What to wear? [it's a miracle]

For the past few months, as I've stared at my increasingly unruly students, listening to them scream at each other (and sometimes at me) and make a lot of noise, I've wished for summer and occasionally given in to daydreams about sitting on the sand, sipping some colorful cocktail while listening to the waves.

And hopefully I'm not too far off in my fantasy -- our honeymoon destination is Kauai, Hawaii! We can't wait. At this point, with wedding anxiety looming and the general stress of the last weeks of the school year, I can only think of the honeymoon in abstract terms. But I did think enough to order a new swimsuit!

Six years ago, I splurged on a swimsuit that has served me incredibly well. The black, wrap style V-neck Miraclesuit I purchased has been an incredible workhorse; it fits great and supports me in all the right places. But it's just now starting to fall apart, so I splurged again (hey, once every 6 years isn't too bad!) and purchased another. I got this little beauty from Lane Bryant:

It's called the "Garden of Delight" Oceanus Miraclesuit. I liked the idea of a neutral-ish, black floral suit. It fits great!  However, the actual pattern is completely different, and looks like this one from Cyberswim. Hmm. Good thing I like fluorescent pink.

I also bought this adorable cover-up to throw on. It isn't nearly as A-line as it looks in the picture, but it's still cute.  Plus, that little spot of pink matches perfectly with my surprise-pink patterned suit.

from (Lane Bryant)

If you're getting married this summer and you want to take advantage of the upcoming Memorial Day swimsuit sales, I thought I'd pass along a few other links to plus-size swimwear that I found. Besides, I am in the market for a second suit -- that deep V of my new suit is honeymoon perfect, but too revealing to wear at our day-after swim party.

If you want a Miraclesuit, Nordstrom has about two this season. Lane Bryant has a slightly better selection, but the best I found is at Cyberswim.

If you happen to be in the 24-26 size range, Land's End has a great selection of suits. Also the site Swimsuits For All looks good (up to 32W). But the most honeymoon-ready selection appears to be at AlwaysForMe.com. I personally prefer well-built, super supportive swimwear, but I can't resist all those cute, colorful, sexy suits in sizes up to 26.

This seems like the most choice I've had in swimsuits in a while! I can't wait to jump into the water!

If you're a plus size, where did you find your honeymoon outfits?

Love, American Style

Part of the reason I've been a little absent from the 'Bee is because this past week, I flew out of state to visit my grandmother. She is wonderfully recovered (although she has no recollection of her time in the hospital) and excited to come to the wedding! It was so nice to see her.

While I was there I was able to spend some time with my mom. I mentioned to her that I wanted to display some family pictures at the wedding, and we ended up going through some photo albums.

As a little girl, I considered it a magical thing to look through my mother's old albums. Mostly I liked seeing what she was like before I was born; it was always fascinating to me that she was a person, not just my mom. I felt like it made me know her better.

The wedding album was special because I didn't get to see it very often. She looked so beautiful and my dad looked so happy. I love the sense of history and seeing my family members all dressed up in their finest.  One of my favorites is this one of my grandfather helping Mom with her beautiful dress (purchased from JC Penney):

My mother's was one of the most formal weddings we've had in our family, and she was very involved in every detail. I think she planned it in four or five months. She was engaged longer than that, but she told my father he would have to wait until she finished her exams for college graduation. So, they got engaged in January of 197X (Mom doesn't want me to reveal the year!) and were married in September.

My mother vividly remembers all the details she spent so much time on. But here is the coolest -- she and her aunt (in green) made the bridesmaids dresses! They match her wedding gown a little bit. Check them out!

They are also showcasing the very latest in early 1970s hairstyles. I especially love the updos worn by my two aunts.

I hadn't seen this album since before I was planning a wedding, but now that I see it again I think the cake is fascinating. Mom says it was a "fountain cake." There was a fountain -- inside the cake! Apparently I really haven't been paying attention to cakes -- they still have these. Are any of you having one?

I know my fascination with this is not warranted -- I mean can you imagine our kids in 30 years? "Mom, why did all your cakes look like boxes stacked on top of each other?" Anyway, here it is:

They had a band, too, and Mom forgot to include them in the meal list for the caterers. She got a surprise bill after the wedding! Here's my parents' first dance:

The happy couple departs:

Now that I am going to have my own "wedding album," the photos take on a special significance. Of course, the sense of history is magnified now that several of the people in the photos, including my father, are no longer with us.

I believe strongly in the universality of weddings, and even though there were some different expectations, some different dynamics and definitely some different styles (bouffants! ruffled shirts! fountain cakes!), there is so much that is the same. My mom and I, always so close, are now sharing a similar experience, which is what makes the wedding albums so interesting to look at again.

If you have grown up seeing your parents' or a previous generation's wedding, how has it affected your wedding planning? Are there any things you'd like to repeat? Things you vow not to do?

Hmm. It seems I now have an incredible craving for cake.

Champagne Wish [Sparkle & Swish]

Like most brides, I started looking at dress pictures as soon as I got engaged. I had no idea what our wedding would be like, but whenever I saw a dress I couldn't stop thinking about, I figured it meant that there was something about it that spoke to me, and I saved it.

Originally, I'd denied the excitement these dresses held for me, but after I got that self-image stuff out of the way, I decided to look at them again and see if any of them had jumped into my subconscious.

Alvina Valenta, 9914 What a romantic dress. Look at that color! And the lace! And the box pleats!

Amsale, "Ella" - The natural waist, tiny pleats, and lace bodice make this dress look so sweet.

Melissa Sweet, "Saffron" - I love the sexy sparkly-ness. Also, the veil.

Renella di Fina, "Lauren" - I love the deconstructed elegance of this. I just want to go running in a field with it. Also, the taffeta.

I love the glow of a beautiful hand-made dupioni gown, like this one by Lea Ann Belter.

Can you find the common elements in these dresses? When I went back to my original favorite dresses, I kept thinking about what I truly wanted. I realized that I wanted a lot of fabric to swish around in, and I wanted to sparkle. So here is my "sparkle & swish" dress.

It's a natural-waist, strapless very full A-line, with an inexact hem. It will have a sparkly bodice; the perfect showcase for the beaded lace my grandmother bought me. The sweetheart neckline will have the matching trim we picked out that day. The shape is a full a-line; the waist comes to a V in the back and the skirt will have box pleats. I have not yet decided what to do with the waistline (ruched? organza? a sash?) but we'll see.

In the sketch, the dress looks a bit plain. But there's one more surprise. Here's a shot of the dress fabric underneath the beaded lace:

I hadn't expected to find this, but came across it by accident. I initially chose the ivory silk satin for my dress, but, seeing as that was never what I truly wanted, I set about looking for the perfect dupioni and saw this one in the back of Richard Brooks fabrics. I couldn't stop staring at it -- and you know what that means. Depending on your monitor, the sunlight, or the lighting in the room, this shimmery shantung can appear off-white, gold, or pink (pink!). The fabric's official name is "Champagne."

Even though I loved the Alvina Valenta, I didn't plan on wearing a non-white/ivory dress. I can't deny, though, that my admiration for that dress got me comfortable with the idea. Plus, the contrast of the "champagne" with the ivory beads shows them off beautifully.

I hear many brides say they tried on something and "just knew," but I wonder how much of that is just an affirmation of an idea or thought we might have had a long time ago? Did any of your initial ideas from your earliest days of being engaged make it into your final choice?

"Isn't she a vision of bridal beauty?"

(part one)

At this point of crisis, I could have opted out and decided that I would not attach so much symbolism to this dress. I would have continued with the sub-par design, and it would have been pretty enough.

But to do so would have been to completely ignore that the dress did have some significance to me; to have ignored the fear that comes with making an irrevocable, once-in-a-lifetime decision; and would have skipped the hard work of finding out what that significance was and I would have passed on finding out what “beautiful” really meant to me.

A wedding is a unique opportunity to expose your own preferences to the world and have them validated, recorded and remembered for the rest of your life (no pressure!). It’s safe to say that, consciously or not, I focused too much on the “validation” part of this process and neglected some of my own ideas, for fear of taking some kind of risk.

The perfectly serviceable A-line dress I designed wasn’t what I truly wanted to wear. It’s what thought I could wear.

With nothing to go on except pages and pages of magazine ads showing dresses I could not try on, and no public examples of anyone who looks like me wearing anything I’d want to wear, and fashion rules that say things like, “hide,” “elongate,” “slim,” and “disguise,” and external definitions of beauty (which may say anything from “you should wear an A-line” to “you’d be prettier if you were [fill in the blank]” to “women like you don’t get married”), I’d designed myself into a corner, and almost ended up stuck there.

I believe that a bride is at her most beautiful when she is at peace with herself and happy. Everything else will fall into place. I got the most peace from finding the courage to throw out all the “fashion rules” and quit worrying about what anyone (except me) thought of the dress. Ironically, it’s only then that I felt free enough to come up with something uniquely “me” and more beautiful.

From there, the process was easy. I think, however, that it's important to note that those "fashion rules" and external definitions, which are inescapable no matter how confident you are, were absolutely a factor in why I had trouble choosing a dress. The fact that I could not try on dresses and simply "find one" was also an enormous frustration. So while I ultimately did find my way to bridal-beauty happiness, it was a path considerably more fraught than it would have been had I been closer to a "mainstream" bride.

I know I'm not the only one who went through this. I've seen it many times on the boards as well, someone will say, "I'm getting the dress I love, no matter what anyone thinks, and that's final!" And invariably, they look beautiful and happiest in the dress that truly resonates with them.

How did you arrive at your vision of bridal beauty? Did you find your vision from an external cue, like advice from a friend or a magazine picture, or from some other place with yourself? Are you wearing something likely to elicit strong reactions from friends or family? How much do you care about what they think, anyway? And how fair is it that a bride's choices are routinely held up for scrutiny by others?

*The title is a quote from a wedding movie. Can you name it?

Finding my way through the dress panic

Everything was going fine with the progress of my wedding dress. I drew up a design (based loosely on the Alfred Angelo 830 that I tried on), and when it came time for the first muslin fitting, I realized that I hated the dress. Panic ensued.

Well, it wasn't really that bad. Well, maybe.

Every day on message boards, bridal resale outfits, wedding shows, etc., we see brides who simply cannot choose a dress. Some even purchase two or three. On television, a bride’s indecision is frequently edited to make her a spectacle to the audience, set up as another example of a “bridezilla” or to create some other ratings-friendly bridal drama. Sure, some of these brides are just indecisive, but I suspect that for some, the dress confusion is a symptom of some deeper, soul-stirring internal crisis, as it was for me.

When I imagined my wedding day, for a long time it was a blank spot in my mind. I could see getting married, I could see my fiancé at the altar, and even the happy faces of our guests surrounding us. But when I imagined looking in the mirror at myself, there was a big blank hole and nothing could fill it.

I also realized that I hadn't thought at all about what this dress would mean to me. There is a lot of discussion and critique on the symbolism of the wedding dress, but I hadn't yet found an answer that applied to me.

I never really saw myself as the "Cinderella princess" type of bride. A “princess” can absolutely be a symbol of something else (purity, femininity, etc.) but I think many of us associate a “princess” with (if not an actual, royal princess) a character, or something that isn’t real.

Putting myself in character (a character created for little girls, natch) on my wedding day seems like an excellent way to disassociate myself fully from the entirely non-fantasy, emotionally fraught, and decidedly grown-up experience of getting married. Surely I'm not the only one who feels this way? I wonder if many of the more sophisticated wedding dresses we’ve seen in the past few years have been direct responses to this narrative.

Some of these dresses are very “sexy.” I knew I did not want to look deliberately sexy on my wedding day. I believe sexiness comes from within, and as a large-busted person, I wanted at least one day where I looked beautiful but did not have any parts on prominent display. I did not see my wedding as a day to assert my womanhood in that particular way, although it should go without saying that I have nothing against those who feel differently about it than I do.

I have always liked the idea of the "timeless" looking, classic bride, since I'm not really into trendy things. But even knowing this wasn't enough to help me choose a dress.

The only idea that's ever truly resonated with me is the one that says that on my wedding day, I should be myself at my most beautiful. A bride's beauty has been used for hundreds of years as a metaphor or symbol of beauty at its most exuberant, joyful, and hopeful.

But here was my problem, and, for me, the only way out of this panic. Sure, I could have driven all over Texas in hopes of trying on a few more dresses. But it wouldn't have worked. That blank hole in my mind needed to be filled by my own definition of bridal beauty, and I had none.

So here I was, having a dress crisis, with a week left to finish the muslin before starting the dress. A week! How would I possibly pull this off? We'll see... part two will be up tomorrow.

Bridal Shower in the Pink [Memory Lane]

I'm having a bridal shower at work on Monday, and I was thinking about the last bridal shower I went to, which was for my dear friend who is now my maid of honor! (This is the friend who came to the impromptu bridal shopping trip a while back). I was her maid of honor back in 2007.

Oh, how young we looked just three years ago!

Back then, I was single and lived in a little apartment with a cat and a teacher's salary (and maybe some maid-of-honor expenses?). But I still wanted to do right by my friend. So, here is the bridal shower I hosted for 8 people, for $100. I am very proud. :)

MOH's wedding color was pink, so we went with this for the theme. I had seen an old (2003) Martha Stewart Weddings magazine showing a beautiful pink bridal shower. Though ours wouldn't be nearly as swanky as that one, we thought it would be fun to keep the theme going if we could. We sent out a little pink invite via evite.com, asked guests to wear pink if they wanted, and even came up with some pink foods and drinks for the party.

One way I saved money was to cook nearly everything myself. Here's my kitchen, the morning of the shower:

I also ran to a party store to see what I could dig up. For about $30, I found a plain tablecloth on sale, some pink bridal paper plates and napkins (on sale, they were discontinued), some pink plastic flatware, and a cute little plastic pitcher. I know some consider balloons to be cheesy, but we needed them -- my apartment was hard to find, so I went out front and tied them to the car. I used the extras as decor.

For pink foods, we got some little pink candies, pink lemonade, and I made little salmon sandwiches:

We also had a delicious Whole Foods white and pink cake, but when we went to set it up, people gathered around and ate it so quickly that I never got any pictures of it. Still, the cake was so good that MOH and I have a tradition now of celebrating events with that same cake. We used her cake stand, which she reused a month later for her wedding (you can see it in the background of that shot up there).

A big hit was this game, Bridal Bingo. I saw it online and decided to make it myself. I made it in Microsoft Word and printed it on cardstock. For prizes, I bought a couple of little raspberry-chocolate bars -- the wrappers are pink!

And here are a bunch of pink ladies.

We do really love pink -- in addition to the other things we have in common, we met when we had a class together in graduate school, and both pulled out our pink phones at the same time. We decided to commemorate this. Can you name that show on TV in the background?

My cat wanted to wish her a happy wedding day, too.

Now that I'm planning my own wedding, I can't imagine planning someone's bridal shower at the same time... but I hear that some of you have to do it! Are any of you planning themed showers?