Shoes!!

Four months, twenty-five days, according to my forum ticker. Not long, yet still so far. I'm getting a little impatient now, even though I know that I shouldn't wish this time away. There's still a lot to do and two weeks out from the wedding I may be wishing that I put this "impatient waiting" time to better use!

I did tick one tiny little thing off my list today however; I bought my shoes. I have been eyeing them off in Williams for I reckon a couple of months now at least, and today I decided it was time to try them on. When I told the lady I liked them, she said "30% off today as well", so that instantly sold it (although I think I'd decided anyway). So I got a $70 pair of shoes for $49, which is better than I was hoping for for wedding shoes. Here's a blurry pic courtesy of my iPhone:

Please excuse the chipped nail polish. I practiced my "bridal walk" in them, on carpet too.. they don't feel too slippery but at least I'll have my Dad to hang on to if I do have a balance or skidding issue.

I've been researching shoes for my bridesmaids too. It's wayyyy too hard to find gold coloured shoes in stores, so I've been looking at the following website: shoes.com . I've found the following styles which I like, but the actual style will be my BMs' choice:

However I think my girls prefer closed-toe so I will leave the style choice up to them as I said. Additionally even though these are ladies' shoes I love them for the junior BMs:

I am extremely hesitant about buying shoes online as you don't know how well they will fit or look, and if they're comfy enough. But the prices are very reasonable; all the above styles are around the $50 mark, and so much nicer than the hideous ones I see in actual stores.

Gowns, make-up and spermatazoa

Quick post since I've got to get ready for tap class. Firstly, the bridesmaids gowns are finally sorted; they have been re-ordered all in the same style (Dessy 2804), even the junior BMs. It will be nice to have the continuity of same styles, and y'know, matching colours are always good too. Hopefully they wont need too many alterations, and I really hope these won't be too expensive either.

I had my make-up trial on Saturday and I was happy with the result. I was wearing it from around 11am through til when I got home from my cousin's wedding at 12am, and it still looked okay then, so it lasted pretty well. My hair meeting last week was brief, but we sorted out the basics and I'm to go back for a trim on Nov 29th. Plus I have been instructed to start growing out my fringe, which I am really not looking forward to!

Finally, on the fertility front, my poor man had his semen analysis last week, and no sperm were found under microscope. :( I was very sad to discover this, even though I half expected it. Now I am hanging out for our follow up appointment with our fertility specialist, as she made me feel so happy and positive about the whole process last time that I need to be inspired by her again. We have five straws of his semen from several years ago to be transferred across from his old clinic, however I'm not holding out a lot of hope for using these in IVF as freezing sperm can cause DNA fragmentation which means they are incabable of effective fertilisation. I am feeling better now though than I was after the news on Friday. Assisted conception is a sucky journey, but there are many avenues to explore before the bitter end.

Back again already...

... but a couple of wedding-y things happened today. Firstly we went to our second meeting with our celebrant, which turned into my poor man suffering through an hour and a half of me and her gas-bagging about weddings and life in general. But she is totally awesome and I can't wait for our ceremony now; it will be straightforward and simple with nothing particularly original or any extras, but I am still excited. I asked her if we could please try and keep it light rather than overly romantic, as I have a massive fear of crying during the ceremony; I really really don't want to cry cause I'll be embarrassed and self-conscious. I don't care if people expect it!

Secondly, we went to Solid Gold this afternoon as we had to go into the city, and we ordered our wedding rings. The engraving we have decided upon is both romantic and geeky; the word "Soulbound". It is geeky because when you get an item in World of Warcraft that you can't trade or sell, it is referred to as Soulbound, hehe. I am having "Soulbound ~ 14/04/12" on the inside of my ring, and my fiance will be having the date and maybe our names inside his, and the "soulbound" is going to be engraved on the outside in Elven font (Lord of the Rings). His last wedding ring had an Elven wedding verse engraved upon it, and he still likes the design but for obvious reasons doesn't want to replicate the ring exactly. He still needs to email them to finalise exactly what the engraving will look like apparently.

That's it for now. Two updates in two days, some sort of record. :) There probably won't be another one until after my hair and make-up meetings.

Whoa, seriously?

Is it October already?? Well, tomorrow I mean. I couldn't let September go by without a single blog post, so even though I don't really have anything important to say, I had to write something.

Okay, wedding stuff... I've organised a make-up trial for the same day as my cousin's wedding; I'm getting it done at 10:30-ish, so I'll get to see how well it lasts and so forth. And I've lined up a meeting in a couple of weeks with the lady who will hopefully be doing my hair. I hope she doesn't have a heart attack over how thick and annoying my hair is. But then when I've had it done in the past (four times?) it's never been a huge issue to get it looking nice. I have no idea exactly what style I want, so I really need to try and remember to do some research in the next couple of weeks. And remember to ask how far in advance I need to grow my fringe out. I might go and get it trimmed for the last time just before Christmas, then let it go... that is going to be a big challenge for me! I will have to try and remember to get it cut again the day after the wedding if possible; as we're off on honeymoon very very early on the Monday morning.

Annoying issue with the bridesmaids' dresses; three out of four turned out to be the wrong colour when I picked them up last Saturday; obviously the "lux" chiffon doesn't take the Claret coloured dye as well as the normal chiffon, or it was faulty fabric or something... They looked a weird pinkish sort of colour, not at all like the gorgeous deep red that I chose. I tried to look past it, but I was just in denial I think. For the first time something in my wedding organising didn't go right, and I don't think my brain was prepared for that eventuality, hehe. So I took them back, and they agreed with me and said they would investigate for me. I am yet to hear anything. I've got my fingers firmly crossed that somehow I can get the gowns in the colour I want without too much hassle (and more importantly without paying a cent more).

As I stated in my first ever blog post, this is also going to be a place for me to talk about our IVF journey. We had our first appointment with our chosen fertility specialist a few weeks ago, and we really like her. She gave us a lot of hope that the IVF ICSI procedure would work well in our case, and even though I don't want to get my hopes up for an easy ride, it's nice to feel positive about it all. I am in the process of having a Ovulation Tracking Assessment Cycle, which means several times this month I have to go for bloods to work out whether my hormone levels are doing all the right things, and also an ultrasound on ovulation day to ensure that I had a dominant follicle ready to go (which I did). It was very cool seeing all my female bits on the ultrasound... she had a lot of trouble locating my right ovary, but eventually got there in the end after a lot of probing! So I apparently ovulated on Tuesday, and I probably only have two more blood tests this cycle; one this coming Tuesday to ensure my body is producing enough progesterone to sustain an early pregnancy, and then another a week later. This will be a standard pregnancy test, even though we are not even trying right now due to wedding/honeymoon stuff, but even the negative test will confirm that my hormones have gone back to baseline levels again.

Then, my fiance just has to do a Sperm Analysis, which will be interesting and nerve-wracking as he hasn't had one done for several years, so we will find out whether his condition has improved, worsened, or stayed the same. I'm also a little anxious about one of the blood tests I had done the same day as our initial consultation.. it's to measure a particular hormone which will show how high or low my ovarian reserve is. The specialist gave me the impression that early menopause is actually fairly commonplace, so I hope I've still got plenty of baby-making potential left in me. Although we'll be incredibly lucky to even have one baby, ideally we'd like more! Anyway, our follow-up where we get our results is on November 10th, so I'm quite anxious for that. Now that we've got the ball rolling for TTC, we have become extremely impatient and want to get started right away. But logic insists that I definitely do not want to be up the duff for my wedding and honeymoon, so wait we must...

Tiny update...

Our dice arrived this week, and they are perfect. The colour I asked for turned out to be (in the flesh) different shades of deep red swirled together with gold. So beautiful that it's a shame they're only little plastic dice and not some kind of gorgeous ornamental glassware!

Secondly, we hired a cake maker this week from the website I've already referred to. The cake I've ordered is (copying and pasting from the invoice):

2 tier (10" and 7") chocolate and caramel mudcake, decorated with white fondant, diamond embossed pattern with edible gold cachous, dark red ribbon, dark red sugar roses, fondant covered board with ribbon trim.

The cake on her website which provided me with inspiration is below. Basically it's the same cake, only round, without butterflies, with red ribbon instead of black, and gold cachous instead of silver.

So can you picture that? I think it will be nice and simple, incorporate my colour theme without overdoing it... but most of all, be stupendously delicious, with the bottom tier chocolate and the top caramel. I might have to try and sneak a piece of both on the night!

I'm still here...

I just have nothing new to report right now! But I did pay off the balance for the bridesmaids' dresses today, so that was awesome. And my wonderful fiance renewed his membership to Jenny Craig with the wedding in mind as a weight loss goal, so that's pretty great too. It's up to me to help him stick to it, and to motivate him to exercise and so forth. Which in recent times has been a challenge for me too. I've kind of helped myself by joining the gym, but I've been so busy at work that I don't get to go as often as I'd like; my membership is off-peak, which means I can only go between 6am - 8am (impossible) or 12pm - 4pm (only possible when I finish work on the dot of 3, which hasn't happened as much lately). But I couldn't justify paying heaps more for a full membership, even with the added perks of being able to use it any time, plus the pool and classes. Maybe I'll upgrade it in the future when we're "rich", but right now I have my own little cardio routine that's fine for me: 2km on the treadmill walking on an incline, 5km on the bike with level 10 resistance, 2km on the rower, and 2km on the cross trainer.

Should keep me fit enough to maintain my current weight, if not lose any. I'd like to lose about 5kg, but I know my main priority is just to be healthy.

Anyway, I now have names and numbers for hair and make-up possibilities thanks to my ever-helpful Matron of Honour, plus the email and website for a cake possibility courtesy of a girl from primary school who I haven't even seen since the last day of Year 7. She saw me saying something about the wedding on facebook, and sent me a private message to tell me about her friends' cake business. Very nice work; the company/website is called Sweet and Simple .

I'm yet to contact any of these people, mainly because I keep forgetting, and perhaps a little because I'm concerned about it being too early. But I guess in the wedding planning field these days nothing can be booked too early (unless it's something you might change your mind on), so I guess I'd better get on it! I don't want to contact the cake lady just yet though, as my old schoolmate told me that she's going on six weeks' maternity leave as of this month, so I may just leave it for another couple of weeks before I start emailing her.

Other than that, everything is same old same old. I do have the occasional "moment" however, when I'm looking at my ring or talking about the wedding to someone, when I just think, "I can't really believe this is happening". Not in a "Squeeeeee!! I'm so excited I can't believe it!!" way, but more "This isn't actually real". It's weird, I spent so long dreaming about the time leading up to getting married, but because now I'm here, I feel like it's not real, so I rarely get properly excited. If that makes sense.

I kind of feel like I won't truly be excited until the actual day (or maybe for a week or so before). But I do know that when I walk down that red carpet and see my sweet boy at the other end, it will be one of the most amazing moments of my life. :)

What an awesome and productive day!

I am in a very good mood tonight. I had appointments today for both bridesmaids' dresses and flowers, and both were incredibly fruitful; they are now both ordered and have the deposits paid.

I'm like some sort of organised easy-going super-bride from the future.

But seriously. I can't believe how simple all this has been so far. I'm sort of living with this constant feeling of "when is this going to get harder?...." Everyone keeps going on about how stressful it is organising a wedding, but I really don't get it.

Yet. I've probably jinxed myself a million times over for writing that!
Anyway, my beautiful bridesmaids have been fitted out and their dresses have been ordered. I'm more excited about seeing them all looking amazing than I am about myself. I keep imagining I'll just look like everyday-me wearing a big pouffy white dress!

Links to the girls' gowns:
Junior bridesmaid
Junior bridesmaid and Maid of Honour - The junior bridesmaid will have straps similar to the above style
Matron of Honour

The lady from the bridal shop gave me a swatch of the colour, "Claret". Just out of interest I compared it to the colour of the centrepieces, the only other red things I have purchased for the wedding. I thought they wouldn't match as all the candle holders are a deep red-red, whereas the fabric is a burgundy-red, but they actually match pretty well. It's a highly unimportant detail that no one in their right mind would notice, but I'm pleased nonetheless.

I was able to take that swatch to the florist I had an appointment with today. Stacey from Beans and Bunches has a very quaint little "hole in the wall" kind of a shop in an arcade in Northbridge. She took us into her back room where we sat down at an adorable tiny wooden table with matching chairs, and I showed her the bridal party colour and my floral inspiration pics (in a previous post). She scribbled down all the flowers she could spot in my favourite examples and put together a list of the flowers she could include in our bouquets, and how many of each. I was my typical self and agreed with pretty much everything she suggested. And I am so excited now, they're going to be beautiful! The red roses incorporated into each bouquet will match the Claret so nicely as they are a lovely dark red. She had some there just by coincidence, and when I held the swatch up to them they were EXACTLY the same colour.

My bouquet will have: 3 x yellow roses, 4 x red roses, 3 x orange roses, 6 x orange/yellow calla lillies, 6 x red/orange freesias, 2 x orange/red carnations, 3 x orange gerberas, will be edged with camellia leaf and bound with creamy gold satin.

My Maid and Matron of Honour will have: 3 x yellow roses, 3 x red roses, 3 x orange roses, 4 x orange/yellow calla lillies, 4 x red/orange freesias, 2 x orange/red carnations, 3 x orange gerberas, edged with camellia leaf and bound with burgundy satin. The junior bridesmaids will be the same only without the carnations and gerberas.

I think the delivery of the flowers will be one of my "girly bride-y" highlights of the day. Can't wait. :)