Shoezilla Perfection!

The only thing I’ve stressed about is finding THE shoe to compliment the gorgeous dress her daughters made for me to wear to my wedding.

I searched high and low in my town of limited fabric and shoes.

Then we discovered Endless.com with FREE overnight shipping and a gazillion shoes… TWO DAYS before the wedding.  They arrived ONE DAY before the wedding. I wish I were kidding.  The entire 24 hours I had to wait, I worried that they would be yellow.  I don’t know why!

Aren’t they lovely and perfect?  Nearly as pretty as my dress!  I know, I KNOW!  Thank goodness they aren’t yellow!

My sister just text messaged me to wake up.  If she only knew I’ve already been up for 3 hours!  I should really get dressed now.  The “Quiet Family” will surely kill me if I’m late to my own wedding because I’m still blogging!

Tell Me Thursday and it’s MY WEDDING DAY! 

I wish you could all be there to witness this joyous occasion.  I’ll post photos later and maybe even have my oldest son send a pic via Twitter.   You can follow me @chele.

Just in the last few days, my mother discovered we are marrying on a Blue Moon.  We giggled and commented that this is a sign.  My mother says I’ll finally be getting married “once in a blue moon”.

I’ve also strengthened a friendship during the months leading up to my wedding day.  This is also the kind of friendship that is so rare that it only happens, well, once in a blue moon!

You may already know about the wedding dress that my sweet friends Annette, Kathryn and Tara made for my special day (we’ve been blogging about the experience as we go and will be completing the story soon).

I am so very grateful for my special friends and I will never be able to fully express my appreciation for them.  Today I will wear the gorgeous dress and know that they were standing with me in spirit as my maid of honor and maidens of virtue.

Annette and I start chatting on instant messenger and talking about the boob problem we would need to adjust.

There was something said about David being the person that filmed the rough draft fitting video and Kathryn and Tara become worried.

Well, obviously, because it’s BAD LUCK to see the bride in her dress before the wedding! 

I was afraid our lovely maidens of virtue would surely faint on me and then I’d be in serious trouble. And have no wedding dress.

We quickly reassured the girls that it was just the rough draft of the dress that he saw and not the final version. Everything should be fine… right?

RIGHT?!

Sure. Until we tracked the package at USPS.com and noticed this:

• Processed through Sort Facility, December 15, 2009, 8:29 pm, COPPELL, TX 75099
• Missent, December 16, 2009, 9:56 am

Missent? MISSENT?! What does that mean?!

I believe the term “Mail Order Bride” now has a new meaning for me now… it took longer for the mail man to deliver the dress than it took the girls to put it together!

I was dreaming of the rough draft dress coming and being so perfect that I wouldn’t want to return it. By the time it arrived, I was so excited that I had to calm myself before opening it. It WAS gorgeous. It was like my dream. It was going on MY body!

AND THEN… (insert a horrible screeching noise right here)

MY BOOBS SHRANK! Or the girls were kindly TOO generous. Or something. I couldn’t believe my boobs could do this to me!

I tried to take some photos to show the girls what we were dealing with. Then I was afraid my photos would find their way into a porn hall of shame. Hehe! So, we pulled out the Flip camera and made a video to show the girls that I needed a breast reduction!

Then we made another video showing how it should fit.

I had my mother pin the dress where the girls would need to take it  in and make it smaller. Then I popped it back in the mail, paid overnight shipping and crossed my fingers that they could get the changes made and finish the dress in time.

It was time to be BRIDEZILLA!

Chele: “What do you mean it was TOO dark?”
Annette: (stuttering) “I don’t understand what happened…”
Chele: “How hard is it to match a color to another?”
Annette: (sobbing) “I will try again. I will go every fabric store in Illinois tomorrow!”
Chele: “You better FIND THE COLOR tomorrow or you are FIRED!”

Nah… not really! I could never be mean to the Quiet Mom Annette!

We discussed the different colors on the video and the different textures and we mutually agreed on the lovely champagne Shantung with matching lace. It was more elegant anyway!

Annette did worry a bit and she is STILL paranoid that I don’t like it. I have no idea why. It’s not like I’ve ever acted crazy or anything… well OK, maybe I have a few months ago, but that’s not relevant now!

I had Nannie measure me so Annette and my seamstress team could be sure to purchase enough fabric.

I also heard rumors of a practice dress being made and even a camo version of the dress to be sure to keep the attention of my hunting groom! I could hardly wait to see how the project unfolded next!

• I live in a small town so selection is limited.
• I wanted to do this with my mother and she’s a night owl.
• Wal-mart is open late but was only well stocked for making quilts.

So, we make the best of it! In our great selection to choose from, we settled on a costume polyester to make color selections. We were pretty sure that if we got something close enough to make us happy that Annette could find something comparable and most likely far more superior in Chicago.

I took a camera along so that I could have Mom photograph me holding the fabric and I could see how it would look on me. Personally, I think it was the most brilliant thing I’ve done so far in this project!

Pardon the flat hair that totally went to bed as I waited hours for my mom to wake up and meet me to visit Wal-mart…

We liked the champagne (it’s so obviously cocoa, but give me a break, I was in love) color so much that we decided to buy it and ship it to Annette. This is where my eternal jinx came in to play. The fabric was a clearance item because it was damaged. The entire bolt would be needed and the entire bolt was imperfect. We settled for a strip of the fabric to ship to Annette to take shopping at a fabric store in her neck of the woods. Or city.

The next day as I was preparing to mail the fabric scrap, the neighbor sent my youngest boy home with a wedding dress he had found left behind in one of his rent houses. I now had a freebie dress. Which was really cool except…

• Kathryn & Tara were already excited about starting our project.
• I was pretty excited about the wedding dress project.
• The freebie dress was made for a really tall, skinny girl. (At last it pays to be average and frumpy!)

I loved the look of the lace on the dress the neighbor sent over and he said we could do whatever we wanted to do with it. So I popped it in the mail with my fabric scrap to give my little sewing princesses some ideas.

This is where things really start to get interesting! Annette, Kathryn and Tara go shopping to find the fabric. Read about their fabric shopping trip and see the video of the fabric comparison.

1. I announced my engagement to the the world.
2. Everything was perfect and wonderful!
3. I freaked out.
4. Then WE freaked out and put it on hold. Then we decided to “JUST DO IT” at the last minute!
5. I told my dear friend Annette and whammo… she started a dress making project for her daughters! You can hear us talk about it at our little pet project, Tell Me Thursday.

Got it? Good! Now, let’s talk about this dress that the lovely “Quiet Family” has generously bestowed upon me, shall we?

Choosing the Pattern
Yeah, I drove Annette crazy with links to all sorts of patterns. I wanted simple yet elegant. I wanted something special but something I could wear again. Then I found a lovely pattern from years ago on Etsy! The dress could be worn with a lace jacket to fancy it up and be worn with a more casual jacket later… nice! Thanks for selling it, Glamorous Vintage Lindsey!

It was perfect until I decided I didn’t like the jacket that would go with it when I wore it after the wedding. Annette found an updated version of the same style with a jacket I preferred later. We even decided that we liked the length and fullness of the dress in the second pattern better. With two patterns, we were set!

• We had a little over a month.
• I live in Texas. She lives in Illinois.
• What could go wrong?

You can read Annette’s more eloquent version and keep up with the project on her blog as well. Read her version of the Wedding Dress Pattern.

It’s like she’s a saint. Or something. I think so anyway!