The Great Shoe Crisis

Weddings are stressful. Did anyone know that? When we first started planning the wedding, someone told us, "Weddings take as much time to plan as you have." Which is ultimately true. If you have two months, you cram it in within those two months and if things are forgotten, whatever. If you have fifteen months (like us) it takes fifteen months.

With my two back can't-work-must-be-horizontal incidents, I got a lot of planning done. A LOT of planning done.

Caterer booked, location booked, DJ booked, photographer booked (twice...don't even get me started on flaky photographers), you know...everything that seemed...well, important.

I got the dress (very critical), started registering, designed the invites and the save the dates.

All in all, I felt very confident in where we were in the planning. Like it was hurry up and wait time.

However, as we're approaching the 6 month mark, little things start encroaching on the peaceful "I'm all planned, I have nothing left to do but sit around and wait until the big day." Like, where is the wedding party going to stay? Who is going to pick up the groomsmen's outfits suits? What kind of signs do I want?

Holy crap.

At least I am pretty solid on the big details. And the things I absolutely, 100% do. not. want. Like a unity candle. Or a unity sandbox. Or anything with the word unity that just serves to make my ceremony arduous for those who have to sit in 80 degree heat and watch us do it while I roast in 30 lbs. of raw silk.

Speaking of raw silk, I got to put my dress on the other day. I had my first fitting. Small crisis developed there...

Not with the dress, it's still gorgeous and I neverevereverevereverever want to take it off and I almost cried when I had to leave it with the seamstress.

A shoe crisis.

Because I went a little itty bit over budget on my dress, I was going to be a responsible girl and wear these gorgeous shoes that I had already paid a good deal of money (for me) for. I knew they were comfortable and I thought they would be fine. These beautiful wedges...

Small problem, they don't match. Granted, no one will see them really, but they just...don't. The nude is just this side of the wrong shade and those lovely gems aren't as silver as they look in the picture. They're really more of a pewter. Which would be fine, except the detailing on my dress is decidedly silver.

So they day before my fitting, I ran around Bend to the very limited shoe selection to try and find shoes that would be (a) remotely comfortable and (b) match. We thought we had one pair, but while wearing them for the fifteen minutes the semi-bossy, very chatty Russian seamstress was fitting me in my dress, my feet fell asleep. So no good.

After the same semi-bossy, very chatty Russian seamstress (who is apparently the very best in town and the only one you should trust with your very expensive wedding dress), vainly tried convincing me into platform flip flops for my wedding (oh hell no...), and kept telling me that I should try to find shoes that would avoid having to hem the 6 layers of my dress (only $200 right there), the hunt was on.

I'd been eyeing these almost from day one of the bridesmaid shoe-hunt and so I purchased them from Zappos.com. (Free overnight shipping and free returns!)

Small problem here: I put them on, and not only were they exceedingly tall, but my feet started aching the second I put them on. No go. Sigh.

Next runner up were these pretty shoes...

Lovely, pointy and elegant. Unfortunately, I'm looking for a shoe I can wear most of the night, and while one hour in them was not the end of the world, some pinching was starting to happen about then.

Now, oddly, Tyler really wants me to avoid wedges. I don't think he realizes what's involved with walking on grass/taking photos in a forest with heels. Granted, I'm doing that to my bridesmaids, but I'm expecting that they'll take off their shoes shortly after the ceremony. I would like shoes that I don't have to try to remove when my feet start hurting. I would like to be able to wear them for 80 - 90 % of the day. Because it's damned hard to get around 30 lbs. of dress, especially to take shoes off.

These are coming in the mail in two colors, a nude and this blue. Blue isn't in my color scheme, but these are actually a quite lovely shade of greyish, earthy blue in real life...maybe my something blue! We'll see how they go...if not, free returns!

In the end, I may just end up with shoes that don't match the dress, which ultimately is all right since I won't end up seeing my feet that day anyways, but it's fun to try. I'll let you know what the verdict is.

Ciao,
kc