Dress Dilemma

Yesterday, I attended Filene's Basement ROTB with my entourage. We had little success in the beginning as most of the nicer dresses were in piles on the floor or being hogged by brides who made the early bird arrival at 8 am. Well after 3 hours of trying on so-so gowns, I was able to accumulate a good number of really nice dresses through trades and the sharp eye of my girls. I fell in love with two particular dresses, both traditional styles and not at all what I thought I wanted since I was looking for something more modern yet still romantic. My final pick was a gorgeous all lace off white gown by Pronovias. Her name is Romina and she is two sizes too big for me and way too long but her soft delicate fabrics and sweeping train had me wrapped in rapture. I am not sure Romina is really for me but I am going to take her to the seamstress to see if she can be resized for petite-me. I am afraid to lose the beautiful lace details at the bottom of the dress if it needs to be hemmed. If not, my inexpensive purchase of a designer gown was still worth the experience of going to ROTB. I will probably sell the dress if alterations don't work out and have a dress custom made instead. Now this brings me to another dilemma. The dress I initially fell in love with was a Tara Keely gown which was not available at the bridal shop I visited (that carries the designer line). I tried on a very similar dress but can I really have this gown made without actually trying on the dress? I am not sure. I never thought finding a dress would be this challenging. I watch, Say Yes to the Dress and think about how silly those girls are because they are so indecisive and I am really not like that at all. Well I learned that choosing a dress is really an emotional decision because the wedding dress is a reflection of the bride's style and personality. It is really what defines her on that day.

Romina

Sneak Peak: Monogram Design

Our invite designer, Kemba Celebrations recently sent us monogram designs I had them create for our stationary. We really love the color combo of the third monogram as it is a beautiful marriage of colours with the metallic gold card stock backing, the pearlescent paper with cornflower blue and fuschia colours. It will look similar to this invite but with our Apsara monogram and using the floral lattice pattern Kemba created for their social event collection. We still have to work on wording our English invites, RSVP and Event card. A blank text will be used for the Khmer invitation suite. Hopefully, we will have our STD and Invites completed by the end of the year as we do have to send them earlier since half our guest are OOT.

Open Bar

I knew that taming the budget beast meant we had to cut back on certain things like flowers and taking on DIY projects (invites) but one thing we could not trim was the alcohol or at least we tried. Our guests like to drink and they really like - no, LOVE cognac. Well, Hennessey VSOP to be precise but we can't afford to have a bottle on every table. So we will compensate with open bar on beer and cocktails. A limited service on cognac and champagne. A good bottle of bubbly is pricey but I don't want to serve the cheap stuff either. However, we are very fortunate that our venue does allow us to bring in our own alcohol so that will save us some pretty pennies but since our caterer does not have a liquor license, we need to find a professional bar tending service. Finding this service for a reasonable price is nonexistent in Newport. I know, I know...I choose to host our wedding in this ultra expensive city so now I must suffer or in this case my wallet cries poor. The alcohol alone is a little over our $1,000 budget. We are getting beer kegs to save money and waste (no bottles/cans) and serving limited cognac and champagne. No wine - as the complex layers of flavors in Asian cuisine doesn't always pair well with every dish in a 7-10 course meal. Don't fret too much though as there will be plenty of beer and top shelf/premium liquor. Thanks in part to our neighbors up north, New Hampshire. But we still need quality bar tenders to service guests. So my hunt continues. We still have ample amount of time to buy alcohol and to find a pro bar tending service but I'd like to get as much planning done before I resume school in the Fall (next month). We are going to visit Maine (to see my granny and the rest of the family yay!) and on the way back swing by the New Hampshire liquor stores to check out the inventory and maybe stock up on alcohol. Sounds like a plan!

Possible Beer selection
- Sam Adams Boston Lager
- Blue Moon Belgian Ale or Honey Moon (Summer Ale)
- Miller Lite
- Bud Lite
- Heineken

Wedding Website

After much procrastination, I decided it was time for me to start working on our wedding website as we need to select a Save the Date (STD) design. I plan on having the website link printed on the STD. This will save us a ton of time and some money, not to mention a few trees. We won't have to print any additional cards for the invites (only RSVP and Event Card). I will also see if having one Fan Menu (created by our invite designer, KembaCelebrations) placed on every table is feasible. I am still not certain if I will have programs available for the traditional ceremony as we have a tight stationary budget. We will have all our wedding related information available on our new website, Moni & Aaron. Weddingwire.com made it so easy to create the wedding website with their diverse selection of templates and easy to follow instructions. It didn't take me long to get started.

Check!

We booked our photographer(YAY!!! We narrowed it down to two photographers, Visual-Obsession and Tyra Bleek Photography but it was the chemistry we had with Piotr and Konrad of Visual-Obsession that made them our first pick. The benefit of having two photographers was a big plus for us too. Pepe and I are really excited to have a night escapade session with them in the near future!