Buying an engagement ring is a huge purchase and if you haven’t bought a new car or house before this point it may be the biggest purchase y, ou have made yet. The range of styles and prices in engagement rings is endless. There are thousands of rings available from hundreds of retailers online (and [...]
TheKnot.com just posted a link on Facebook about their new wedding centerpiece trends. I am not sure who decides these things, but the trend is really all about doing whatever you want. Here is a rundown of their 2010 trends and some options if they aren’t quite what you wanted.
And beware, as you click through [...]
Choosing my wedding veil and how to wear my hair on my wedding day shouldn’t have been that difficult but it was. I wanted a simple short veil and a simple up-do hair style with a flowered hair clip on the side since I saw it in a Chicago Bride magazine and it looked simple and elegant. The veil [...]
I have had a lot of cold calls from telemarketers latley who seem to be getting my name and number from bridal stores trunk shows and wedding bridal expos. I understand that these companies may use my info to market to me but I did not expect them to sell my name in a database list to [...]
By far the hardest part of planning our wedding so far (after finding a reception hall) has been trying to find a theme or color combination for the wedding. There are a million options and for some reason we didn’t have any characteristics that were meaningful in colors or wedding themes. In fact we are in our mid-late [...]
After finding my wedding dress last weekend at Priscilla of Boston I was thinking of how clueless I was about this process when I started and what I would tell someone as advice if they asked about where and how to shop and buy a wedding dress in Chicago. I think there are some misunderstandings about wedding [...]
I started my search (journey) for my wedding gown like many Chicago brides do, online and in those glossy perfect bridal magazines. Chicago has many good bridal and wedding magazines written with this area in mind. The two I have are Chicago Bride and Chicago Weddings. I found the Chicago Wedding information very helpful in the southwest suburban [...]
Deciding who will pay for what at your wedding in Chicago is one of the most important things to start figuring out when you get engaged. How much money you have to work with and who is taking part in the planning will determine a lot about what you end up doing. The thing is, money is [...]
I have written about our difficulty in finding a suitable wedding reception location in Chicago that had a minimum dollar amount and minimum person requirement we could meet! We eliminated the Naperville Country Club ($10,000 minimum), Seven Bridges Golf Club ($11,000 minimum), the Hyatt in Lisle (no minimum but it was $9,500 with everything included [...]
I had to start my search for a wedding gown at Macy’s Bridal Salon in downtown Chicago on State Street. I grew up going to Marshall Fields in Oak Brook but they don’t have a bridal salon in that store. I have gotten more familiar with the State Street flagship Macy’s (Marshall Fields) since I [...]
I have heard that most grooms just rent a tux, buy the rings and show up on the wedding day to get married. Everything else in the wedding planning has been traditionally been left to the bride. I think initially that made sense years ago when there wasn’t much to plan and weddings were simpler. Now weddings are a much [...]
Picking a date for my wedding has hinged on finding a location to hold the wedding reception in Chicago. There are no shortage of Country Clubs, Golf Clubs, Banquet Halls, Hotels and Large Restaurant locations in Chicago and the suburbs, but yet my wedding reception search has been difficult.
The reasons the search for a reception location in [...]
The first step in our engagement process was to find and buy an engagement ring.
I went through many iterations of what I thought was a pretty engagement ring over the years, and as styles changed I came back to liking a very classic style. I was not sure what Steve was going to think of this since engagement [...]
Welcome to my blog: The Chicago Wedding and Bridal Blog by a real live Chicago bride. I just got engaged to my boyfriend Steve on Saturday 9/27/2008 and I am thrilled! I wanted to blog about the process that we are going through now to plan our wedding. It is also something I wanted to do because I wanted to [...]