Wedding shoes. To splurge, or not to splurge

Ever since I decided which wedding gown I'm wearing, I've been on a search for either teal heels or ivory lace heels. I found no teal heels, so I bought a pair of $45 heels from Calista (Thanks for the tip, Allysa & Lynette!) which at the time, I really liked. There's no return policy, so I have to keep them no matter what. They are a champagne glittery color with many rhinestones on the front part that goes over my toes. I thought I was all set on my shoes, until I went shoe shopping at Nordstrom with a couple of my girls.

I came across a to-die-for pair of teal Badgley Mischkas. Now I'm not a shoe-lover, nor am I swayed by fancy brand names. This shoe is beautiful in it's own right. The only issue is that it's about $150 with my bridesmaid's bf's discount. I went on Zappos to see if they were offered, which they are, at retail price. Then I saw a taller pair of a similar shoe that was also offered and I love that one too! Haha, now I'm not going to get both pairs of Badgley Mischkas, but I'm just trying to decide if it's worth it to get even one of them. I plan to wear them again after the wedding as teal is quickly becoming one of my favorite colors. However, I've never spent over $20 for shoes. I'm a frugal girl when it comes to clothes and shoes and it's greatly conflicting me to spend SO much on shoes.

Oh, and before my teal lovelies were discovered, I'd really been eyeing out this pair of lace Chinese Laundry heels from Zappos too. (sigh) such difficult decisions. :P

Slow progress

We have chosen a few more vendors:

• ShutterBooth Hawaii for our photobooth (Jamie and Pat are awesome!)--info about this registry soon
• SuMoCa for our cranes (Morris is really friendly and is good about following up with me. I really look forward to working with him.)

My gracious and hard-working bridesmaids have put in their orders for their dresses at the end of last month. I'm so excited to see them in their selections!! Now I need to figure out jewelry for them. (And for me, too) See my board on pinterest for my accessory ideas.

I'm really dragging my feet on make-up and hair for the day of. Trials can be really expensive. And what if you don't like it, then you have to go and try with another person. Once you choose someone you like, then you still have to pay them for the day-of. And that fee is only to get them for the initial getting ready part. If I have to fix anything later on, it's gonna be me doing it! (sigh) I was really leaning towards just doing it myself. But I have a trial set-up for next weekend and I'll see how that goes. My hair & make up pinterest board.

A couple months ago, we met with some cake vendors to hash out our ideas of having a one-tier cake for cutting (white fondant, black damask design, teal ribbon around base, possible white anemone flowers; vanilla cake with chocolate filling) and mini cupcakes (multiple flavors) to fill up the cake display but not be overwhelmed with sweets since we'll be having a dessert bar with the buffet. It's coming together :) My cake/cupcake pinterest board.

Aaron and I received our wedding rings a couple weeks ago. He picked his out from this artist on Etsy, and mine is the matching band to my engagement ring from The Wedding Ring Shop.

I'm currently finalizing our invitations so that we can print, assemble, and mail out by the end of this month. (crosses fingers)

We are waiting to hear back from our first choice linen vendor to see if they can still do our event.

The honeymoon is not planned as of yet. We're not going to do it directly following the wedding as that's the first week of school for Aaron. We're going to wait until late September/early October to take advantage of Aaron's fall break. We were leaning towards Japan for the honeymoon, but we haven't been getting the greatest help from the travel agencies we've been to, so Aaron is thinking maybe it's not meant to be. Our second option is staying on the West Coast of the mainland to do some wine tasting and other fun stuff. Man, I wish it wasn't necessary to plan a honeymoon at the same time as a wedding >:|