Nifty Wedding Apps, Invitations and Bridesmaids Dresses

I really wanted to give an update about two new apps I’ve downloaded. You may remember from one of my first posts that my search for a decent wedding planning app was rather unsuccessful, but I’m happy to say I’ve found a new app that is not only free, but also absolutely awesome. If I had found this app when I first started planning, I probably would not have bothered buying a real wedding planner.

The app I’m talking about is Easy Weddings which is available for both iOS and Android.

It includes a countdown checklist with all the tasks that need to be done and when they should be completed, with the option to add your own custom tasks and delete the default ones that don’t apply.

It includes a guest list planner, which has options to import contacts from Facebook, from your device contacts, or create a new contact completely. You can have multiple guest lists, such as ceremony, reception, shower, bachelorette, etc. Some useful features include; the ability to add people to groups (for example if you want to keep all members of a family together), you can tag guests as children, guests with infants, guests with special dietary needs, and of course a toggle for guests whose invitations have been sent, guests who have RSVP’d as attending, and those who have declined. Even better, you can easily filter all of your guests by these tags, so you can quickly and easily get an updated count of who is coming, who hasn’t responded, which guests are kids, or which have special dietary needs. One feature I wish this section had was the option to add a meal choice so that I could check off who would like the beef and who would like the duck, however there is a notes section for each guest which should work for keeping track of that. The guests lists are also automatically loaded into the seating planner section of the app, which makes planning out the seating at the reception very easy.

The app has a budget tracker, which is pretty standard as far as wedding budget planners go. You can set an overall wedding budget, a budget per item, what each item costs, how much was paid, and the amount owed is automatically calculated. I like that it gives suggestions for each item if you really have no idea how much each thing should cost. Although one thing I do not like about this part of the app is that while you can add your own custom items, you can’t remove the default items, however you can easily just set all dollar amounts to zero for the items that do not apply.

There is also a section for suppliers, where you can keep track of your vendors and potential vendors, complete with their contact info and any notes you want to include. It seems like the app has the capacity for finding nearby vendors based on your location, however it does not bring up anything for Vancouver. Based on the URL of the easy weddings website, I would assume that this is an Australian app, and you’d probably have better results if you’re Australian as well.

Lastly, there is a general notes section which I have not really used yet, but I can see that it would also be pretty useful for any ideas you might have that you want to keep track of, including scheduling, speeches, vows and readings, etc.

All in all, I think it’s an awesome app and a definite must-have for any bride-to-be. I especially like how it keeps track of how “complete” your wedding is based on the sections you have filled out and your budget and task list progress. Our wedding is 61% complete!

Wedpics
The other app I have recently downloaded (and set up) is Wedpics. We had heard about similar apps early on in the planning process and had planned to research a little later on, and it was actually Jason who found this one in particular and suggested it to me. It’s basically an app that anyone at your wedding can download for free, input your wedding code, and then upload any photos and videos they take during the big day to a communal “site” complete with the ability to sort by album (i.e. ceremony album, reception album, shower album, etc.), and a live feed of what photos and videos have been uploaded, and by whom. The website has table cards that you can either order or download and print yourself with instructions for downloading the app, and an option to download a fun scavenger hunt to encourage people to take photos of specific things. Afterwards, you can either order prints of the photos (I believe this feature is only available in the US), or you can download the original high-res image if you bring up the album on your PC. There are many apps out there that are similar to wedpics, however many are not free, most do not support video, and in general this one seems to have the highest ratings and best reviews.

Bridesmaids Dresses… [Rant Warning]
Forewarning, this is going to probably be a rant or at least close to a rant.

So… I got together with my parents, my maid of honour, best man, and one of my bridesmaids (the other bridesmaid lives in Wales) to go dress shopping for the bridesmaids and flower girl dresses this past weekend. We started out at David’s Bridal in Langley, made our way over to the wedding district on Columbia Street in New Westminster, and ended up at the wedding district on East Hastings. It was easily the most stressful and least fun part of the entire wedding planning process to date.

To start, Moore’s clothing once again, has pissed me off. We went all the way out to Langley to David’s Bridal because Moore’s told me that they share the same colour palettes and that they would have dress colours that would match the pink of the groomsmen’s vests exactly. Well, they don’t. In fact, they had never even heard of “bubblegum pink”. For those that aren’t from Vancouver, Langley is not near by. This was not a good start to the day.

Second, it seems I am about a month or two late on tackling this task. Four out of five places we went into gave me a look like I’m crazy and said they couldn’t turn it around that quickly, others looked at me like I’m crazy and said they might be able to pull it off but it would probably cost extra for a rush fee.

Third, I didn’t realize you would have to take off your shoes in every single shop. Even the ones that didn’t have carpet. It didn’t really bother me so much, though if I had known I probably would have worn shoes that are easier to slip in and out of instead of knee-high zip-up boots, but I was more concerned with my Mom. She does not have the best mobility, so walking from store to store was difficult enough, let alone walking around without shoes and taking them off and putting them on over and over. Unfortunately because of this, combined with the surprising lack of seating in most of the shops, she was not able to go to all of the stores with us and had to sit in the car after awhile 😦 I really would have liked her to be there and weigh in on the dresses, so I was pretty disappointed with the stores and their lack of accommodation. We could not have possibly been the only group to ever come in that had a person who could not stand and walk around for long periods of time. On the positive, there were one or two stores I went into that I was able to gauge that I would be miserable in based on the 70+ pairs of shoes at the entry way (surprisingly, I am not exaggerating with that number) and didn’t bother to waste my time looking around the store.

Fourth, teenagers. It seems February is the prime time of the year for all 17 year old girls to trample the fancy dress stores looking for their prom dresses. Go figure. I guess this was also my fault for leaving this so late, but suffice it to say, every single store we went into was crammed to the ceiling with loud, obnoxious, teenage girls who all want to be prom queen and have the irritating diva attitude to prove it.

Fifth, customer service (or lack thereof). Maybe it was because they, too, had to deal with hoards of teenage girls, but none of the stores we went into seemed to give a crap about us. They were rude, unaccommodating, and in every store we went into instead of being helpful when we inquired about bridesmaids dresses, we were told to simply put our name down because there was at least a 30 minute wait for the fitting rooms.

Sixth, just general frustration. I’d start looking at dresses, 2 seconds later someone would call my name to look at a dress, I’d go back to looking, 2 seconds later someone else would call, rinse and repeat over and over. It was really aggravating! Fortunately I think my maid of honour and my mom picked up on how stressed I was getting pretty quickly and not only backed off a bit, but also tried their best to calm me down. It was also very frustrating that several of the dresses that I picked out that I liked were styles that “could not be ordered” for whatever reason.

Seventh, difference in taste. I guess this comes with bridesmaid dress shopping regardless of circumstance, but I learned very quickly that my maid of honour, my bridesmaid, and I have very different tastes in style. Namely the bridesmaid who was able to attend. I really appreciated my maid of honour’s attitude of “I may not like it, but it’s your wedding so I’ll wear it”, but although she’s an awesome friend and I love her to bits, my bridesmaid did not share that attitude. I don’t want my wedding party to be miserable by any means, so I’d like to at least find something they don’t hate, but nearly every dress that I picked out, my bridesmaid was not happy with. She asked for a pencil skirt style dress over and over despite my explaining that the majority of the wedding party would not be comfortable in a pencil skirt and A-line style dresses are much more flattering for most body types. She even suggested that her dress be altered to be pencil skirt style and the others be left A-line, which I am definitely NOT okay with. It was an uphill battle.

And lastly, limited time… eventually I realized that despite getting started at around 10am, it was now 4:30pm, the stores close at 5:00pm, and I still hadn’t found what I was looking for. I cut my browsing time down significantly, and sometimes eliminated entire stores pretty quickly based on one or two factors. This was the case when I walked into a shop on East Hastings. I took my boots off, walked around, found a dress I liked, $799. Walked a bit more, another dress I liked, $399. So I put my boots back on and got the hell out of there. As I started to leave, I anxiously looked around for my crew and couldn’t find my bridesmaid, so I hovered impatiently at the door for her and she finally came from the back of the store and waved me to come see something. I shook my head and told her we were leaving, I was not going to waste precious time taking off my boots and putting them back on at 4:45pm to look at more dresses in a store where the average dress (which was not all that spectacular) cost between $400 and $800, and the people working there couldn’t even be bothered to give us the time of day. She said that they were 15% off, but in my mind 15% off of $800 is still too expensive. She would not let it go. Like I said, I love her to bits, and she’s one of the kindest and most caring people I know, and I definitely want her up there standing beside me on the big day, but obviously she could not tell just how stressed I was, as it took all of my patience and willpower to bite my tongue as she still brought it up hours later how I would not go look at the dresses in the back of that store. I try not to be a “bridezilla” or “pull rank”, I really do. And I think until this point I haven’t done so during the entire wedding planning process, I genuinely try to make everyone happy (usually at the expense of my sanity) despite everyone constantly telling me “it’s your wedding, do what you want!”. But I don’t care if we pass a shop where every dress is $10 and comes with a free kitten, if I don’t want to look at the dresses, I’m the bride and I don’t have to. Although to be fair, if I found a store like that, there is no way I would not go into it…

Anyways… after that day of stress, I finally found a dress that I really liked (I was a bit rushed so I didn’t get a picture yet), and it was at a store that actually seemed to care! The woman could tell I was a frazzled I guess because she kept telling me it would be okay, we’d find the dress and we’d get them ordered in time. That won huge brownie points for me, because while she is on commission, so are all of the other stores, but they still couldn’t give us the time of day. Furthermore, the woman who was so nice to me actually worked at the bridal shop, not the bridesmaid dress shop (the store had two shops side-by-side), and she told me to make an appointment and we’d get it all figured out… so she likely wouldn’t get a commission out of me anyways. Unfortunately, the dress I liked was $270… I spoke to Jason and we decided to offer to the wedding party that if they paid for around $150-170 of their dress, we would pay the difference, and then my parents chimed in and offered to pay for $100 of the difference as well which took a lot of pressure off.

So, I’ve booked an appointment at Tiffany Bridal to get ‘er done! I’ll update on the results after the appointment 🙂

Achievement Unlocked: Invitations Sent!
So after we finished dress shopping we came back to our place and set up an assembly line of assembling invitations. Everyone was taping and cutting and had their own little jobs and it came along quite quickly. We got everything probably about two-thirds complete by the time my parents went home and we decided to call it quits for the night in favour of drinking away the stresses from earlier (the best man and maid of honour kept pouring me drinks the whole time we were doing invitations… they’re so awesome!). The next day, Jason and I had a How I Met Your Mother marathon and finished the rest of the invitation assembly and mailed them out the following day. I’m really happy with how they turned out, I just wish I could see everyone’s faces when they receive them!

Jess (maid of honour) putting the magnets and stickers on the butterflies

My Dad assembling the inside pieces

Craig (best man) is cutting paper

Jason is working on printing envelope labels

I’m realizing my printer sucks at printing envelopes while Val (bridesmaid) works on assembling

The finished product!

Anyways, that’s all for today!

Days Until the Wedding: 2 months, 19 days
Total Cost So Far: $11,556.57

My Big Fat Wedding Update!

Hunker down everyone, this is gonna be a big’un!

So, for those of you who haven’t been involved in planning a wedding… there’s kind of a “lull” in the middle… You get engaged, it’s about a year out, and you panic and get all the early stuff figured out like venues and vendors, but then suddenly there isn’t really a lot to do until a few months before the wedding. That’s kind of what happened with me, I got my venues, my dress, my photographer, and then I kind of took a couple month hiatus from the whole wedding planning thing over the holidays. The downside of that is that January hit, and suddenly it dawned on me… oh shit, I have like 3 and a half months until the wedding!! Eep! So I kicked it into high gear and (combined with looking for a new job) have been a very busy girl these past few weeks.

So, I’ll do my best to keep this post as organized as possible, even though it’s really going to be all over the place!

The Wedding Show… I do? I don’t.
I’ll start with the big fancy wedding show I went to. Every year, Vancouver has a big ass wedding fair in January, but unfortunately last January I had only just became engaged, and hadn’t really jumped on board with the whole planning things out yet, so I missed out. This year, it turned out to be kind of the opposite story. Jason and I went to the show, and basically skipped over 75% of the booths because we already had planned out those parts of the wedding.

So I’m talking about The Wedding Fair that took place on January 12th, at the Westin Bayshore. It’s pretty much the biggest wedding show in the Vancouver area, I even remember hearing ads for it on the radio when I was in elementary school.

To be honest, I don’t know how any bride-to-be could go to that show without their groom-to-be… the swag bag was absolutely massive, and when I got home I threw it on my bathroom scale and it came out to about 15lbs! Poor Jason had to lug that thing around the whole time… and to be honest, it was a very disappointing swag bag. At the little wedding show I went to last year out in Coquitlam, there were chocolates, candles, y’know… actual swag. But the wedding fair… their “swag” consisted of quite literally, just paper. I got a few free magazines, which is about as close to swag as you’re going to get there, but I haven’t even bothered to read them because I am really just so done with bridal magazines. They’re all the same, wedding dress after wedding dress that I don’t need (because I already have mine) and couldn’t afford even if I wanted them, and diamond engagement rings… because people who are engaged somehow need to buy engagement rings? I kind of thought that was the whole… husband-to-be’s job to buy you an engagement ring before he asked you to marry him? I’d understand if they were wedding bands but… 9 times out of 10, nope.

He could sell me anything!

All in all, while it did get my wedding excitement going and I had a fun time out with my hubby, I was relatively disappointed in the wedding fair itself. If I had to guess, I’d say it was 50% travel agencies, 15% venues, 15% photographers, 10% DJ companies, and 10% other stuff. Considering we’re planning to hold off on honeymoon planning until after the wedding, and we already have our venues, photographer, and DJ figured out… it wasn’t worth the time nor money. Although, one vendor brought their adorable dog with them to the show (best. sales. strategy. ever), so maybe meeting that little guy made it worth it.

Limousines and Weddingful… my new favourite go-to- wedding site!
I did get a couple of good things out of that show however, one is my new favourite wedding resource, weddingful.com. Basically they list all the nearby wedding vendors by category, they include reviews, ratings, prices, discounts, and availability for your wedding day. The weddingful booth had a little wheel you could spin for prizes and discounts, I actually managed to spin the wheel and get the best prize, 15% off anything booked through weddingful!

So, my awesome maid of honour did some phoning and research and I managed to get my limousines all booked, and took advantage of not only the 15% off I received at the wedding fair, but also a 20% discount they had through their site as well! All in all, I booked 2 limousines for 4 hours with King Limousine Service for only about $665.

Invitations
The other big thing I got out of the wedding show was a business card from Making Memories Scrapbooking. They do wonderful custom invitations, and I was very impressed with the sample invitation they included with their pamphlet. So, the best man and I went over there last week and over a few hours I went through countless invitation samples they had, picked out 10-15 of them that each had an aspect that I liked (font, colour, embossing, etc). By the time we left, I had put together a design that I really liked, and they should be ready to pick up this week. I saved a little money by ordering them not assembled, with the plan that between my parents, Jason, the best man, and maid of honour, we could get them all put together in a night. I also saved some money by buying the paper to make my own RSVP cards, and managed to get the design finished and all the cards printed up last night. All in all, it came to about $573 for 60 invitations, along with enough stamps to send them all out and to pre-stamp the RSVP envelopes.

 

One Ring to Rule Them All… (Yep, I went there.)
The final good thing I got out of the wedding fair, is that I spoke to Michael Hill Jewelers. Some time ago, one of the diamonds had fallen out of my engagement ring (I was so devastated!). So I stopped by the Michael Hill booth at the show and asked if I brought the ring in, if they’d be able to replace the diamond and for how much. I spoke to the store manager from the Metrotown location and he was so nice, and said they would do it for $30, no problem.

So, a couple weeks back, the best man and I ran over to Metrotown to get the ring fixed, and well… everything was just so shiny and pretty… long story short, I saw a wedding band that I immediately fell in love with. It’s an enhancer style wedding band, meaning it takes the place of both the wedding band and the anniversary band, so in my eyes I felt that it was definitely worth the price because I’m getting two rings for one! 0.5ct, blue and white diamonds, white gold, and matches my engagement ring perfectly. It was even already the right size! Unfortunately, my engagement ring was not made for it… and didn’t quite fit, but they told me that they could send it in with my engagement ring and ask the goldsmith to adjust the band so that the engagement ring fits nicely within the band.

The ring was regular $1500, and they offered it to me for $1200, plus free rhodium plating for my engagement ring so the metal would match a little better to the wedding band. It was a lot of money, and I was originally planning to buy a ring I had seen online for only about $300, so we went off to think about it, grabbed a coffee, and walked around the mall looking in other jewellery stores. None of the other stores even had the enhancer style wedding bands, let alone ones with blue diamonds… until we went to People’s Jewelers. They not only had an enhancer style wedding band with blue and white diamonds… they had the same wedding band that Michael Hill had. They were selling theirs for $999, and had a deal on for zero tax. Since Michael Hill already had my engagement ring, and since the manager was so nice at the show, I went back to Michaels to give them the opportunity to keep my business. I told them I could get the exact same ring at People’s for $999 after tax, they not only honoured that price they also included the complimentary rhodium plating for the engagement ring! So I went and picked up the rings last week, and they’re perfect! The engagement ring looks like it was made for the wedding band, and fits perfectly. The only downside is that Jason won’t let me wear the wedding band until we’re married! 😦

Something Old, Something New, Something Borrowed, and Something Blue!
Over the past few months I have been slowly gathering my wedding accessories… I stopped in at a little shop just about a block away sometime before Christmas, and found a necklace I absolutely loved. It was a little difficult to decide whether I should get it as my wedding colours are black, white, and pink, and the necklace is silver and blue, but I opted to go with it because it would match my rings. My good friend, neighbour, and bridesmaid gave me two pairs of earrings (I have 2 holes in my ears) for Christmas that I mentioned I would love to wear for the wedding. And I managed to find my wedding shoes on sale at Shoe Warehouse. Unfortunately the shoes are a little too white compared to my dress which is just off-white, but they are dyeable so I will be hesitantly experimenting with that in the near future…

While that pretty well covers my something new, my Mom has helped me out with finding my something old, something borrowed, and something blue by not only letting me pick out a purse from her vintage and antique purse collection, but also by lending me a beautiful blue handkerchief that was hand-sewn by Austrian nuns. I picked out a black and pink beaded purse (to match my wedding colours) from the 1940’s. There were many other purses I liked but they were either not quite the right colours, or not quite big enough to fit my cell phone.

I am currently working on the veil, the mother of a mutual friend of my maid of honour and I is a seamstress and agreed to make my veil for me (I have specific tastes). All I need to do is go out and get the material, and she is going make it for the reasonable price of $12/hr with an estimate of about 3 hours.

I also happened to pick up some flip-flops for the honeymoon (when we get to that) while I was out this past weekend… they write “Just Married” in the sand when you walk!

A Few Major’s
There are a few important, but… scattered things that we worked out over the past couple months as well. Firstly, we hired our DJ for the reception. My maid of honour recommended a friend of hers, DJ Zavarella, and the price was pretty awesome! $475 for a wedding DJ? I’m sold!

Another major, was well… the wedding party. It was a little up in the air because we weren’t sure who would be able to make it out to the wedding from Wales to be there for Jason. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like many will be able to come, but on the positive I have some wonderful friends and family who are more than willing to stand up there beside the both of us. My best friend, Craig, will be best man, my best girl-friend (aka my wifey), Jess, will be my maid of honour. Jason’s sister, Michelle, as well as my neighbour and good friend, Valerie, being bridesmaids. My brothers, Brad and Grant, will both be groomsmen, with Brad hesitantly agreeing to MC as well. Michelle’s kids, Daniel and Bethan, will be ringbearer and flowergirl respectively 🙂

Pink Vests!

So of course, once we figured out the wedding party, the next step was to get our tuxedos sorted. I’m really more of a fan of the “suit-style” tuxedo, not really fond of shiny lapels… so we went for black Vera Wang suit-style tuxedos, white shirts (no ruffles!), black ties, with pink vests for the groomsmen, and a white vest for Jason. I think it looks pretty good!

We’re planning on heading out this weekend to get the bridesmaids dresses picked out, then the pressure will be much lighter!

Getting Into My Wedding Bod…
Some of you may be following my other blog, focused on my dieting and weight loss progress, but for those who aren’t, here’s a small progress update. I started my wedding diet back in September and am proud to say that I am coming along very well! I am officially more than half way to my goal weight, and while I don’t think that I will reach that by the wedding, I am already more than happy with the progress I have made. I am officially down 43lbs since September 16th, and my wedding dress is fitting better and better all the time.

Bits and Pieces (Mostly Decor)
Finally… (yes, this is coming to an end!) there are a lot of little bits and pieces that we’ve gathered, mostly decorations. Craig, Jess, Jason, my parents, and I went over to the reception site a couple weeks ago and took measurements of practically everything. I found out that the hotel will put vases with floating candles in the many wall sconces around the reception site at no cost… score! One less expense on decorations, and one less thing to worry about. I also found out that the tentative lunch meeting that was to be scheduled at the reception site for earlier in the day on my wedding day fell through, which means we can decorate the site ourselves and don’t have to put out money on a decorator!

I’ve found that Christmas has provided me with a few decorations to save some money, I set aside some silver birds I had on my tree, and my parents have set aside several boxes of clear Christmas lights. There are a lot of windows at the reception site, with gold rails along most of them. I’m thinking of wrapping the bars with tulle and Christmas lights… so when we go to find fabric for my veil, we’ll also pick out some bolts of tulle.

I picked up four vases (one extra just in case) at the dollar store as well as three white rose rings to go around the bottoms, I plan to use those as the centerpieces for the head table and place the LED roses we bought last summer in each. I also found some pink butterfly lights at the dollar store for $2 per string, so I cleared out all that they had. They look really pretty on the box, but after getting them home and turning them on, it turns out the lights are red and not clear (as it shows on the box). I think I’ll probably still use them, but they don’t look quite as nice as I expected.

I found some pink and white rose petals at Wal-Mart for $5, a garland of vines and pink roses at Michaels ($14 after a 40% off coupon) to decorate the top of the archway that my Dad made by hand, and wedding bubbles (instead of rice) at Michael’s for $22 (on sale, plus 40% off coupon). The bubbles are a little plain, but with adding a pinch of pink glitter that I picked up at the dollar store, they look better already. I plan to order some custom ribbon in the next couple of weeks to tie on to the bubbles which should add a nice finishing touch.

Lastly, I found a perfect set of toasting glasses over at a store on west 4th in Kits. They were only $43, and absolutely awesome… Yep, the glass comes out and the stems are joined together as a stand.

We have a lot more ideas for decorations that are in the works, and I have to say that my best man and maid of honour are being absolutely amazing at helping me get organized and helping me to get out there and get things done! Unfortunately Jason has been working crazy long hours lately as the project he is working on is coming to a close (as much as 20 hour work days), so I know I would not be able to do all of this without them!

Phew! Okay! That’s all for now 🙂 Thanks for reading everyone!

Days Until the Wedding: 2 months, 27 days
Total Cost So Far: $11,556.57