Wedding Dress Saga - in Hindsight

Since I only get married once (I hope), I think it's OK for me to recap the crazy journey that was to find a wedding dress!!! I really dislike German wedding dresses. I think most of them are over the top, unfortunately. Most of the dresses I tried on just overwhelmed me in appearance. I felt like a girl swimming in an ocean of overly heavy fabric and overdone details.

This was one that I liked, if I would have gotten married in a colder climate. My high school best friend loved this one! I liked the sense of movement in the fabric pattern, but I didn't like the fact that I'd have to wear a frame underneath in order to hold up the poofy shape.

Once I started looking at shorter dresses, this was the favorite one that my girls had sent me. It's simple and beautiful (with the gloves) and the cut looks like one of my existing dresses. I thought quite hard about getting a dress like this made from scratch, and even investigated costs associated with this. But, I was a little concerned that since I wasn't planning to wear a veil on the (windy) beach, that the rest of the dress would be overly casual.

Then when I found this dress, I liked it right away. There's something about the simple elegance of the dress that I loved. The cocktail style made me feel like I could walk through a party and play hostess without being bogged down by layers of fabric. But, I didn't love that the left breast was not covered in the same material as the rest of the dress. (It was of a bra material. Why?! German wedding fashion is so weird.) I also didn't cry like the girls in Say Yes to the Dress when they found their favorite dresses.

Unfortunately, when I went back to the store a month later, this dress was already sold. I bought one that was the same style, but 4 or 5 sizes too large. They had to rip it apart, re-make the whole thing to fit me, and also hand-make crinkled fabric in order to cover the left breast to match the rest of the dress.

I also liked the idea of mixing and matching short and long dresses, so I sent them this picture to ask them to make this detachable train for me from scratch. I wanted a detachable train for functionality and -- so that just in case I hated it in the end, I could still take it off.

When I picked up my finished dress (which costed only 500 Euros even including all the alterations), I was in love. (A few fittings had to occur, remember? It was too small after they resized it, and so they had to resize it again a couple of times.) I was thrilled by how fabulous my seamstress was; you literally couldn't tell that part of the crinkle on the dress was made by hand. I bought a hair accessory to match the modernness of my dress, and a single-pearl necklace to match its simplicity.

Then, because of all the health- and job-search related stress, I lost weight. I don't have a scale at home, but I estimate that I must have lost between 5 and 10 pounds from pure stress. So, I had to bring the dress back, etc etc. get it altered again so that it didn't look like a borrowed dress. In the end, it was such a relief that everything still worked out!! (Reposting final picture from an earlier post... Once I get the professional photos, maybe I'll post an update.) So, whew. If you're a bride-to-be, good luck!!! I hope you can get through the whole process with fewer fittings than me. I estimate that in all, I had to have about 8 or 9 fittings, which is well above the average for a bride-to-be and is a lot for a gal who goes shopping maybe twice or three times a year and who tends to shop like a man (in and out in 45 minutes with a lot of things purchased... Geoff shops way slower than me!).

Survey Project - I'm Back!

I recently gave a survey project to my 7th-graders, that involved them creating/administering a survey, creating circle graphs with a protractor, drawing conclusions from graphs, and making educated predictions for a larger population.

Here are some clear photos I managed to snap of a few of their posters. I am impressed by how informative they are, considering that the kids didn't turn in any rough drafts. (Note to self: Threatening to turn it into a full-blown writing assignment really helps to bring up the quality of submitted posters.)

See full-sized yellow poster here

See the complete blue poster here.

See the full-sized cream poster here.

PS. Yes, I got married!! Here are a few pics.

Belize looks like this:

Snorkeling with sea turtles!

 

Our beach ceremony (people sat in a spiral form). It was awesome to have 50 friends and family join us from as close as El Salvador and as far as Sydney and Shanghai!


Newly weds! (My dress worked out fine in the end. It was short, with a detachable train.)

A couple of days after the wedding, we had a sunset cruise with the guests who were still around. It was lovely!!!

Mini Wedding Updates

So, now that I am on October break and work is temporarily put into the back of my mind, I thought I'd give a little bit of wedding prep updates. Brace yourselves!

On a semi-happy note, I think I found a dress. It's short, classy, and suits who I am without being "loud." The complication is that I had let 3 or 4 weeks pass in between the first time I had tried on the dress, and going back to purchase it.* So, during that time the dress I had tried on (which was in my size) had been sold, and so I decided to buy a dress that is 6 sizes too big to have them size it down. No problem, except when I went back today to try on the dress again, it's now too small and the dress bunches up in weird places instead of falling smoothly like it's supposed to. The store seems to still think that they can fix it OK, but I really needed their help to zip it up today and it looked very funny anyway -- definitely not the fitting experience I had hoped for. To me, it's all a bit nerve-racking, because the alternative is that I'd have to start over looking for a new dress, with less time left.**

On top of this, there are some not-so-straight-forward stylistic alterations that I want them to make to the existing dress (as recommended by my dress jury and my own gut instincts). It requires them to crinkle some fabric in the same style that the rest of the dress is already crinkled. The store people told me that they're not sure that they can do it, but that they'll try (with a mixture of chemicals, getting the fabric wet, and repeated ironing) and then let me know if it's even possible. So, at this point, the whole dress is a bit of an unknown variable still.

On another note, I am really looking forward to the wedding itself. My boss granted me 2 extra days off (attached to a two-week-long spring break, so it's no trivial matter), and that means that we're heading over to Puerto Rico for a mini pre-wedding honeymoon en route to Belize! Geoff, the ever responsible one, researched to find out that there is some bio-luminescent area of PR that is a must-see. So, we're going to brave Mosquito Bay merely days before our big day. :)

This is not wedding related, but for you non-Facebookers, here is a recent photo of us from Oktoberfest in Munich. Lovely time all around, with a great group of friends from the States!

*Problems in paradise: I went to the Berlin Music Festival, which took up one whole weekend in September. Then, the next weekend I was in Leipzig for a Coldplay concert on Friday night, and couldn't make it back in time on Saturday to go to the store. The following weekend my girlfriends were not around to give me the thumbs up. So, it was 4 weeks later when I finally made it back to the store. In the interim, I had been trying to convince myself that I always get paranoid about things for no reason. Little did I know that my paranoia was totally real, and the one correct-sized wedding dress did sell out within those 4 weeks! 

**I googled this problem, as googling is my way of self-therapy whenever I feel anxious about something. As you would expect, many brides-to-be purchase dresses that are several sizes too small -- on purpose! And then, weeks before their wedding they panic if they still cannot fit into the dress that never fit them in the first place. OMG. As a chronic stresser, I cannot even imagine how panicked I would be to still have a dress that I cannot fit into, two or so weeks prior to the actual wedding. I can only hope that people who do this have allotted extra money to buy a second dress!

Wedding Dress Shopping Stress

I am totally stressed out from wedding dress shopping. HOW COULD THIS BE?!

• I am getting married on the beach. It's going to be over 30 degrees Celsius.
• I don't want to look back on my wedding day as the day when I sweated off all of my makeup in a sickeningly thick dress!!!
• Berlin dress shops mostly carry strapless dresses, which means that there are thick underlying corsettes that add invisible layers to the dress. No matter how light a dress looks from the outside, if it's strapless, you are guaranteed to be carrying a fair amount of weight just from the corsette and the cloth. Let's not mention the under skirt that you would have to wear, which adds extra weight and therefore, extra heat.
• To complicate things, it's the end of the 2012 season, and either I can buy a leftover, likely oversized dress from a store, or I can wait until the END of October to try on new dresses for 2013. That is pushing it too close, considering I am getting married in March 2013.
• So far, the few people who have seen the photos of the dresses that I've liked, have unequivocally voted for a thick dress in lieu of the light and airy ones. That is not helping me come to a decision.
•  AHHHHHHHHH!!!!

Destination Wedding Planning

Geoff and I have started working on the logistics of our wedding, and I am actually genuinely surprised by how complicated even the details can be!

Originally, we were going to have a summer wedding, since as a teacher that seems to make the most sense for me to get married during a long vacation (and Geoff's schedule is flexible). But, as it turns out, we decided that we wanted a destination wedding -- both to trim down the overall wedding costs for us and to allow us to spend some quality time with our guests who do decide to come -- and that changed everything. We picked out Belize as our desired destination, because we had both loved the island of San Pedro when we visited it a couple of years back. We checked airfare briefly and it costs about $500 to $600 to fly roundtrip from the States, so it's not entirely out of the realm of possibility for our friends who may wish to come, but at the same time would help to keep the wedding small and intimate. Plus, having the wedding in Belize opens up the slim possibility that our Salvadoran friends (who don't make American wages) might be able to fly/bus in as well to come to our wedding.

But, the decision to have a destination wedding in Belize changed everything because we cannot get married during the summer months (June - August) in Belize. That's the rainy season, so now we have to get married either during my February break (1 week) or my Easter break (2 weeks). We have not totally made up our minds yet as to which time frame is better in 2013 (since February is too hectic for us in terms of traveling from and back to Europe, and April is possibly more expensive for our guests because Holy Week is a popular Latin American holiday), but Geoff and I contacted a wedding planner and took a trip to Belize this past week (during my very short February break) to look at some potential venues and to meet our destination wedding planner.

Whew. I've never been one to dream of a perfect wedding (I think the most romantic part is to marry someone you have already been with for a number of years...), so to me the wedding-day logistics actually aren't so important as making the schedule and the cost feasible for our guests. Geoff and I looked at a variety of venues and resorts, some very posh and some that are more casual. (Geoff likes the posh resorts, because he thinks that people who are paying to fly to Belize will expect a certain level of luxury, but I prefer the more casual locations that have a more authentic island feel.) Even though many of our guests might opt to stay at hostels -- and San Pedro has some truly lovely ocean-view hotels/hostels that are reasonably priced and centrally located -- we wanted to give our friends an option of staying in our close vicinity, at the same resort, if that's what they choose to do. After visiting places with our wedding planner, we still have not decided anything -- not a date nor a venue, because we are waiting to hear back about group room rates and also whether we can block entire sections for our wedding guests. But we are very excited! During our short second trip to Belize, we had such a great and relaxing time in this tropical paradise that it absolutely affirmed our decision to get married there. Everything just felt perfect this second time back; we think that our guests will have a blast with all of the natural loveliness that Belize has to offer.

So, consider this a teaser! I am nervous that it's not all going to work out, but we're super excited that it could be completely amazing. :)

PS. Here is the link to our wedding planner's blog. She has some amazing photos of past weddings, that give you a feel of the raw beauty of San Pedro!

Mini updates!

This week has been somewhat distressing. Geoff and I had some noticeable water problems -- as in, our water got turned off by the water company! --Not fun. We learned the hard way that the ANDA water bills here are not cumulative; if you miss a payment (which we did in the beginning, since we didn't know whether we were supposed to be paying the bills ourselves, or how), the next bill that comes doesn't contain or refer to the overdue amount. Each bill stands alone, which doesn't make much sense to us, but that's just the way it works here. So, we had paid off the most recent bill online, thinking that would suffice, but that was apparently the wrong assumption. And, after a couple months of an unpaid old bill... tada! off goes the water. FOR THREE DAYS!!! Geoff and I couldn't get down to the office in person to take care of the issue during the work week, so we had our super-ish person look into it for us. She spoke to the company and they said it was coming back on, blah blah. Predictably, nothing happened following that promise. Eventually, because of a fluke, a maintenance guy from a different company turned the water back on for us today. So, in short, we don't know whether the water is here to stay, or if the water company is going to come back and turn it back off, or what. We can only hope for the best.

And, you know, it's amazing how difficult this was. The amazing thing is that we sort of did have water; we still had drinking water in tubs, and we took our empty tubs to the pool out in the back and filled them to flush the toilets. But still, we were frustrated as hell. We can only hope that this is a permanent fix, and that the water company just flakes out altogether and doesn't send anyone else down to toggle with our water supply. But, as the running joke goes, it's El Salvador, and anything is possible.

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I learned while talking to a friend that once you employ a maid here, you are responsible for paying the maid weekly even if you aren't going to be around that week (ie. the maid gets the week off). This is because the $10 to $15 you pay your maid each week is, in fact, their main source of income, so if you go on vacation and decide not to pay them, then they are unemployed for that duration. Good to know, since Christmas break is coming up. I would NOT want to cause our maid to be unemployed and to be in financial difficulty when we are away.

It's one of those small things that showcase the income disparity in this country.

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On a brilliantly good note, Geoff and I went to scope out a salsa dancing class yesterday, and it was fantastic! The dance teacher, Raul, had been dancing for 16 years. It was basically like a private session, because he thinks we're not good enough to be with the rest of the class. So, for the whole hour, Geoff and I practiced on the side, and he showed us several moves. I have taken a number of social dance classes and am usually pretty good with following the rapid-fire instructions, but this instructor was moving fast. I love it! He says that in two months, he thinks we'll be good enough to join the rest of the crew in learning fancier moves. It sounds lovely...

We want to go back there at least once a week. The only problem is that getting a cab ride to and from that place isn't totally easy, so we have to resume looking for a car to buy...

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Geoff won't be around this weekend, because he is heading to Jersey for a wedding! I'm totally envious, because I want to be in NY and I wish I could be at this beautiful wedding of two really good people. But, it's good that the local crowd is organizing a weekend getaway, so I wouldn't just be hanging out at home feeling bored. Congrats, M&M!! Enjoy your big day!!