If only....

A while back I stumbled upon this little gem on Frugal Bride while looking for a vendor. It burns my bread to read it because isn't eloping the most frugal option? For a site that wants to promote frugalness they sure seem to look down their noses at elopers. Thing is I actually like the site. There is a lot of useful information on there, especially for Canadians. So having something like this on there is really insulting. Maybe though I'm over reacting......

WHY DO PEOPLE ELOPE?
Parents don't like your choice of partner.
Just wanna get married and get it over with
Illness
Your fiancée is pregnant
You're going to jail
You're going to war
You're leaving the country
You want to become a citizen of a country
Spur of the moment thing, "What the heck, let's do it!"

Wow right? So I'm reading this and thinking "Wow too bad I'm not a sick ,jailed, pregnant, immigrant who is going off to war, whose parents hate my fiance" but then there's also the "Ugh we hate wedding lets get this over with" line and the "Oh my god we just met! We are soul mates! Let's get married!" line. Really those are all the reasons to elope? What about "We cannot afford a big wedding and don't want to go into debt to host one" or "We just want the two of us and our closest family there." or "Let's spend the money we were going to use on one day on XYZ instead"

It's really funny to me that the wedding world just assumes that every bride wants to have her Cinderella ball and that if you don't there must be something wrong with you..like perhaps your dying or in the country illegally.

What's a bride?

So you might have guessed that the September plan is going forward. I'll continue planning unless my neurologist(seriously when did I become the girl with a bunch of specialists?) tells me that those lesions on my brain are something gruesome...I mean more gruesome than lesions, seriously could that be a more ugly word? You could totally be all "Girl...did you see that dress? It's totally a lesion." maybe because for some reason it also makes me think of leprosy and leeches....anyhow. ON WITH THE SHOW!!!!

It's really odd how the wedding industry works it's magic. Somehow without me even knowing it sneakily seduced The Mister with the idea of what a wedding dress should be. When he saw the red dress he said it wasn't very "bridey" or "weddingy" (the fact that neither of these are actual words didn't matter to him." but couldn't really elaborate on what either of those words meant to him. More white? More lace? More train? What exactly? Isn't the fact that I'm wearing it make it "bridey" and the fact that I'm at a wedding make it "weddingy"?

He deemed this dress "Not bad"

and I agree, but who wants to wear a "not bad" dress to get married in? Would you want a "not bad hair cut"? I forget who made this dress but the material was meltable and it was around the same price as the lace dress. This dress he called "cute". CUTE!


I don't know about you but cute is not what I want to be called by my man on my wedding day! Words that I would like are: hot, stunning, gorgeous, beautiful, sexy, oh my god lets make babies! Things like that. Not cute.

So you've all seen the lace dress. So what do you think he said when he saw it? Any guesses?

Hint: it wasn't cute.

My mother's secret Vegas showgirl dream.

So my second weekend of wedding dress shopping I ventured to my home town for, which is just 40 minutes by train from my house. I didn't think I would find anything I really liked but I was pleasantly surprised. I had decided to go there and try on dresses so I could have the sister, a bff and my mother come out and watch me try various frocks on. It would have been hard to get all 3 in the same spot otherwise and well...honestly having my mother around tends to make me lose my mind rather fast. I love her but there are more issues there than Reader's Digest.
My first appointment was at 3pm.
We go to pick up my mother who, like me, does not drive or have a license(I do have my motorcycle license.) she looks perfectly fine in jeans and a top. Right before we go to leave she goes and changes into a clingy long dress that doesn't look that great on her. My dad asks why she changed and she tells him that she wanted something easy to get off if she decides to try on dresses.
See my mother has a habit of making anything and everything about her. Sometimes it's manageable but when she's going on about how she would give you some clothes she no longer wears but they wouldn't fit because they are size 4 and should she keep them just in case you do lose the weight?....well...my mind starts to melt. I could start a whole new blog just about her and I would be able to post every day for the rest of my life.
I'm blow off the comment because of course if she saw something she liked she should try it on, I wouldn't mind. It just seems that all she can think about is finding herself a dress. We get to the store and enter and there is a pile of shoes and a sign asking everyone to please remove their shoes. My mother balks at this several times standing there asking me if she has to. Which I find funny because she's wearing sandals so she's practically barefoot already. I start going through the gowns and she walks across the store still in her shoes! I tell her she has to remove them and she acts flabbergasted and states that she isn't trying on dresses. I explain to her that a lot of bridal stores ask you to remove your shoes, white dresses and dirt after all are not the best of combos. She finally takes them off. Phew. The store over all really only had one type of silhouette so I mostly tried on dresses for "fun" they had two suitable dresses that were shorter "destination" dresses but both of them were made of material that was awful. One of them felt like sleeping bag material, nylon maybe, and the other was 100% polyester. YUM!
She made some comments that were..well..embarrassing, about my boobs and my sisters boobs and completely making something up that apparently I used to always say but in actuality have never once uttered. But over all it wasn't too bad, she didn't seem too into the being there and kept showing my sister dresses she liked that were really, really, well....tacky. She told my sister that I had told her I wanted her to wear red, which I hadn't but my mom likes to wear red so she stands out and I could handle a red dress but all the ones she liked were suitable for a Vegas show girl and not my 54 year old mother.

The next morning I called her to tell her we'd be going to store number two at 11:30am.
She says "Ok we'll meet you there."
Me: "Uhhh who is we?"
Her: "My friend and I."
Now, I have met this person once, maybe twice. I honestly couldn't pick her out of a lineup if I had to. I totally pulled a Bridezilla and said "Um no, this is just for you, my sister and bff. No one else. I don't want someone I've met once there." she snippily said "fine, fine." and hung up.
I asked my sister and bff if I was being crazy and they assured me I wasn't. Seriously who does that? It's not like this friend is an old family friend, my mom has only known her for maybe 5 years or so. When we arrived and had to remove our shoes again she acted like she was being asked to walk around naked. Even though I'd already told her she would have to! Argh.

The second store had more dresses but was poorly laid out, the staff wasn't exactly helpful but they were nice. Since they didn't take appointments the staff was spread thin once the place started getting crowded. Again my mother started pulling out show girl dresses...now please remember that my wedding will be on a Friday afternoon followed by high tea. Here is something I think would be suitable....
Now here is something similar to the dresses that my mother was thinking she could wear.......




This is why I'm going with her to find her dress. Imagine if I was having a formal evening wedding?

Are you my dress?

Another weekend of trying on dresses. This time for fun I went to my home town and my sister, a bff and my mother came along for the ride(Oh man my mother..I'll have a whole post coming up on that!). I have a whole whack of photos of dresses that were beautiful but inappropriate for Friday afternoon nuptials. We were about to leave the second store when we went into a room that I thought held M.O.B dresses but actually was the clearance room. Usually clearance rooms are full of frocks from the 80's and 90's sad dresses that no one even wanted then and are now doomed to live out the rest of their lives at a fraction of their original price until someone needs a costume. Not this one! Sure it had some atrocities but most of the gowns were just from last seasons collections and were styles that just were not popular in my home town. I pawed through them (there is no gentle way to pull out a gown smooshed in with 30 others!) and there on the rack were three Pronovias/La Sposa dresses that were simply amazing, including one short one.
I tried them on and all of them were beautiful but the short one was the most the first dress I felt comfortable in. It was bridey but not too formal or bedazzled. You wanna see? Yes? Ok then....

The quality is stunning. Handmade lace? Yes please! Silk lining? Alright! 70% off? You don't say! The dress is by La Sposa, I cannot find a photo of it on line making me think it might be from a 2008 collection or a 2007. It's a bit tight but that should be easily fixed. One of my favorite things though is that I'll be able to wear a normal bra! Hooray. It's on hold while I thought about it and I think I love it. I had to go away and think because I'm a bit of a deal whore and wanted to make sure that I wasn't in love because it was a fraction of it's original price. I honestly don't think that I will find anything as lovely for the same price or even close. And since it is all natural fibres I can easily get it dyed and wear it again!

And yes pretty much every photo of me wearing a wedding dress is me posed like this. Freakin' mutton arms.

Double fives!

Seriously April is kicking my butt.

Yesterday I felt nauseous as I went into work by 11am I was laying on the floor of the office bathroom shivering and puking up my yogurt and berries.

(No, I'm not pregnant. Seems if a lady is puking that is the first question everyone asks!)

A co-worker drove me home where I was sick some more, took some Pepto pills(no way could I drink that stuff...ew.) and slept like I had been drugged for about 5 hours. I ate a banana, some toast and The Mister brought me apple juice.

I had a fever of 102 and could barely walk. My head was pounding. Over all it was horrific.

Then I woke up this morning and felt fine. 100% better.

Seriously what the heck?

Stomach bug? Another bout of food poisoning? Could April get anymore sickly?

Anyhoot...I weighed myself this morning because other than yesterday I have been pretty good this week, getting to the gym 3 times and eating pretty well. I'm willing to guess that half of this loss is from yesterday though.

Seriously though two 5's! I cannot remember the last time I saw two 5's in a row on a scale!

Let's play dress up!

So on Saturday we headed to an early appointment at White in Yorkville here in Toronto. I honestly don't think I will ever enter another store with such amazing customer service. It truly was perfection. Everything was organized by designer and we got our own HUGE room to try on dresses. It was grand! I did find out that mermaid dresses look horrid on me, if I ever want to show off all the worst parts of my body I will wear a mermaid dress. We took some photos of the ones we liked, to show my mother and sister who weren't able to make it.


This is one of the dresses I tried on, obviously that is not me, the Oscar De La Renta rack was full of dresses I wanted to marry. Seriously this picture just does not do the dress justice. It was breath taking...on the rack. On me...well, hello child bearing hips! Guess ten grand couldn't fix that!

Oh look it's my headless body! (The photos were all taken from a downward angle so I cut off my head to save everyone from the many chins of doom!)
This darling, wonderful, beauty is the handy work of Monique Lhuiller. The detail on the bodice was dreamy. On it made me feel like dancing! I joked that I was going to knock out the sales girl and make a run for it, yes...joked that's it...ha.ha. errrr. She was less than the Oscar, but more than say...a used car...at 5800. Sigh. You can sort of see my ring in the photo proving to all that I am actually engaged. Yes someone totally wants to marry me.


Now on to the infamous red dress.....


It had pockets! For my stuff! I still think it's a darling dress and the colour makes me realise that I need more red in my wardrobe! Those shoes were so comfy, Oscar De La Renta yet again! They cost more than the dress! Like double!

The Jenny Packham dresses were beautiful, this one had straps that formed triangles in the back that were incredibly beaded. The dress just floated and swooshed around. Again the angle makes me look like I'm preggers but I am grateful that my friend was able to take some photos! The boutique even fed them! Tiny lemon poppy scones, chocolate chip cookies, chocolate macaroons! I want to go there every week!

Thinking thoughts about things.

First off thank you ladies for A) all your comments, it's good to have people who are detached from the situation to offer level headed advice and B) for actually reading through that last posts numerous cluttered backwards sentences. Although a bar in the bathroom would have been nice there wasn't, but I'm assuming y'all knew that!

I honestly have not been the same since Sunday. I feel completely disconnected and out of sorts. It could be the horrid weather here in T.O, rain, rain, rain and oh look it's raining!
I just feel like I need to rethink everything. Like this plan was patched together because I compromised what I wanted to the very basics with the promises that there would be X, Y, Z if our wedding went this route. Z can only happen if Y does and right now I'm not confident that Y will happen. I need to think and then think some more and then when I'm think I'm done thinking I've got to think about it again. I need to know that what I'm doing is right.

Also I haven't talked about this because I didn't want to be a big downer, but I recently found out that I have lesions on my brain, a lot according to my neurologist. I don't know if a lot is 3 or if it's 100, when he told me I was too shocked to ask. Apparently lesions only occur on the brain through trauma or disease. I haven't suffered any trauma to the best of my knowledge. My next MRI is in May and they will be injecting me with some gadolinium which they didn't do last time. I keep telling myself it is nothing to worry about but every shooting pain in my head and every time something feels odd I can't help but wonder if it's because of that. In truth I am scared. If by some bizarre twist of fate I am actually sick I want to have the original wedding I had planned. I want to dance with my friends and eat amazing food. I want a night to remember. I know it sounds horrible but that's what I always wanted. I'm seriously one of the most glass half full people you will meet, at least I try to be, I don't take anything very seriously except health because without your health what do you have?

I've got so much on my plate right now and I'm just not hungry at all. I just keep pushing it all around and soon it's going to be one big gross mess of stuff.