Dumping my first vendor

Breaking up is hard to do y'all.  Seriously.

I am very picky when it comes to my hair.  And I'm not just your average picky girl.  I grew up in a salon.  My mom was a nail technician, and also did make-up and facials, and I would go there after school when she didn't have a baby-sitter for me.  When I was too old for a baby sitter, I became the salon mascot of sorts.  I swept hair, folded towels, folded foils, cleaned out sinks, ran errands, etc.  The stylists tipped me out, and I had it made.  I never once paid for hair cut/style/color/products, and the girls experimented with my crazy thick hair when they were bored.

I had an amazing guy in Madison who did my hair.  At this ridiculously amazing, sort of punk-rock salon that I adored.  (here is their website if you want to check it out:  http://www.chachahair.com/)
Unfortunately, Jason doesn't really do up-dos.  He sort of hates them.  So I felt bad asking him to do mine for the wedding.  I asked a friend of a friend, and over the holidays I had my trial.  I went to her armed with these inspiration pictures.

Source

I have no idea where this one is from, let me know if you do.

What she gave me was a frizzy, lopsided mess. 

She kept saying things like "on the day of, I will smooth it out, on the day of, I will curl it a little".  What I couldn't figure out, is why she was charging me for a trial, yet not doing the things she would do on the day of? 

I think my face here pretty much says it all.  I was not impressed.  So I emailed/pleaded with Jason, and he basically laughed at me for not asking him sooner.  Then I broke up with my  stylist over an email.  Some things just have to be done.

Have you had to break up with any vendors?

*iPhone photography of the hair trial mess by the lovely bridesmaid Vero, who I think may have been laughing at me a little bit.  You should see the pics from 2 hours later when the hair was completely falling out.  Not pretty.

Laying some ground rules

(Sorry for my lack of posting lately.  Things have been a bit crazy lately with work/wedding planning/life.  What I need to remember is that blogging actually helps relieve the stress, rather than adds to it.)

On Thursday evening, I was happily waiting for the street car on St. Charles with P and his friends that had just arrived for his bachelor party.  (Don't worry, I was about to peace out to my friends house for the weekend so they could have a man-fest, but I spend the first night with them, which proved to be an amazing time.)  While we were waiting, I noticed I had a voicemail from my mom.  Now, if you've been reading this blog, you know that my relationship with my mom is an interesting one, and she really doesn't call me that often.  I was hoping that she was calling me to let me know how amazing our wedding invites were (that she should have receieved over a week ago), so I happily called her back.  Instead I received some serious drama on the other end when she picked up.  She tried to pull me in, once again, to the drama surrounding my brother and his never-ending divorce with my former MOH and very dear friend.  She basically accused me of some ridiculousness, and instead of fighting with her, I decided to try a new route.

I played the bride card.  That's right folks.  I told her that I did not want to hear about my brother and his drama, her drama (she is apparently about to get her 4th divorce, but she has been saying this every few months for the last 4 years), or anything else negative UNTIL AFTER THE WEDDING.  If she wants to call me and talk flowers, programs, dresses, unicorns, and fairies, that's fine.  But if she wants to talk about family drama, she can turn elsewhere.  I said this all very calmly and sweetly (with an underlying tone of "if you don't like it, you can shove it") and then I ended the conversation. 

It was so liberating.  As I've grown older and wiser I've realized that sometimes it's OK to be selfish.  And this is one of those times. 

Has anyone else played the bride card to put an end to some nonsense?  Did you feel as liberated as I did/do?

The best wedding fight I'm letting him win

So P doesn't really care about too many wedding details.  However, the details he does care about he has very strong opinions about.

For instance:

• no halter top wedding gown - please don't even ask.  For some reason, I think he once saw a somewhat questionable looking bride in a halter style gown and thinks any halter style looks a bit slutty.  I for one, have no boobs, so I am incapable of looking slutty in anything, but I didn't even need to argue this point because I'm not a huge halter fan anyway.
• no fancy wedding cake - no problem, I don't want one either
• no weird DJ - again, we are on the same page here
• no garter toss, bouquet toss, etc. - ditto

But the most important thing to him is music.  Since we are iPod DJ-ing it up, we have total control here.  He is more concerned about the slower music, as the hip hop/dance music is more my department.  He has been steadily working away at our cocktail hour/dinner music playlist, and it is a thing of beauty.  I will get around to posting it soon, I promise.

Here comes the disagreement: our first dance.  We both have songs we love.  I presented mine, which he really liked.

It's great, right?  But then he hit me with his:



He has put this song on countless mixes for me, it is a cover of a Will Oldham song, and it is so perfect.  Seriously, when we listened to it and thought about it being our first song, we both got a little teary.

So I'm letting him win this one.  'Cause his is way better.  (Just don't tell him that.)

Struggling...

I read this post on a practical wedding this morning and I could not stop thinking about it.  Because that is where we are at right now.  We are a little over two months out, and things are stressful.

I've found myself picking fights with P over stupid stuff about wedding planning.  (He does not read this, if he did, he would be rejoicing right now at that admission.)  Seriously.   The problem is, he doesn't care about the details.  And as  I mentioned before, I don't really have anyone helping me out with anything.

So what to do?  Most of the time, I really enjoy planning, I'm an organizer by nature and I love coming up with a vision.  But now we are getting down to the nitty gritty details, and that is not my strength.  We are having our wedding in the city we used to live, I don't have a lot of people there I can delegate things to.  One of my bridesmaids lives there, but I am afraid to give her too much. 

I don't want this to become a time that I look back at and all I remember is stress.  I want this to be about us, about our love, about getting ready for our marraige.  But instead I feel like I have so much anxiety about what has to get done and how it will get there.  I just don't want to get lost in it.

Has anyone else been here?  What did you do to pull yourself out of it?

One year ago today

We were backpacking through Europe on our last spring break as graduate students.  It was my first time even using a passport and I was beyond excited.  It was the fourth day of our trip and our first full day in Paris.  Now if you know me, you know that I've been dreaming of traveling to Europe since middle school.  But what I was most excited for was Paris.  P, well, he was not so excited about Paris.  He was more excited about the other parts of our trip (London, Amsterdam, our Belgian tour with our dear friend, etc.).  In fact, he kept raining on my Paris parade pre-trip, and pretty much had me believing that he was dreading our 3 days in Paris.  So much so that I sat him down at our first (delicious and perfectly ordered in my rusty French) Parisian dinner and lectured him about putting on a happy face for the next 60 hours.
We woke up early that morning and headed to Montmarte, ready to see the beautiful Sacre Couer.  My French historian college roommate recommended that we pay the 2 Euro or so to hike up to the top, as it was the best view of the city.  When we arrived at the top, a little winded, I was seriously amazed.   P put his arm around me, I leaned my head on his shoulder and took it all in, trying to savor the moment.
"Hey Linds, will you do something for me?"
P, of course, was bugging me about taking a picture or something.  I turned to him, a little annoyed, and then saw him with this goofy grin on his face.  Then he said, "Will you make me the happiest man in the world and marry me?"
I replied, "WHAT?"
So he repeated himself.
Again, I said "WHAT?"  (this time, I'm told I was laughing.  Slightly hysterically. I believe this to be an exaggeration.)
Then I noticed he was holding a ring.  He wasn't down on one knee, it wasn't in a box, he just had it in his hand.  It was so him.  So perfect.  Of course I said yes.  (and proceeded to wear it on my middle finger for the next 10 days, because it was way to big, but I wanted to wear it anyway).

Here is a picture of us that we made some other tourists take a few minutes later:

(if I look a little stunned, it's because I was.  I had NO IDEA.  The boy is not a planner, this was surprising.)

Does anyone else find this totally crazy?!?

Last weekend, Gilt Groupe had a wedding weekend sale, which was pretty amazing.  They had designer dresses for more than 50% off, bridesmaid dresses, beautiful wedding jewelry, and even honeymoon packages.  While I didn't end up purchasing anything (the prices were still pretty steep, even with the discount), I did have fun looking.  I didn't expect, however, to stumble upon this:

Blueprint Cleanse

Now, I have nothing against cleanses.  Personally, I've never done one.  I've considered it, but I just love solid food too much!  P and I are talking about doing a 10 day vegan cleanse soon, which I think will be great, but that's probably as close as we are going to get.  But, I digress.  

The crazy thing was how this thing was marketed.  One of the packages they were selling was a cleanse for your whole bridal party.  Now I've heard of some crazy brides telling their bridesmaids to lose weight, but I thought that was some sort of bridal myth/urban legend.  What would my bridesmaids do if I told them they had to do a cleanse?  Well I think they would either slap me, laugh uncontrollably, or tell me off.  And that's why I love them.

What to wear on my head

While I have always dreamed of the perfect dress, I have never dreamed about a veil.  To be honest, I knew going into this that I wouldn't wear a veil.  (also, I have kind of a big head, which makes the whole veil thing interesting.)  Anyway, I tried one on for my sister-in-law just to appease her, but my heart wasn't in it.  (I even tried on a tiara, which is soo not my style.  I laughed out loud and I think I pissed off the bridal attendant.) 
If I was going to wear a veil, I would wear a mantilla veil.  Something about mantilla veils just gets me.  Here are a couple that make me wish I was a brunette who wanted to wear one:

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OK, let's focus.  (Clearly I am feeling a little ADD today.)  After my no veil decision, I started to pay attention to hair flowers, since I'm not really a headband girl.  I discovered these from Etsy seller myrakim:

They were really beautiful, but I was still unsure about my ability to pull off a birdcage veil.  That, and I was concerned that a big a** flower would make my rather large head look even bigger.  (Seriously people, I have a huge head.  I don't think I realized this until I was getting fitted for my high school graduation cap, and then I realized why hats never look good on me.  Numbers don't lie.)  Anyway, I saved these in my Etsy favorites folder until one day I stumbled upon ohmydeer's etsy shop.  I requested a custom order, a smaller ivory gardenia, with a vintage inspired center and a little bit of birdcage veil netting (it's as close as I'm gonna get to a veil).  Here is what she came up with:

I really love it.  I'm not completely sure how I'm going to wear my hair yet, perhaps I will throw that one out to y'all in another post.  But chalk this one up to another Etsy purchase.