Tag Archives: wedding

The Dress

Blogging,

So far, my biggest wedding stress (glossing over the job loss a week after getting engaged) has been finding a dress. Sure, I can find dresses I like and even love. It’s justifying the expense and then actually affording it that has gotten my insides all twisty.

I started out on Etsy. I love the artistry and handmade items on there, so it seemed like a great place to start. There was one shop in particular that I came back to again and again, and I had a hard time narrowing down between more than a few dresses, particularly:

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And

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I ruled out the bottom one because I’m built like a teapot (short and stout), and I didn’t want to tiptoe around in stilettos trying to pretend otherwise. It’s my wedding day, and I plan on being comfortable, dangit. I also really loved the old-fashioned sense of whimsy in the first one.

But it is roughly $400, and I’m finding it really hard to swallow spending that amount of money on a dress I will wear only once and for only a few hours, especially at a time when finances are in such a scary state due to my work suddenly closing.

So after much thought (and even ordering fabric samples to see what color I liked best), I gave this dress a lingering look and then clicked away.

I went to the massive and sometimes convoluted world of EBay, looking to expand my options. And I found two I really liked:

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Untraditional, I know. But I love it, and we don’t concern ourselves too much with traditions around here.

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I also loved the look of this dress, and thought it would really glow at our nighttime ceremony. It also has an accompanying jacket, which would be nice if it’s cool. It will be fall, you know.

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Pretty, right? But even that one is almost $150. Not bad for a wedding dress, but every dollar counts for us.

Plus, we don’t want to focus so much on our ceremony so much as coming together and celebrating our life and our family. We want that to be the focus, not whether or not everything is perfect and whether we wow everyone with our formal wear, decorations, and food.

But that would be nice 😉

So with this focus in mind, I began researching how other brides have found their offbeat wedding dresses, and with some helpful tips I began the many, MANY google searches using different terms to find my dress.

And I FOUND IT.

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It was a 70% off prom dress from an online retail store. $58. Talked it over with the future Mr. of mine and we agreed we didn’t want to miss out on this deal.

It may not be my dream dress, but it’s a good dress, a great price, and one I can definitely eat, drink, and be married in.

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A Rose By Any Other Name… Wait, That’s My Name, Dammit!

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With our recent engagement, all sorts of questions have been popping up, one of which is if going to change my name.

Now, we could get into all sorts of stickiness here about feminism and identity of the self and individuality, etc. But I’m not usually that serious and generally hate debating and defending my opinions, so let’s get down to the truth about it.

It’s weird.

I’ve always thought it was weird when friends I’d grown up with suddenly had a new last name, and it usually takes me a few years to get used to it. And it’s double confusion if they’ve divorced and changed back or even remarried in a relatively short amount of time. I feel like I should slap a “Hello, my name is… ” sticker on them just so I can keep track.

Am I alone here?

So I hate the idea of changing my name. I like it. I’ve had it for thirty years. I’m associated with my family by it (usually a good thing). It’s modern times. Can’t he change his name?

Of course not. That idea was met with a scowl and a “hell no.”

He should know me better than that by now. I know he loves me like crazy and would do anything to make me happy. So I’m going to have some fun with this.

“We can always hyphenate our names. We can be the Linville-Cloyds. Or the Cloyd-Linvilles. Your pick.”

“No.”

“Come on! We can pretend we’re like Scottish clans coming together to make one ginormous clan. You’re part Scottish. We could make it work! As we walk down the aisle, we can be serenaded by bagpipes!”

“….What? No. Just no.”

“Ok, hmm. We could combine our names and come up with a new one for the both of us. How about the LiCloyds? Oh! Oh! We could even do it with our first names and have completely new identities. DaJessica LiCloyd 1, and DaJessica LiCloyd 2. You can be number 1 since you are older. Some consessions should be made.”

“OMG!”

“That’s it, isn’t it? I knew we could do this.”

“No. Go to sleep.”

“….Would it be better if we did Sr.  and Jr., to reflect the age difference between us?”

“I’m going to kill you.”

“Ok, ok. I’ll shut up….”

It’s fun to jerk his chain. 😉

But for reals, I’m gonna change my name to his. I just had to give him a hard time about it.