The Wedding Day Part Three A: Traveling with a Wedding Dress

This was quite possibly the most frustrating part of my whole trip. I had bought without considering the complexities of getting a big boofy dress on an airplane to Canada, especially without putting myself through the stress of wondering if it was okay in the hold.

To cut a long story short I did not want to put it in a suitcase and check it into the hold, I have seen how they treat those bags and I just did not want to get to Canada and have a dress that was all dirty and crushed and ruined. Plus like I said, added stress of worrying, so I ended up buying a Travel Box from the Life Memories Box Company:

Travel Dress Box - Life Memories

I could take it on as hand luggage and fit inside the overhead compartments, this meant that I could have it with me at all times.

I looked everywhere in Australia for these and couldn't find one anywhere so I bought it from the UK had it delivered to my Mum and then had a friend who was coming over last november to bring it over for me. Thanks Tom! I bought one of their "slightly damaged" ones because it was cheaper and it literally had one a small dent in it! By the time i'd squished the dress in and got it to Canada it was covered in dents.

But Mandy, How on earth did you squish that big dress in that little box without ruining it?

Fabulous question Internet! 

I tried a couple of times to get it in and I realised I could but it would be tight and I was concerned about damaging it. After investigating other options and fearing having to put it in the hold and scrap the box I found a solution.

I didn't squish it in myself, when I got the dress altered I mentioned it to them and they offered to pack it in for me. What she did was turned it inside out and then packed it in and rolled bits of the acid free paper to keep a good shape on the bust area. That way if they opened it to inspect they wouldn't get their grubby hands all over the front of it. I took it to them the night before we left (we left very early in the morning), I also didn't fully shut it until the morning when we were leaving, and as soon as we got to Canada it was out of the box. 

It was a tight squeeze though, I had to get some luggage straps to keep it closed, but it worked perfectly. 

What did the dress look like when you got there?

It was pretty crumpled, I ended up getting a complimentary steamer from the Fairmont and spent the night before the wedding steaming the creases out, it took me a couple of hours (with breaks)! My advice just pay someone to do it, it so wasn't worth the saving! If I had my time over I would definitely have just taken it somewhere to get them to steam it for me. 

Takeaway:

I don't regret my dress purchase at all, but if you are considering traveling overseas somewhere for your wedding do think about the size and bulk of it. Some airlines only allow a certain size in the overhead compartments and you cannot always just take it on in the dress bag. 

Also do make sure you know where to take it at the other end to get the creases out, don't do what I did and spend ages doing it yourself!

The Wedding Day Part Three: The Dress!

I originally wrote a post about my experience with purchasing my dress on eBay. 

So if you didn't know, now you do! I purchased my Pronovias wedding dress off eBay and it was one of my best purchases of the whole wedding. It was called Dolomita and was part of the 2013 Glamour Collection. It was Tulle with chantilly lace application a-line gown with a sheer neckline. 

On the model, which is a lot nicer than on me! LOL

I had the typical bride moment coming up to the wedding where I thought I looked horrible in it, but i'm pretty sure that it is a common thing. In the end I was really happy with it, here are some cool photos! 

I liked the way the back of the dress looked in this, all swooshy!

On a side note I was wearing my sisters veil with a pearl and crystal brooch I bought from a local wedding jewelry store. I also had a hoop skirt underneath which is pretty much a must, but luckily I also borrowed that from my sister!

Also this is an awesome photo of the dress at the Fairmont Banff Springs.

Takeaway

You don't have to spend a fortune to get an amazing dress that you love, look around you might get lucky like me. 

I am not keeping my dress which seems to get me a lot of grief from people.  I don't understand why I would pack it away in a box and let it sit there for the next 50 years. I have decided to try and sell mine second hand online. I figure if someone can't afford to buy one brand new then why not give the option to get a beautiful dress like this online and have something fabulous on their wedding day that they might not otherwise be able to have! If I don't sell it, no big deal, but if I do, I know someone has an amazing dress and I have a bit of money to put towards a dress I can wear all the time (or maybe a holiday or something!).

Share the love people, don't let a beautiful creation rot in a box. 

xx

Mandy

The Wedding Day - Part Two: The Flowers

Initially I had wanted to purchase real flowers for my wedding day, unfortunately after contacting five different florists over the time coming up to the wedding only one of them responded! Even after calling a couple and being told to email them and still they didn't respond. Very disappointing.

Luckily one florist did end up returning my call and I ended up purchasing two beaufitul vases of flowers that would sit on pedestals at the end of the aisle. I hired the vases and the flowers were delivered on the day, a family friend returned the vases for us the next day to the shop in Banff rather than paying for pickup.

I am really glad we bought these, they looked beautiful and really finished off the room, I think without them the photos wouldn't have been as beautiful.

Flowers from Forget Me Not Flowers - Banff

What about the Bouquets? 

In the end I didn't buy real flower bouquets, it wasn't because I didn't want them, they were just VERY expensive. For two medium bouquets (one for my sister and one for myself) it was going to cost around $500AUD and that was without any roses or really the flowers that I wanted (Because it was winter they were not in season).

I wouldn't look at this as a bad thing as such, it was winter and flowers are hard to come by. Unfortunately it was just not in my budget to spend that much, especially without really getting the flowers that I wanted.

I spent a lot of time looking into alternatives, brooch bouquets, fake flowers, pearls, feathers, there are seriously a lot of options, personally I found Pinterest to be a good help on ideas. Keeping in mind my budget I ended up going for fake bouquets. To be honest I was really nervous that they would not look very nice because they can be really hit and miss.

I ended up purchasing this bouquet for myself from the Love from Lily shop on Etsy. They are based in the UK so I had the flowers shipped to my Mum and she bought them over to Canada for me.

They were really accommodating and the end product was beautiful. I also bought a smaller one for my sister. Which I will add a photo for later because for some reason I can't find a nice close up! Weird.

Takeaway: Just because everyone else has real flowers doesn't mean it is the thing to do. There are a lot of options to be different that wont break the bank. If it isn't in your budget don't just say "oh just this once" because it wont be the only time you say that. Sometimes you have to make some compromises. But at the same time don't just settle. I spent a lot of time searching for something that I was happy with. It is your special day after all. 

The Wedding Day Part One: Things I forgot.

So I thought I would start the run down of the wedding day with three things I totally forgot about that made absolutely no difference to the day at all!

You spend so long organizing the day, planning, stressing, making sure everything is perfect and you think that if anything is forgotten it is going to be a big disaster. I can assure you, it wont be! I forgot so many things some I didn't even realise until weeks later.

1. My Shoe clips

I bought these fabulous shoe clips, but when it came to the day I completely forgot about them! I only realised today (over 5 weeks later). Whilst i'm a little disappointed that I forgot to include my sparkle, the fact that I didn't even realise points out how insignificant it was!

Takeaway: Don't get too hung up on organizing all the little things, in the end you will barely notice and it wont change the day at all.

2. My Super hero props

I had originally intended to have photos taken by the Photographer but we realised just as we were leaving for Canada that you would be able to see the t-shirts under the white shirts. So we had intended to do a quick wardrobe change. In the end we totally forgot to take everything and ended up not having any taken by the photographer.

But we just staged our own photo shoot later during the reception and it was a heap of fun. Plus, we ended up getting to spend more time getting beautiful photos from the photographer rather than wasting time with the wardrobe change for the boys.

Takeaway: Things might not always go to plan, but sometimes you end up having fun doing it spontaneously anyway!

3. False Eyelashes

Okay, so this one wasn't actually me that forgot. The woman that did my hair and makeup told me she would bring them and then didn't. I'll be totally honest, this was disappointing, and i'm still a bit miffed about it. But overall it didn't affect the day and all the photos I wanted were not close ups anyway.

Takeaway: Have backups for things like makeup. I was so close to bringing my own and then I didn't because she said she would have them.

Sometimes things go wrong, and it will bother you, but don't hang on to it throughout the day, it really isn't worth it. In the end it isn't about the bits and pieces it is about marrying the person you love with the people that matter to you there to witness. 

Blinging up the Shoes.

I bought my fab purple suede peeptoes from Nine west a while a go, these are my indoor, not freezing my feet off shoes. You can read about that in my post about "The Other Shoes" if you like. As a quick reminder they look like this:

Fabulous as they are I really wanted a bit of sparkle, so I searched everywhere locally to try and find some shoe clips and came up with only a couple of options, which frankly looked like the toy clip on earrings I had in my dress up box when I was a kid. So I went on Etsy and found a whole bunch of options. I ended up getting mine from Parisxox they were a bit more expensive but they looked the nicest.

 

I will after the wedding show you what they look like on the shoes. They look lovely if I do say so myself! :) But we can't give everything away can we!

Mandy

Making DIY Snowglobes

I am currently investigating decorations for the wedding, I briefly thought about paying someone but decided that it was way too expensive and also...I am pretty fussy I don't think I could leave it to the whims of someone else.

In case you don't read all my blog posts my wedding colours have been decided as Plum, White and a bit of silver. Knowing this makes my life a million times easier!

I pretty much just google imaged decorations, as well as searched on Pinterest and also Etsy for ideas. But I fell in love with these little DIY Snowglobes.

My wedding DIY Attempts #1

It has been a while since I wrote a post, simply because nothing new has happened. I have however been busily search the internet for decoration ideas. I do enjoy a bit of arts and crafts so I have been playing around with some DIY efforts, nothing is quite there yet, but there is still time...