Pretend diaminds are a girl's best friend.

Sometimes I make a big deal out of nothing. Unfortunately, my wedding jewelry turned into one of those things.

I guess the real problem is that I was very torn about what kind of bride I wanted to be. I didn’t want to be all glitz and glamour. I also didn’t want to be boring. A friend of ours who got married in New Orleans wore a beautiful purple necklace and it was a very fun and refreshing part of her wedding attire. The problem with not doing something classic is that you run the risk of looking back at your wedding photos and saying “What was I thinking!” I was nervous that I would regret my decision later... as we've discussed before, I am not very brave. I found something that I thought was a perfect balance of glamour and simplicity at Ann Taylor.

Source

Source

It seemed too soon to buy it and I wanted to wait until I had a coupon or something. Then, out of nowhere, Ann Taylor pulled it from their stores and website. 

Cue the bridal mania.

I looked everywhere to find a replacement. I looked over hundreds of pieces of jewelry on the internet and went to Bloomingdales and Nordstrom countless times… I found one (just ONE!) bracelet and one pair of earrings that I thought I liked. It turned out that Wes didn’t like them together. I know it shouldn’t matter what he thinks, but it does. So, I returned a bracelet and kept these earrings.

I really wanted a specific kind of bracelet and in my head I could imagine what I thought it should look like. I found similar things, but nothing was quite right. That would be the only time that Etsy sellers have ever failed me. So, I decided to make it myself. I bought beads from China which took a month to get here. Then, I taught myself jewelry making. But, all the effort was worth it because it came out beautiful. See?

I used 8mm and 10mm beads on Eightjewelry's shop on Etsy. I purchased the jewlery tools from Artbeads.com. I bought silver wire (half hard, 22 gage) with a coupon at Michaels. And finally, I used this tutorial from Artbead.

THEN, the original jewelry I loved came back to Ann Taylor. I was pretty aggravated about it. I had to order the jewelry because I had a 20% coupon and more importantly, I would never be able to relax if I didn’t see them in person. I got them in the mail and… they weren’t what I expected. They were much more glitzy than the website lets on. I returned them and the good news is that it made me feel that much more confident about my DIY bracelet.

I also found another pair of earrings to wear during the ceremony because I want something simpler with my veil. My veil will come off during the reception and I will change into my party earrings.

So, here it is all together.

I don’t know why, but the things you least expect to drive you crazy during the wedding planning process always end up being the “thing”. I care too much – that’s my problem. But, I guess I wouldn’t be Megan if I wasn’t like that.

If you need me to make you some jewelry, let me know! Because I have some crafty wire curling skills now. J

Crafting with wire

Speaking of being crafty with wire, look what I made!

One of the things that is often forgotten is to bring a nice hanger for you to hanger your dress on while the photographer is taking pictures.

So, these things cost $30 on etsy and I couldn’t bring myself to spend the money, so I decided to make it for $12. The wire is from amazon and I bought a 5 pack of hangers at target. I used a small drill bit on my power drill and used super glue to hold the wire in the holes.

I may have had enough hangers and wires left over to make some more as presents…

Another ceremony accessory

If you remember, I am wearing 4 inch heels. I have been wearing them from time to time around the house and I am fairly confident that I can spend at least 5 hours in them. However, I am not so sure that walking in grass is going to be very easy. Mostly, I am concerned that my heels are going to sink down into the grass and I can just imagine me falling over or losing a shoe while I trying to walk down our grassy aisle. Just as a reminder, here’s where we are getting married:

So, I decided that I should invest in some heel protectors. Have you heard them? I hadn’t until I started reading wedding blogs. There’s a few different kinds and today I ordered two different pairs to compare and contrast:

Starlettos, Picture Source

Solemates, Picture Source

I think this is going to be a good investment. I don’t know how discreet they are, but luckily my dress is long and it won’t show. I will definitely take them off when my photographer is snapping pics of my glorious 4 inch purple sexy shoes. I will let you know what I think about how “obvious” they are. If they don’t look too bad, I might suggest to our moms and the bridesmaids to get some.

For reference, I purchased them here:

Solemates, Size “small classic” in the color clear (they come in size narrow, classic small, and a wider size called classic medium), http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002CWYCQW/ref=oh_details_o00_s00_i00

Starlettos, One size fits most shoes in the color clear, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0070RUXU8/ref=oh_details_o01_s00_i01

Anyone else have a pair of heel protectors? Do you like them?

Maybe I lied about being obsessed with weather...

Usually I frequent weather.com for my weather forecast, which will only give you a forecast 10 days ahead of time because beyond that who knows. However, I just came across accuweather.com... they tell you the weather a whole month ahead of time... oh man. Now I know this is not accurate because the 22nd is so far away still, but...

From accuweather.com

Again, this probably means nothing, but if that ends up being the case then I will take it! What scares me, though, is now I have the ability to check on the weather everyday starting now. I was calm earlier this morning knowing I wouldn't know a thing until 10 days before the wedding. But now, I think I may have just become a weather obsessed bride.

Any ideas for how to distract me from hoping that the 23rd's weather doesn't shift into the 22nd?

It's June!

I thought this month would never come! So, I have officially 21.5 days left to pull this all together!

It is such a beautiful day in Piscataway, NJ today as well.  Planning an outside wedding does something crazy to your brain so that you always think of the weather and daylight in terms how it would fair for a wedding.  For instance, as I was walking into work, I thought, now this is dream weather for a wedding – whoever is getting married today is lucky!” The high is 77deg F, just a light wind to make sure you aren’t too warm, partly cloudy. Amazing. One can only hope and dream for a day like today on their wedding day.

I like to think of myself as realistic so I understand that I cannot control the weather and I definitely have a plan B in case there is a crazy thunder/lightning storm at around 6pm June 22, 2012. However, I do find myself making deals with mother nature. For instance, I’ve thought, “Mother Nature, I can live with some rain, but please please please don’t give me wind over 20 mph the day of my wedding.” Or, “Dear Mother Nature, if you promise to make sure we don’t have a heat wave where the temp is above 90deg F, then I promise not to complain about it being cloudy.” Overcast days make for even more beautiful pictures, in my opinion.

While I am being silly about the weather, I am by no means obsessed. Seriously. What happens, happens. Wes and I are getting married that day regardless, so it is going to be a lovely day. J Plus, in the case of a tornado, it should pass fairly quickly…

What I have been obsessed about is daylight. I have been tracking where the sun is in the sky and how long the shadows are for two months now to try and extrapolate what is going to be like on June 22. Assuming the sun will be out. One of the nice things is that June 22 is one of the longest days of the year so the sun doesn’t set until 9:15pm. During the ceremony, it should still be very bright but with long shadows. Slowly over cocktail hour, the shadows will get longer. We will move inside to the reception well before sunset but during dinner yu should see the first stars coming out. You should be finishing dinner right as the sun is setting when we have our first dance. Did I plan that good or did I plan that good?

So…hooray for June! And, let’s all cross our fingers for no heat wave and no crazy wind storm 22 days from now.

RINGS! Part 2

And the ring drama continues! Wes’s was actually a bit harder to find!  

Wes felt very weird about spending gobs of money on a ring. Also, he is a very active person. He is always doing something that would probably scratch up a soft metal ring. This got me thinking that maybe a harder type of metal might be better than gold. There’s a few options for people in the market for a nontraditional metal ring.

There’s tungsten, titanium, cobalt and palladium just to name a few. In particular, tungsten and titanium are significantly cheaper than white gold. If you are interested in knowing how all these metals compare I suggest these site:

http://www.e-weddingbands.com/store/contemporary-metals-comparison.html

http://www.e-weddingbands.com/store/precious-metals-comparison.html

Tungsten is much harder than gold and it is getting easier to find tungsten rings, so we gravitated towards this metal. Tungsten is hypoallergenic, doesn’t scratch, and stays polished forever. Too good to be true right? Well, yes in my opinion. Tungsten is a dark metal so it doesn’t look like white gold at all. Trust me we ordered some and they were very dark. However, they can be made lighter by plating it with some other metal and is thus called white tungsten but it is harder to find than regular tungsten. But here's the worse part… tungsten is difficult to get off in case of an emergency, as well. It is not impossible to get it off, but it takes longer. (I can hear Wes’s mom in my head right now saying “Wes you better get white gold instead of tungsten!”). Also, I felt that if we were going to consider white tungsten that we should go through a reputable company to make sure it was made out of tungsten carbide instead of lead! I was not very confident that some strange internet website selling rings for $20 would be able to confirm for me exactly what the ring was made out of.

For the record, I am team white gold! However, white gold isn’t all it is cracked up to be either. White gold is made by mixing gold with white metals like nickel or palladium and then is plated with rhodium. The rhodium wears off quickly. I have only had my engagement ring for two years and it is already yellowing. So, I have to take it in to get it replated which will cost $45. If it is plated with something else to make it white then what is the point of getting white gold anyway!?!

 I guess the only thing I recommend to people is that you do your homework and know exactly what you are buying.  

Wes tried on white tungsten carbide and white gold at the jewelers. He knew before going that he wanted a very plain band. No designs. No inlays. No fancy finishing. He decided he liked exactly 5mm, not 4mm or 6mm. He liked the ringed domed, not flat. He instantly liked this 5mm white tungsten ring the jeweler had. I was hoping we could it in white gold so in case of an emergency paramedics would be able to cut it off. However, the domed rings are more expensive because there’s more metal compared to the flat rings, so the jeweler gave us another crazy price for white gold. They didn’t have any older rings in the back like mine, so we left without a ring for him. We did some searching online and found white gold and white tungsten carbide rings on sale at Macy’s. I also had a 15% coupon so we order both of them to look at.

 Here they are:

Tungsten on right.

Tunsten on right. This is my hand - Wes's hand isn't that girlie!

They look the same in color. The only difference is that the white gold ring is a little flatter than the white tungsten. Both are comfort fit. The white tungsten was much cheaper. Again, I am team white gold.

AND he picked (drumroll)…

Tungsten. Oh well. Little does he know that his wedding present from me is going to be a vice grip for him to carry at all times in case we have to crack his ring off.

RINGS! Part 1

We have our rings! Hooray!

I spent a little bit of time thinking about what I wanted. My engagement ring is fairly simple ring with a round stone set in a very thin pave band made up of little round diamonds. Non-matching wedding rings are becoming very popular. I think it looks great and there’s something so brave about going with something nontraditional and having the confidence to carry it off. Check this one out:

Weddingbee

I definitely can’t afford to get more diamonds or bigger diamonds so I thought maybe I can get a metal other than white gold. Such as rose gold! I looooooove rose gold right now. I have this beautiful rose gold watch that I got for my birthday. I wanted to try out the look before committing to it, so I ordered a fake rose gold thin pave ring from a costume jewelry store.

I like it! But, let’s be honest… my love for rose gold might not last forever and I am not a brave person. Thus, I decided to stick with a matching band. I tried a few others things at the jewelry store just to check, but it only confirmed that I should go with a matching band.

Until they told me the price… It was double the price of my engagement ring setting. WOAH! Why you ask? More diamonds? Nope. Better diamonds? Nope. Better metal? Nope. It was more expensive than my setting because the price of gold has been sky rocketing. Sad face.

I literally almost burst into tears because I had no idea what we were going to do. Wes was so wonderful. He told me that we could get it and that we would just figure it out. While I am sure this what any girl wants to hear, I just couldn’t spend the money. The lady could see that she wasn’t going to get a sale out of me and that I was really upset. That’s when she said that they had older rings sitting around that were ordered back when the price of gold was less and that they would be cheaper. We went through them and found one that is almost exactly the same as my engagement setting. Bingo. It was half the cost of the “matching” wedding ring.

Here it is!

This ring doesn’t fit perfectly up against my engagement ring, but I can live with that.

Maybe from time to time I'll slip the rose gold ring between the two to change it up. J