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 🙂

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

Chillin’ At the Holiday Inn

Posted on January 30, 2013 by lysse48

Whatever happened to Chingy? He was pretty good. I liked him. But, I’m glad that people don’t wear bucket hats anymore. Anyways, as the artist formerly known as Snoop Dogg said “Been chillin’ at the Holiday Inn.” Taking the advice of Snoop Lion we chose the best hotel according to hip hop music for our wedding accommodations.

The Holiday Inn- Akron West

4073 Medina Road

Akron, Ohio 44333

330.666.4131

You can start booking your hotel reservations by calling 330.666.4131 and make sure you tell them your booking for the Shaheen-Giallourakis wedding to get the special rate of $89 per night. If you bring Chingy, Luda, or Snoop to our wedding as your guest I’m sure they are going to love the accommodations. But your going to have to bring your own Henny. That is not included in the $89 😉

Protecting the Bling

Posted on January 29, 2013 by lysse48

I have to be honest, it is kind of weird wearing an engagement ring at first. I’ve worn plenty of rings before. But none of them have been this important and this expensive. At the beginning of our engagement I was kind of paranoid about losing my ring. I previously lost the most expensive ring I ever had and my family members have a tendency to lose their wedding rings as well. It did not help my paranoia that I got my own ring size wrong and my ring was too big. The first couple of weeks I was extremely cautious when wearing it. I would walk around with my fist clenched, wash my hands with extreme caution, and not wear any lotion of any kind. But after my ring was sized, I felt much more comfortable about wearing it. In fact, I felt fabulous. Like this:

I had to get to used to wearing my ring. But I also had to get used to doing my nails regularly. One of the first things your supposed to do when you get engaged is get a manicure. I normally don’t paint my fingernails. I always ended up ruining my manicure within 10 minutes of getting my nails done, I suck at painting my right hand, and I really don’t like the way my fingernails look painted. So when Phil put a ring on it, I got myself a Groupon for a gel manicure because there was no way I was going to paint my nails myself. I wanted to try a gel manicure because it is supposed to last up to 2 weeks. A gel manicure is perfect for me because the less I had to do the better. It was great because it dries instantly, so I couldn’t mess up my manicure. Although, my manicure didn’t last 2 weeks it was more like 1 week. But it is longer than a regular manicure so I was super happy. So I decided to buy Sally Hansen Salon Gel Polish Starter Kit and it was well worth the money. You don’t have to paint your nails perfectly for it to work and it lasted longer than my gel manicure that I got at the salon (around a 1 1/2 weeks). It costs around $64, which is the cost of 2 manicures at the salon. So my ring turned me into a manicure person. Who knows I might instagram pictures of my nail art while holding an invisible hockey puck. Who am I kidding…I’ll never do that.

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

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