Heating Up For The Kettle Wedding: A Bridal Shower

After our amazing engagement party, the next official party we had was the bridal shower. Like so many other aspects of this wedding, the shower was larger than one would expect. There were 50 invited women. There ended up being 55 in attendance. I arrived horribly late, just like I was for the engagement party. I marveled at how gorgeous the decorations were as well as how many presents there were.

Personal Photo: Decorations/Favors for each hour of the day.

Personal Photo: More decorations/favors.

Personal Photo: An obscene amount of gifts, mostly from Victoria's Secret. They covered the whole table! If giving gifts measured love, I was feeling the love.

In my defense, I was coming off a 3-day (night) work shift and had only had 3 hours of sleep in between getting off work and getting to the shower. But I arrived and went to each table snapping pictures and saying hello.

I sat down to eat and finally got to have some sangria out of the special bridal shower glass my mother purchased probably 2 weeks before I was even engaged. The food was amazing. We were at one of my favorite restaurants, Buca di Beppo. Lots of laughter and chatting happened all around.

Personal Photo: I wish I'd taken a better photo, but you can see the "Sho" of Bridal Shower if you look hard.

Then a delivery arrived that made everyone ooh and aah. Mr. Kettle's entire family took pride that they raised him right. My whole family cooed that I'd found a great man.

Personal Photo: Mr. Kettle had them delivered during the party. He's such a sweetheart!

After we ate, it was time to start the games. There was the game I'd been dying to play: Toilet Paper Wedding Dress.

Personal Photo: These women got outrageous with their designs. This one had an 8 foot train.

Personal Photo: They were weaving a crown with ribbon. There were lots of non-toilet paper items ending up in these dresses.

Personal Photo: Me posing with the lovely models. I wish I could remember who I chose as the winner. But I was impressed with these dresses. Off the shoulder, two tier skirts, halter tops, belted waists, they weren't playing!

There was Who Knows Miss Kettle Best. That game was very interesting because no one knew everything. I started to feel as if I'd compartmentalized my life. People I'd gone to dinner with knew my favorite foods and wine. People I'd known as a child knew what super hero I'd be. Hardly anyone knew my actual height. I resolved to have more well-rounded discussions with people.

My mom brought her dance instructor to teach us all a dance. It was far too complicated for our group that had been drinking sangria, but it was fun.

Then it was time to open the presents. There were so many! It took forever. My mother and bridesmaids came up with a clever theme for the party. The decorations and invitations and everything went with it. The theme was around times of the day. Each guest got a time from : Breakfast Time, Lunch Time, Dinner Time, Cocktail Time, Exercise Time, Bath Time, Bed Time.

Personal Photo: One of the nicer lingerie sets I got. I figured I could show this one on the internet. It got much worse (or ahem, better) from there.

Personal Photo: I got excited when I got a gift that wasn't lingerie. 

No one told me, but apparently, every time is time for lingerie. I joked a lot about how I couldn't believe all these women were cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner in lingerie. My closet it still full of things we haven't used yet. I used to have half a naughty drawer that really just held random stuff I picked up at a friend's bachelorette party back in 2010. But now, we have two full drawers of naughty stuff. That's not even including the lingerie.

After the gifts, the party wound down. We gave out favors and cleaned up and moved on with our day. All the bridesmaids came back to my parents' house and we had a snack of the leftovers. Mr. Kettle met us there and was promptly embarrassed by me showing him some of my gifts in front of my father. I wanted to tell him that we were getting married and the whole world knew what we would be doing as a married couple, but instead, I just laughed and ate more pasta.

How did your bridal shower go? Did your guests go lingerie crazy? Have you used all your gifts yet?

Bridesmaid Dress Stress, But A Solution Arises

In my last post, I left off with ominous words. Yes, we left David's Bridal and headed to Eva's Bridal. This wasn't the Eva's Bridal in Tinley Park where I bought my dress. This was the Eva's Bridal in Orland Park. They had dresses and were up the street, so we figured we'd check them out so the day wouldn't be a total waste.

After the magic with the first dresses, I didn't think we'd find it again. But I went through the same routine nonetheless:

1. Have the girls pick out dresses they all seriously like.

2. Veto the ones I hate on sight.

3. Have them try on the dresses they picked.
4. Have other girls try on dresses as I decide they work on each successive girl.

We changed it this time and made Step #3 "make sure the dress is available in our color choice." We looked at all the purples and ultimately chose that same blue-ish purple color we now know is called Regency.

I didn't have high hopes that we'd find yet another dress that looked amazing on every girl. They're just too different. They have seriously different body types. Kind of like this.


Image: Keen Eye Style post on Body Types

 We did manage to find something that worked. After trying on a number of dresses...

Personal Image: MOH Sis trying on a great satin dress and looking super tiny. I really didn't like the dip in the back though.

Personal Image: BM Law trying on another great satin number. Can you tell I was trying to stick with satin at this point? And who doesn't love pockets?

Personal photo: sorry for the skinny photo. I had to crop out half-naked MOH Sis. Apparently, not wearing pants runs in the family.



Personal Image: BM Libra trying this one on. Still cute. At this point I'm thinking maybe my commitment to satin isn't so firm.

Personal Image: BM Law trying it on too. Still cute! I was pretty much sold at this point. I just needed the girls to okay it.

This A-line, floor length was really the ticket, even though they all have great legs. The surprise to me was the empire waist. I figured a natural waist would be more universally flattering. I don't care about being wrong because this dress is just fabulous.

Here's the dress we ended up deciding on that day.

Image: BIll Levkoff #537

We're getting it, of course, in Regency.

Personal photo: Regency is the one all the way to the left.

 This dress is all over weddingbee, much like my wedding dress. It's because it's awesome and fits a variety of body types. Momma Kettle worried that putting my bridesmaids in a dress longer than mine (dress hint!) would be backwards, but I figured it would be okay.

We let the jr. bridesmaids also try on dresses though we knew at this point we'd just get them the coordinating dress.

Image: Bill Levkoff #53702

Personal photo: This looks too much like an overgrown flower girl dress in my opinion, I wanted my girls to look like young ladies.

Personal photo: Even worse. I just had to show this photo of when bustles go wrong.

So we were all set, right? Not even close. I don't want to get into all of it here so I will gloss over the details, but just know that this whole situation made me bury my head in the sand for a few days and not answer phone calls or texts from my girls for a few days until they worked it out amongst themselves.

The price was an issue. BM Law expressed on behalf of some of the other ladies that they couldn't afford the price at Eva's. After some drama in which she ended up apologizing for speaking for people out of place, we settled it. They really wanted this particular dress, so they would make it happen.

I had already talked to each of my girls about what they could afford, but I ended up finding the dresses for much cheaper at >House of Brides online.  If we order them all together, we'll save a bundle on shipping and insurance. So I'll be collecting everyone's money this week and ordering the dresses.



Our bridesmaid dresses will be here by mid-December. Mima Kettle just informed me the flower girls dresses have arrived (let's pray those 5 years olds don't grow too much in the next 6 months!). Now we just have to find 7 more dresses and we're done.

What 7 more you ask? 3 dresses for my hostesses. One for Momma Kettle, Grandmother Kettle, Mima Kettle, and FSIL Grand. They're very important ladies in this whole thing too!

Trying To Clothe The Kettle Ladies

I didn't want to make a big production of finding bridesmaid dresses. I had my maid of honor and Easy's maid of honor look online for the last month or so. We found a couple of great options. David's Bridal seemed to be the place to go to in order to fit into a certain price range and style selection. I made an appointment for a Wednesday when most everyone was available.

My maid of honor, MOH Indy, lives in NYC, so she wasn't available. But Easy's maid of honor, his sister was available. As were her twin daughters who are our flower girls. Also available were all my bridesmaids except one. Our two junior bridesmaids were also there to try on dresses. Throw in my mother, Easy's mother and sister, and we have a group of 14 females, only 4 of whom weren't trying on a single dress.

It was so much more fun than you could imagine. I was going around ooh-ing and aah-ing at all the pretty dresses and taking pictures. The flower girls didn't want to take off their "princess dresses".

Personal Image: Vera Wang shoes that we still drool over in memory.

Personal Image: BM Shorty trying on a dress I'd love if it didn't look like it was trying to be a one-shoulder gown.

Personal Image: One of the twin flower girls looking adorable in a princess gown.

Personal Image: BM shorty in yet another that didn't make the cut. Just too much... everything.



Personal Image: both twin flower girls in more pretty dresses. The one on the left is the one we ended up going with.




Personal Image: JB Cousin trying on a possible jr. bridesmaid dress, right color, but not quite perfect.



Personal Image: FNIL Tiny trying on another jr. bridesmaid dress contender. I was feeling this one since we were leaning toward satin at first.

Personal Image:  BM Law trying on a nice dress that I loved more for the cummerbund waist than anything else.

Personal Image: BM Libra looking good in everything she puts on, as usual. I really liked this one, so we had our coordinator round up some more of this in everyone's size.

Personal Image: BM ATL, with whom we hadn't been having much luck, looked super cute in this one too.

And then something magical happened.

Image: Magic Desktop Wallpaper via Wallpapers Desktop DiQ

Somehow, one dress looked great on every single bridesmaid. And it just so happened that the only 2 who weren't there look good in literally everything they wear.

I was so excited. They didn't have my color swatch match though, major color fail. I thought of the Thank You wreath I'd worked so hard on. But then I realized this dress looked good on every single bridesmaid. I had achieved something that should have been unachievable with that many girls, so I focused on what really mattered in that moment. I asked for all the options in purple.

Personal Image: All the options in purple.

Our coordinator went to get the swatches and we picked this lovely color that looked like a rich purple but photographed kind of blue. That made me super excited because blue is the color I originally wanted.

I had all the ladies pose for one giant photo as proof that they truly all rocked the dress. I could see it in that great purple-y blue color. I was already editing invitations and color schemes. It would epic! It would legen-wait-for-it...-dary!

Personal photo: even ill-sized and wrong-colored, they all look fabulous!

And then...

Image: Luke Himself

Our happy parade came to a screeching halt. She informed us she was mistaken about the dress being available in that color. The only options were a horrific burgundy color and this other dusty de-saturated purple-y shade.

I was immediately ready to leave the store. She apologized too many times and I told her we were going down the street to Eva's Bridal. We will still be getting our flower girls' dresses from there though, since they would coordinate perfectly with my dress.

We went to another store where things only got worse. I thought the dress shopping would be hard because of all the different body types. But nope, it was something else entirely.

This post by no means should reflect poorly on David's Bridal. The dress had just been changed to unavailable in my color a day or two before our appointment. And anyone who can deal with the dress flurry fury we presented with deserves a big hug or a cookie or maybe even some sort of award.