I’m sure what I am about to describe has happened to some of you. You stand in front of the mirror at the bridal shop, trying to decide if this is The Dress. You smooth down the fabric around your hips, adjust the neckline, check out the way that the train lays in the back. “Hmm,” you say, almost to yourself. Then, almost out of nowhere, the bridal consultant sweeps in and plops a veil on your head. “There! A bride,” she exclaims. “Perfect!”

In bridal stores, as well on shows like Say Yes to the Dress, the veil seems to function as the ultimate transformative piece (and hard-sell accessory): you put it on, you become a bride! But what happens when you don’t want to wear a veil?

I knew from the beginning that I didn’t want to wear a veil. That’s not to say that I didn’t admire veils. I love long, lace-tipped ones, like this one from Rohm. It’s also not to say that I didn’t try any veils on; I had veils dropped on my head whenever I seemed remotely interested in whatever dress I was trying on. Having the consultant do so, however, just reinforced my feeling that a veil just wasn’t for me.

I did know that I wanted to accessorize my gown with some kind of hairpiece. Like I had done so many times before, I turned to Etsy. I first started looking at different hair flowers. (I just realized that several of the ones that I bookmarked have tiny tulle netting attached!)

Image via Amie Noel Designs

Image via Tessa Kim

Image via The Little White Dress

I then started looking for crystal or pearl hair clips, wanting to see if I could match some of the detailing in my belt and other accessories.

Image via Aurora Bridal

Image via Amie Noel Designs

Image via Feathers and Frills

One of these hair accessories stood out more than the others. I placed my order and hoped that I would love it as much in person as I did in the picture. Bees, I did!

The packaging

The clip!

Are you accessorizing your gown with a veil, a hair flower, or a hair comb (or something entirely different)? How did you decide?

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.

Now that I’m officially back and you’ve seen a glimpse of my wedding-day ensemble, I wanted to introduce you to one of my very favorite parts of my wedding-day look (who am I kidding—they all were my favorite parts), my bracelet.

Personal image taken by Doloris Petunia

Unlike my everlasting search for earrings, I knew exactly want I wanted in my bridal bracelet. Something delicate, but not subtle or small. Something shiny and organic. Something unusual and romantic, nestled on a band of tulle. I searched and searched, but unfortunately I couldn’t find it anywhere. I had an image in my head and nothing else would do.

I soon became aware that I would have to go the custom route if I wanted to get my hands (or wrist?) on my elusive dream bridal bracelet. Then one lucky day I found Doloris Petunia. I quickly shot her an email where I attempted to describe my bracelet idea. And she got it. And better yet, she could make it.

The perfect-amazing-gorgeous bracelet she made surpassed all my expectations. Here I am wearing it on my wedding day:

Photo by Amelia Lyon / Bracelet by Doloris Petunia

And the best part? Unlike my dress, I get to wear this baby again.

Did you have anything custom made for your wedding day?

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.

I’ve been working on getting my something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue for the wedding. I’m almost there! Most of them are related to my accessories, so I thought I’d share some of my pretties for the big day.

Something Old – I had my idea for this for a while. Before my dad’s mother passed away, she told me she was going to leave me her pearl ring. She also told me to make sure my dad gave it to me, because she “knows how he can be.” I finally worked up the nerve to ask my dad about it this weekend, and he went to the safe and got it out for me. After making sure that I was going to take good care of it and inspecting it to make sure the pearls weren’t going to fall off, he finally gave it to me.

The ring

I plan to wear it on a chain around my neck along with my Something New:

It’s a little fish charm with an “r” on it I got on Etsy. It symbolizes Cherry Bomb. Mr. Cannon used to always sing, “Give me back that baby fish! Give me that fish!” to the tune of that McDonald’s commercial when Cherry Bomb was a newborn, so we refer to her as “the fish” fairly often. R is the first letter of her first name.

While I was on Etsy, I also picked up these earrings here for a back up Something New:

Not the best picture, but I was getting pretty annoyed with my camera by the time I took this. Click on the link above for a better picture at the Etsy shop I bought it from.

For Something Borrowed, I have my veil and my headband borrowed from some very special bees - Mrs. Pretzel and Mrs. Cola! The veil:

And the headband:

I am still searching for my Something Blue. I have a sneaking suspicion I will be buying some blue underwear in the near future—unless someone out there has a better suggestion!

Did you do the something old/new/borrowed/blue for your wedding? What were they?

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.

There are just a few things that I’m genuinely sad didn’t exist when I was getting married back in 2008. Among them is the existence of the White by Vera Wang line. Her spring 2011 launch was met with rave reviews, and she’s just launched her brand new Bridesmaid Collection, that includes some incredible dresses, all priced under $200. A dream!

Vera’s team sent over a preview for us here at Weddingbee! The entire line is available exclusively at David’s Bridal. Be sure to click through; you won’t want to miss the shoes…

View the rest of the new collection here.

Pick a favorite…I dare you!

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.

Sashing? Dashing? Close enough, right?

This is so strange, but it’s true. For some reason, when I made the easy decision of picking out my dress, I decided I had to have a sash. In fact, I got my heart all set on it. I’m not 100% sure why I had to have one, but I think the artist in me was drawn to the pop of color, and the opportunity to use it to coordinate our wedding colors and make them even more cohesive (… because I was a crazy bride like that).

If you look back at the image of my dress that David’s Bridal provides, you’ll see something around the waist.

Screenshot from David’s Bridal /Style T9309

Just so you guys know, the sash in that photo doesn’t come with the dress (included is a length of 2″ white ribbon, there’s even two teeny loops to hold the ribbon onto the dress), but they suggest it with the dress, as well as a thicker, fancier sash, like the purple one in the photo below.

Screenshot from David’s Bridal /Satin Sash

I know, it’s a lovely sash. It’s kind of hard to see in the photo, but there’s all kinds of pretty embroidery at the bottom.

Naturally, I had to have it. But then after I tried it on in the store, in the color Pool (as seen below), I found out that it wasn’t offered in baby blue (or the DB color “capri”).

Screenshot from David’s Bridal /Satin Sash

Long story short, I was crushed.

What’s a girl to do? Well, I maybe have been a little mopey after mucho Googling couldn’t find me a sash I wanted, but then I got my act together. At this time, Etsy’s alchemy was still around, so I started the hunt for some one who could make a sash for me, in the color I wanted, all for the price of $50.

I discovered seller BusyBeeHolidays (was the ’Bee’ in her name a sign?), who hadn’t made a sash before, but definitely seemed up for the challenge.

She started by sending me fabric colors and embroidery options to choose from. I ended up choosing one that I loved (yay!), and then I gave her another $5 because I chose an option too big for her embroidery hoop, so she’d have to get a new one. Not a bad deal, I’d say.

Then BusyBee began sending me photos of my sash as she made it, step by step. Watching the whole process come together was so exciting (and such a relief, actually, after I was super worried that I wouldn’t get the sash I dreamed of). The more photos I saw, the more excited I got to see the real thing in person.

And, because a photo’s worth 100 words, here’s the story in photos.

Photo of me with the sash that I posted on Alchemy for reference.

The option I chose for embroidery.

A sample of the embroidery for me to approve.

Ah! Coming together – embroidery on my sash.

Then some pearls for good measure. Now all it needed was a hem…

Perfecto!

Love!

I’m not going to lie, this was one wedding project that was pretty easy because I just had to sit back while someone else did all the work.

Dying to see the real sash in action? Me too! I can’t wait to share the pro pics with you all in the future.

Did you having something custom made for your wedding? On a scale of 1-10, how awesome was it?

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.

Australian bridal designer Johanna Johnson is bringing back 1920s and 30s art deco in a big way.  When she was searching for her own wedding gown she was let down by the lack of options.  Having a graphic design background, she sketched her own gown and hired an experienced seamstress to bring it to life.  Johnson knew there were more women out there like herself, so in 2005 she launched her label.  She has been immersed in a love affair of bringing old Hollywood to the red carpet’s new Hollywood and high-class glamour to brides ever since.

This article was originally posted onBridezilla.

As I mentioned before, Mr. Snow Cone and I have decided we’re doing the traditional bouquet and garter tosses. I have my bouquet all straightened around, which is 50% of the toss battle. I can’t really do a garter toss without a garter, now can I?

Fortunately, the garter-less garter toss will not be occurring at the Snow Cone wedding. That’s right, I’ve secured my garter, armed and ready for tossing. When brainstorming garter options, I knew I wanted something specific, so it was just a matter of tracking down someone to execute my vision. After doing a couple dozen Google searches, I came across Let’s Dance Garters, a small company that offers a huge array of garters with a boatload of customization options.

I found this set, which immediately caught my eye:

Image via Let’s Dance Garters ($24.95)

But I decided that if Mr. Snow Cone withdrew a garter from underneath my gown that only paid homage to my university (which is probably one of his least favorite colleges, at least sports-wise), he’d have a cow. And, to be perfectly honest, what initially led me to this garter site was the fact that it sold a certain other collegiate garter as well:

Image via Let’s Dance Garters ($24.95)

Just as doing my school alone would ruffle Mr. Snow Cone’s feathers, doing his school alone didn’t 100% sit well with me. I decided to give the company a call and see if there was any plausible way to smoosh two schools into one garter set. I described my vision hesitantly, keeping my fingers crossed and my hopes high. As soon as I finished my description, the woman on the other end of the phone exclaimed, “Oh! You want one of our mixed-marriage garter sets! We do those all the time!” Perfection. A few quick detail decisions later, I placed my order. Less than 48 hours after that, I found these beauts waiting for me:

Personal photo

And here’s a close-up of the center of each garter in the set:

Personal photo

Personal photo

I was so pumped with the finished product that I immediately showed it off to everyone and anyone who made eye contact with me. The overwhelming response? “Oh, he’s gonna die when he sees those!” My thoughts exactly.

Did you use customization with your garters? If you could give a shout-out to any team via your garter set, which team would you pick?

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.

I’m one of those brides who could honestly care less about the dresses that my bridesmaids wear. In fact, I told them that we could pick a designer and color and length, and they could choose from there. Whatever made them feel beautiful. My bridesmaids are all different sizes and shapes. MOH A is a size four and is 5′3″. BM S is a size sixteen and is 5′6″. BM E is 5′2″ and is a size eight. No two girls are alike in any way. Thus the reasoning behind getting different dresses. MOH A and I talked about the reason we had to pick one designer and color. Navy is one of those weird colors that all designers seem to do in varying shades. Some navy blues are so dark they are black, and others are light and look almost like a dark royal blue. Not that I minded the shades, but for some kind of cohesiveness MOH A urged me to go with one designer, thus one shade of blue.

Now MOH A pretty much took charge on the dress front, which is fine with me. About half of my bridesmaids live in Des Moines, where MOH A lives, so if she wanted to book the appointments to find the dresses, I was game. I was happy to delegate (which is completely surprising because I am usually one of those people who likes to control every little detail). So MOH A made an appointment at a swanky bridal salon in Des Moines because there was one dress that I really loved the idea of and wanted the girls to try on.

The Convertible Wrap Dress from Dessy. The top can change into anything the wearer wants! / Image via Dessy

The dress was a bust. Not only could you only order it online, the only way to try it on was to also rent a try-on from the Dessy site for 35 bucks. Um, sorry, but I was not going to spend money to have my girls try on a dress that may or may not work.

The bridal salon was also a bust. They wouldn’t let the girls take pictures to send to me, plus they were super snotty. So MOH A and BM S left to see if David’s Bridal could fit them in. They figured this was a good second choice since the rest of the BMs were spread out (some in other states), and they could go in and order their dresses on their own. So they went and were sure to take a ton of pictures for me. MOH A was actually hoping to find a dress that all of the girls could wear; she is more traditional in that aspect. I told her if she could find one that all of the girls could agree on then, sure, that would work too. So she and BM S began to try them on.

Some were obvious nos:

These dresses were not that flattering on the curvier girls…so they were nos.

None of the girls were feeling the bows or the bubble hem.

Some were definite maybes:

We thought the above dresses were fun and flirty.

The girls liked the sparkle on the hem of these dresses.

And then they tried these on:

The holy grail of BM dresses (at least for our party)

Every single one of my BMs who went to try on this dress loved the way it fit. MOH A had done what I thought would be impossible. She found a dress that flattered every single girl and that every girl wanted to wear. We are getting them in the blue color. As an added bonus there was this:

MOH A joked that she could hide a mini-flask in there for me in case the jitters get to be too much. What is the funniest part of this whole thing is that, while the dress was surprisingly easy to find, the shoes have now become the hard part to find. Finally, I told the girls that we will just go shoe shopping as part of my bachelorette weekend, and it’s not a huge deal if the shoes don’t match. Their reasoning is that if the dress matches, the shoes need to match!

Was it easy for you to find your wedding-party dresses? And was your wedding party pickier about what they wore than you were?

*All are personal photos unless otherwise specified!

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.

When I set up my bridesmaids’-dress meeting, I figured we’d all go together and get dresses knocked out. But the weekend I had set aside for it didn’t work for my sisters, so Bombshell, Pistol, my mom, and I all ended up going the week before I planned on going with everyone else. Bombshell requested we check out a dress shop near my parents’ house, so I drove out there to check it out.

The shop was small but not crowded. All the bridesmaids’ dresses were in the back of the store. Bombshell started digging through dresses and trying on various styles. “What’s that?” you say. “Trying on all kinds of styles?” Yes, my friend—although I haven’t discussed it yet, I decided to let each girl pick whatever dress she wanted as long as it was short and the correct color. Each girl has their own color to fit in with the rainbow theme. Bombshell is green, Pistol is orange, Rifle is yellow, Shotgun is purple, and Machine Gun is blue. So, I was mostly there to approve the color and tell everyone they looked fabulous.

Anyway, Bombshell dug through dresses and Pistol, Ma, and I talked. Pistol didn’t do a lot of looking at this store because they didn’t have much to try on in her size. We had already planned to go a couple other places, so we weren’t too worried about it. Bombshell tried on all kinds of things. Some looked good, some not so much. Just for kicks, my mom picked out a dress the shade of green that I liked for her to try on so we could see how the color looked on her. Honestly, none of us was all that impressed with it on the hanger. But when she came out of the dressing room in it, we were all blown away. It looked great! My mom made Pistol go out to the car to get heels for her to try with it. Even better!

And, since the dress she tried on was in her size and the right color and fit perfectly, she bought it and took it home right then and there. She wants to sew in some spaghetti straps, but I already mentioned she’s an awesome seamstress, so we’re not worried about that. So, one down, four to go (five including Cherry Bomb).

This picture does not do it justice. It looks killer in person (and hopefully will when a pro photographer captures it).

With such success, we were hoping Pistol would be just as easy. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. We went to David’s Bridal and had a sort of irritating attendant, so she didn’t try much on. What she tried on looked good, but not amazing.

Meh

We also went to a locally owned bridal shop, but all their samples were way too big and we were not digging anything. We finally went to the mall to see if anything jumped out, but orange is a tough color to find at the mall. (Well, we did find this dress that I got Pistol to try on for a laugh. We got quite a few laughs when she accidentally got locked out of her dressing room and had to wear it for fifteen minutes while we found someone to unlock it!)

So we ended the day with no dress for Pistol, since we were all pretty sick of looking by that point. We still had plenty of time and figured we’d give it another shot another day.

Did you have a tough time dressing any of your girls?

All images personal unless otherwise noted

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.

You might remember that I posted last week about  my difficulties in finding the perfect pair of shoes for the wedding. I mentioned that I the Stuart Weitzman Turalu was at the top of the list since the first pair I loved were discontinued.

The Turalus via Zappos (currently on sale)

What I didn’t tell you was how obsessed I became with finding these shoes.

I have Googled these shoes every day for the last three months waiting and waiting and waiting for them to go on sale. They never went on sale. Until the day my shoe post went up. Fate? Special Weddingbee powers? Maybe we’ll never know. Either way, it’s amazing.

As excited as I was, I was also worried that I would have the same issue with the dye being worn off from shipping, so I called customer service, voiced my concerns and was assured that this would not happen again.

They finally came in yesterday (the only drawback to internet shopping, the wait) and I held my breath as I opened the box, hoping they arrived in perfect condition.

They were perfect.

Good from the front

No scuffs!

And they fit!

(Sorry for the nasty bug bites on my feet, I was attacked by bugs at BM J’s bachelorette party this weekend)

Now I just have to try them on with my dress to make sure the heel height is perfect (or close enough)! I’m so excited to get this very important item crossed off my list.

Did fate ever intervene to help you find something you loved for your wedding for a great deal? And, thanks to all you awesome bees for your special internet powers in getting my shoes on sale, I know it wouldn’t have happened without all of you!

This article was originally posted onWeddingbee.