Well I know I’ve been quiet the last week or so. We’re kind of in a holding pattern with the planning of the wedding itself. The wedding planner at the Marriott likes to start planning about 3 months out, so in the next two weeks or so that process should be underway.

These last several days I find myself being kept up at night with so many ‘other things’ I should probably have done by now. This time last week I had no bridesmaid dresses, no invitations, no ‘first dance’ song, no welcome bags or contents, no veil, little weight loss (about 4 of the 10 pounds I want to lose are gone)…

Invitations have been a challenge. I want something that is somewhat informal and fun, but still contemporary and reflects the event itself. I spent countless hours researching ‘Destination Wedding’ and beach wedding invitations. The message in the bottle and other themed invites with starfish and sand dollars that I had thought were so cute at first, very quickly felt cliche. We’d go from one extreme to the other – given we have to send out less than 50 we figure we can splurge and do as elaborate an invitation as we want. Elaborate quickly becomes complicated though and then I go the other direction of wanting as simple as possible. Funny thing is that invitations is the last thing I expected my fiance to want anything to do with and would you believe he does care a lot about the invitation and wants something completely opposite of me?! Never saw that coming. Hopefully we’ll finally have one picked out later this week.

Of the list items, the invites and bridesmaids dresses are the most urgent. The weekend before last I went shopping with my bridesmaids and found out that these things take 12 weeks to order! Unless of course you want to put a rush on it. I was convinced we would just find something off the rack which would be nicer anyway, but that was proving to be difficult. Our colors are orange and pink. I wanted a nice bright (but not blinding), ‘happy’ tropical pink for the dresses and was amazed at how hard that is to find in a regular dress! And here I thought I was being easy – I told the girls a lightweight, knee length dress in my pink but they could pick the fabric AND style AND they don’t have to match.

My girls happen to love J Crew but I had seen their swatches months ago during a trip to NYC and didn’t like their pinks (one had a lavender tint, another was ‘dusty’, another super pale and the forth looked ’salmon-y’). Several weeks ago I had thought I might as well take another look at the swatches hoping they would look better in another light, and asked them to mail me their pinks. They said sure, 7-10 days but a month later still no swatches. I had pretty much given up on J Crew. I was ready to take on Plan B – a champagne color. I did like the idea of a shimmery sandy color that would coordinate well with the guys in their white shirts and khakis. And of course, champagne is easier to wear again.

Well this last weekend my fiance and I stopped into J Crew. At first they told us they do not keep sets of swatches in their store because they change so often. We explained the situation – 13 weeks left and the spring / summer colors were on sale and were going to begin selling out. They called their corporate office to have swatches rushed to me and just after that one of the girls remembered they had some ‘returns’ in the back so she could show us some of the colors. The only one we thought might work was the ‘tea rose’ (even though I think that’s the one I had thought looked salmony on the swatch). Well it turned they had that pink in two different fabrics and we did like it. They let us bring it out into the natural light and we found we loved their tea rose pink! (The champagne was really pretty too, but very light and I wanted a little more contrast.)

After seeing all of this, one of the other J Crew workers came up to see what was going on and we told her the story. Well, turns out they did in fact have swatches. She brought out the swatch book and for some reason that pink doesn’t look nearly as good on the swatch as it does on the dress. Left to the swatches, I would have had a really hard time picking that pink. So, I call my girls and said “Pick whatever you want in Tea Rose pink”. Well they both loved the knee length Sophia Silk Tricotine dress that was marked from $165 to $99 (pictured – the color looks different than it does on screen – this pic looks ‘coral’ to me)! If J Crew had sent the swatches I would probably still be looking for dresses. And, if we would have decided on that color weeks ago they would have paid a lot more for the dresses. So, at least this is one case where it paid to wait, though I wouldn’t recommend it!  =)