My Wedding - Planning Part 2

Welcome back to My Wedding Series :)
If you are new here, you may want to check out The Engagement

and Planning Part 1 before you keep reading.

  

FYI: I don't have any photos to add to this post :(
All Most of our photos are still on an old computer that I don't have access to right now.
It of course has everything from venues we visited, to dress shopping, to bridal showers.
So for now you are getting all words :(
Hopefully someday when I regain access I will add those photos to these posts just to have the memories and words all in one place.

Enough excuses explanations...on with the story!

Attire

I had mentioned in my Planning Part 1 post that I knew since I was a little girl

how I wanted my dress to look.

I used to draw my dress all the time,

add colors to it etc,

but the style and look of the dress always remained the same.

I thought for sure I would have to have my dress made for me.

To my surprise the exact dress I designed all those years ago

was being sold at David's Bridal!

And it was super cheap!

I did try on a handful of dresses,

but I knew what one I wanted from the start!

It is funny how we second guess ourselves instead just going with our gut.

I also knew exactly what style and color of dress I wanted my bridesmaids to wear as well :)
Black, strapless, simple.
And that is exactly what looked best on everyone!
A few of them even wore the dress again to other events...very versatile :)

Back before it was "the thing to do", I sent all of my bridesmaids personalized
invites to be in the wedding party.
I then hosted a bridesmaid luncheon for the girls to get to know each other a bit
better and to go dress shopping.
It was a really fun day filled with pasta (Olive Garden),
dresses, and homemade cupcakes by yours truly :)

The guys tuxes were super easy as well...all black!
From the top of their heads to the bottom of their feet,
they were covered in black.
The only difference between the guys and Mic was that he wore a white vest.


Decor

I am not a huge flower person, so they were very limited for the wedding.
I carried a bouquet of red roses with black ribbon,
my MOH carried an orange bouquet,
while the rest of our wedding party had alternating red and orange boutonnieres
and mixed bouquets.

For everything else we had leaves!
If you couldn't tell from my blog design (thanks again Erin),
I LOVE leaves, trees and pretty much anything Fall related!
We had leaves on our cake, dangling down the aisle in the church,
and attached to branches for the centerpieces on the tables at the reception :)


Photography

This is such a sore subject with me :(

Photography has grown so much since our wedding 7 years ago!

There are a million people that do it now!

Back then the hard bound books, where the pictures are the pages were all the rage.

To this day, I still love the idea of the book :)

The great thing was that you were just starting to get discs with all your images on them

so you could print however many pictures your little heart desired :)

I originally went with a bigger name (in the area) photographer because I loved

their work, and they offered the book I mentioned above.

We put down our deposit and things were set.

We went in for our "free" engagement session and that is where things took

a turn for the worse :(

When the session was over we were given options to purchase our engagements photos.

I was told the session and photos were included in our package price,

but only the session actually was.

Then at the same time they started going over the photo options for our wedding day.

Come to find out we were going to be shelling out a lot of money and the actual book itself

wasn't included in that cost!

Our contract said it did, but failed to mention that it wasn't the book they advertise.

After a lot of sleepless nights for me,

I found another photographer for our wedding day.

We unfortunately lost our deposit at the first place, but it was best to cut ties with them.

In the end it would have cost over $5000 (which was not what our contract said)!

The new photographer and his assistant "seemed" great!
The reviews looked good on him, and I liked the style of his work.

He offered the same book, but this time no additional cost!

A beautiful leather bound book with our photos as the pages :) I was in heaven!

We also got the discs with rights to all of our images to print when ever we wanted!

While it still wasn't super cheap, it wasn't $5000 either.

We communicated back and forth with each other a few times before the big day

just to review what photos we wanted to have taken, locations, etc.

You may or may not be able to tell from the photos you will see in the upcoming posts,

but he was very disorganized!

The entire time he kept asking me what photos I wanted to have before the ceremony and after...this was while he was taking our pictures!
Like I don't have a million other things running through my mind on my wedding day,
I now had to figure out what shots I wanted taken right then and there!

What happened to the list you made me complete? UGH!

He didn't bring his actual assistant either!

It was some guy who doesn't even photograph weddings!

And all those times that he was nice to us were gone!

He was very rude to all of the wedding party,

and especially our 3 year old flower girl!
He got upset because she wouldn't pay attention to what was going on.
Hello, she is 3 years old!

I felt horrible!

I couldn't believe this was the same guy that we had met with prior to our big day.

Our photos turned out alright, but nothing special.

He didn't really do any retouching, and I had to keep sending emails back and forth with him
because he wasn't completing our book they way he was supposed to.
Some of the pages with supposed to have a photo over top of another and such,
collages, etc.

Super bummed with the whole experience honestly.

As you can tell, super sore subject with me still.

Thankfully, he is no longer in business so no other couple has to deal with him.


We did have our wedding videotaped through another company and they were awesome!
It felt like they were part of our friend group!
One of the guys even danced with my cousin because she just thought he was SO cute :)
Just wish they would have started do photography then too!

Check back next week for the next installment of my Wedding Series,

My Wedding - The Ceremony :)

I promise it won't be a sad story!