Welcome to part 3 of our “My Wedding in a Week” series! If you haven’t read about how we decided to get married and tackled the decorations and food, I’d recommend catching up on those first, but all the parts can pretty much stand on their own. Today’s post will focus on how we, the bride and groom, prepared for our wedding!

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The Bride

The Dress

After we’d sorted out the bigger questions about the wedding, I realized I was missing a big part of the “bride” experience — the dress.

I obviously wasn’t going to have time to go through the whole rigamarole of going to a bunch of boutiques, trying on different gowns, and getting my favorite one altered to fit me perfectly. Cue desperate online searching.

I knew I wanted one with an A-line skirt and some lace, but other than that I really wasn’t sure what I should get. I found a couple of contenders, but some wouldn’t get here in time or would be cutting it close, and others had mediocre reviews. In the end, I took a flyer on this beauty from Modcloth. I ordered a size up, as reviews suggested, and crossed my fingers.

Honestly, I probably should have ordered more than one dress to hedge my bets, but I know myself and how bad I am at returning online purchases. (They tend to sit in a “to return” pile until they are well past their return deadline.) Plus, I figured I could run out to a department store and grab something in person if it came down to that. I also ordered a gold metallic belt as a statement piece.

Luckily, my gamble paid off and the dress fit perfectly. I was thrilled I got the aesthetic I wanted at an amazing price. The belt, on the other hand, wasn’t really a look I liked, but the dress definitely needed a little something to spice it up.

The Accessories

The day after Thanksgiving, I dragged Joe to Charming Charlie. If you’ve never been to this accessories chain, let me describe the glorious ridiculousness of it: every store is filled with jewelry, scarves, shoes, purses, and random stuff like mugs all organized by color. Nothing in there is super high quality, but the prices are good for what you get, especially since it’s all stuff that’s very affected by trends. Since it was Black Friday, they were allowing visitors to spin a wheel of coupons, and I got one for 10% off! Any little bit helps, right?

There’s a bridal section at the back of the store and there I found a couple of potential, blingy sashes to replace the metallic belt that didn’t work out. One of them worked perfectly and really took the dress from beautiful to bridal.

The next day, I actually returned to this den of accessories with my bridesmaids and found earrings and a sparkly comb for my hair. I spent way more in Charming Charlie than I ever have before, but considering what I got for it and how convenient it was to find all those things in one place, I was happy.

The Face

Makeup is yet another thing a bride has to think about! I had some basics, but I’d run out of my nice foundation, so I ran over to Sephora and grabbed some Makeup Forever foundation and their matte HD finishing powder, which I had heard helps make you look great on camera. Not a cheap combo, but way cheaper than hiring a makeup artist. My sister-in-law and my Maid of Honor did my makeup on the day, using these products and some we already had, and I think it turned out fabulously.

The Shoes

The saga of my wedding shoes is a sad one. I found the perfect pair of wine-colored heels at DSW two days before my wedding. Sadly, I left them behind in the rush and they spent my wedding day at my parents’ house instead of on my feet. Luckily, my sister-in-law lent me her black heels for the ceremony and photos, and I had brought a pair of black flats for dinner and dancing anyway, so it wasn’t the end of the world, but I was still bummed. I’m counting the shoes as an expense, since I’m keeping them and I wouldn’t have bought them if the wedding hadn’t been happening.

The Groom

The Outfit

On the Wednesday of our pre-wedding week, Joe and I headed to a mall near his parents’ house to hunt down his wedding outfit. Since he works from home, he hasn’t had to wear a suit since his brother’s wedding a few years ago, and that one didn’t fit with the color scheme we were going for.

Our first stop was Nordstrom Rack, which is one of our favorite stores to find sneaky deals, but nothing there quite fit. He needs a tall, wide-shouldered fit, and most average sizes just don’t cut it. Oh well, it was worth a shot, and we did find a nice white shirt on sale that we snapped up.

Next stop, Brooks Brothers, where we met a nice salesman who helped us narrow our choices and eventually decide on a navy blue suit that would look great with the fall color scheme of the wedding. It fit really well for an off-the-rack suit, which was key because we had no time to get it altered. Plus, there was a sale going on for the holidays that brought the price down a little, and now Joe has a suit he can wear in the future.

Finally, he needed a tie to match the burgundy that was going to be our base color. We bought three that might work and returned the two that he didn’t wear.

The Ring

The last piece of the groom puzzle was his wedding ring. I was just going to use a ring I had as my wedding ring, but Joe doesn’t wear jewelry normally, so we poked around in some stores looking for a cheap ring. No one wanted to sell us anything under $125, and since we knew this probably wouldn’t be his permanent ring, we weren’t willing to spend that much.

Then I realized we had overlooked maybe the most obvious option — buying the ring online. Amazon to the rescue! We found a white tungsten ring with great reviews for less than $14.

This is the one we chose, (click on the image to see it on Amazon) and it’s been great so far:

 

The Cost

Note: I’ve rounded all the prices to the nearest dollar to make the totals easy.

I paid for fast shipping for my dress and belt, which was an extra $20. Cost: $206

Makeup from Sephora is expensive, but I know I’ll keep these items for a while and get a lot of benefit from them, so at least it was a multi-use purchase. Cost: $83

Charming Charlie accessories for days! I’ll definitely wear the earrings again, and this includes some items that I’ll talk about in my next post. Cost: $144

The shoes I got are gorgeous, so despite the debacle, I’ll keep ’em. Cost: $36

Joe’s new suit was on sale for 30% off. Cost: $317

A nice, lightly patterned white shirt with French cuffs to wear with the suit was a nice find at Nordstrom Rack. Cost: $32

A burgundy tie rounded out the groom’s outfit. Cost: $15

Once we realized online was the way to get Joe’s ring, we bought it in about five minutes on Amazon and it arrived well before the wedding. Cost: $14

Overall outfits/jewelry cost: $847

Total wedding cost so far: $4,052