Pin the Shoes on the Shoe Addict

Love this game designed by Keg Design...

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Hooray for Joanie!

The Chicago Bride-to-Be is a Chicago Wife-to-Be. Have fun! Savor every moment.

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I can't wait to read about  how things come together. Based on her Photobooth Bookmarks, I think that it's going to be great!

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Check this post to read about her idea for using all of the ribbon that adorned shower gifts received from her Bed, Bath & Beyond registry.

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Rain, Rain, Stay Away...

...because lots of Chicago girls are getting married today! It looks like they'll be lucky too.

Lots of Blog Love to all of the Chicago Girls getting married this weekend:

Kelly from Keg Design

 Images: Keg Design

Mel from Chicago Girl Gone Mild

Image: Chicago Girl Gone Mild

Katie The Indecisive Bride
- who won't be a Chicago girl for much longer :(

 Image: Indecisive Bride

 How fun! Congratulations and have a blast!

 There are still a few more local girls for us to follow and drool over:

• Chicago Bride-to-Be 
• soon to be koo... 
• Wed in the White City 
• Kasia
• The Road to June 19, 2010... - I cannot wait to see this wedding! It's at the Chicago Illuminating Company. I am so obsessed with this space. I asked Terese to make me her free DOC or coat check girl so that I can attend. :)

I hope that I didn't miss anyone. I think that I've convinced another A New Leaf bride to post here soon. Her Save-the-Dates are the coolest.

tw + ac: 10.17.08.20: Cocktail Napkins

Economy and Hurricanes be damned, I got my cocktail napkins. Yeah!

I also impulsed purchased some handtowels for the bathroom while I was chatting online with the PrintGlobe customer service rep finalizing the napkin order. (BTW, PrintGlobe is excellent. I highly recommend them, as did Robyn.)

When I recently made a joke to my sister-in-law's about her impending beach wedding trumping ours because it was on the beach and Andy's mom loves water, she said, "You had personalized towels in the bathroom. Deal with it." Damn. Don't hate, yo.

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Speaking of bathrooms, remember my dilemma about having courtesy baskets in the bathrooms? Well, I had them. AND SOMEONE STOLE ALL OF THE STUFF! I remember noticing that there was one nail file and one mint lying in the dish at the end of the night and thinking "Oh, cool! They actually used everything!" But a few days later, I realized that had there been enough illness and "emergencies" to require:

• 2 first aid kits,
• 4 bottles of ibuprofen and aspirin,
• 2 bottles of antacids (OK. This one, I could see.),
• 2 sewing kits, and
• 2 boxes of tampons,

I would have heard about it. What a sham. Maybe our guests had to use the tampons to plug up bloody noses and to seal wounds after they ran out of the first aid kits? (Seriously, I'd say that 10% of the female guests at our wedding were menopausal and another five were pregnant.)

On the plus side, the bathroom baskets allowed me the opportunity to use some shower gifts before they went to storage in Aunt Ruth's basement. I used some serving trays from Crate & Barrel as our "courtesy baskets." They were perfect, stylish, and saved us some cash. Crate & Barrel uses theirs for cantaloupe and mixed nuts, I use mine for tampons and dental floss. To each his own.

Images: Napkins: Sarah Alair; Dishes: Crate & Barrel

New Chicago Bride-to-Be, Sorta

Kash (rhymes with Posh) is planning a lofty Chicago wedding from her current post in Africa. So cool. You can read about her cooler-life-than-yours African adventures here.

Surrendering Our Birdcage Veils

Well, Tara, Colleen, Natalie, Robin, and Darcy, it appears that a new bridal brigade is storming Chicago. We're old news! :)  But that doesn't mean that we can't watch them longingly from afar.

Chicago Bride-to-Be

Chris + Flora

soon to be koo...

I love the name - and header - of this blog: Wed in the White City 

If I missed any other local brides, please comment below or e-mail your web site address to itheeobsess@gmail.com. Also, if you're currently planning a wedding and would like to share your experience with others without commiting to a blog of your own, please contact me about guest blogging or becoming a contributor. Support from my virtual bridesmaids was so helpful to me during my planning phase and I'm happy to share my established community.

P.S. So jealous of you all! I miss wedding planning so much! Let me know if you need any help.

Preppy Halloween Swap

The Pink Clutch is hosting a Preppy Halloween Swap. The enrollment deadline is 09.01.2008.

Image: Martha Stewart via The Pink Clutch

The Unbride's Save the Dates

I can't believe that the blogosphere hasn't made a bigger deal about The Unbride's t-shirt save the dates. As always, she's the coolest.

Images: The Unbride

Speaking of cool brides, this afternoon I attended the wedding ceremony of the new Mrs. Dan, Tara from In This Instance. First of all, she looked BEAUTIFUL. Gorgeous. I had never met her before and she's definitely a hot chick. Her and Dan were both beaming during the ceremony. And she did a fantastic job at the venue. Her tabletops were gorgeous. I can't believe that she made those tablecloths herself! It was so fun seeing all of the blog posts and e-mails coming to fruition.

I Want Cigarette Girls...

...who wear flowers in their hair and carry hawker boxes bebazzled with feathers.

Image: Hello Darling Events via Elizabeth Anne Designs Library

And, thanks to the new Elizabeth Anne Designs Library, I know where to get them. Man! Do I wish that the EAD Library was around when I first became bethrothed! Just having a list of vendor sites on which to prowl for eye candy is like a virtual Christmas morning. Although, in their words, it sounds much more purposeful:

We are incredibly excited to announce our new project, The EAD Library. After months of development and research, we are launching a new resource for brides tomorrow, Tuesday July 22nd. The Library is filled with hundreds of useful links, from photographers to shops to stationers. Our goal is a simple, comprehensive list of vendors. The Library will help every bride, no matter her location, find the vendors and inspiration she needs for a beautiful event.

Go check it out!

P.S. Tara's gettin' hitched this weekend! Yeah!

How Does My Google Reader Have 962 Unread Items In it?

I've been using Reader for escapism all week! How can it be so out of control?

Image: allegrae.etsy.com

"Nah, she looks to pure to be pink!"

Below is an excerpt from a post that has been sitting unpublished in my list of rainy day posts for a few weeks now. I wrote this shortly after I had been shopping with my sister and friend and got dirty looks for rejecting dresses as "too bridal."

"One of the problems with reading wedding blogs and wedding magazines is that you stumble upon so many people that are cooler than you. After I saw Style Me Pretty's feature on The Unbride, by photographer Justine Ungaro, I found yet another Rizzo to my Frenchy. According to her web site, I am an 'Unbride.' YEAH! Take THAT tradition! I crush you with my brightly-colored shoe.

- she’s probably not super young (grrrrlllll, okay?) or the first of her friends to be married
- perhaps she’s just a little bit (or a lot) jaded about the whole wedding machine
- she wants the vibe of the wedding to represent the personal style of the couple rather than trying to create a “fairy tale”
- she wants to vomit if a wedding is referred to as a “fairy tale”
- on that note, anything princessy has to go…no tiaras here
- menu choices might be unusual or presented in a different format
- the invitation might not even resemble an invitation
- some traditional wedding etiquette might be thrown out the window altogether
- the day’s/ evenings events might be rearranged somehow
- the gown might be “different” - short, colored, sexy, crazy, unusual, not a gown at all?"

So imagine my surprise when I checked out her new blog, Unveiled Society, tonight and saw my blog featured front and center. Yeah! I feel like Dirrrty Sandy. Too bad I have a big embosser in the screen shot she used. Embossers are BAD ASS!

Photo: collider.com

P.S. I have to admit that I often wonder if people call me "sassy" to be polite. Kind of like when you describe relatives as "eccentric."