Dresses, dresses...

We spent weeks going back and forth with our eight-yes eight, lovely bridesmaids about dresses. We knew it wouldn't be an option for everyone to get together with the great distance and finally decided to select them online and cross our fingers. Mr Figg sat down with me to go over the final 20 options and we quickly narrowed it down to the following five Bari Jay designs.

The deal? They could pick Misty Blue or Sage, any dress they would like, simple as that.

Or would it be? Let's face it, no two ladies are exactly the same. With heights, waist, bust sizes and style preferences we had a lot stacked against us. Somehow we had done it, they were all thrilled with the options. So happy in fact that we heard back from each of them within 24 hours with their selection!

Surprisingly when we reviewed the selections we realized the ladies had narrowed it down to these two styles on their own...
(there wasn't an image of the bottom dress in Sage so we played with it in Photoshop).

When the dresses come in I'll remove the stock flowers and tiny jeweled applique that are on them.  I will then repurpose the shawls that come with the dresses and left over material from alterations to make custom accessories, something along the lines of what is below.  Each will be a bit unique, just as the bridesmaids are...

Tell us how did your quest for the ideal bridesmaids dresses went! 
Will you plan to make modifications to your bridesmaids dresses? Was everyone on board with your selections or did you cross your fingers and leave it in their hands?  Were you able to have a dreamy get together with your ladies and pick the dresses together?

A destination wedding-at home?

So we live just outside of Philadelphia, however a zip code doesn't always mark your home. We're from New England and wouldn't dream of getting married anywhere else. Hes from New Hampshire and I'm from Maine.

Easy we thought, we'll just find that private property we've been day dreaming about, book it and then start planning our way to wedded bliss. Right? Not so fast. We officially started planning before we were officially engaged and man oh man are we glad we did! It took us four long, stressful and at times, tearful months. And then one day it just happened, I found another property on www.vrbo.com, sent another email, called another number. The phone rang, I tried to stay calm as I asked my questions and the craziest thing happened-he didn't hang up, he didn't didn't sound confused. In fact, he said yes!

Yes we could rent his hand built lodge on a private island on the most breathtaking lake in New Hampshire. Yes we could stay for a week and have our wedding there. Yes we could decorate it however we wanted. Yes it came with boats annd it had electricity and running water (uh, we looked at a few places that didn't have these things). Best of all we could see it in two weeks when we would be in MA for my cousins wedding.

The day was horrible, sideways rain, heavy fog and only about 38 degrees. We ignored the weather, got in the car and drove the hour and a half to the meeting location and where thrilled to find him at the dock.



An hour later we were soaked, freezing and back in the car driving away with huge smiles on our faces.

How did your venue search go? Was it the first place you set eyes on or did you spend weeks searching for the perfect tree for the ceremony, the church that your grandparents were married at or the perfect country club?