Bridesmaid Dresses

Oh buddy, let me tell you, there was not a happier day in my life than the day that we found the bridesmaid dresses!

Bridesmaid dress shopping is probably one of the most unholy practices in the world. We had literally been looking online for dresses for months. Its difficult because obviously you dont want them to feel ugly or uncomfortable in their dresses and if you are like me and have girls with a wide array of heights, sizes, skin tones, hair colours etc it is really challenging to find one dress that will suit each and every one of them. I know what you are going to say, let them wear multiple different styles of dresses and yeah sure for some brides they dont mind doing that and to each their own, but for me, I have a minor obsession with weddings looking uniform.

So four months ago we set out in the city of halifax looking for the dress. We went to Always and Forever because I had been to Felicity and Winchesters before and they are crazy over priced like nothing under 250 bucks.

I made the girls try on a bunch of dresses and FINALLY we found two possible contenders by the same designer, Bill Levkoff, that were contenders. One was short, one was long. Going in, I was convinced that we would get a short dress but seeing the long dress made me realize that they screamed fall wedding. So we went with the long ones and we are going to add straps for those who want him. Here's a look at the dress:

Why I Took A Break From Blogging

I know, I know... It's been like six months since my last blog post. Why the break? There are a number of reasons why I took a break from blogging, here they are:

1. Not a whole lot has been happening. You'll find this if you take a year or longer to plan a wedding. The start of the process is busy and the end of the process is busy but the six months in between are pretty slow. There hasn't been a lot to do over the past 6 months but I will catch you up on some thing in the next post.

2. I've been busy finishing my degree and doing my last practicum block which was fantastic but a busy 5 months.

3. The stress was starting to catch up to me and to be honest I went through about a 3 month period where I seriously considered eloping. But as frustrating of a process as it can be, I want my day. So I took a break, I stopped thinking about the wedding and starting focusing on myself and my career and it was a great break. Now that there are only six months left, I dont really have the luxury of doing that anymore!

So I'm back, true Eminem style and ready to motor through these last six months.

I found a flaw with theknot.com

So my wedding website was nearing completion until I decided to to work on the rsvp page. When I clicked on it I realized that you cant edit the RSVP page and it is set up in a stupid way. There is no area for invited guests to list the number in their party. So they would either have to RSVP for each individual member of their party at which point we would have to decipher who is with who, or they would just rsvp their own name for their entire party, so we would have no sweet clue what our numbers would be.

SO I am debating making the move to mywedding.com, I will keep you posted on my progress!

You're Awfully Young To Be Getting Married...

Oh if I had a dollar for the amount of times I've heard this one. I would think it would be obvious to the average soul that I, in fact, do realize that I am a young bride; however, they still wish to inform me at every occasion they see fit. So here is my post to the haters and how to deal with the hate. Why am I getting married so young?:

1. I've been with Josh for over four years, we started living together after 6 months of being together. Obviously we are not on the stereotypical schedule of how relationships usually go. There are a number of reasons for this that I dont plan to share with you but lets just put it this way, as a couple we have had to deal with more things in those four years, then most people have to deal with in 10. I'm not saying that to be dramatic, but it plays a role in why I said yes at 22.

2. Josh is not young. People usually say "Chelsea" in a stern voice when I say this, but well its the facts folks. There is a decent size age gap between the two of us with him being 28. He is at the age where people settle down. I on the other hand, am not, but I've also never been a person looking for a fling, I've always been attracted to people who had their shit together and knew what they were going to do with their life, so perhaps that why I'm marrying someone older (granted it took him plenty of time to get said shit together lol).

3. I dont really understand this whole notion of not having lived my fun years. People always say that one: You're missing out on your fun university years. I always interpret this as them thinking that because i'm young I should essentially be whoring myself out on the weekends. Not my style, I've had plenty of fun with Josh, I got to see my first NFL game, we went on an incredible cruise and I've had great beer and cigars on tropical islands with him. But that's not even the best part about our relationship. The most fun that I have with Josh is doing the little irrelevant traditions that we have established as a couple. like going for a milkshake together every weekend or going out for dinner and listening to live music. That is what is really fun for me because I know that I get to do those things with him for the rest of my life and I'm never going to get sick of that.

4. I see being married young as an opportunity rather than something negative. I see it as more anniversaries. Who knows maybe we will be that couple in the newspaper in 60 years that actually gets to celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary with one another. Maybe its more kids that we will have the opportunity to have. Why would I wait, when I know what I have is right. I'll be done school, Josh will be a CA (fingers crossed), we will be ready to take on the next step.


So if your young, old, or in between and getting married, it doesn't matter people are going to judge you in some way whether its your age or your wedding. These people are only judging you because they resent you, if you need to resent me to feel better about yourself, i'm okay with that, I have thick skin and as seen from my above thoughts, i dont really care what people think (this seems to be a recurring theme eh?). These people can go back to their couch with a bag of chips and continue to be hateful and bitter for the rest of their lives, I'm gonna get married and start a family in the meantime!

Remember That Time...

I said I was going to watch what I eat and try and lose some weight, well guess what, I lost 15 pounds this summer and then guess what, I GAINED IT ALL BACK since  I started school. So I'm for real this time, if you catch me eating chips, onion rings, drinking pop etc., slap a bitch.

Make Bride Friends

This has proved to be very beneficial for me. In my program there are three of us in the same class all getting married within a four month time period, we are all on strict budgets, we are all have moderate to large wedding, so the thought occurred to us, why are we all buying similar items at full price. If you can learn to trust other people and not be super picky about details that most people will not remember about your big day, this next bit is an ingenious idea.

The three of us have decided to go splits on certain items ie. White Lights, Tulle, Possibly Vases etc. Through being just a little flexible we are going to be saving ourselves a ton of money. Figure out who in your life is getting married and if its not possible to do like we did, offer to buy some of their stuff off of them after the wedding so as to save money. For instance I bought 15 pew markers off of another girl in my class who got married last summer for 20 bucks. I'll probably have to put like 20 more dollars into them to make them my colours etc, however, it would have cost me a couple hundred to make them myself.

Most importantly scour Kijiji for wedding items. They usually have tons of brides reselling their decorations on there. My entire wedding will be from Kijiji and the dollar store essentially and I'm not ashamed to admit it because it is still going to be stunning.

What I Learned From The Jack and Jill

It has been over a week since the Jack and Jill happened and it was a great time. Apart from getting to spend time with friends and family, making some money, getting a little on the rowdy drunk side and dancing up a storm, we learned some valuable lessons that we will take with us into the wedding week.

The first is that there will be a lot of little costs here and there that you wont think about that will add up quickly. For instance, meals, liquor, float money, decorations that you forgot ex. extension chords, white lights etc. We ended up spending a lot of money that weekend that we hadn't banked on.

As a couple you need to let people figure their own life out. I went into overprotective mode for this event for some reason and decided to essentially book all of the hotel rooms, I organized all of the drives even though other people had offered to do it. I think I did it this time because it wasn't the wedding so I wanted to make things as easy on everyone else as humanly possible, but I definitely wont be taking that on for the wedding!

More hands make less work? True but it also can cause more stress. There were about 20 people there during decorating time and while I appreciated everyone taking the time to come help it was about 10 people too many. 20 people means 20 different opinions, it means 20 people looking at you for a task to do. It was just too overwhelming for that day. With that said, the more men the merrier! Morris was probably my best help because he just stood beside me with a roll of tape the whole time. That's the great thing about men and weddings; they are just so overwhelmed by the idea of it, that they need a ton of direction and if they dont get direction they will continue to do their original job for the entire time. Women on the other hand will be working on a project, get bored and then find something else to do lol.

Only your opinion matters. (EVERY BRIDE MUST READ THIS) This is where you need to turn a little into bridezilla. Some people will think they know what's best for your wedding, they don't. This is going to come off bitchy but I'm not in the business of buttering people up, this isn't the sugar coated guide to planning a wedding, I want it to be real; if an opinion on something wasn't asked for, chances are I didn't want to hear it. That doesn't mean I was walking around like a dictator, I asked for a lot of opinions that day and was happy to hear them when I asked. Giving opinions that countered mine when not asked for, made me frustrated, because it made me second guess something I decided on. If I decided on something, it's because it was what I wanted, not what someone else might have done. I'm lucky because 99% of the time I genuinely dont give two shits about what other people think about my wedding and that's because I am not a pushover. The truth of the matter is I have more event planning experience than anyone else invited to my wedding (except maybe Craig and I am always open to his opinion) and I'm not ashamed to say that i'm a FANTASTIC event planner. But there are a lot of pushover people like that out there especially when it comes to friends and family. If you are grown up enough to be getting married then you should be ready to put your big girl pants on and learn to say no to people.


On a higher note, I had a ton of fun at my Jack and Jill and from what I remember, most people seemed to have a great time. Here are some photos from the event: