed. She also said that if necessary she could make any alterations that were needed, and was really nice and helpful when she was suggesting possible changes.

Not my bridesmaids, but cute all the same! Pic by shutterpal

I ordered three dresses on the spot - all different but with elements that tie them all together - and then browsed  through the accessories. There were so many lovely things, again, very reasonably priced, and I picked up some hair pins and some flowers, which are lovely and have been tied up with ribbon ready to be carried as bouquets by big and little nieces.

I'm so glad I found the shop, because it's such a lovely place just to mooch around and I'm sure I'll find excuses to go back in there again for hair accessories and an evening bag closer to the wedding date.

PS - The shop also sells eggs!

Kirkham's Sewing Boutique
26 Willow Street, Oswestry, SY11 1AO
e: kirkhamsboutique@yahoo.co.uk 
t: 07546 107172

Buying my dress

The first big purchase of the wedding plans was my dress. Having done quite a bit of research, I knew that most wedding dress shops ask for at least 16 weeks before the wedding to get the dress in and alterations done. Since lovely beardy fiancé only proposed 16 weeks before the wedding, I knew I was cutting it tight and fully expected to be met with looks of disapproval from staff at the shops I went into. That said, I was also fully prepared to walk out of any shop which treated me with disdain because I dared to try to get married on a short time scale and not on their time scale.

The week after we got engaged I had a look around local bridal shops to where I live in Oswestry, Shropshire, and talked to other people, and everyone seemed to have nothing but good things to say about Trisha's. Having heard all these good things, I called them up to make an appointment to pop in to try on some dresses the next Saturday (3rd August), thinking that then I could get some ideas ready for when I went shopping with my bridesmaids the following week (10th August).

I was so excited I couldn't actually wait until the Saturday, and on the Friday I popped over to the shop in my lunch break to have a look around. Trisha herself was in the shop and was more than happy to spend a bit of time talking to me about what I'd be looking for and to show me around the private showrooms where dozens of beautiful dresses were hanging on racks ready to be tried on. Most importantly, when I told her the date of the wedding, she said it wasn't going to be a problem and that it would be perfectly possible to get a dress in that timescale.

On the Saturday I went back with my friend Rachel to give a second opinion on anything I found. Trisha was lovely, and had pulled out a few dresses ready for me to try on after remembering what I'd said the previous day. I was really impressed, and it was one of the ones she suggested that I eventually went for.

When it came to ordering the dress she said that they say it's a 16 week delivery timescale, but then reassured me by saying she wouldn't order in anything unless she was sure it would be in in time for any alterations to be done. She also said that even if it went down to three days before the wedding, they could take care of any last minute changes because they do all the alterations in store.

A few days later I got a call from Trisha again to tell me that the estimated delivery date was going to be 23rd October - a full month before the wedding. She then said I should feel free to pop in or call any time if I had any questions of concerns.

The staff in the shop were lovely, the experience of trying on dresses was really relaxed and fun, I found the perfect dress, and it was well within my budget and actually cheaper than I thought it would be!

Trisha's
57-59 Beatrice Street, Oswestry, Shropshire SY11 1QR
e: trishasbridalwear@hotmail.co.uk
t: 01691 671133
w: trishasbridalwear.co.uk

Choosing a hairstyle

I love beardy fiancé dearly, but as far as my hair goes, he has terrible timing for trying to arrange a wedding!

A few months ago I cut off my 15" long ponytail and donated it to the Little Princess Trust - a charity which makes wigs for children with cancer. After the chop I had my hair styled really short and it's not even grown back out as far as my chin yet.

Now my hair does grow really quickly, so I expect it will be down to my shoulders by the wedding, but as I have really fine hair it does leave me a bit short on options for my hair style. I'm going to wear a veil, so it needs to be something that will fit in with that, but it would be nice if it also created some volume.

Some of the pictures I've been looking at for inspiration are here, with my comments.

 

I really like the waves in this hairstyle and the way the flowers fit in with the curls. It's a very natural look, but unfortunately I don't think it would work for me. My hair doesn't hold waves very well without masses of hairspray in it, and with the veil on top as well - assuming I could persuade it to stay - it would probably flatten any waves that did survive. Very sad, but that's my hair.

This is another quite natural look and I really like the bits soming down around her face. I'm not sure what's going on at the back of her head, but the front looks good, and I like the bit of extra volume she's got just behind her fringe. Definitely something to show my hairdresser when I go for a trial session.

This is the sort of style I'm thinking of, with bits around the face and the hair up at the back, but I think she has rather more hair than me! It's something I'll be experimenting with though, to see if I can do something along these lines - but a bit less messy.

In a similar vein but neater, I really like the way this works with the flowers in it. She obviously has much longer hair than me, but I like the way the hair is made more interesting with a few little embellishments. I'll be looking on eBay to see what sort of clips and decorated bobby pins are out there before I go to the hairdresser to see if I can find something that will go with my dress. It's also something I can give to the bridesmaids to tie all of our looks together.

I think this is my favourite picture that I've found so far. It's a lovely, soft, romantic look that's not too messy but not so neat that you'd notice if a few strands came loose. I can't quite see what's going on at the back, but it seems to have a lovely shape to it.

Another soft, romantic look, this is quite a simple style but I think it would look quite nice with a veil and wouldn't get squished or disarranged too much by it. The only problem with this is that the top is quite flat, and I'm not sure I'll have enough hair to pull it off. It's worth bearing in mind though.

• A lot of these looks came from a wedding hairstyles blog that I found and immediately bookmarked.