A Crash Course in MY Big Fat Greek/Filipino Wedding

Who woulda thought with the postponement of the wedding to TWO years off, I would have a very remotely related wedding-themed post in the month of August 2007? With most bloggers that I know getting married (COngrats!) it has made me think of my own wedding.

My mom and I took Cleo, one of our cats two the vet. Leah was going to meet us there after work. Cleo actually behaves better than Caesar (who is thisclose to getting a sedative the next time he goes so he can get checked) so when Leah came to the vet, my mom wanted to go to this store Markella's across the street. It sells stuff related to weddings and baptisms, with a Greek twist of course. This is Astoria, where there are 4 Greek Orthodox Churches within a 10 block radius. It's also a place that you can make a bridal registry say for china - I figured that out when I saw the Kate Spade display case and began to drool internally, for now my mother can finally see what I go gaga about.

Even though Mel and I are of different religions, we are getting married in a Greek Orthodox Church. They are very plain outside, but ornately decorated inside in the Byzantine style. In fact, we are going to get married in the same church that I was baptized in, and my parents got married in in 1981. I also went there for Sunday School and (blech) for a time Greek school.

There is a ramp that leads up to the main entrance on the second floor; when my parents got married, the photographer had the entire bridal party line up along the ramp, and he took a picture from the street. I have seen the picture, and in a nod to my parents I want to do the same thing. It has recently finished a massive renovation/restoration and it looks fantastic.

If you have seen "My Big Fat Greek Wedding" (yes, cue the jokes here) you know what a Greek wedding is like. There are these crowns called stefana that the bride and the groom wear (and the ribbon is held by the koumbaro, i.e. best man but it can be a girl so long as they are orthodox - Mel's best friend from college is Bulgarian) and they walk around the altar. My mom wanted to see what Markella had to offer in terms of stefana, and the boubounieres, which are the favors.

You also need lambades, which are just big fancy candles trussed up for the occasion. Luckily, since orthodox churches are mega fancy with paintings covering every inch of the walls, you don't really need to go all out in decorating the church. Since St. Catherine & George's (the church) is redone it will most definitely not need much.

Most of the stefana are downright gaudy, like sparkly versions of a white olive wreath connected with ribbon, and just short of a princesse's tiara. I wanted something different. Miraculously we both liked this one in particular - it sorta like a crown made of gold wire tightly wound to make the circlet, with small flowers in cream with a (few, very, very few, I really don't like bling) crystals. Simple, but elegant and modern.

All of the stefana are imported from Greece, and with Astoria being the way it is, you don't have to worry about asking your yiayia to get you stefana from Greece. They even have the cases for the stefana; my parents still have their stefana in the case in their bedroom. Their case looks like a little church, but more modern styles still have the icon inside - either painted or in silver - and it comes in more contemporary shapes, like oval or round.

Just Gotta Wait One More Year

Wedding is postponed till September 2009.

Update: I didn't get to finish this post actually. The wedding is not postponed because the sh*t has hit the fan in my relationship or any other bad reason. However, I do appreciate everyone's concern, and I apologize for making everyone worry.

The simple reason?

Time. Jikan ja nai (There is no time).

I am in Japan and trying to find a reception place that is nice and affordable within the NYC area (INCLUDING Westchester and Long Island, now anyone from NYC proper will understand why there is a wee bit of hesitation, ha-ha but we are looking at places and let me tell you NYC/LI/Westchester AIN'T cheap) is tearing the hair out of all parties involved. Even trying to make appointments to see places just on the weekends when both sets of parental units, plus Mel and I can see it is crazy. My dad is only free in the mornings during the summer because of the ice cream truck and Mel's parents are free only on the weekends because they have Mon-Fri jobs, which is the same for Mel. The only two people that can go at any time of day, and day of the week is my mother and I - me because I am a student and my mom because she is a teacher so we get summer vacation. Now, that just marks of old-school wedding planning, just the bride and her mother; I am trying to be diplomatic here.

Plus, if we wait one more year there is the possibility to be able to get a really good place. So, if we don't find anything that we (all parties involved) really like we can go to the Brooklyn Botanical Garden (which everyone minus my dad because he didn't get the chance to go saw) and won't go crazy. It is a nice place, just some caveats about the packages make it very tight for 2008. However, when I do get back this summer we can look at some places, like we did shortly before I left, and just build up a lot of dossiers. We saw three places, including the BBG (Tip for any future brides in the NYC: Do NOT go to Bronx Botanical Garden, its $250 a pop plus then some! Yikes. And the carpet was old.).

I have to admit I sort of feel guilty because it is the simple reason that I am in Japan that lead to the eventual postponement. One cannot do this sort of stuff in a month - when I get back this summer. I mean it is possible, but not without alot of uneccesary stress. Remember a few posts ago when I was tearing my hair out over wedding dresses simple because they are too expensive and the cheap ones are tacky, and trying to find and alternative on the net? For all the wonders of the internet, it does not show me how I look in a wedding dress and what the prices are.

Planning a wedding is supposed to be fun. It is not supposed to make me blog "I hate weddings." Nonetheless, I still stay clear and far away from wedding magazines; I get the feeling that they are trying to market a particular "idea" of what a wedding should be: its extremely consumer driven, and that is something that is very cookie-cutter-ish in my mind. I really despise what the wedding industry has come to - seriously, Bridal Expos? However, they are good for ideas, but getting a subscription to Brides magazine is not my thing. I prefer Martha Stewart - that magazine for all its Martha Stewart-ness doesn't looks as splashy or pushy. (hey, I am a prep ya know!). Hmm...maybe I'll pick up the latest one now, and maybe the fall one will come out when I am home, and then get a subscription because unlike other bridal magazines which come out every damn month; MSW is seasonal so it's just 4 times a year. Good for my psyche.

Hmm...then I will be around in NYC for Vera Wang's Annual Sale (and other trunk shows, I get the emails and I kick myself when I see them) which is in June/July. I can bring a posse with me. Up to 75% off wedding dresses...grab my friends, and get any dress in my size (10/12 even 14 just to get the right fit, its call alterations).And even bridesmaids dresses.

When I get back in March 2008 for good, there will be 18 months till September 2009.

There is one great upshot: our anniversary falls on the 12th of the month (the yearly one is in February) and September 12, 2009 is a Saturday.

Now THIS, Ladies is a Wedding Dress

Well, what do you think? VERY suitable, eh? (^_~) Come on, you KNOW that this is every girl's dream dress!

So Instead of Doing My Homework...

...I planned my bridal shower. A year in advance. Talk about being anal-retentive. But, a "bride" does have a right to what she would like in her bridal shower, no? I even asked my mom that and she gave me the go ahead to dream of a "Kate Spade Inspired" bridal shower with DIY fixin's (because there is no way in hell I will justify a $75 polka dot vase for a bridal shower centerpiece. However, I will register for that polka-dot vase, because I like it very much.)

They say that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery; since the wedding is more a collaborative affair and I can have every single say for the bridal shower, I made a storyboard like they do over at The Preppy Wedding. It is such a great idea (I wonder what they would think of mine?) and alot of fun. But this is the only storyboard that I will be doing, since doing it for the wedding is too much at the moment, as we do not know where the wedding reception will be.

Comments, suggestions and criticisms are greatly appreciated! I want this one to be PERFECT, and I am having trouble reconciling toile with the Kate Spade "aesthetic" if you will, but I like my polka dots and toile.

COPYCATS!

Ok did anyone see the trailer for the season finale of Grey's Anatomy?

Did anyone notice that towards the end, when Meredith opens the doors at the church to reveal herself, Callie and Izzie as bridesmaids for a brief moment?

Did ANYONE notice that they were wearing CHOCOLATE BROWN BRIDESMAIDS DRESSES in DIFFERENT STYLES to suit their different figures?

Not that I am flipping out - but it is sort of funny in a twisted way to see the idea that I have for my own bridesmaids practically brought to life in my favorite tv show.

Thats said - COPYCATS! I thought of it first!

(Though I know that other brides have the same idea, but I just had to act like a brat for a moment there. :::chuckle:::)

Another Option

I post another option to my loyal readers on the wedding dress issue.

But first, the big reveal.

The dress in the last post has a relation to Disney, hence the title. It is made by Kirstie Kelly for DISNEY FAIRYTALE WEDDINGS. That dress is from the "Snow White Collection." Go on an laugh, or bitch about how capitalist Disney is. Doesn't matter to me. It's a nice dress and I don't care where it's from. I was laughing from here to high heaven; I saw the article about it in the Daily News and if it weren't for the fact that there were photos of the dresses in the article I would have brushed them off. I was very pleasantly suprised - and the hilarity ensues when my mom, Mel (I told him about the site but didn't show the specific dress), Leah all said, "I wonder if your Uncle can get discount" - since he does work for Disney and all.

However, the price ($1100-$3500) is a bit squeamish. When I first got engaged, I dreamed of Vera Wang, Melissa Sweet and of peonies; now is the time to be practical. I am a bit of a cynic - there is a social construct to this whole wedding business and the damn industry makes too much money from marketing this idea of "THE perfect dress," "the DREAM dress," "the most EXPENSIVE dress in your whole life." Frankly, f--k that. I would rather take the $3000, go to Carolina Herrera or some other classy designer and get a couture cocktail dress in black that I can wear, and pass down to my daughter/granddaughter. I am a practical person; I buy clothes that I dress up and down. Which is why I like J.Crew; for all the expensive stuff, I buy on sale (or the very occasional splurge) and it LASTS. And I wear it all the time.

And also, I am going to be 23/24 (wedding might now be postponed till 2009); I feel that most of the dresses will make me look too old, for all the niceness that they have. I like the Snow White dress alot, but I am not sure if I can really see myself in it. But I do not want to look like a flower girl either. I just want to be different.

Which leads me to the other option, which is still, mercifully "anti-cupcake." Did I mention that I dislike salespeople? Bugger off. The ONLY salesperson that I will actually willingly talk to is Michael from J.Crew @ Columbus Circle. Apparently, he is the best salesperson out of all the J.Crew stores in the States. He is fun, he doesn't overly pester and makes me feel like a pampered brat but in a good way.

But I have insecurities (acne for one) and I do not need a saleslady in need of a commission to point them out when I am very much fully aware of them, and I do not want people to tell me what I want. I know what I want, dammit. If I need advice, I go to my mother and for fashion advice, my father and my grandmother. They actually worked in the Garment District so who better? Might I add, I go to my dad for approval of my clothing purchases, or ask his opinion of what is online.

Ann Taylor just came out with two wedding dresses. One has beading which is a mild no-no for me (frankly I prefer lace) and the other is a plain, simple strapless dress. And the price is very nice - $600 - AND I can go to the store on Madison Avenue to check it out myself.

Bit boring, but I have other ideas. Consider the plain, basic, strapless dress as a canvas. One idea branches out into ideas A, B, and C. The main idea is a cardigan, specifically 3/4 sleeves (sorta fuddy duddy with full length sleeves especially for a wedding). Idea A is a basic white one, from J.Crew (as always). There are three different fabrics, but the cheapest is $68:

Idea B is same cardigan, BUT in espresso/chocolate brown/bark/what have you to match the bridesmaid's dresses:



Idea C is this cardigan, which I think is an amazing design. Extremely retro, very 50's/Audrey Hepburn. Paired with pearls, sigh:



So those are my options that I have decided on with the strapless dress/cardigan option. I can either make it as a cover-up, or an integral part to the outfit, as Ideas B & C purport. Cardigans might not be original, but if I go with either Idea B or C it is quite interesting I think, and B would look cool with the bridesmaids. C goes very much for a classic, simple elegance. I DESPISE poof, pouf, frou-frou and fluff.

The price is not ridiculous (10% off via my sister on the cardigans!) AND I can order them online or get my sister to do it for me and try them on when I get home, since the last one is a particular design and not a basic, so it won't be around for awhile. Returns within 60 days with receipt get full refund; after 60 days with receipt is store credit. Either option is a classic, preppy-ish look which is the style I feel comfortable in, and won't break the bank. And I can wear the cardigans again - even with the last one which is $130, I wouldn't feel too guilty, since it would look great with skinny jeans, flats, and a long-ish, slim-fitting t-shirt.

And pearls. I have been wanting these
for a real long time.

I Always Said I Preferred Disney...

As I have mentioned before, I have an uncle that works for Disney and I get in for free. Walt Disney World that is, since he lives in Florida. Last I heard, he is working on getting me a ticket to Tokyo Disney since it isn't directly owned by the company, they just licensed the name. So I grew up with alot of Disney in the house, since the late 80s-early 90s were quite the prime period for Disney movies. When I was a kid, my mom would pop in a video for my sister and I to watch so we can go to sleep. Worked like a charm.

So, I have looked, and looked and looked for wedding dresses (Don't worry I'll get to Golden Week in a few days, I just have to post this now). Call me anal, but the internet is quite a godsend.

Most of the dresses are strapless, overly sexy and if they aren't strapless they are fuddy-duddy. The NICE non-strapless dresses cost an arm and a freaking leg. The Knot helps with getting sticker shock even before you enter the bridal salon. I very much dread getting a wedding dress this summer, as I have acne on my shoulders. Bah.

However, that can be somewhat amended with makeup and dermatology treatments. Still doesn't mean that I want a strapless dress - do I want to pick up the thing all night? Plus, 99.9999999% of the strapless dresses are EXACTLY th bloody same. I call them "cupcake dresses" and the girls in them "cupcake brides" - same exact hairstyle too: big puff of hair on top of the head.

I already know that my hair will be in a loose-ish chignon at the nape - I have thin hair so I can't do puff and poof. Good.

But alas, the point of my post. Like the dress?



I like it. My mom likes it. My sister likes it. In astrological terms, the three of us make two Leos and Sagittarius so there is always problems and disagreement especially with big stuff. I have an opinion - I AM the bride dammit and the one going to wear the dress. Of course, my mother has an opinion - she is my mother and there to help. And my sister (who is younger than me and the maid-of-honor) has not only an opinion, but a very loud mouth. You can imagine the arguments over Skype which are very few and far between since I have learned to "Handle Wedding Dress Shopping With Care" but like I said I dread the thought of getting a dress simply because I am picky (but honestly, what "bride" wouldn't be?) and I don't have much money to get THE Vera Wang or Priscilla of Boston or Melissa Sweet dress that I have seen on the internet (some of which do fit my criteria, namely not being strapless, but alas, not the budget. And I like to think myself as practical - not like I am going to wear a $5000+ piece of white puff again).

The bridesmaids dresses were solved very early in the whole planning: so long as it is brown and from J.Crew (yes they are pricey but since they choose and it's in a "functional color" they can wear it again, plus my sister is still going to be in college so 10% discount) whatever you want as long as they are all different (4 girls, 4 different dresses). My sister, Leah will choose whichever dress she wants in pink. So the colors are chocolate brown, pink (of one shade or another, preferably a dark one) and maybe a third color. I am going to make them wear gold shoes; matchy-matchy dyed shoes is sooo early 1990s (however, no offense to anyone who had that in the mid-late 1990s and 2000s, it is my opinion, and I was in a wedding in the early 1990s where everything right down to the usher's cumberbunds was matchy-matchy emerald green taffeta). Blech.

So you like it?

You will NEVER guess who the designer is. The clue is in this post - trust me, there is a connection.

Twinkle, Twinkle, Diamond Ring...

As you can tell from "The Reading List" to the left on the page, there are a bunch of websites and other blogs that I am reading. I am also currently reading about 4 books as well:

1) Sayuri (Memoirs of a Geisha in Japanese)
2) The Dante Club
3) Memory and the Mediterranean
4) Mao: The Unknown Story

So that is alot of reading. One of the blogs that I read posted this book that the blogger got as a wedding gift, which I think is rather cute and cheeky:
and aptly quoted one of the "nursery rhymes" from the book:

"Twinkle, Twinkle, Diamond Ring,
In a blue box tied with String.
Tiffany's new princess cut,
Twice the size of baby's butt."

The full title is "This Little Piggy Went to Prada: Nursery Rhymes for the Blahnik Brigade." If Carrie Bradshaw on "Sex and the City" were to ever become a mom or a bride this is something she would definitely recieve as a gift. Though I think the rhyme got the "string" part wrong - Tiffany boxes are always tied with ribbon. Oh well, one has to rhyme in order to make the poem work.

The Fordham Invasion, Part 2

And so the wedding reception hunt begins.

This past Saturday, Mel, my mother, his mother and I went to the New York Botanical Garden up in the Bronx to check out their wedding facilities and prices. Well, we already had a clue what the prices were since it was in the email that Mel received, but we still wanted to check.

Two-hundred and fifty one dollars a person the NYBG does not make. The carpets were old, the mirrors a bit grimy, the linens looked cheap (didn't help much that the color chosen for the wedding that afternoon was peach) and the place where they had the cocktail hour wasn't very garden-looking. You weren't even in the garden. The tent was dirty, too. The chairs for the cocktail tables were this hideous green. It just looked so blah. If it wasn't $251, we might have thought on it a bit more, since you can change the linens and the chairs and such, but you can't, only for an "extra charge" so money wise it was a waste. No wonder there was a wedding that afternoon - it was a hundred dollars cheaper a person.

Fordham is right next to NYBG and my mom kept on pestering me, saying that "Oh wouldn't it be so nice to take pictures on the Fordham campus?" (Only alumni can get married at the chapel there and take pictures, provided that at least the bride or the groom is an alum.)This was said in hopes that we would choose the NYBG, and before all 4 of us came to the conclusion before our appointment that it just sucked. I kept saying pretty much "Hell no - I never set foot on that campus for more than 20 minutes at a time and the longest time I ever spent there was at graduation." Not my school. Simple as that.

During our appointment, the bride for that afternoon's wedding came in from the "bridal suite" to look at everything and she was happy with it. To each her own.

After the bride left to "go get herself married," my mother turns to the sales representative that we were talking to and asked, "Is the ceremony at the garden?"

The sales representative turns around and goes, "Oh, not this time. They are getting married at the chapel at Fordham University. It's right next door and I hear it's very pretty."

I stand corrected. I am surrounded.