Through the Rabbit Hole: Gown Shopping in Virginia

Here is a list, at least a beginning one, of local boutiques in the DC metro area that have several of the gowns by designers (though not all) that I'm interested in. I'm not sure when I'll begin the descent into the rabbit hole that is wedding gown shopping, but this is a least a good start. Danielle, during her visit last week, took me to Sax at Tysons II, but sadly there seemed very little to choose from. Fortunately, though, there is a trunk show on October 24th, so hope to venture out to see that!

One thing I have been learning, though, is that purchasing a gown from a boutique requires foresight and good planning, with six months to order until arrival, and up to four months of customization and tailoring. On our time line, that would mean having a gown (should I buy it from a boutique) by December!

A starter list of boutiques in Northern Virginia, MD, and DC area, at least for the next few weeks. I'll be adding to this...!

Hannelore's, Alexandria, Virginia: La Fleur by Anne Barge gowns.
Jeanette's, Manassas, Virginia: Augusta Jones gowns.
Betsy Robinson's Bridal Collection, Baltimore, Maryland: Amsale gowns.

Music Makes Whimsy

Ah, music at weddings. Inevitably the cheapest and most popular way to go is to hire a DJ to spin some tunes from the last four decades while serving as the master of ceremonies via a pumped up microphone. DJs are great for dancing, great for singing along to, but it's not the way we want to go. Partly it's the cheese factor, and partly the strong vibe of an eighth-grade dance event in the 80s, neither of which really fits into a rural Virginia location. Somehow, I'm thinking heavy base from a speaker would kill the mood. But maybe that's just me.

Instead, Chris and I are in love with the fiddle--yes, you heard us. The fiddle. As in fiddling. As in serious genuine music of the people. Of the peeps. Of historic value and ambiance. As in 'Ole Fizzy Wig of Charles Dickens' Christmas Carol. Yes, that kind of fiddling. While we adore Blue Grass, we are more in love with Irish music--folk songs, upbeat drinking tunes, traditional ballads, haunting violin solos.

Chris, thanks to his genius web searching, has found a band we adore! Dubbed the Bell/Blake duo, this team hails from New York City, but plays within 500 miles and for an incredibly affordable price. Chris has already written them, and they responded quickly, saying they're interested, though they're not booking until after the New Year. They would be perfect for both ceremony, cocktail, and the reception--their range wide enough for soft and airy as well as for a party time hoedown. We're already planing a trip to hear an audition.

Check out their tunes here!

Fun with Nicholas, Our Officiant

We met with Nicholas last night to review the ceremony and our vows, and believe it or not, we got it all down to 25 minutes--probably less. This is a relief, as the ceremony begins at 5:30 (half an hour after the tourists leave Oatlands) and sunset isn't far behind, with twilight approaching around 6:45 on October 3rd. This window is a tight one, making things close for pictures unless Nicholas keeps things short and tidy! So, it looks like, at the very latest, the ceremony will wrap up completely by 6, and while guests are having cocktail hour, Chris and I and the wedding party/family will have a photo shoot: 10 minutes for family and wedding party, 20 minutes for Chris and me.

This will all work out!

Here's the structure of the ceremony:

• Groom and officiant walk down the aisle first, followed by Best Man and one groomsman. Bert English and Matt McClinch will stand by Chris.
• Music will change, denoting the bride and bridal party. Matron of Honor (Jen) will walk down the aisle, escorted by Man of Honor (Patrick). They will stand by Ally.
  
• Father gives bride in marriage; this is accompanied by a brief spiel.
• Biblical reading, which we'd like Bill English (one of our groomsman) to give.
• Brief sermon, related to marriage, love
  
• Marriage vows and exchange of rings
  
• The Lord's Prayer
• The Marriage Prayer, read by Bill English.
• The Peace, during which bride and groom kiss and walk down the aisle.

Seems simple enough! And we like the pacing of it all! With no hymns or other readings, this ceremony above is around 20 minutes, giving Nicholas room to pad as he wishes, as he can be long-winded.

Nicholas also recommended that we print up programs, with the structure of the ceremony, or at least the Lord's Prayer and Marriage Prayers, so we can all follow along.

More to come soon... but Alice is off for a brief vacation, and away from wedding wonderland.

Checking Off Wedding Tasks

If only to make myself feel better in all of this wedding craziness, I thought I'd make a list of everything we've accomplished thus far. Lists are wonderful, and crossing off taken-care-of items from said list is even more wonderful. Really. It is. It gives me a sense of peace. So, I thought I'd pour it all out here, and share a bit! Please excuse my need for order! It's part of my Myer's Briggs INFJ/ENFJ tendencies.


This is where we are:

• Budget: established!
  
• Wedding date: October, 3, 2009. Ceremony: 5:30 p.m. Cocktail Hour, Tours of Open Mansion: 6:00-6:45 PM. Dinner: 7 PM-9 PM. Cake, coffee, tea: 9 PM-10:30 PM.
  
• Location: Oatlands Historic House and Gardens. Ceremony: Italian Garden. Cocktails: Terraced Gardens and front foyer of historic mansion. Dinner: Carriage House. (Note: all outdoor events have restroom facilities in the garden dependencies building).
• Bride, Groom, and Wedding Party dressing facilities: In good weather, bride and party will get ready in the Mansion, and groom and party in the Bachelor's House. In rain, both bride and groom and respective parties will get ready in the Bachelor's House.
  
• Rain back-up plan: If drizzling, still hold ceremony in garden and supply guests with umbrellas, but hold cocktail hour and dinner in Carriage House. If raining outright, all activities will take place in the Carriage House. (Note: In the event of outright rain, guests will gather around, standing up, during wedding ceremony so that the space can then be used, right after ceremony, for cocktails.
  
• Oatlands Events Coordinator: Katherine Farley + team.
  
• Officiant Reverend Nicholas Lubelfeld of The Falls Church.
• Wedding Vows: Common Book of Prayer. Goal is to work with Nicholas to shorten ceremony to no more than 25 minutes). No communion will be held. Only one biblical reading. No hymns sung. Meeting with Nicholas on Sept. 30 to go over ceremony details.
• Wedding Party: Bert English (Best Man), Matthew McClinch (Groomsman), Jennifer Armistead (Matron of Honor), Patrick Armistead (Man of Honor), Matt Witting (Groomsman/Usher), Bill English (Groomsman/Usher), Brenden Petersburg (Groomsman/Usher).
  

Upcoming Appointments

• September 30: Phone meeting with Jennifer Chase, photographer.
  
• September 30, 7:30 PM: Meeting with Nicholas at The Falls Church to review vows and ceremony format.
• October 7: Danielle visit: Oatlands!
  

Next Steps

• Meet with additional photographers. Select and reserve photographer. Accomplish in the next few weeks before they all disappear!
• Reserve engagement photo shoot.
  
• Begin shopping for wedding gowns.
• Research caterers. Schedule tastings.
  
• Research musicians for ceremony, cocktail hour, reception.
• Research pastry chefs
• Research stationary.
• Finish content development of wedding website. Launch when Save the Date cards are issued, probably in February.
  

Fuzzy Ideas and Details

• We're going with a literary theme.
• We'd love to have a black, blue, and white color scheme, but need to scope out Carriage House reception space more closely.
• We're obsessed with luminaries. Hanging, standing, you name it.
  
• Jen is wearing black!
• I'm in love with deep blue hydrangea.
  
• We'd love to have a string quartet for the ceremony procession--and even for cocktail hour and the dinner/dancing.
• We'd love to have a bride-groom first dance, and at least the father-bride. Not sure if this crowd is composed of dancing fiends, but we'll have a great floor for it, nonetheless!
• We'd love to have our rehearsal dinner at Lightfoot restaurant, in historic downtown Leesburg.
  
• We'd love to have an engagement party in April or May of 2009. We'd love to have it at someone's house, low key, perhaps a cookout and casual. We'd like to have this later, rather than now, and to complete our premarital counseling/mentoring first.
  
• We're planning on reserving rooms at at least one B&B in historic Leesburg. Chris and I will stay here on our wedding night, and probably on Sunday night, before venturing to Dulles airport for our honeymoon plans. Possible B&B contender: Norris House.
  
• Thinking of having honeymoon in Zurich > train ride through Swiss Alps > Lake Como, Italy.

More to follow... Alice is checking things off left and right!

These Photographers, I Adore

Searched the web, wide and far and with the help of Somer's keen internet skills (!), and these are my two favorite photographers, for both wedding and engagement purposes: Stone Blue Productions and Kellie Kano. Both are just lovely, smooth, full of energy and a romance all their own, authentic and creative. The black and white treatment is gorgeous, dramatic. I love it, particularly the shots (in color) with unusual backdrops: broken windows, exaggerated foregrounds, old brick buildings. I also adore the quirky snapshots: couples kissing, wide-eyed, playful, chasing, wearing hats, dancing along long pathways and corridors. Both photographers handle faces, shadow, and portraiture amazingly.

I think either of these would do a fabulous job with Chris and I at Oatlands, particularly by the reflecting pool, the wine vines, the old barns and wooden fences and wrap around porches and wide white columns, the lush rolling hills, the Blue Ridge in the distance.

Alice is contemplating... Perhaps I will, out of curiosity, write to each and inquire about their price ranges. Both travel, so that is encouraging.

Our Officiant!

Reverend Nicholas Lubelfeld of The Falls Church has expressed his willingness to perform our wedding ceremony! Chris and I are thrilled, and hope to meet with Nicholas soon to review the vows and service, both taken from the Book of Common Prayer. The vows are rich and lovely, though we want to be sure, since the ceremony is outdoors (and indoors at the Carriage House with everyone standing up and around us if it rains) that the ceremony is kept to a 25-30 minute minimum. We may need to do some editing, possibly on the readings, but we'll have to see. Chris read through the BOP and it took him about 25 minutes, so that is encouraging.

Nicholas is a lovely man, and one of the few people I know who can utter a single sentence containing the topics of The Chronicles of Narnia, healthy relationships, Peter the disciple, and medieval architecture without blinking an eye. He has a delightful sense of humor and a wonderful, compassionate way about him. We couldn't think of a more fitting person to officiate our marriage. Hope to make an appointment with Nicholas soon.

Themed Weddings: Creative or a Bust?

I have been toying for the last month or so with incorporating a theme into our wedding--and by theme I was thinking something personal, something that captures both Chris and me, our interests, our loves, a bond that connects us. Themes have become quite popular these days--those that go beyond color and season and into a theme that says something about the couple involved.

I have seen many a themed wedding online, and many of them are downright ghastly, including the infamous Al Capone themed wedding, the Great Gatsby wedding, and even Star Trek influenced weddings complete with Klingon costumes. And I'm serious about that last one. It actually happened.

As for Chris and I, we love wine, Virginia, nature, fall, books, and film. These define so much of our relationship, as well as how we spend our time enjoying one another. With the wedding in Oatlands, we've got Virginia covered. With the ceremony in beautiful, natural, and organic gardens in October we've definitely got fall and nature covered. However, books and film are wide open, and up for discussion.

Film is tricky, but books--ah...books--we might really have something there. Initial ideas for how to incorporate this theme:

• Use a 1930s royal vintage typewriter (which I already have) and sheets of typing paper for the guest book, where guests can type away their sound advice and well wishes! Chris and I can save this later and frame it, if we like.
  
• Use vintage typewriter keys (numbers 1-6) attached to bookmarks printed with the names of guests to guide them to their respective tables at the reception dinner.
• Design table center cards, featuring a black and white illustration of a scene from a famous love story, or maybe just frames of apt quotations, and of course the number of the tables themselves.
  
• Give away novels as favors that correspond to the novels illustrated and quoted at each respective dinner table. Consider wrapping novels in typed Courier font paper.
• A literary reading during the ceremony, or perhaps just at the reception dinner itself, by one of my dear lady friends, if they are brave and willing.
• Our October 3 wedding date is the birthday of famous writers, including Gore Vidal and Thomas Wolfe, but that's not very exciting, but rather just something cool to note. Noted.
  

This is probably as far as I'd take any theme--besides, of course, extending it to invitations and stationary--and this literary theme is clever enough to be a lot of fun, I think, and, of course, to promote Chris' and my love of literature.

However, there are a few hesitations I have in going with this theme:

(1) Is this appropriate for a wedding? I think it would be unique. And educational! But is it appropriate? Worth it?

(2) The vintage typewriter accessories and typewriter itself are black, and I want to make sure our color scheme would work with this. I am in love with blue and black and white (so beautiful and funnily enough the same decor as my house), and this would work beautifully with this theme, but I am concerned about the fact that the Carriage House at Oatlands has a green baseboard around the perimeter of the room (though the rest of it is wooden and rustic, minus a few strips of carpet in the table area, which mom and I have a plan for covering, as well as the trim around four posts which lovely fabric will handle). Would this clash? I will post pictures of the Carriage House soon for further consideration. If so, open to other colors--except green. We won't do green.

(3) Is a literary theme distracting from the historic beauty of Oatlands itself? Would we do better to go with a more natural, rustic flair? To incorporate, instead, brown leaves from the fall, or more rustic accessories?

Alice continues her quest through the maze that is her reception decor. First step: find way to cover carpet, possibly trim in Carriage House. Second step: finalize color scheme, based on results of step one. Third step: see if literary theme can work with this. Fourth step: move in on stationary and matching invitation scheme. Fifth step: Finalize wedding website with all elements thusly incorporated.

The Dress

The wedding dress is a complex garment, emotionally speaking--it is the gown you wear when you cross over from singledom to marriedom; it must be intrinsic to your personality and style; and it is the one gown you will wear in life that will make the largest fashion statement. Ever. So how does a woman pick this gown? The pressure seems immense.

After scanning those high-gloss wedding magazines (thank you, Somer, you are a dear!), and looking at hundreds of wedding websites, I have learned a few things about gowns of this nature and what my eye seems to gravitate towards.

• I am not a big, poofy dress kind of person.
• I am not a skin baring all type of person.
• I am not a modern person.
• I like minimalism.
• I adore gowns that have touches of vintage, a look from another time period, but strangely, not gowns from the time periods themselves.
• I want to feel like a slight garden nymph with a historic backbone.

With this in mind, I have found three gowns or at least "looks" that I would feel so beautiful in. Of course, mind you, I haven't tried any of these on in reality, and as we learned through venue shopping, reality and vision have a way of dueling with one another. For now, though, my intention is to try these three gowns on, wherever they may be, and go from there:

Gown #1: The Marielle gown, by Augusta Jones
Gown #2: The Destiny gown, by Augusta Jones
Gown #3: The strapless, bolero gown, by Watters

A Splendid Venue, Indeed

It was a ten hour journey, through Appalachia by car and foot and pure caffeinated determination. There were small venues and large ones--all historic and rustic and hidden, some more than others. But behold: the wedding venue has been selected, a beacon of Virginia beauty.

I give you Oatlands Plantation of Leeesburg, Virginia--250 years of manor splendor and Italian gardens that terrace and wind up rolling hills and down to a quaint Carriage House. Beyond there are the Blue Ridge mountains, the hills of grassy Virginia falling like blankets all around.

When I first laid eyes on Oatlands, I fell instantly in love--it was as though I had seen it all before, been here before: the feeling of an embrace when coming home, a familiar notion of knowing you're where you belong.

Chris and I wanted to have a historic Virginia wedding--where we met, fell in love, where our past and present and future intersect. We couldn't think of a more fitting venue than that of a historic manor, a shining example of Virginia historic preservation: holding onto the past, progressing forward with a lasting foundation.

Our plan, for now, is to hold the wedding in the lower Italian garden, the cocktail hour on the porch of the manor and up through the terraced gardens, and dinner in the quaint Carriage House--all amongst the changing autumn foliage in October sunset.

More to come, more to follow. Alice is navigating her way through wedding wonderland, afterall. Who knew.