The Wedding Pros

Editor’s note: The following is the first in a series of entries which will be contributed by Kristen Switzer, an area bride who is currently in the beginning stages of planning her wedding.  We’ll be following her progress here on the blog as well as on The Wedding Pros podcast to see what sorts of things she will encounter as she plans her wedding.

Monday, May 14th 2007

I can’t believe I have been engaged for almost 3 months! A lot has happened quickly in those three short months. My fiancée and I have picked out a wedding date (Oct. 11, 2008) and have discovered that although our wedding is 17 months away we had to move quickly on planning. Our wedding date is a highly coveted weekend in the Finger Lakes region as it is Columbus Day Weekend and so many people are taking advantage of the long weekend to plan events!

My fiancée is not overly eager to pick out every little detail seeing as we do have 17 months to plan, but I on the other hand have been planning this day since I was 6! So as soon as he popped the question I started planning! I knew for as long as I can remember that I wanted my wedding in the fall and I wanted it on the lake. My fiancée and I both have always wanted to get married at the Norton Chapel on Keuka College. Thank goodness my mom is an alumnus of Keuka College and thought about reserving the chapel ASAP! Our next task was to get right to work on finding a reception site. After days of traveling the county side (and watching one site burn to the ground) we settled on the Geneva Country Club. With its breath taking views of Seneca Lake I can only imagine how gorgeous it will look during the fall!

My favorite part of wedding planning came next… finding the prefect dress! After looking through countless wedding magazines and attending several bridal shows I feel in love with several dresses. I went to all the local bridal stores and tried on a bunch of dresses. My mom feel in love with one and I thought it might be the one two but I wanted to make sure. We went to a couple of other shops and I tired on the dresses I loved from the magazines. I really liked how it looked but I was afraid it looked too much like a prom dress and not a wedding dress. I want to be the bell of the ball at my wedding not just another girl in a pretty dress. At our second bridal shop, the woman helping us brought in at least 10 other dresses for me to try on. Most were scary and full of lace and other scary wedding dress nightmares, but there was this one dress that my mom and I both said “Eww, that will look awful on, we hate that style dress.” Low and behold that was the dress I feel in love with and made me look like the princess I wanted to look like. I instantly feel in love with the dress, but my mother being the level headed woman she is insisted I try on more dresses. After countless dresses and bridal shops I finally convinced her that was the dress I was meant to wear. 

Bridesmaid dresses were a little bit easier. Difficult part is that one of my bridesmaids lives in Mississippi! I picked out several dresses and my local bridesmaid tried them on. After settling on one… I changed my mind and settled on another dress. The nicest part of dealing with a small local bridal shop is that regardless of where my girls are located if they get measured, my bridal shop will order all the dresses and make sure that they come in, in enough time to make any alterations. Picking out tuxes is by far one of the easiest parts to planning a wedding. Once you have decided on a color scheme all you have to really decide is what length tux, double breasted/single, and what style vest and tie do you want. After Hours Tux Shop offers American Designed tuxes by Tommy Hilfiger for our larger American male frames versus the slender European frames.