Berlinovo Wedding Blog

Mom has kicked into high gear

I think Mom is starting to see cracks my calm facade. Or perhaps she has been talking to my fiance. Or perhaps, since I gave her access to our google wedding calendar, she can see all of the things coming up in the next few weeks. No matter what the reason, she has kicked it up a notch, and I have to say she is right on time. When the wedding is 7-8 months away it seems like you have plenty of time to iron out all of the details. And in truth you do. At least, you have the time to iron out the details that you KNOW about. The trick is that there are a whole bunch of little nitty details that don’t crop up until way late. Add to that all of the details that you have (eh hem) procrastinated on,  and suddenly you feel like the only guy wearing red at the festival of San Fermín in Pamplona. So Mom has graciously offered to take care of some of those pesky details, and I am one to say a hearty “Thanks, Mom”.

Bridal Fair Hell

There is nothing more overwhelming and eye-opening than a bridal fair. The Sunday after the Friday/Saturday bridal shopping extravaganza, my best friend and I went to our first, and last, Bridal Fair. First of all, you actually have to pay to get access to all of the people whose job it is to get the most of your wedding budget. For our $6 ransom, we got a bag to put all of the wedding brochures and propaganda and we got a “free” Brides magazine. We were then ushered in to two large rooms full of caterers, photographers, djs, wedding destination travel agents, bakers, florists, make up artists, videographers, favor creators, and anything else wedding related you could think of. We could taste anything from cake to beef stroganoff. We must have killed at least a tree worth of paper. I came home with videographer samples and dj samples. It made me realize all of the different vendors that went in to a wedding. I think the ones that most shocked me that day, were the photographers. Pardon me, the “artists”. For the price of some of their packages, you would of thought they were selling you a hand painted Monet of you and your betrothed. While I understand that photography is an art and that you should pay for the skills that the photographers have honed, please! I do not think that 10-20% of my wedding budget should go to photos. I think the big issue I had was with the negatives (or jpg files, I should say). In my mind, they are my photos, I have paid for them to be taken and they should belong to me. This is not the case. Some photographers will not give you the files. If you are allowed to have the files, you have to pay for that privilege, and often, you have to pay a healthy price. One guy said he would release the files to me for free after a year. My pictures should not be held hostage, especially for the price of the photographers. I should not be forced to purchase a wedding album at exorbitant prices. THEY ARE MY PHOTOS! I was going to have to find a photographer that perhaps was not a “wedding” photographer. They were a bit entitled.

On a positive note, I found my DJ there. His name is DJ Earl. I liked him because he ran his own shop. He was who you hired, not some guy who works for him. He has been doing it for 25 years and had a very warm friendly personality. We have a winner in DJ Earl.

Every other aspect of the bridal fair just reinforced my desire to not get ripped off by the bridal machine.

nutter butters are not my friend

How is this related to my wedding you ask? Follow me….

Most brides start dieting immediately to fit in that “perfect dress”. Well, my “6 hour dress” has a corseted back, thus allowing me to justify procrastinating on the typical wedding diet. I was happily eating anything I wanted until a friend of mine, unknowingly sent me into diet overdrive by announcing “only 6 more weeks until the wedding! Can you believe it?” NO, as a matter of fact I can’t! When did that happen? Is it possible to lose 20 pounds in 42 days? That’s around 1 pound every 2 days, if I calculated that right. I might be able to do it if I ate steamed vegetables and brown rice every day. We did get a really cool rice cooker from Mom… Okay, wait…slow the panic train down. My seamstress pointedly asked my if I was planning on dropping dress sizes. Even with the corseted dress, she seemed to frown on this idea. Okay, so 20 pounds, not such a good idea. How about a more reasonable amount like 5-7 pounds. That was more doable. A pound a week. I could lose that. So for the first few weeks, I was pretty good. Then hell week at work hit. Hell week at work has culminated in my sitting here in the airport at 9pm waiting for my redeye back east, which has now been delayed for 2 hours. Enter the Nutter Butters. I needed solace and for some reason, I thought the Nutter Butters could provide it. And to be quite honest, they have done a good job (don’t tell weight watchers). I have managed to only eat half of the package (don’t ask the obvious question) and I think I will stop now. But to bring the story full circle… my wedding diet was blown today due to the plane being delayed and the pull of the Nutter Butters.

Tomorrow will be a better day.

Box carnage

Our house is turning in a graveyard for boxes. One corner of our living room has opened presents that we don’t have places for yet. The other side of the living room has empty boxes and gobs of peanuts for which we don’t have room in our recycle bin. I have a vague recollection of a list item that was “order a bigger recycle bin”, but I don’t know where that list went. The upstairs bedroom is “wedding central” with leftover invitations, bridal shower presents that haven’t migrated to their homes yet, multiple pairs of wedding shoes (I finally found a comfortable pair today). The kitchen table was the scene of wedding favor creation today, so it is a bit chaotic. I have a feeling that is only going to get more and more chaotic in the lead up to the wedding. One day the house will return to normal…one day.

Dan, the man, levitan

We love our harpists name! It is just so musical. Very appropriate for a musician, I suppose.

Wednesday we sat down with Dan’s list of questions and music and set out to pick the ceremony and cocktail hour music. Our harpist sent us a list of various songs that he could play, both classical and contemporary. Now I have to admit, I am woefully ignorant of classical music. Thank goodness for iTunes. My fiance and I sat at the computer and typed in some of the different songs Dan listed on his playlist. The classical music seemed the most appropriate for a harp/flute combo. I just couldn’t wrap my brain around an acoustic harp rendition of John Denver. Most days I can’t wrap my head around John Denver music in general.

In the end, we went the traditional route for the most part. Quite frankly, it was just easier. I did pick music for the recessional that is a little different, just to change it up a little. For the cocktail party we picked more contemporary music. It is a celebration after all! A little Phantom of Opera, some Godfather theme for Dad and a little Maple Leaf Rag to liven things up. Plus whatever Dan comes up with.

Another thing checked off of the list of things to do.

Wedding Dresses on ebay?! what will they think of next?

Plagued with bridal dress fatigue, my best friend and I drug ourselves into the final bridal shop on our list. I had tried on no fewer than 40-50 dresses in 2 days. We had figured out what style fit, so every dress I tried on was pretty because it was the right cut. As the sales lady informed me “we are not trying to find a pretty dress, there are lots of those, we are trying to find the ‘perfect’ dress”. Yeah whatever. At this point, I just wanted A dress so that I wouldn’t have to try any more on.

THINGS I LEARNED: Don’t make any decisions immediately after you have tried on lots of dresses. It is like going to the grocery store when you are hungry. You will not have a clear enough head to make a sensible decision. You need to rest. Take a few days of not looking at dresses. Clear your head. Otherwise, you may end up with WAY more dress than you want.

I am not sure if it was due to our glassy-eyed bridal dress fatigue or the fact that we really just wanted out of there, but we actually found “the perfect dress”. As a matter of fact, we found two. The sales lady was kind enough to give us the designer names (no model number though) and sent us out the door, reminding me that I needed to make a decision pretty quickly because it was February and we needed at least 6 months to order a gown. No pressure or anything.

So I went home and started to surf the net. I went to the designer’s websites to see if I could find the dresses. I did not trust that the sales lady had necessarily given me the correct designer name, so I wanted proof. After much searching, I found both of the dresses on the respective designer’s sites. Now I had the model numbers! I went to an online dress website with a shop in Louisiana, and got prices for the two dresses I was interested in. The prices came in around 30% lower than the bridal shop’s prices. I was making progress!

For the next few days, I searched through page after page of dresses on ebay. I read the message boards on the Bridal Bargains Book website regarding dresses from China. Lots of women had written about the various ebay shops. I knew which shops sent good dresses on time and which ones had faulty cheap zippers. (Note: I just went on the website to see if I could find the message boards and I could not. So either they took them down, or their site is just that poorly designed). In the message boards and in the book they give seller IDs of ebay stores that people had had good luck with. One of these was called Cinderella Bridal, at least that is what it was called when I found my dress. The book did warn you that the shops changed names frequently. A little concerning, I know.

So, I went to the online shop and looked at the dresses. I started to recognize some of the names of the dresses as one of my designer’s dress names. It was a shop that knocked off one of my designers! I was ecstatic! I typed in my model name (the designer used women’s names) and there was the dress for around 80% less than in the store! I placed my order immediately. The site said it would take 35 days to get the dress plus 10 more because it was their busy season. 45 days was way more reasonable than the 6 months that the bridal store told me that I needed. Plus I figured, if the dress didn’t show up or showed up wrong, I wasn’t out that much. I had the dress done!

no pictures please

One of the things that you quickly learn when shopping for bridal gowns, is the bridal shops want to do everything they can to keep you from being able to “shop” the gowns. As I mentioned earlier, they take the designers tags out, replacing them with their own. They don’t tell you the designer’s names unless you ask, they won’t write the dress names/designers down for you and they certainly don’t give you the model number of the dress. And they don’t let you take pictures of the bride in the dress. Now to be fair, not all shops stuck to all of these bridal shop norms. The more high end stores were far more informative (I guess they figured if you were willing to throw down $3K on a dress, you weren’t the type to shop around for the best deal).

To combat this, we brought a pencil and my Wedding Book and my best friend drew the dresses with descriptions and occasionally a designer name, if I could remember what the sales lady had told me. We were going to find a way to foil their attempts to keep us from saving money!

a truly wonderful experience?

By far, I think the worst experience I had was at Trudy’s Brides  whose tag line on their website is “a Truly Wonderful Experience Awaits You”. I guess if you are in to the ostentatious and pretentious then perhaps Trudy’s would be a wonderful experience. Now to be fair, I was very suspect of the very “Wonderful Experience” that Trudy’s touts. I went in prepared for the most cunning of sales ladies trying to extract the most money out of me as quickly as possible. I am sure the naive gaggle of tittering 20-somethings in the dress veiwing area next to me were quite happy basking in the obsequious attention being showered on them by the “bridal consultant”, at least for the 90 minutes they were allotted, before they were unceremoniously cut off and shoved out the door.  Trudy’s is the bridal shop that the books warn you about.

I went to the dressing room, where the consultant asked me what I was looking for before she went to find the perfect dress. Of course, all of the “perfect dresses” were again in the high end or TOTALLY out of the range that I had given her. They also did not necessarily reflect what I had told her I was interested in. In my cynicism, I believe they were more what she was interested in selling me, rather than what I wanted. All of the tags were Trudy’s tags not the designer’s tags, standard practice I assure you. If I asked the sales lady who the designer was, she would tell me, but she certainly did not volunteer that information, nor would she write it down for me. And when my best friend attempted to talk to the consultant as she was coming out of my dressing room, to suggest a certain dress that she saw, the consultant curtly informed her that she should just “go sit down” in the viewing area and brushed by her. Now I understand that the bride is the main target and the one with the money, but perhaps sales clerks should try to understand the basics of protocol amongst women. Best friends may be even more influential in this decision than mothers. Win the best friend and you have won the business. You would think that seeing as the sales clerk was a woman and I only had ONE friend with me, that she would understand this dynamic. Obviously NOT.

We left Trudy’s completely disgusted, never to return.

bridal dress bonanza

If you are going to order a dress online, you first need to figure out what kind of dress fits your shape. The only way you can do this is to try on tons of dresses. My best friend came with me for bridal gown bonanza weekend. She booked us appointments for two days solid. We went to high end stores and down to off the rack sample stores (another good place to get a dress). The first place we went was having a trunk sale. This is where the store shows every dress in a designer’s collection and you can try on as many as you can fit into your appointment, which is usually around 4-5 dresses. The upside is that you get to see a lot of dresses hanging freely as opposed to smashed on racks with other dresses. The downside is that you generally ONLY get to see those dresses. We couldn’t really see other designers because it was a trunk show. So I tried on a few dresses and the high quality of the material was very evident. At over $3,000, it should be! This was my first round of the obligatory wedding related questions followed up by either wedding stories or tales of the sales ladies own dating life.

How did you meet your fiance? Where is your wedding? and the seemingly innocent:

“When is your wedding?”

This is a tricky question, because you might not want to give the real date. If the wedding date is within 6 months of when you are shopping, they sales lady will put on the very concerned face and tell you that you really need to order soon because it takes that long to get a dress. Then you start to get the harder sell. YUCK!

“What is your budget?” Ew. Another trick question. Obviously you need to HAVE a budget, but you do not need to disclose it. If anything give a range. You will quickly notice that the sales lady will find the top of that range and a little over the top of the range. This is how they make you buy more dress than you want. So my advice, is to give a range lower than what you really have budgeted. That way when the sales lady finds the “perfect dress” but apologetically she tells you it is a little out of your price range…Surprise! It still IS in your price range.

Next stop was a sample store. This is where all of the dress samples that lived in other bridal shops for a while went to be sold. This is also a good place to get dresses at discount prices. Same round of obligatory questions asked by the sales ladies, but at least the saleslady had a whisper of genuineness about her. Which leads me to the next shop…. 

my amortized six hour dress

I learned from my Bridal Bargains book that one of the biggest places to get ripped off was the “bridal dress shop”. Labels torn out of dresses so that you couldn’t tell the designer (they wouldn’t want you to shop the dress), salesclerks, excuse me, “bridal fashion consultants” trying to up-sell the hell out of all of the extras, or as they call them “necessities”.  I had read the chapter on bridal gowns numerous times. According to the book, all dresses came from China, whether they were designer dresses or not. The dress left China for around $100-$200 and was sold to the designer. The designer sold the dress to the bridal shop for $500. The Bridal Shop sold the dress to the blushing bride for $1000. Quite a hefty mark up, if you ask me. However, China, true to form, is busy knocking off all of the dresses they are being paid to manufacture and you can buy them on ebay. Now, this is not for the faint of heart. You don’t know who you are dealing with, you can’t touch the fabric to know that is not 70’s polyester blend and who knows if the dress is made with lead beading or the fabric is washed in some sort of toxic chemical. But hey, if you are willing to risk it, you can get a wedding dress for bargain prices. I was willing to risk it. I was willing to risk it because it is a SIX HOUR DRESS. This was my answer whenever anyone asked why I would order a dress as special as a wedding dress on ebay. SIX HOURS! Figure most average dresses cost between $800-$1,200 per dress, before alterations. Tack on another $300-$500 for alterations and you have a dress that is going to run you between $1,100 and $1,700. Divide that by the 6 hours that you will be wearing a dress that costs $183-$283 per hour. There aren’t too many things that I will rent for that much per hour. And realistically, you are only going to wear the dress once, so why spend a fortune on it. I knew could definitely save money here!