Dressapalooza

As soon as the Architect and I got engaged, I did what any normal sane bride-to-be does and started searching obsessively for pictures of what could potentially become THE DRESS for our wedding day. In my mind, the dress had to be (1) Simple, (2) Not beaded or covered in anything sparkly -- rhinestones, crystals, sequins... you name it -- I like to keep my bling on my finger, thank you very much, (3) Elegant, and (4) Not plain. I'm going to stress this last point. Despite the fact that I wanted a simple dress, I certainly didn't want a plain (read, boring or ordinary) dress. This was my wedding dress, and I wanted it to be beautiful. I wanted it to be memorable. I wanted it to be fabulous. With that in mind I started searching for inspiration . I quickly learned that it is WAY harder than it should be to find a stunningly beautiful dress that is not beaded or bedazzled in any way. But never fear. I pushed on through websites and websites until I found some dresses that I could see myself wearing. Here are some of the fruits of my labor:

I loved this dress by Jenny Lee... and pretty much every other dress that she has designed as well. Her dresses scream "simple yet elegant" to me, which was pretty much exactly the look that I was going for.

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I especially loved the notched collar on this Nicole Miller beauty. The lack of a long train appealed to me too, since I was worried about dragging a train around in the grass and dirt at our outdoor wedding. However, I wasn't sure if this style of dress was "bridal" enough for me.

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Oh sweetheart neckline. I love you so. I also love the cinching around the waist on this dress that creates such a beautiful hourglass figure.

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Hmmm... lace. It's a lot of embellishment, which wasn't exactly what I thought I was after, but it's not beading or bling, so it didn't break my rules. I certainly was open to at least trying out a dress with lace. Afterall, it's so pretty. I wasn't sure if lace was really "me", but hey, don't knock it until you try it, right?

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More sweetheart necklines. This style is a little more flow-y, which I thought might look nice. There is a small, but potentially acceptable amount of beading on this dress.

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Ahhh... beautiful. I can't tell if I'm in love with the dress or the picture itself here. Certainly the dress is beautiful, and it definitely fits into my "simple yet elegant" aesthetic that I was hoping to fulfill.

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Ok, so after saving and bookmarking these pictures I definitely had something to work with. Some of the styles were pretty different from one another, but they also had several things in common. At least I now knew that I liked strapless dresses, sweetheart necklines, A-line styles, and empire waists. With my inspiration pictures in hand, it was now time to venture out into the land of bridal boutiques to search for the dress that would eventually become "the One". Did I end up with one of the styles from my inspiration pictures, or did I "go rogue" and end up with something completely different? Stay tuned to learn the answer...

An Engagement Story

To set the stage:
Over Memorial Day weekend this past spring, the Architect and I headed down to New York to visit the Architect's cousin. At this point, we had been ring shopping a few months previous, and I was definitely expecting a proposal soon. I even had reason to suspect that the ring was currently residing in our apartment (!) . However, I certainly didn't think that the ring was making the trip with us to New York on what was supposed to be a weekend for visiting the Architect's family. This thought actually put me strangely at ease. While I had been pining for a proposal for quite some time, knowing that this would not be the weekend allowed me to just sit back, have fun, and enjoy the time hanging out with the Architect's cousin and his very pregnant wife. Afterall, this would be our last time hanging out with them before they became a family of 3! However, upon arriving in New York, certain events made me start to question whether a certain ring might have come on the weekend trip with us afterall...

Hint # 1 that something was afoot:
We spent the day on Saturday walking around NYC with cousin N and his wife S. For some reason, walking around cities always makes me hungry, and I was RAVENOUS. I mean, I couldn't stop eating all day. Huge sandwich for lunch? Sure! Ice cream in Central Park? Ok. Dinner? Yep, and while we're at it why don't we add on a yummy cocktail to that... and a HUGE dessert b/c I'm STILL hungry. (Did you ever read the Eric Carle book "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" when you were a kid? On this particular day I was the caterpillar. But I digress...)

Ice cream. Yum!

Despite the fact that I spent the day literally eating my way through the city, the Architect seemed surprisingly out of sorts and wasn't eating much at all. I kept asking him if he felt ok, and he always responded that he was justfinethankyou. So, I decided to ignore his lack of appetite. Instead, I may have helped him finish off his lunch... and his dinner. Which leads us to...

Hint #2 that something was afoot:
After dinner the Architect decided to announce that he had a surprise for me. What was the surprise, you ask? Tickets to the Broadway production of "Wicked". I was psyched. Then I asked if N and S would be joining us, and the Architect said that, no, N and S would be returning home, and the show was just for the 2 of us. Did N and S already know this, I asked. Yes. Ok, well just one more question -- how were we going to get back to N and S's house after the show, since we had all taken the train into the city together in the morning? The Architect said that everything was fine b/c he had a train schedule with him, and we would call N to pick us up at the station when we got back that night. Wouldn't it be late?... The Architect seemed unconcerned, as did N, so I dropped it at this point. We grabbed a cab and hurried off to see "Wicked".


Hint #3 that something was afoot:
Ok, at this point I was starting to get suspicious. I mean, really suspicious. After the show was over (and btw, it was AMAZING), the Architect got on his cell phone while I made a quick trip to the lady's room. When I asked him who he had been calling he said he was calling a cab to make sure that one was waiting for us. Hmm... I have never EVER heard of calling a cab on the phone in NYC. Afterall, cabs are readily available on every street corner, so why call? Well... when we exited the theatre I learned that the Architect hadn't really been calling for a cab at all. What he had actually been doing was calling the limo that he had hired, to find out where it was parked outside. Yes, you read correctly. The Architect had hired us a limo.

At this point the gig was up. I totally thought I knew what was going on, but the Architect kept me waiting for a while longer while we took the limo over the Brooklyn Bridge to a park on the Brooklyn side with an excellent view of the nighttime Manhattan skyline. It was beautiful. The night was warm. The park was romantic. The view was to die for. ...and then the Architect pulled a ring box out of his camera bag (he had been carrying it around all day), asked me to marry him, and I said yes. Squee!

The view back towards Manhattan

Under the Brooklyn Bridge

OMG! I'm engaged!

The happy couple (picture taken by our friendly limo driver)

After spending a little more time enjoying ourselves in the park, the Architect and I took the limo back to Manhattan, where we spent the night at the Waldorf Astoria. It turns out that the Architect used some of his excellent work connections to get us an amazing room for the night. Of course, I had only been counting on spending the day in NYC, so I had no supplies for the night or clothes to change into for the following day. Luckily, it turned out that the Architect had thought of everything. He had had an overnight bag sent to the hotel ahead of time for himself... and for me he had bought a brand new dress, and some really cute heels. We had a brunch reservation for the following morning, and I got to wear my new (white!) strapless dress for the occasion.

This is the best picture that I have of the dress/shoes that the Architect bought for me. Sorry!

The Waldorf-Astoria

The dessert spread at brunch. Let the eating continue!

After brunch on Sunday morning, we headed back to N and S's house where they were eagerly waiting for us. They had, of course, been in on the entire plan, and they were ready to congratulate us. The weekend was more than I ever could have hoped for, and I was on cloud 9 :-) I'll leave you with a picture of the ring...


Did your fiance surprise you with a proposal? What lengths did he/she go to to keep it a surprise?

* All photos taken by the Architect unless otherwise noted

The Perfect Place for a Wedding Ceremony

So I mentioned in my last post that once the Architect and I decided on the Bar Harbor region for our wedding, we immediately knew where we wanted the wedding ceremony to take place. ...and here it is. The Thuya Garden in Northeast Harbor, Maine. This was one of the first places that the Architect took me to, on our very first trip up to Bar Harbor back in 2006. The garden is set up on a cliff, overlooking picturesque Northeast Harbor.

Photo taken by the Architect -- What an amazing view!

It is an intensely beautiful and completely peaceful location. What a perfect place for a wedding.

Photo taken by the Architect

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Even better... groomsman C had once mentioned in passing that some friends of his had been married in the Thuya garden. What we didn't know, was that these friends had had a 15-person extremely informal wedding ceremony in the garden, with no chairs, no decorations, and therefore no set-up or clean-up to think of. When we asked about possibly having our wedding in the Thuya Garden we were dealt some bad news. If we wanted the wedding to be during the summer, it would have to be small, and we couldn't use chairs. Well, ok, we were planning a small wedding. Just how small is small? The answer -- less than 20 people. Umm... yeah, well when we said our wedding was going to be small, we meant more like 100 people. Also, we were planning on having a short, secular ceremony, but the ceremony would still probably be long enough that our guests would appreciate having a place to sit down. Of course, the other possibility was to have a wedding in the off season -- June and September were possibilities. Then the garden would let us have as many people (and chairs!) as we wanted, within reason. We were pretty worried about this option though. The weather in Maine is reliably, well, unreliable. The summer -- July and August -- are pretty much the only times of year that you can count with reasonable certainty on having good weather. Since we were hoping for an outdoor ceremony, we were pretty set on getting married in the warm sunny summer months.

...and it was back to the drawing board.

Did we manage to find the ceremony location of our dreams in the end? You'll have to stay tuned to find out. Did you come across any roadblocks in your quest to find the perfect ceremony location? Do tell...

...and What About the Wedding??

Yeah... what about the wedding? I've been busy telling you about how the Architect and I met, but I still haven't told you a thing about what kind of wedding we have planned. Well, once again, I'll start at the beginning. I mentioned before that I knew from very early in our relationship that the Architect was going to be the man that I would marry. While I had never been the type of girl growing up who imagined her future wedding incessantly... or at all for that matter... once I knew that my current relationship with the Architect was likely headed for the alter, I started to think about what our future wedding might entail. ...and I immediately knew where the wedding would have to take place.

Dun dun dun...

On Mount Dessert Island in Maine, of course -- home to Bar Harbor and Acadia National Park, and to beautiful scenes like the ones depicted here:

Photo taken by the Architect

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The Architect's good friend, groomsman C, has been living in Bar Harbor since before I met the Architect, and we have faithfully been making the drive up to visit groomsman C several times per year since we first started dating. We LOVE Bar Harbor, so of course it would be the perfect place to have our wedding. The 5-hour drive from Boston (where both the Architect's and my families live) puts this somewhere on the spectrum of "destination" weddings. I prefer to think of it as a pseudo-destination wedding, since travel to the wedding will not require a plane trip for many of our guests, but it will certainly require a multi-hour drive.

Luckily, once we actually got engaged, the Architect agreed with me wholeheartedly on getting married in Bar Harbor. We also thought we already knew the perfect location for our wedding ceremony. More on that is coming soon...

Did you decide to get married away from your hometown? Does the place that you decided on have a special meaning for you as a couple? What caused you to make the decision to have a destination wedding?

First Things First

Ok, so before I tell you all about our wedding plans, I think we need to back up just a little, so I can tell you the story of how an astronomer ends up dating, falling in love with, and marrying an architect.

Now I'm going to preface this story by saying that, at the time I met the Architect, I was pursuing a graduate degree in astronomy at a notable school, and I was more likely to meet a boy that I liked over coffee while discussing quantum mechanics than I was to find true love in a bar or a club. But things never exactly turn out the way you expect them to, do they? Internet, if you promise not to judge me, I will tell you the true story of an astronomer meeting an architect... at a club. You can probably already see where this is going.

So... in December of 2005 my good friend C (who will hereafter be referred to as bridesmaid C) had her birthday party at a club in downtown Boston. The attendees of this party were mostly women (many of them single women), and one of the single women happened to bring her male roommate to the party. Yes, that was the Architect. I introduced myself to the Architect while we were all sitting around having drinks, and then we both quickly went back to talking with our respective friends. Imagine my surprise, when later that night on the dance floor I feel a hand on my hip... and the Architect is trying to dance with me of all people. I danced with him on and off throughout the rest of the night. At the end of the night, the people who had stuck it out until the end of the party went out to grab some late-night pizza before heading home. I thought that the Architect might ask me for my phone number at this point... but he didn't. Oh well. With no way of getting in touch with me, I figured that maybe I would see him again at some future party, or maybe I wouldn't. His loss, right? :-)

Bridesmaid C gettin' down

M, Bridesmaid L, Me, and Bridesmaid C

That's the Architect in the top left corner. See? I told you he was surrounded by lots of single women all night :-)

Fast forward another week, and I get an email from a guy through an online dating service that I was partaking in. I check out the guy's profile, and I am totally surprised to see that it's the Architect. How he managed to find me on an anonymous dating service was somewhat of a mystery to me. He still swears to this day that he was just searching through some profiles, and my picture came up. He had been thinking about tracking down my contact info through bridesmaid C, so coming across my profile online must have been fate.

I replied to his email and suggested that he might want to come to a holiday party that my housemates and I were throwing the following weekend. I doubted he would show, but I was in the awkward position where I had already invited his roommate to the party, so I didn't want to leave him without an invite. Well, in the end he came to the party, and this time the two of us ended up talking the whole night and getting to know each other far better than we had at the club a few weeks previous. It turned out that this architect guy who I had danced with at a club actually had a lot in common with me. He even said he liked astronomy... which btw I totally thought was just a pickup line to begin with, but then he impressed me with his vast knowledge about my chosen field.

...and, as they say, the rest is history.

Have you ever started a successful relationship with a guy who you met at a club or a bar?

First Post

Whee!! I'm so excited to be starting this blog, which will focus on our wedding, and all of the craziness that is wedding planning. First let me introduce myself. I am the Astronomer, and the fiance is the Architect.

I've known that the Architect was the one for me since surprisingly early in our relationship -- definitely within the first year, and probably within the first 6 months. (We've been together for almost 4 years now.) Then it was all about waiting around for him to propose, while trying to not be THAT GIRL who only thinks about how much she wants to just be married already. Who knew that once he finally proposed (and the proposal story is one for the ages btw) that I would be thrust into the WONDERFUL WORLD OF WEDDING PLANNING. Seriously, I sometimes think this whole wedding planning thing is like a cult... or maybe more like a wonderful sisterhood? Seriously. I had NO idea what I was getting myself into. Venues, officiants, music, wedding parties, color schemes, center pieces... the list goes on and on and on. I can safely say that I have never planned something so complicated before. Luckily I quickly got up to speed and learned about many of the amazing resources available on the world wide web. I seriously don't know how women planned weddings in the days before the internet.

So in the interest of paying it forward I will also be adding my own wedding planning experiences to the internet. Hopefully our wedding will have something unique to inspire you... or maybe you just want to come along for the ride and see the pretty pictures. (I'll try to offer up many of those.)

Are you planning your wedding? Have you found that little wonder called the internet as useful as I have?