The Cheetah Girls: Searching for the Dress

I’ve narrowed down the choices for bridesmaid dresses to these three:

America the Beautiful

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"Butterfly in the sky, I can fly twice as high, take a look it's in a book..."

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Aqua Surprise!

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Okay, I’m obviously joking, but I do love America. And the ‘80s. And Snooki dressed as Cinderella for Halloween?

Dressing my bridesmaids—or Cheetah Girls, as I like to call them—has been more difficult than finding my dress—but I do love looking at dresses, so I’m not complaining. The 8 amazing women standing up for me have been delightful BMs and they all say they’ll wear whatever I want. But I know they all have different styles and preferences and I want them to be comfortable with the dresses they’re buying. The control freak event planner in me is not willing to totally give up control however, so I won’t let the Cheetah Girls wear whatever they want (kudos to the brides who can do that!).

My plan is to let my ladies pick their favorite style from a few options all in the same color, fabric, and length. I also want to keep the dresses under $200 ($150 if possible) and there needs to be maternity options.

There are a lot of wonderful lines of bridesmaid dresses, but as I’m finding out—when it comes to fabrics and colors I’m pretty picky. Picky like a fox! Wait—I mean Cheetah! Picky like a Cheetah.

Option 1

Aria Dress

3 above images all from Aria Dress

Love, love these styles. Bridesmaid WD40 and I visited their Pasadena store and she looked absolutely gorgeous in their styles. However I’m not really digging the fabrics. I don’t want anything shiny (it just doesn’t feel right for an outdoor desert wedding), and most of their options are shiny. Boo.

Option 2

Priscilla of Boston – Dresses in crinkle chiffon

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Gorgeous fabrics, gorgeous colors--but a limited number of styles.

Option 3

Amsale – Dresses in crinkle chiffon

3 above images all from Amsale

Love the fabric, love the designs. Don’t love the $250+ price tag.

Option 4

Alfred Angelo – Dresses in chiffon

3 above images all from Alfred Angelo

These dresses have the best prices, but even with their 55 color choices, I can’t find one that is just right. Plus these dresses take a little longer to come in so if we want these I needed to have ordered them yesterday.

Are your bridesmaids all wearing the same dress or do you have varying dress styles?

Buy Me Presents!

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I was afraid to register. It felt weird—like I was demanding presents from our wedding guests. But when I am a wedding guest I always appreciate a registry, so I finally sucked it up and we created a wedding registry last week. Well, three registries to be exact. And it was kind of fun—except for all the hard sells (“Just scan it, you can return it later!” “Make sure you register for that $10,000 couch, your wedding party might pool together!”).

Mr. Cheetah & I went to a registry event at Crate & Barrel, visited Bed, Bath, & Beyond, and set up an Amazon registry online. Crate & Barrel is a standard registry store in our circles, Bed, Bath & Beyond has a great return policy—and don’t forget those 20% off coupons! At Amazon you can pretty much register for anything you want—which is great since as an artist I’d love some more tools! Mr. Cheetah and I have lived together for a while now so we don’t need a lot of the standard registry items (we already own the coveted KitchenAid Mixer), and we’re also trying to only register for things we really want/need (hence the power tools). To be honest, I also was reluctant to register since I know we’re very open to that one gift you can’t ask for: a $10,000 couch—just kidding, I of course meant moolah. As it turns out both Mr. Cheetah and I are very excited about our registry. I just hope I don’t go all Monica from Friends on the gifts after the wedding:

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You can watch the video clip here.

Did you have a hard time registering?

Ms. Cheetah Springing Into Action!

Hello Hive! I’m so excited to bee here! It still hasn't sunk in yet. In fact this was me when I opened the e-mail from Penguin saying I’d been accepted as a Bee:

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A little bit about us Cheetahs:

We met in undergrad at UC Santa Barbara (any gauchos out there?) through our friend (now bridesmaid) Mrs. P. What started as a friendship became something more and we’ve been together over ten years—yup that’s right, over a decade. After graduation we moved to LA and we still love exploring our adopted hometown. We’ve decided to make this relationship legal and throw a big party, AKA our wedding!

Here are the Cheetahs in the early days at an ‘80s theme party:

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Here we are now:

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Why Cheetah?

1. Look at her! She’s so regal and adorable.
2. The cheetah is the fastest land animal in the word.
3. She’s fast and cute—do I need a 3^rd reason?

You may have noticed that I'm Ms. Cheetah. I'm a Ms. in real life, and since I'm keeping my name I'll remain a Ms. after the wedding, so it just makes sense that I'm a Ms. here too.

We are planning a modern & elegant semi-destination wedding in lovely Palm Springs and I look forward to sharing our wedding planning adventures with all of you!

A Sweet Battle: Cake vs. Cupcakes

Warning: You may not want to read this post if you are hungry.

I love wedding cakes. I love cupcakes. What’s a girl to do?

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I love going to weddings and seeing the big fancy cake. I don’t know about you, but I (unfortunately) do not have a lot of occasions that require multi-tiered, perfectly piped, expertly crafted cakes. So really, the wedding is a fantastic opportunity to get my own fancy-pants cake. Mr. Cheetah and I even love shows like Cake Boss and Ace of Cakes. On the other hand, Mr. Cheetah and I really love cupcakes. We love trying all the cupcakes places around LA (some faves are: Sprinkles, Frosted Cupcakery, Famous Cupcakes, SusieCakes.), and cupcakes are one of my favorite items to bake. So, a battle has begun for our wedding dessert: wedding cake vs. cupcakes.

Some cakes I love:

from Martha Stewart Weddings

Two above images from Sweet & Saucy Shop

Adorable cupcakes:

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Here’s how the battle is breaking down:

Prettiness Factor: Cake

Ease of Eating: Cupcakes (you don’t need a plate & fork!)

Taste: Tie

Price: Cupcakes

Cupcakes are inching ahead. Since our dinner and dancing are in two separate (but connected) spaces, the “Ease of Eating” factor is huge for us. Dessert will be displayed near the dance floor and it would be so easy for our guests to just grab a cupcake and return to boogying the night away. While a part of me is sad I don’t get to help design a glorious six-tiered cake, images like these make it all better:

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Weddingbee's own Mrs. Swan's cupcakes

I want to eat them all! Nomnomnomnom...

Would you prefer to eat cake or cupcakes as a wedding guest?

Dirty Dancing

The fiancé and I love going through our itunes trying to figure out the music for our wedding. It is a lot of fun and it is something you can plan at anytime. While we don’t have a song that is “our song” for our first dance, there are many songs that mean something to us, or that we both just love. The problem is that they are totally inappropriate.

The inappropriate-ness seems to fall into two categories: 1) Depressing/about a break up, and 2) Sexy sex.

Our sad choices:

Careless Whisper by George Michael*. There is something about the sound of George Michael’s voice that just says romance to me—yet all of his songs are about breaking up or sex. This song is super pretty and we could dance to it (we seem to have a hard time picking something we can slow dance to—another problem we have when choosing a song). Yet it is also totally depressing.

Drive by The Cars.

Okay, this song is awesome. But the lyrics start: “Who's gonna tell you when/It's too late/Who's gonna tell you things/Aren't so great/You can't go on/Thinking nothing's wrong.” Um, yeah… no. Somehow the fiancé still thinks this song is a viable option.

Our dirty choices:

DIVINYLS - I TOUCH MYSELF
Uploaded by noriko75. - See the latest featured music videos.

I Touch Myself by the Divinyls. Come on, admit it-- it’d be kind of hot if I sang this to my new husband. Hot, and a little creepy.

Like a Virgin, Madonna:

Okay, both of these songs would make horrible first dance songs and we know it--but aren't the videos fun and don't you want to dance to them? I guess we just like dirty songs. Sometimes we joke about making this our first dance. Don’t worry--it’s just a joke :)

I do think that we are making progress, stay tuned to learn about our more appropriate choices.

What is your first dance song? Do you mind if I steal it?

*Side story: I accidentally became a member of a secret George Michael fan club one day in 4th grade when I walked into the 2^nd floor bathroom at school, AKA the secret club’s meeting spot.

Wedding Dress Eye Candy

Like many brides-to-be, I heart Martha Stewart Weddings Magazine. The latest issue has a fantastic wedding dress spread and I just had to share some of my favorites.

Jenny Packman on the left, Kenneth Pool on the right:

Priscilla of Boston:

And my favorite, Carolina Herrera:

This dress above makes me swoon. It is the only dress I’ve seen that has made me second-guess my dress choice, if even for a second. I love it so much it hurts. Thankfully I also love my dress so much it hurts. Hurts so Good.

all photos from Martha Stewart Weddings

The Post Office is Mad at Me

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And I thought we were friends, USPS! In fact I looove mail. I love sending it, I love getting it. I even love stamps! I send postcards from every trip I go on, I send out cards for all sorts of holidays (like Halloween & Valentine’s day & more!), and a have a few friends with whom I regularly exchange letters.

But for some reason, now that I’ve finally sent out the Save the Dates (I just can’t bring myself to call them STDs*—oops too late), the post office is mad at me. How do I know this? My sister, the MOH, hasn’t gotten her STD. BM Buenos Aires hasn’t gotten her STD. A friend’s STD was returned, even though it was sent to the correct address. Even gifts people are sending me are being returned damaged!

So while I can’t yet reveal the STDs, here is a teaser shot right before we took them to the Post Office:

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(Please excuse the crafting mess!)

We had a nice experience at the Post Office, the line wasn’t too long, the lady who helped us was nice, even saying our envelopes were cute. What happened USPS? Where did we go wrong? What can I do to make it right?

*I giggled each time I typed STD, does that mean I'm not mature enough to get married?