The title sounds worse than it is by A LOT, but I thought it accurately summed up the situation.  My husband will tell you I am one of those people who loves something in the store (or online) and then immediately second guesses my choices once the item is purchased and home.  For example when we got our dining room table chairs I obsessed about if the cream went okay with the beige/darker cream couches we have. I think it took a good two weeks for the buyers remorse to dissipate.  I love the chairs and think they look great … so seriously what was up withe the buyers remorse?

If it happens with purchases like a pair of jean or a chair, then clearly the buyers remorse would kick in for a wedding dress, right?

I started watching “Say Yes to the Dress” before I got engaged and once we were engaged I thought heck I will try on 5 or 10 dresses and find the one I want quickly.  Unfortunately I wasn’t a 5-10 dress kind of bride. I think I was probably more in the 30-40 range.  I would chalk a lot of that up to trying on almost any dress suggested so I could narrow down what it was I really wanted.

I tried on a lot of dresses before deciding on THE dress. The day I found my wedding dress I was with my MOH and one bridesmaid.  And just to make things interesting the dress I decided was THE ONE happen to be part of a trunk sale.  This dress was only going to be in the store for that weekend and then it would be packed up and sent to another bridal shop.  There was no way I was going to buy a wedding dress without my mother seeing it. The owner of the store suggested we skype with her, however while having lunch, my sister and I decided my mother should fly from Boston to DC just for the day.

Oh yes I am that crazy and thought it was TOTALLY appropriate to have my mother fly in Sunday morning and out that evening just to see the dress.  After some serious convincing my mother agreed to fly in for the day.  We found a “reasonably” priced ticket and the next day she arrived bright and early to do some dress shopping.  Smartly, she requested that we go to at least one other store so she could have other dresses to compare THE dress too.

We began at Hannelore’s and I tried on two dresses for her.  The first and the immediate favorite at that store looked like this:

Anne Barge, Style 612

The second, which I had liked the first time, but not loved got cut almost immediately. We quickly realized in pictures you couldn’t see the beautiful lace in the boddus.  It just didn’t “pop” to us.  Here’s the second dress:

Romona Keveza Legends 804 – Look at my sister in the background … how bored does she look. hahahahaha. It was because she knew it wasn’t the right dress!

After taking my measurements for the first dress and pretty much talking myself out of the dress my mother had initially flown in to see we headed to Love Couture.

They already had “the” dress as well as one other I had been considering ready for us.  I slipped into the dress and was grinning ear to ear.  As my sister had predicted while we were in Hannelore the Stephen Yearik dress was a better match for the look I was going for.  Here we are trying on the dress at the store:

Stephen Yearick

Two days later the buyers remorse kicked into high gear. I started pulling up the two dresses and comparing/contrasting them. My sister, the MOH, kept telling me I was crazy for doubting my initial decision. I waffled back and forth for the next few months. I started checking out second hand versions of the Anne Barge dress and seeing if I could afford (heck no!!) the second dress I liked as well.

In the end all the buyers remorse was erased when I went to the store to try my dress on the day it came in!  After the alterations, makeup, jewlery and all the other good bridal stuff here’s how it looked on our wedding day:

Photo Credit: Korie Lynn Photography

Thanks for taking a walk down memory lane with me.  Buyers remorse be gone because on the day of our wedding I wouldn’t have wanted to be in any other dress!

Happy Dress Shopping!

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After making our wedding invitations, calligraphy envelopes and then rehearsal dinner invitations oh and the escort cards I figured why not make the menu cards as well?!?!

We went back and forth about having 2 menu cards per table or a a menu card for each guest.  In the end since the cost difference was minimal we decided to go for a menu card for each guest.

DIY Wedding Menu Cards | Life's Tidbits

What you need:

Paper cutter, Printer/Ink, Card Stock and Photoshop or MS Word

Menu cards are one of those things you can do ahead of time, but no too far ahead. It’s important to have had the tasting and finalized the WHOLE menu.  If the menu isn’t finalized then some reprinting might be in your future.  When using PhotoShop my suggestion is to paste the menu text into MS Word first so everything is spelled correctly.  Even with my husband and I both double checking the menu card we missed a spelling mistake and had to reprint a number of menus. :(  Thank goodness one of the bridesmaids caught the mistake!  Oh and don’t forget to figure out approximately how many menu cards are needed. I made a few extras just incase.  The extra menus weren’t used, but it was nice to have a “clean” one for the wedding scap book!

Menus come in all shapes and sizes.  An important thing to consider when deciding on a size is will it be big enough to fit all the text.  We had three entree choices (fish, chicken and vege), which took up a lot of room on the card.  I went with long thin menu cards – 3.5 by 11.  Partly this was because of the text length, but honestly it made for easy paper cutting as well … one cut and done.

For the wedding and rehearsal dinner invitations I did the paper cutting after the printing. For the menus I cut the paper first and then did the printing.

I didn’t really have a menu “inspiration” card, however I did reference the menu cards of weddings I had previously been to. I decided I wanted a small image/graphic at the top and then the rest of the card to have a clean look. To tie the menu card in with the rest of the wedding paper items I re-used (FREE!) fonts: Mutlu Ornamental and Adobe Pro – from the Wedding Invitations and Allegro – from the DIY Calligraphy Envelopes.

We also used the same type of paper from the wedding/rehearsal dinner invitations, but in a different color – light purple!  The light purple looked great with the gold table clothes and sterling silver roses on each of the tables.  Here’s how they looked:

Photo credit: Korie Lynn Photography

I went back and forth on rounding the edges of the menu, but in the end my mother and husband liked the non-rounded look better.

My tips are pretty much consistent with other printing related projects I’ve blogged about:

  • Print on High Resolution
  • Spell check!
  • Print tests on white paper before doing a test on your nice card stock.  White paper is far less expensive!
  • Don’t wait to the last minute.

Happy DIY and Wedding Planning!!

Did you make your own menus? Any tidbits for other brides you can share?

Don’t forget to leave your tidbit by commenting below! :)

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