Forever21

As happens every Spring, I decide that I need more dresses. I love wearing dresses, but I have no where near as many as I would like. I also don't have anywhere near enough money to buy all of the dresses I would like, so I've been looking at relatively affordable options.

I thought that Forever21 might be a good idea, since I have found nice pieces there in the past.

And I did find a few cute looking dresses on their website.

But the number of cute dresses was far overshadowed by the sheer amount of wtf dresses. I can't even call them all ugly, because some of them just make NO SENSE.

Here are pictures of a few of my favorite wtf dresses.

This is an "Origami Satin Dress" in navy blue. Not quite sure what part of it is Origami, but hey. It's part of the "Twelve by Twelve" line, which "offers a more sophisticated, modest fit than FOREVER 21."

Now, I have no idea what that means, because to me, this just looks wrong. I mean, where are you supposed to wear this? It's almost completely polyester and dry clean only, which translates to me: stuffy, uncomfortable and pointlessly expensive and difficult to clean. Plus, do you see those sleeve-things? Those scream itchy to me.




Now, I love mermaids as much as the next girl, and when I was 7 my goal in life was to become Ariel, but that does not mean that I would EVER wear this dress.






If any of you had dreams of dressing like a combination of Xena and a dominatrix, but doing it in a fun, summery kind of way, here's your dress.

If not, I'd steer clear of this dress which has somehow managed to make this size OO mannequin look like a cow.






For those of you who would rather look like a Barbie, though, here's the dress for YOU. There could be no other possible inspiration for this dress than to make the wearer look as much like a Barbie as possible; the biggest flaw, in my eyes, is that the designer hasn't seen a Barbie since the 80s.





This dress is shameful. It's a mullet dress. That is all.










And now we come to... this... dress.

I know when I go shopping, I look for outfits that make my hips and thighs look bigger, and accentuate my boobs to a point just short of painting actual nipples on the fabric.

I can't imagine this dress was designed by a woman. Or anyone who ever saw a woman... or spoke with a woman... or... looked at a woman. Seriously.



And finally, the always classy, I'm-faking-pregnant dress. Because that's ever a good idea.

Zox

Okay, so, I have a lot of music. My goal for the past few years has been to just accumulate music. Because I love it, and you can never have too much music.

Until you get an ipod mini and can only fit a small percentage of your music on it at a time.

But one of the bands that I've been listening to a lot (other than the Two Gentlemen Band - I'll write about them later - I'm madly in love, must see them, and give all my thanks to Nikki) is Zox. Now, I downloaded a lot of their songs after hearing them on Pandora. I can't remember exactly which playlist they came up on, but I'm leaning strongly towards my Dispatch-based one. Because Dispatch is great.

Now, I've been listening to them for close to 2 years now, and have never had the urge to, you know, look them up online or learning anything about them. Because I'm lazy sometimes.

But I just did, and oh my god I'm angry at myself for not doing this earlier.

Mostly because of the list of bands they opened for.

I get angry at myself when I find things that I would have LOVED to do, but missed the opportunity.

Here's a quote from the wikipedia entry on them: They have opened for or toured with bands such as The Black Eyed Peas, O.A.R., Rusted Root, Common, OK-GO, The Roots, Everclear, Dispatch, Live, Guster, Good Charlotte, Gogol Bordello, Streetlight Manifesto, Phantom Planet, Flogging Molly, The Sugar Hill Gang, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Hawthorne Heights, The Living End, Petey Pablo, and Lupe Fiasco, among others.

Now, the above list contains some of my favorite bands of the past few decades. I've seen several of them, but, very unfortunately, never when they played with Zox. This makes me sad.

The end.

Custom Ring Dish

Look at this absurdly adorable Custom Ring Dish on Etsy. I don't foresee a need for a custom ring dish for the wedding, nor do I see room in the budget for something so adorably frivolous. That won't stop me from drooling over it for a day or so.

Maybe there's some way we can diy a similar thing... as a favor? For the shower? It doesn't look like it would be too terribly difficult if we adapted the design to be simpler.

Antique Pink and Sage

I made these two color palettes off of the two dresses one of my wonderful bridesmaids liked. They're both from The Dessy Group again, but this time in Sage.

The first palette was made second, and is a lot simpler. The bottom one is really just a collection of ideas and images that vaguely fit into the color scheme and that I like. The top one is quite a bit more selective.

Ideas? Opinions?

Soft Pink and Celadon

After yesterday's post inspired by 100 Layer Cake, I decided to pursue a similar color palette a little more. Everyone knows I love ranunculus, especially when they're soft pink with hints of green in the center. I also like the color of these Dessy bridesmaid dresses, shown in the color Celadon, which is, apparently, a name for a type of ceramic. Go figure.

Pink and Green

For the wedding's color palette, I've been wavering between Pink/Green and Blue/Green. As much as I love blue, I'm leaning strongly towards pink/green.

However, I hate hot pink. And I'm not sure if I want a vibrant pink. I would prefer a softer, paler pink if possible. I've even been thinking of a peach or coral instead of/or with a pink.

I've been on the fence about it, but after seeing yesterday's 100 Layer Cake post, I'm thinking that might be the way I'll try to go.

Guest Blogger, Snippet and Ink writes

I love playing with colors, seeing if I can make predictable color palettes new, or pairing colors that might not seem obvious together. Pink and green is still a favorite for weddings, and I imagine it always will be, but it can come across as saccharine and unsophisticated. Black tones down the sweetness, and makes it all look chic.

Palette: melon-mint green, pale grapefruit pink, black avocado.

Here are a few more color palettes that incorporate peaches and corals that I like.

A gorgeous collection of coral Etsy products.

A really cute celery and peach palette.

A nice peach, orange and aqua one. I don't love the orange, but the peach is really cute.

I also really like this spring-themed collection - the flowers are my favorite part.

All of these palettes are from The Perfect Palette, a delightful blog that has very pretty, creative wedding palettes.

House

Zach and I have been house-hunting lately. I blame my father and Eric, for the most part. It's not Eric's fault so much, because he actually needs a house. But my father? He think it's a good investment. Well, it is, except for the small little problem that I currently have two part-time jobs to accommodate the fact that I'm still in grad school.

However, the fact that it's currently a buyer's market, Zach has some money saved up and he has a good credit score and I have a borderline great credit score makes us actually not in a terrible place to buy a house. Not a big house. A starter house.

We've been looking a lot on Long Island because, for the most part, it's more affordable than Queens. Yes, the taxes are higher, but houses are mostly cheaper and have bigger properties. Towns like Elmont have some surprisingly nice houses that are relatively cheap and the school district isn't bad. We've even found a couple houses in West Hemsptead that are completely affordable, and the West Hempstead school district is apparently really good. I mean, that's not just my opinion, that's according to grades and reviews found online.

Save-the-Dates

I realized today, after looking at a few save-the-date promps, that I can't send them out until I have addresses, and I roughly finalized guest list, to boot.

Frick.

So I've spent the better part of the morning: A. brainstorming/editing save-the-dates, and B. Frantically trying to finalize the guest list, which is, apparently, no where near finalized.

I've done a lot of organizing though, and hopefully once I talk with the in-laws and my parents, I'll be able to actually finish this so we can get these save-the-dates out!

Hairstyle

Now that I have my dress, I've been thinking about the rest of my appearance. I know that I would like to wear my mom's pearl necklace. I'd like to whiten my teeth. I'm trying to get in better shape (omg when did I get flab under my arms?! That's so not okay!). Of course I'll get a manicure, and I might even try to grow my nails out a little so I don't look like a child.

And my hair. I've been trying to grow my hair out for a long time. Right now, my hair is longer than it has been in years, and by years, I mean since I was about 14. I've also been dying it with henna lately, instead of chemical dyes, because I would love if I could have my hair be the perfect shade of red with something natural, because that's just how I roll.

I've been thinking, and right now my ideal wedding hairstyle would consist of some sort of loose side bun with a flower in it.

My preliminary search for matching hairstyles has pulled up nothing that matches my ideas. However, I'm sure I've seen it done somewhere before, so... I'll just have to keep looking.

These are the closest ones that match the picture in my head:

I think I'd prefer a flower to a clip, but this one is very pretty, and I'm about 99% positive I want a real flower as opposed to a silk one with a feather around it, but this one is also pretty, so there you go. Both are from Theknot.com, go figure.