Yesterday we took advantage of the Steelers game, during which we knew stores would be nearly empty, to head out and start our registries. I know it is really early to be registering for things, but our logic is this:

1. People have already started asking us about where we’re registered. We wanted to be able to give them an actual answer, other than, “Uhh…”.
2. We will have plenty of time to play around with what items we have on there, so that by the time my shower/the wedding roll around, we will have the “perfect” registry.
3. We are sending save-the-dates out in the next two weeks, which link to our wedding website, and I don’t want there to be a “Check back soon!” on the Registry page, because that’s boring, and people might forget. Having the registries already started and linked from our website will give those instant-gratification types something to look at, and give everyone something to mental-note for later.

Jason and I don’t technically need a lot of stuff. We are pretty well-equipped, having lived on our own throughout both our college careers, and together for six months now. However, most of our stuff is, well, very “college”. It’s nearly all hand-me-downs, Ikea, or thrifted, and while it’s all technically functional, it’s not exactly the best, and it all badly needs to be upgraded. So we are replacing most all of our kitchen things, towels, and bedding, and adding a whole lot more “nice-to-haves” on top of that. It’s like we’ll be real grown-ups or something, with matching full sets of dishes, glasses, silverware, serveware, towels, sheets, house accessories, and so on. Crazy, right? :)

About a month ago I started a shared Google Doc between us on which we could jot down anything and everything we thought of registering for, so that when we actually went to do the deed, we wouldn’t be completely lost. So any time in the past few weeks we’ve found ourselves cursing our cheap Ikea pots, or our lack of knives (we don’t even own a serrated knife. Seriously.), or our singular set of sheets for our bed, or our plethora of threadbare, mismatched towels, we have been able to jot it down on our shared list.

So on Sunday, we strapped on our walking shoes, loaded the list on my iPhone, and headed into town. Our first stop was Bed Bath & Beyond. I have heard pretty good things about BB&B’s registries, and I normally think of them as “the ‘kitchen stuff’ store with a little bit of other things” so I knew had wanted to register there from the beginning, because we need a lot of kitchen stuff.

When you register at BB&B a consultant takes your name, address, phone number, wedding date, approx. number of guests, and various other details. You are then given a scanner gun, a checklist, and sent on your merry way. We started in the kitchen gadget section. Jason was in control of the scanner gun:

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while I manned (womanned?) the iPhone list, and the picking-up-and-feeling-everything, because I can’t possibly choose something without touching it first (this is why I hate, HATE online shopping). We fondled shopped our way through the store, aisle by aisle, section by section, adding things like silverware, drinking glasses, coasters, pots and pans, and the like. Jason took his job as Scanner/Deleter/Quantity Changer very seriously:

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And also rearranged monogrammed things to spell out various words:

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We got most, if not all, of our essential kitchen items here, and not a whole lot else. We spent about two hours in the kitchen/dining sections and maybe thirty minutes in the rest of the store combined– like I said, BB&B is The Kitchen Gadget And Some Random Other Junk Store in my mind. However, we still needed things like linens, wine glasses, everyday china, and our toasting flutes and cake servers, so we headed to our next stop: Macy’s.

I honestly hadn’t planned on registering at Macy’s until about a week ago. I was fully set on Target, but the more I thought about it, the more I thought that maybe that wasn’t the best choice. Target has such quick turnover of their stock that by the time the wedding rolls around, nothing we registered for there would be available. Plus I have heard nightmare stories about the registry not updating when someone purchases something (meaning you could very possibly end up with five coffee pots and no rice maker), and online/in-store edits not syncing (meaning you essentially could have a different registry online than you do in the store — not good!).

When I found out about Macy’s perks program I was all set to register there though. If you have a Macy’s credit card, they give you 5% of every registry purchase, and 10% of every personal purchase with your Macy’s card, in a giftcard a few weeks after the wedding. Depending on what you register for or how much other stuff you buy for yourself on your card, you could be banking some serious cash there. Even if you never, ever use the credit card, you will still get the giftcard with 5% of every registry purchase on it. They also have a 10-20% completion discount for 90 days after the wedding — meaning that if you go in after the wedding (with that giftcard!) and purchase all the remaining items off your registry, you will receive a percentage off. So I opened a Macy’s card (baby’s first credit card!) and we were on our merry way.

At Macy’s the process was much the same: give consultant your name and contact info, get registry gun, scan (and in my case, fondle) away. We only had about 40 minutes there before the store closed so we didn’t get much done other than looking, but we did see some really beautiful things there. We are planning on going back Tuesday after work to finish our fondling/scanning of items and round out the registry.

So. Want to see some of my favorite registry items so far? :D

{Cuisinart Contour Stainless Steel 13-Piece Cookware Set}

{Calphalon Contemporary 17-Piece Knife Block Set}

{Rowenta DW2090 Effective Comfort Cord Reel Iron — it winds the cord up inside itself for super-easy storage, how cool is that?!}

{Lucille Gold dinnerware by Denby — we are undecided on this pattern, though it is very beautiful}

And of course, the pièce de résistance:

{KitchenAid Artisan Stand Mixer in Pistachio}

So that’s where we stand on registering so far. Oh, and fun fact: both stores suggested registering for 1.5 to 2 gifts per person expected in attendance — for us that means around 200 things. I thought we must be near or over that after today — but when I looked at both our registries online, I found that we’ve only registered for 56 items in total. Fifty-six!! That’s only a quarter of the way there! I know the numbers the stores give you are probably overestimates to try and get you to register for more, and thus purchase more with your completion bonus, but still, I think they’re not too far off: all of the weddings and showers I’ve been to, I have bought a multi-item gift from the registry, and many (if not most) other people do too. I know a lot of people like to do “theme” gifts or gift bags/baskets, especially with the cheapie stuff. So I think when we go back on Tuesday we are going to have to add a lot more stuff. There is some Kate Spade glassware that I’m coveting right now at Macy’s that may just find its way onto the registry…

How was your first-time registering experience? Did it take you more than one trip to complete the registry?

MOH Emily and I had a heck of a time with our wedding shoes. I’m almost embarrassed to admit how much thought and stress went into the damn things, but boy, was it complicated.

At some point, MOH Emily bought these shoes, the original shoes I wanted all the bridesmaids to wear, back when I had bridesmaids, in a size 7:

{Personal photo}

At some point, I also bought those shoes in a size 7.5, as well as these black slingbacks:

{Personal photo}

After my purchase was made, I was having some major indecision. You’d think I wouldn’t really care that much, being that hardly anyone will see or pay attention to what shoes I have on underneath all those skirt layers, but I’m a shoe person, so my wedding shoes were of utmost importance to me. So I wore both pairs around the house for a few days, and here is what I found out:

The champagne colored pair were definitely The Ones. My heart had been with those all along, and the deal was sealed when I tried them on with my crinoline, which arrived last week (and which I promise will get a post of its own soon!). But the problem was that the 7.5s were just too big for me, even with a bunch of jelly insoles and heel grippies in them for padding. And our local store, every store in the district, and the website, were all sold out of size 7. Emily had the only pair, and she was going to wear them in the wedding. So I figured I’d just go with the black shoes, since they fit me fairly well.

But the black shoes just weren’t doing it for me anymore. They were stunning, sure, but in the end, not exactly what I wanted with my dress. Plus, they ended up being not as comfortable or well-fitting as I had originally thought. Wearing them around the house for a few hours one night proved that they were rather unforgiving on the soles and hard on the toes — the shoes bent right where my big toes were with every step, which caused my big toes to get smooshed in the bend, and caused an unpleasant bruise-y feeling after a while. I could not imagine the shape of my poor big toes after an entire day of wearing these.

So, I resigned myself to returning both pairs and starting over from Square One…again. Maybe in another couple months, because I just felt shoe’d out by that point. But first, I did the awkward/rude thing — I asked MOH Emily if she would sell me her size 7s, which I knew fit me perfectly (having tried them on before), and have her find another pair for the wedding.

{Source}

Before you go calling me a Bridezilla, let me explain myself. MOH Emily’s size 7s were too big for her — she had to do the stuffing-with-gel-insoles thing too. She had also mentioned offhand at some point that maybe she would sell me hers if my shoes didn’t work out, or if she found something cheaper. So I knew it wouldn’t be totally out of line to ask. And I’m glad I did, because she said yes, that was probably fine, let’s just wait and see if either of us can find another pair first. We still had nearly our full 30 days at that point to return the shoes to DSW, so there wasn’t any rush.

Fast-forward to the following weekend when we went shopping at The Winner. There is also a gigantic shoe warehouse called Reyer’s across the street, which has a huge discount room, with probably more shoes to choose from than the regular-priced section of the store. We plunked ourselves down on a big bench and went looking. On my first pass through the size 7s, here is what I came back with:

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I think I had eight or nine shoes (pictured here are just the right shoes; you had to ask for the lefts) to start out with. And the pile just kept on growing. I think I probably tried on about 20 in total (and I felt bad for the poor guy who had to come around and put all my rejects back!), and only a few made it to the final round and got the left shoes tried on. In the end it was between these two:

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But sadly, after wearing both around for thorough walks through the store, neither were particularly comfortable. So I cast them into the reject pile and that was that. MOH Emily hadn’t really found anything either. But as I was putting my own shoes back on, feeling utterly dejected about my wedding shoes yet again, Emily tried on a certain pair that she immediately fell in love with. I have never seen the girl go so crazy for a pair of shoes before.

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The minute she put them on she knew they were The Ones. They fit her perfectly, they were the right color, and they were SPARKLY — instead of sequins, the straps are covered in tiny little square mirrors — very chic! Emily agreed to sell me her size 7s from DSW, and I could return the 7.5s and the black pumps. And the coolest part? Her grandma (who love shoes) heard about this shoe shopping trip a few days before, and said she would pay for whatever shoes Emily decided to get. Thank you thank you thank you, Emily’s Grammy!

After a long day of failed dress shopping, these shoes were exactly the pick-me-up we needed. We both finally had our wedding shoes, definitely for real this time, and they both fit us properly without insole-stuffing, and we both LOVED the ones we ended up with. Success? I think so.

How did you decide on your wedding shoes? Was there any outside factor that weighed on your decision?

Whoever donated this to Goodwill:

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THANK YOU. Thank you, truly, from the bottom of my heart. You just ended a saga of complete failure and disappointment, and turned our crappy luck right around. In the second it took me to realize what you were, we went from one end of the spectrum (complete, utter fail) to the other (the best luck ever). Kudos to you, my mystery friend.

But let’s back up. Two weekends ago, MOH Emily and I went on a huge shopping spree, on which we shopped our way from one end of town to the other (literally) for many, many hours, trying to find the poor girl a dress for the wedding. Our ideal color was Celadon from Alfred Angelo:

{Alfred Angelo}

We figured we’d be able to find some summery, Celadon-y dresses in the clearance sections of department stores, since it is fall now. But it seems we waited too long, because there were hardly any summer clearance dresses to behold, and all the winter dresses were much too dark and heavy for a June wedding. After no success whatsoever, we kept our chins up and made plans to go to The Winner, a GIANT dress discount warehouse-type thing, in Sharon, PA, a couple hours away from here.

So last weekend we went to The Winner, expecting to find at least something in their huge sea of dresses. After almost two hours in the store, what did we find? Nothing. Seriously, Absolutely Effing Nothing. It was insane. In the THOUSANDS of dresses they had there, not a single dress fit the bill. There were two Celadon-y dresses in the whole store, and both were ridiculous prom-type ballgown numbers — definitely not bridesmaid-appropriate at all. Cue the Sad Trombone. Big, fat bummer.

We decided to wait until February or March and return to The Winner during pre-prom season, to troll their spring/summer dresses, and if we still found nothing, we would just go with the original (read: expensive) Alfred Angelo dress that she found and liked. It didn’t seem like the best plan (talk about waiting until the last minute!), and I think we both felt disappointed that Emily would remain dress-less until right before the wedding, but it was all we could do at that point. Of course she doesn’t really need her dress until then, but let’s face it, the whole wedding planning thing is way more fun and exciting if you have your dress, right? Plus, I wanted her to be able to share in the fun of wedding stuff — up until this point, all the shopping has pretty much been about me: my dress, my accessories, my shoes, my crinoline, my wedding ring — and I want other people to get to buy fun pretty things too!

But our luck changed last night. Jason and I went into Goodwill in search of things for our Halloween costumes (Sonny and Cher!). I decided to take a gander at the formal dresses, because I was looking for a wedding dress with a hoop skirt built into it that I might be able to Frankenstein into my dress (more on that later, promise!). I was just digging through the piles and piles of nasty retro tulle and satin that filled the small rack, when I saw a familiar color emerge.

“Hmm, that looks an awful lot like Celadon,” I thought. I checked the inside of the dress to see who made it. And what falls into my hand but a satin hanger strap with Alfred Angelo printed on it.

Holy. Cow. I just about died. I checked the tag — Size 6. Perfect for MOH Emily. The style was pretty, and universally flattering — side ruching, subtle beading on the chest, corset back (which meant more forgiving sizing!). Of course, it was floor length, but because it was a plain A-line skirt, it would be extremely simple to take it up to knee length (something one of our various aunts could do for f-r-e-e). There were no marks or rips or flaws in the dress anywhere — I bet someone wore it in a wedding once, recently, and just got rid of it afterwards.

I texted Emily a picture of the dress and told her the stats. Ten minutes later I was in the checkout line, buying her the dress for — wait for it — $14.99. A-ma-zing.

When I got home I tried it on. The dress fit me perfectly with the laces closed the whole way, which meant that it would probably fit one-size-bigger-than-me MOH Emily perfectly with the laces spaced an inch or so apart, as they’re supposed to be. And the length doesn’t matter, as we will shorten it to knee-length-ish for the wedding.

{Personal photo…I look straight-up gross, sorry!}

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I trolled Alfred Angelo’s website to see what dress it was. It’s Style 7027:

{Alfred Angelo}

And the real kicker came when I Googled it to find the price (since AA doesn’t list their prices on their website; annoying!). Wanna know how much this dress costs new?

$178.

One-hundred-seventy-eight dollars. And that’s before tax, shipping, and alterations. With all that added in I wouldn’t be surprised if it was upwards of $250.

I am absolutely floored, speechless, and EXCITED right now, and I’m sure Emily feels the same. I am bringing it to her house on Saturday for her to try it on and give the final word on whether or not this will definitely be her dress — I can’t wait to see her in it, with her awesome shoes (which you will hear all about tomorrow!):

{Personal photo…they are AWESOMELY shiny/sparkly in real life!}

I’m SO happy for her that she has a dress now, and got it for a VERY comfortable price (assuming she decides to keep it, which, given her enthusiasm about it so far, I’m kinda doubting she’ll turn it down). Hooray Goodwill, saving the day one wedding at a time!

Have you had any strokes of amazing luck in wedding-land recently? Do tell!

I seriously think choosing my shoes has been harder than choosing my dress. I don’t know why I’m putting this much thought into an element that hardly anyone will see or pay attention to, but, that’s Bride Brain for you.

On our epic shopping trip last weekend, MOH Emily and I stopped at DSW. There was a pair of shoes there that I had seen months ago and wanted the bridesmaids to wear, and she wanted to scoop them up before her size sold out. I was also in the market for new wedding shoes, after finding out that the ones I originally bought wouldn’t stand up (pun?) to a days’ worth of walking. And so, off to the shoe store we went. We staked out an empty bench in the formals/evening shoe aisle, parked our butts down, and got ready to try on some shoes.

Emily found her shoes right away, but, of course, what is the ONE SIZE they didn’t have? 6.5, aka her size. However, not being one to give up that easily, she tried on the 7s with insoles and heel cushies and whatnot, and she made those suckers fit. So she bought them right up, as well as about $20 (!) worth of gel inserts of various types, and went home happy.

I, on the other hand, didn’t have as much luck. Or I guess you could say I had too much luck, but suffice it to say that I left the store feeling thoroughly befuddled. There were a lot of options, and a lot of things to consider for each pair, and sometimes too many choices can be just as bad as not enough.

I started with the same pair as MOH Emily bought. These shoes were love at first sight from the first time I saw them way back in the beginning of August, and I haven’t stopped thinking about them since. They are so sparkly and fun, and the champagne color matches perfectly with the wedding colors.

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However, I felt like I’d had my “fill” of these shoes knowing that MOH Emily would be wearing them, and I felt like I wanted to get something else. So I put them back and moved on.

The next shoes caught my eye because of the pretty purpley-grey color, the bling, and the d’Orsay shape. I happen to think that d’Orsays are the sexiest things in the world, so that instantly caught my eye.

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However, after wearing these around a bit, I found them to be extremely uncomfortable. They were just a little bit too high to fathom wearing for probably 10-16 hours straight, much of which would be spent on my feet. So, nope. Back to the shelf these went. Next!

Next were these gorgeous black velvet pumps with a blingy little cross strap across the foot. These are SO sexy in real life, and they’re very “me”: pointy-toed black d’Orsays/pumps are kind of my “thing”. They also reignited my love for black shoes with my wedding gown. I was instantly drawn to the understated drama of these shoes, and the “classic with a twist” look. But you’ll notice one thing about them: they’re slingbacks, and after my last experience with those, I had completely sworn off slingbacks for the wedding. So I put them back on the shelf and wrote them off, not wanting to enter into slingback territory again. Eliminated!

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Finally I found the Rocket Dog heels I liked from DSW’s website. They only had them in black at the store, but I figured it was worth a go. Cute enough, but two seconds in these shoes told me they were definitely not contenders — talk about uncomfortable! The soles on these shoes were impossibly thin, and the toe area was too short for my gigantic big toes. (Seriously, I have enormous big toes. It’s weird.) So, cute, but definitely eliminated.

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With nothing particularly catching my eye, I put my own shoes back on and left, empty-handed and slightly dejected. (Oh, but with a new pair of pumps for work…so not really empty-handed after all. Oops?)

But the next day, I couldn’t get shoes off my mind. I kept thinking about those champagne peep-toes, and how much I loved them, and how I was afraid they were going to sell out of my size even though I had decided not to wear them, which probably meant that I should wear them, if I wanted them that much. Finally at around 5pm, I couldn’t take it anymore. I HAD to have them. I was a woman possessed. I checked DSW’s website to see what time they closed that day (it was a Sunday) — 6pm?! $@%&@!!

I RAN down to the garage where Jason was working on the car, asked him how much longer it would take, and told him we were going to DSW as soon as he was done. He indulged my crazybrain, and ten minutes later we were out the door in a mad dash to make it there before they closed. (Of course, the store is only about 10 minutes away from our house, but I was still paranoid that time would magically speed up while we were in the car and it would be 6:01 by the time we got there.)

I marched into the store, right back to the formals section (passing an employee who said I “looked like I was on a mission”), right up to the champagne peep-toes. I grabbed the 7.5s, the last pair in my size, and turned to head for the checkout — but out of the corner of my eye, something caught me and made me stop.

The black velvet slingbacks.

They were just so sexy, so vampy, so I-don’t-know-what…I quickly scooped a pair up, even though they were slingbacks and they were uncomfortable, and ran for the checkout before I got distracted again. I figured I would try both pairs on with my dress when I got home, walk around in them with insoles, see how they both felt and looked with my dress, that sort of thing, and return whichever pair I didn’t want. I assumed the decision would be easy once I had the whole ensemble on.

Ha, why would I ever assume that anything wedding-related would be easy?

When we got home I shut myself in the guest bedroom, put on my full wedding regalia (jewelry and everything — I really wanted the full picture here), and lined up my shoe selections side-by-side. I tried them both on with my whole wedding ensemble:

{Personal photo…excuse the crappy quality; you wouldn’t believe how hard it is to take a photo of your own feet from a decent angle!}

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…And I still couldn’t decide. I pranced around the guest room for probably an hour and a half, switching shoes every two minutes, trying to decide. There were things I liked about both and things I didn’t like about both. I changed out of my dress feeling thoroughly dejected and decided to leave it be for a while — after all, I had 30 days to return the shoes, there was no need to make a decision right this second. But of course, I can never leave well enough alone, so the next night I put it all on again because the shoe psychosis wouldn’t end. Another hour in the guest room and I was still just as torn. But, undeniably, the champagne shoes were far more comfortable than the black ones; I could definitely see myself wearing the champagne shoes comfortably for an entire day, whereas the black ones felt a little bit less friendly. I tried giving myself a quick-and-dirty French pedicure (taking my dress off first, of course!) and tried the champagne shoes back on again. The French pedi certainly gave a more polished (two puns in one post?!) look to the whole thing, and I can definitely see myself wearing these shoes on the wedding day.

{Personal photo}

The final decision hasn’t been made yet, however, according to Track & Confirm my crinoline will be sitting on the front porch waiting for me when I get home (!!) so tonight I will play dress-up again for a third time, with the complete and total ensemble (and ooh I can’t wait to see what my dress looks like with the crinoline!), and I really hope the shoe decision will become clear then. This is the last piece of my outfit that I have to decide on, and I just want to have it done already.

Did you have a surprisingly hard time deciding on wedding shoes?

I spent an embarrassing amount of money this weekend, but it was all (well, mostly) wedding-related, so I can’t feel too guilty…right? Right?? I am feeling a little bit like this right now after all is said and done:

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But I know that it was money well spent.

On Saturday, MOH Emily and I went on an epic shopping spree, mainly to look for a dress for her. Since we no longer have to worry about exact color matching between three girls, MOH Emily is free to pick a dress from anywhere she might find one in the right shade. So we decided to shop at department stores and the like, in hopes of catching their summer dresses on super-super-super clearance. I will tell you all about this in another post. Spoiler: it was a massive failure.

While on our shopping spree, we stopped by Zales, where I finally paid off my wedding ring and got to take it home with me! It’s been sitting on layaway for quite some time, and this week we finally had enough in the bank that I could pay of the remaining balance and take my baby home. Of course, to celebrate, I did a little photo shoot:

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It’s still a few sizes too big, but I’ll be dropping it at the jeweler’s today on my lunch break to get that taken care of. Exciting!! I can’t wait to get to wear my rings together…in 8 more months. :(

Another stop on our journey was DSW, where MOH Emily bought her shoes, and I came away with two pairs of contenders. Again, I’ll talk about this in a post of its own; there are a lot of pictures to share!

And finally, the thing I’m most excited about right now — I bought my crinoline! I ended up buying the “regular fullness” one from angelsbridal on eBay, with the intentions of removing some tulle if it’s too poofy for me. It’s supposed to be here on Wednesday or Thursday…we’ll see how it is then!

So, overall, a fairly productive (expensive!) weekend. Our bank account will surely be glad to take a week off to recoup a bit — before this weekend, when I’m going shopping yet again with MOH Emily. Lord help my poor pocketbook.

Have you had an especially wedding-spendy weekend lately? What did you buy?