Miss Glen Echo, Bridal Hoarder

I am not as bad as Lindsey Lohan or the folks you see on Hoarders, but the closer and closer this wedding gets, I am starting to relate to the feeling of being surrounded by one's own stuff.

Its not so much a problem that I don't like to throw things away, but over the 18 months we have been engaged, all of the on-line deals and "must have" purchases have definitely began to accumulate.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you the evidence, uncensored...

(that pink bag in the back is my first gown, packaged and ready to be sold very soon)

Packed away, within the abyss that is our closet, is my little brother's grooms attendant suit. Here is a sneak preview of what the men in our wedding will be wearing. I love the combo of the gray and purple. I wish I could have convinced Mr. Glen Echo to have the guys do purple shirts for a monochromatic look...but alas...he vetoed it :(

Are any of you ladies swimming in your own "stuff"?

tight pants

we decided against tuxes because our ceremony is outdoors and somehow the wedding has taken a turn for the more summer-y and casual. one of the wedding colors is grey and what better way to pull it in than with the suits? mr. uva will be wearing a three piece modern cut suit and the other three men will be wearing two piece suits.

on our trip to hong kong, we decided to check out the tailors in kow loon and get groomsmen suits made for the gents in the wedding. mr. uva is super skinny and has a lot of trouble finding suits that fit him so he was in definite need of a custom suit but the other men didn't want to be left out.

these things fit like a glove. mr. uva's suit is tiny (and i'm slightly nervous he will look thinner than i do!). the material is phenomenal and the quality is perfect. they really are awesome suits. the tailor we found has made sutis for several us presidents, prince charles, head of state, everyone. he apparently is the go-to-guy in hong kong. mr. uva had 3 different fittings to get the suit to fit just right. in other words he cannot gain a pound. we only had the measurements for the groomsmen so their suits will need some quick tweaking right before the wedding.

my mom was a little concerned that we were doing a flat front pant as pleating is more traditional. we also opted for no cuffs at the pant hem (apparently another break with tradition). i am an emily post fan but am opting for looks rather than tradition....i think the suits look awesome and hope that we wont offend any of our more traditional guests.

i love it!

Call Me Crazy

Yep, we went and picked out the groomsmen/dads suits and accessories already. It was on my to-do list and I figured, well if Men's Warehouse will allow me to do this 9 months in advance of the wedding, then let's do it.

I went to the Men's Wearhouse website about 4 weeks ago and "registered" our wedding. I listed Mr. Fairfax as the main contact since ultimately, the final decisions are up to him and he'll be in charge of wrangling the groomsmen...he he. Good thing they do read this, I'm not sure how they'd all feel about being wrangled! The nice thing about the registering process is then Men's Wearhouse initiates the next step. They call YOU to set up the appointment to select the attire. I gave Mr. Fairfax to expect the call and about a week later I got an e-mail telling me I had an appointment at the MW Tux location nearest me to begin promptly at 7pm. Sweet.

Between purchasing work clothes for Mr. Fairfax and attending to his various formal wear needs over the last two years, we are pretty familiar with what MW has to offer. We knew which tux we wanted, the Calvin Klein 2-Button super 100s with notch collar, and had narrowed down the vest options to either the Tuscany pattern or Rio pattern.

Tireless investigation related to our involvement in The Big Sister's (aka TBS) wedding turned up this precious nugget of information: The Calvin Klein 2-button is one of the ONLY tuxedos you can both RENT and PURCHASE from MW. I believe the other is a Jones New York. There is one tiny difference between the rental CK and the for-purchase CK: two pocket flaps on the front the jacket, however since the very noticeable details like the cut of the collar and the buttons are the same, it works.

The Calvin Klein Two-Button Super 100s with Notched Collar

When TBS got married everyone wanted to buy except two people, so that narrowed the tux choices down. The guys ended up going with the CK tux because it was flattering on everyone involved from the tall lanky groom to my brawny, big shouldered husband-to-be. We had a similar situation with the Fairfax nuptials: only two people need to rent because everyone else was in TBS's wedding or has previously purchased the CK tux for their own wedding.

The poor sales girl probably felt a bit mowed down when we walked in knowing exactly what we wanted. The only decisions left to make were pattern and color of the vests. The first question the sales associate asked was the color of the bridesmaid dresses (brown), and having been to a Men's Wearhouse or two I knew what was coming next, the hard sale for the brown tux. Sorry, lady, not in my wedding. Next, she tried to sell the merits of brown vests with black tuxes. Wrong again. I like it for others, but it's just not for me. I told her, my bridesmaids will be dresses formally and so I feel strongly the men should also be dressed formally and I did not feel the need to make them match perfectly. She was put out by this, and made the "well you are crazy, but fine if you want BLACK with BROWN, I guess I will sell it to you, but I will not be happy about it."

Tuscany......or Rio? No, do not fear, we did not select these colors, these shades just showed the patterns best. We also won't be using the striped ties, we thought plain long ties looked the best. The sales associate did not agree.

Our appointment was at 7:00 and I think we were in and out by 7:45 (yes, it took 45 minutes to decide between flowers and dots). We ended up choosing black Tuscany vests for groomsmen and dads, and a white Tuscany vest for Mr. Fairfax. We weren't wild about the stripey tie so that came with the rental so we will be asking each gentleman to purchase a plain black satin tie. We skipped the shoe issue and will simply trust everyone to shine their shoes before the big day!

We got all the information in to the MW system, and now I can log into the group manager anytime I want and marvel at our efficiency! Seriously though, I was really happy that we could set this up as early as we wanted to. It was nice to be able to take care of attire selection while I felt I had the time to spend 45 minutes debating dots versus flowers, instead of trying to cram this to-do item in between a hundred others much closer to the wedding.

I have now ticked off "select groomsmen attire" from the to-do list and have added "Send first e-mail to groomsmen about attire" to the calendar (along with "send reminder about tuxes," "last day for tux fitting,"and "pick up tuxes!"). Sigh...one item down 79 to go :)

Dressing the Boys

Fiancé and I knew early on that we wanted a "preppy-ish" type wedding. It wasn't going to be black tie optional, but it was going to have just enough class to make it us. We're not fully "preppy" but we try. We decided early on that it would be cocktail attire - which I think is easy considering our ceremony is mid afternoon and our reception starts around 5ish. There's a short 2 hour gap (more than we had wanted) between the two but that's enough time to get everyone across town from the church and get pictures taken.

So we knew early on that the groomsmen would be sporting Vineyard Vine Bowties. A friend of ours told us how fab they were, and when we told him he and his wife were invited, he was stoked because it gave him another reason to pick up another vineyard vines bowtie.

I was pretty stoked last night when I saw this gem while doing some online shopping last night in preparation for our excursion this weekend to the Woodbury Commons Outlets (home of the ONLY Vineyard Vines outlet store in the nation I believe)


Nice!!! This means we need six ties - five groomsmen and a ringbearer (though his is probably not on sale) and Fiancé - so we'll get two of them for free! Bowties, as we've decided they'll wear, are cheaper than regular ties at a nice $45 which is not too shabby for Vineyard Vines!

The ones we're trying to decide between?

whales, in our colors.

bloody mary - also in our colors.

Fiancé saw this one last night but it looks like they only have it in the regular neck tie not the bow tie...it would be very suiting if we could find it in a bowtie though.

Elephants necktie. $75.

We're going to wait to see: 1. if this sale is applicable at the outlet, 2. if not are the bowties cheaper at the outlet? 3. if yes - what styles do they have there?

Unfortunately, the tricky part about this is that we don't know what color suits we want the boys to wear - likely either navy or grey. But my FMIL and Mother are all "well won't navy clash with the dresses? You should bring a suit with you when you pick out dresses" and yadda yadda yadda. I personally am rooting for the navy suits - I mean name a dude that doesn't have a navy suit and how flipping hard is it to really see a discrepancy if the navy's don't match? Not to mention most navy suits look black so will those clash with blue dresses? I don't think they will, of course I could be wrong. But I think grey would be worse and while tan would look the best really? I don't want my boys to have to buy a tan suit that they'll never wear again. Plus it's a nighttime wedding - well afternoon/evening. I don't foresee tan doing well at an evening reception.

Thoughts? Suggestions? How are you taking advantage of super awesome sales for your bridal party??

[all images from vineyardvines.com]

To All the Preppy Brides...

If you're like me and planning on hitting up Vineyard Vines for ties and/or sashes, take advantage of this sale (hat tip - facebook) that ends on the 25th. Fiancé and I decided long ago we'd be having the groomsmen in navy suits with VV ties - we just haven't decided what style ties (bow ties v. neckties) and what pattern.