Crate & Barrel Registering Party

Posted on March 11, 2013 by lysse48

Me with our everyday dishes

Our final registering experience we decided to go out with a bang. Before getting engaged Phil and I had never been to a Crate and Barrel. While doing our “research” on places to register we checked out Crate and Barrel in Beachwood. We absolutely loved it, especially Phil he was like a kid in a candy store. Phil and I love to cook so Crate and Barrel was like walking into cooking heaven, with the each end-cap devoted to different kind of cuisine, kitchen gadgets for everything you ever needed, and dishes that matched our traditional modern style. Phil and I instantly decided that we were going to register there and we were excited that we picked our everyday dishes, glassware, and everything else we really loved (which was a lot)

Phil chowing down on some free breakfast

We signed up for Crate and Barrel Wedding Parties, which is an event that the store hosts where open the store just for engaged couples, serve you drinks and food, and demonstrate certain products. One of Phil’s co-workers went to one of these parties and highly recommended it so we thought why not? We RSVP’d to a Sunday morning event and showed up to the store bright and early. Now let’s note that Phil and I are not morning people; we both love to sleep-in, so getting up early was a challenge for . When we got there we took advantage of the “free” breakfast which included pastries, fruit kabobs, coffee, juices, yogurt, and mini muffins. Since it was our 3rd time registering Phil and I were pros. We started checking things off our list while the other couples were deciding between mixing bowls. Just like Macy’s, Crate and Barrel has an app that you can use as a scanner to add items to your registry. The Crate and Barrel app did not work as well as the Macy’s app, it actually kind of sucked. If we would have done it again we would have used a normal scanner instead of my iPhone.

As we were registering I was kind of paying attention to the other couples to what they were registering for and how they were registering. I figured out that all couples are the same. 1 person would be the person that was really into registering for things and would want to register for everything and the other person would argue and not want to register for the said item. When it comes to Phil and I, I am the person that wants to register for everything and Phil would be the person that would argue about many of items I was registering for. For example:

Alysse: Let’s register for these seafood utensils, it would be really nice to have them when we cook lobster and/or crab legs. Yummm, I love crab legs.

Phil: We don’t need that.

Alysse: It’s not that expensive and it would be fun to have them.

Phil: Um, no.

Alysse: Okkkkkaaay. (Then she registers for the seafood utensils 10 minutes later).

After 2 1/2 hours of registering Phil had enough of it. The free breakfast wasn’t enough for him and he was hungry, tired, and cranky. I couldn’t even get the guy to look at beer glasses he was so cranky. So I finished registering online. So check out our Crate & Barrel Registry, some of our favorite stuff is on it: http://www.crateandbarrel.com/Gift-Registry/Alysse-Shaheen-and-Phil-Giallourakis/r5009585

This Blog Stole Our Wedding!?!

Posted on March 6, 2013 by lysse48

This fake couple stole our wedding…good thing Phil and I are way better looking than this two peeps. Source

When you get engaged and you’re a girl you tend to go a lot of wedding blogs to get ideas for your wedding. There are a ton of really good ones like Style Me Pretty, 100 Layer Cake, Green Wedding Shoes, and Ruffled. Back in November I picked my colors and my theme of my wedding. I swear I didn’t copy them from any of those blogs. I chose the colors below and my theme was going to be 1920s/Art Deco. My vision was that Nucky Thompson (from “Boardwalk Empire”) and Jay Gatsby (from “The Great Gatsby”) were throwing a movie premiere party for our wedding in the 1920s. I love everything that has to do with old Hollywood glam and I love the decor and the style of the 1920s, so it was the perfect combination.

So during my lunch break at work I browsed my favorite wedding blogs including Ruffled and came across this blog post: http://ruffledblog.com/mint-and-gold-wedding-inspiration/ I was in shock. This photo shoot was my theme, my colors, and everything! I didn’t know if I should have been pissed or flattered. This blog definitely stole our wedding because it was posted in January and I came up with my theme in November. It was also very weird that my favorite dessert, salted caramel cake, was a featured dessert in the photo shoot. But, after thinking about it for a couple of hours, I was grateful to Ruffled for “stealing” my wedding theme and colors because now I have actually pictures to show our vendors what we want for flowers, linens, and decor, etc. So, brides out there let me know if you need a wedding theme and/or colors because apparently I’m a “trendsetter.”

See the Salted Caramel Pops! They are onto me!

Our Valentine’s Day

Posted on March 5, 2013 by lysse48

Before Dinner Shot

Phil and I planned a pretty low key Valentine’s Day…just the way we like it. We went out to dinner to celebrate our love at Fahrenheit and it was awesome. It was the first time either of us had been there and we would both highly recommend going there. For an appetizer we had the Cleveland Nachos which is basically fancy potato chips with crack put on top It was huge but Phil and I had no problem finishing the whole thing. Then we both had house salads, which was refreshing. For our entrees I had the lobster mac and cheese and Phil had the Kobe beef short ribs. The lobster mac and cheese is just as good or even better than it sounds. It was creamy, flavorful, and just plain good. Phil says that his Kobe beef was and I quote “outstanding.” Phil loves anything that combines meat with anything Asian so when he found out the short ribs was paired with lo-mien noodles he was instantly sold.

Our gifts to each other…Yes that is Manti Teo on Phil’s card I made for him.

So after dinner we opened a bottle of wine and watched True Grit on Netflix (please note we fell asleep 3/4 into the movie). Yes very romantic I know, don’t be jealous of our lifestyle. We also enjoyed/ate our presents to each other. Usually Phil and I get fancy gifts for each on Valentine’s Day, but this we decided to stay “humble” and just get each other our favorite Valentine’s Day candy. Mine is Fun Dip and Phil’s is Blow Pops. Fun Dip is the best when you get a three flavor pack with 2 candy sticks and you can mix the colors; but now that I’m an adult the Valentine’s Card Pouches are very satisfying. Phil’s favorite Blow Pop is Sour Green Apple. I’m guessing 100% on this, but I think the reason why Blow Pops are Phil’s favorite candy solely because of this 90s commercial below.

Registering in the Night- Macy’s

Posted on February 28, 2013 by lysse48

Phil loves our luggage we picked out…he can’t wait to go to the beach with them

Phil and I wanted to register at Macy’s because we needed somewhere to register for nice bedding, towels, luggage, and fancy things. I found out that Macy’s has an app that you can use as a scanner to add things to your registry. So after work Phil and I went to out to dinner and then registered with my iPhone. After we registered at Bed, Bath, and Beyond I had made a list for Macy’s and Crate & Barrel of certain items that BB&B didn’t have or things that we still needed. Turns out most of the things on our list weren’t at the Great Northern store where we went. But we still were able to test out the softness of towels, sheets, and pillows. We were really impressed in how well the Macy’s app worked. Registering at Macy’s only took an hour and half, which was a piece of cake compared to Bed, Bath, & Beyond. Check out all the fun stuff we registered for at Macy’s here: Phil and Alysse’s Macy’s Registry

The best way to test towels is to do the Yenta

This is what happens when Phil has a camera in his hands at Macy’s

Say Yes to the Dress: Part 3- Found It!

Posted on February 28, 2013 by lysse48

This is how I wanted to feel in my wedding dress

After my 1st trip wedding dress shopping I needed a new game plan. So, I did some research on some bridal shops in northeast Ohio that didn’t have the same wedding dress designers as Catan’s. I scheduled a bridal appointment at Henri’s Could Nine, in Minerva. I had gotten some of my homecoming and prom dresses from Henri’s back in high school so I thought it wouldn’t hurt taking a look there. This trip I took my mom and my Yiayia, aka grandmother, Clara. My Yiayia is sometimes a good luck charm when it comes to shopping, I found some of my best swimsuits and other various clothing items while shopping with her. I found two dresses I liked while trying on dresses at Henri’s. One was called “Gatsby” which goes with my wedding theme and another lacy chic number. But, I didn’t feel like either of them were just the perfect dress. They just didn’t wow me. So we decided to go the bridal shop closet to my parent’s house, Abott’s Bridal in Canton. I had the best salesperson Sarah help me out. She was the nicest and most helpful salesperson I encountered while shopping for wedding dresses. If you go to Abott’s ask for her. I tried on about 20 dresses there and found this beautiful Sophia Tolli dress that I felt really pretty in. But I left the store empty handed.

Me in one of 5,000 rejected wedding dresses

Me in the Sophia Tolli

A week or two later I asked my cousin and MOH Sarah to come shopping with me at some of the east side of Cleveland bridal shops and to browse bridesmaids’ dresses. First we went to Matina’s in Beachwood. That was a huge strike out. I tried on 1 dress that I didn’t even like. Next stop was Demetrios in Legacy Village. Sarah and I picked out a lot of dresses to try on at Demetrios. I think Sarah was picking out dresses for me to try on so she can just dress me up just like she did when we were little. I told her that I didn’t want a really poofy cupcake dress but she still made me try one just to see what I look liked. But Sarah was super helpful by telling me the positives and negatives to each dress I tried on and gave me a new perspective. I liked some of the dresses at Demetrios but I didn’t love any of them. I was frustrated and tried and was thinking that I wasn’t going to find a dress or I was going to pick the Sophia Tolli. But Sarah and I decided to go check out bridesmaid dresses at Nordstrom. I picked out 1 dress to try on and it was THE ONE. I felt gorgeous in it so after a lap around the mall thinking about the dress I went back and bought it. I had a wedding dress 🙂

Workin’ On Our Fitness

Posted on February 26, 2013 by lysse48

Phil displaying our love for food

Phil and I LOVE to eat. We met because we were both hungry, c’mon. During Phil and I’s courting period we ate a lot of delicious unhealthy food. When I lived in Columbus, I lived in GermanVillage and was in walking distance from some of the country’s best food and we took advantage of it completely. Eating Katzinger’s sandwiches with sides of potato salad, Salty Caramel and Brambleberry Crisp ice cream Jeni’s Ice Cream, Pizzas from Harvest Pizzeria, and Pad Thai from Happy Dragon. That was just just the food in walking distance. This doesn’t include the food we ate that wasn’t in walking distance Dirty Frank’s Hot Dogs, Marcella’s pasta and cheese platters, Edamame Sushi, Quesadillas from La Fotaga, and anything we can get our hands in the North Market. Dating Phil combined with my stress eating my way through law school I gained a couple of lbs. Phil also packed on some pounds from eating crazy large portions.

I love sweets

So when 2013 came around Phil and I decided, aka I decided and then I convinced Phil, that we should go on a diet. I’ve been plenty of diets before. I was actually really good at dieting. I lost around 25 lbs in high school and kept it off all throughout college. But Phil has never been on a diet. We(I) chose to go on the 17-Day Diet, a newer diet that is low-carb that has 4, 17 day phases. I was on this diet before my cousin Sarah’s wedding and it really worked. The hardest part for Phil was cutting out his favorite food pasta. Since Phil was a beginner dieter, he was a big pain to be on diet with and Phil knows this. When I told him that I couldn’t eat certain things he would complain like a fat kid who was told that he couldn’t get a happy meal at McDonald’s (my metaphor was intended). By the 2nd phase Phil got used to not eating certain foods and was much more pleasant to on a diet with. Even with all of Phil’s whining he still has lost more weight than me (totally not fair). He has lost 20 lbs and hasn’t been his current weight since high school. I have only lost 12 pounds and still have a couple more to go to get bride ready. We will keep you posted on our next phase of getting into shape.

Go Big or Go Home: Bed, Bath, & Beyond

Posted on February 8, 2013 by lysse48

Phil & I registering…the picture is 100% candid 😉

Phil and I could not wait to register. We decided to register at Bed, Bath, and Beyond first. BB&B has everything and we thought our wedding guests would enjoy using their 20% off coupons to buy tons of presents for us. The one piece and best advice I got from my mother on registering was that always register for extra/enough stuff, most importantly place settings and serving pieces. I took her advice and we registered for a ton of stuff. I started the registering process by doing a TON of research. Phil and I picked the 3 places that we wanted to register and made a dry run at each place by checking out patterns and items that we liked. We decided on BB&B, Macy’s, and Crate and Barrel. Then I printed out the registry checklists from all three places, combined them and researched what the best products were on Amazon.com and Good Housekeeping.com and then found those products on the stores’ websites. For example, I would check out which toaster had the highest reviews on Amazon.com, which was the Cuisinart toaster and looked on BB&B’s website and if they had it I wrote it down. For the stuff that didn’t have reviews like place settings, flatware, glassware, bedding, and towels, etc. we just picked what we liked.

Me with my extreme list.

We had made an appointment to register with an assistant, Torrie at The Strip location in Canton. Torrie was super helpful because she told us where everything was, what the most popular items were, and she kept us on track. Phil was a little hesitant to register things that we already had or things that were too expensive. But after the 1st hour he was in the registering spirit and scanning a $140 trash cans and he was quoted saying, “we only get to register once.”

Phil scanning like a wild man

It took 3 1/2 hours for us to register. I could not even imagine how long it would have taken if I didn’t have my extreme prepared list. We were tired and hungry the last hour but we kept on trucking. One thing good about being tired the last hour is that I got Phil to agree on some girly stuff just because he wanted to get out of there. So check out our registry here: Phil & Alysse’s Bed, Bath, & Beyond Registry

This is our fancy place setting…it’s kate spade. Phil says I loooooooovvvee everything kate spade. Is that a bad thing?

Say Yes to the Dress: Part 2

Posted on February 8, 2013 by lysse48

One of the approx. 5,000 rejected dresses

“Oh, don’t worry about finding a wedding dress it will be soooo easy.” or one of my favorites “My wedding dress was the first dress I tried on.” or this classic line of “You will know it is your dress when you see it.” They are all lies I tell you. All lies. First, finding a wedding dress is not easy. The first dress I tried on barely fit over my thighs, so that was not my wedding dress. Lastly, you aren’t always going to get that “you know it when you see it” feeling when seeing/trying on your wedding dress.

My wedding dress search started at Catan’s Bridal in Strongsville. It is the largest bridal shop I’ve ever been so I thought why not start there…it has to have something I like, right? For this appointment I took my mom and my future mother-in-law. After looking through all of the “couture” bridal dresses of the store, I picked about 15 dresses to try on. I guess that number of dresses is higher than most people try on in one sitting. After showing pictures of my favorite Jenny Packham dresses hoping to get a response I got nothing. The lady that worked with me didn’t really pull any dresses and seemed like she was completely stumped in what kind of dresses I should try on. After trying on all of the dresses I like two of them. The first dress was $8,000, so that was out and the second dress I felt pretty in but it wasn’t a wow dress. After trying on the dresses I found in the store I asked about seeing a dress I found in the Pronovias catalog. The sales lady tried to convince me that I didn’t want that dress because it was too cheap. Smooth move lady…that was a real effective sales technique. I walked away from Catan’s feeling okay about my wedding dress search but not confident.

But when I came home and looked at the pictures of me in the wedding dresses, I balled my eyes out. I felt like I looked like I weighed 500 lbs in all of the dresses. I felt like everyone was lying to me that I looked nice in the dresses just to make me feel better. I know now that wasn’t the case, but it sure felt like that at the time. What they don’t tell you when you take pictures at the bridal shops is sometimes moms do not know how to take good pictures with camera phones. They take pictures when you are not posed, the pictures are blurry, and they take them at the least flattering angles. You gotta love moms but I should have looked at the pictures they took at the store to check to see if I looked good, so I wouldn’t have a freak out. Also another thing they don’t tell you is that the lighting in all bridal shops suck. The spotlights in the stores make odd shadows everywhere on your face and body and they make you look completely washed out. Here is an example of some of the great pictures you get in a bridal shop.

A picture of one of the rejected dresses.
Notice the blurriness, my paleness, my eyes look like black holes. But at least I’m posing in this one.

Today’s Bride Bridal Fair Madness

Posted on February 1, 2013 by lysse48

So many booths…so overwhelmed

Ever see those billboards about those bridal fairs? Or maybe you heard their radio ads? Well the biggest one of those shows is the Today’s Bride’s bridal fair. They have a fair in Akron and one in Cleveland. Angelica at Tangier’s recommended I go to the Akron bridal fair because it was much less overwhelming than the Cleveland one. So my mom, my future mother-in-law, and I headed to the John S. Knight Convention Center to get wedding ideas and maybe talk to some wedding vendors. The bridal show was fun but it was still overwhelming. There are brides of all kinds there including some unfortunate grooms fighting over a spot to check out some pink cummerbunds. It was great to get table decor ideas, cake designs, and get information for all sorts of wedding services. My favorite part of the bridal show was tasting the cakes for the sake of picking the best cake for our guests and not because I wanted to break my wedding diet 😉 My least favorite part of the bridal fair is the TONS of e-mails you get from all of the vendors at the fair before, during, and after the event. I’m still getting them today. It’s super annoying. No I do not was to preserve my wedding bouquet or hire you to photograph my wedding just because you put Ryan Gosling in your e-mail. Overall it was good time and it was great to get some bonding time in with my mom and Mrs. G. But I thought I was going to get more stuff done on my to do list but it just made my list longer. Now it’s time to go through all of the swag.

My mom, Me, and Mrs. G on the “red carpet” of the Bridal Show

Saying Yes to a Dress: Part 1- Damn you Pinterest!

Posted on January 31, 2013 by lysse48

Jenny Packham- Willow…the dream dress

I love pinterest. I was using pinterest before most people were using pinterest that is how much I love it. But, sometimes it can disappoint. For example, you find this really cool recipe for red velvet cookie dough dip and you click on it and it’s spam or you find this fun DIY project using paper towel rolls and chalkboard paint is just a link to a random tumblr page. Another thing that pinterest can do to you is fall in love with really expensive and impossible clothes to find. This happened to me when trying to research what kind of wedding dress I wanted. I fell in love with Jenny Packham dresses. She is a British designer who has made dresses for everyone from Princess Kate Middleton, Angelina Jolie, Cameron Diaz, Rhianna and Beyonce to Keira Knightley, Reese Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston to Amy Adams. Not only I loved her dress Willow (the one pictured above), I loved all of them. After doing some research I disappointingly found out there are zero bridal shops in Ohio that sell her dresses and the closest place that sell her dresses is 4 and 1/2 hours away in Michigan. I was super bummed. Though it did eased my disappointment to find out that this dress was around $7,000. There was no way I’m paying 7k for a wedding dress that I was going to wear once. But I do believe that someday I will own my very own Jenny Packham dress. Maybe Phil will buy me one of these dresses someday…wink wink, cough cough.

This is a nice option…;)

Hey Phil! This dress is on sale!?! I think I could rock this one

Phil & Alysse's Wedding Blog :p+a:

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