Zach and Jan Wedding: dream dress, dream price.

I thought I would take a quick study break to take a minute to reveal my biggest secret of my wedding.

I got my dream dress and even got to design it for under $400 (including the belt around the waist).

Crazy right? I thought so too. BUT. Since it worked like a complete dream for me I wanted to share the secret with each bride to be. 

I found a dress on Pinterest and tried to find out where that bride had purchased her dress. There were some things I loved about the dress but other things I wasn't too fond of. In any case, I wanted to find the store so I could look there myself. Turns out it lead my to an Etsy page. This girl had her dress made and then sent to her. I pondered the idea and was terrified but extremely interested. I spent HOURS looking at different Etsy stores. Once I found one I liked I would look at every review and try to find the good reviews and the most terrible ones. I would follow one shop and then it would bring up related shops and on and on I went for, like I said, hours. I finally came to a lady name Angel. Angel had over 300 reviews on wedding dresses alone that she had made. I still wasn't so sold on the idea so I emailed her. I had her send pictures of dresses she was currently working on and had her send me pictures of dresses she had done in the past. Her work was incredible. 

Since I helped model some wedding dresses my senior year of high school for Allyses Bridal, I knew what I liked and what I didn't like. (Side note: if you want to do this, go try on dresses before you just find a picture of what you like. Sometimes you like something completely different of what you thought you would like.) I want something simple that I would be able to move freely in but also something modest and something I felt fit my personality. After I decided to may be have Angel make my dress I looked at Pinterest for what I had in mind. I found something VERY similar and then tried to find every angel of the dress I could. I then sent those pictures to Angel with the adjustments I would want made. I wanted a different fabric for the sleeve, no lace appliqué around the waist, and made very sure she knew I needed it to be modest for where I would be getting married. Angel was SO good to work with! She confirmed that she could create the dress and repeated all the differences I wanted in more "sewing" terms, and was very patient. She also sent a measurement guide and told me what measurements I would need to take if I went through with the purchase. There were some fears, I'm not going to lie. She lives in China so I was nervous about quality and if it would arrive on time, I worried if I would measure correctly, if the dress would even fit, etc. BUT I knew if I really didn't like how it turned out I could have my aunt who is a seamstress work some magic or try and sell it online for what I paid for and find a dress at a bridal store. 

So I went through with it. 

Angel sent me pictures of how to measure the places that needed to be measured and said she would have it done and to me in 4 weeks. Pretty great I thought. I stayed in touch with Angel the entire time she made my dress. I had her send me pictures every other day or so so that I could see how things were coming along and she even let me make slight modifications if something wasn't how I wanted it. She was SO patient and easy to work with. PLUS. My dress was at my door step in only 16 days. She knew I was stressed with how little time I had so she made sure it was done quickly. Her name fits her quite well I think.

So did it fit? 

LIKE A DREAM!!! Way better than I would have EVER thought. I didn't need a single alteration. Not even one. I then searched Etsy again to find a belt to add a little to the dress. 

There was only one thing I wish I would have done different. And it was my own fault. I was sure that I would wear Toms when I got married. I did a pageant where we did the whole heal thing and was self conscious about how I walked in them. (It's a pageant thing.) So when I measured my length that I would like the dress I did it in Toms. After we got our engagement pictures back we thought it would look better if I was in heels. SO my dress was a smich shorter than I would have preferred but still perfect. 

How was the quality?

Like I bought it from a bridal store. Seriously. I'm almost a little worried about writing this to how people will look at my dress now, BUT I had to share this hidden gem of wedding planning. I got so many compliments of how simple and elegant it was. You would have never known the difference. 

Why did I do it this way?

I'm not usually a risk taker. And it wasn't that I couldn't afford an expensive dress.. However, I got to design exactly how I wanted my dress to be. It was totally unique and totally me. I LOVED IT. And that is how every girl should feel about her wedding dress. That's why I wanted to share this. YOU can have your dream dress for a dream price. 

Were you nervous?

Yes. Swear words, yes. At one point I even thought "this isn't going to work.. what were you thinking?!" BUT it did. Like a dream. I know there are some people who just can't do it like this. You're afraid that something that is a BIG part of the big day will go totally wrong. That's okay! Find you dream dress at a near by bridal shop! They are great too! Just know you have a fantastic reference to use Angel. 

What's her contact information?

You can reach her by email: AngelWen79@gmail.com

If you are nervous about it, I would LOVE to help you or answer questions. Angel and I become quite close and as I recommend people to her I send her an email. We have stayed in touch so if you need any help at all please let me know.

Side note: she is not paying me to write this. She actually has no idea I'm writing this. I just wanted to share this secret so that other girls have options. :)

Here are pictures of my dress.

I couldn't find a great picture of the back but it had a slight "V" 

Plus a little add in: Zach got his suit from True Gentlemen. His good friend owns the company and does an AMAZING job. You can find them on instagram with: @truegentlemansupplyco or there website here. They let you customize every inch of the suit. Zach even put our wedding date in the suit! They are a great company. If you use them let them know Zach and Jan sent you :) Again they aren't paying me to do this.

Here are some pictures of Zach's suit: 

Well that's it for today folks. I better get back to studying. Pray that I don't fail my material's science test will you?

All pictures taken by Alixann Loosle Photography

J+Z Wedding: What I Found Most Important

I've had a few people ask how I did certain things for my wedding and I also want to remember every detail because it was the most perfect day, so I thought I would do a little blog series about it!

Like most soon-to-be-brides, I had no idea where to start. I searched Pinterest for timelines and what was most important but quickly discovered I wasn't going to be engaged for a year (I had two months and one day and it was perfect), I am LDS which makes quite the difference as far as location, dress, etc., and I wanted my wedding to be ME, not an exact replica of someone else on Pinterest (though I did get many ideas from there).

So first things first, I found an old notebook and started to write down what I felt was most important. The list I started with ended up being quite different then what I actually ended with. Through my experience here is what I found most important:

1. A good photographer. I used Alixann Loosle. She is THE BEST. She has traveled all over the world to do what she does and captures emotions and moments perfectly. Her dad actually used to do our family pictures, since our families have always been really close, and she has done all the weddings in the Henderson fam so far. We LOVE her. I know a lot of people want to save money and I didn't want to spend a ton either but after getting all my wedding pictures back, if there is one thing I would suggest to be willing to spend money on, it would be a GREAT photographer. Those pictures are what you look back on for the rest of your life. Here's a little bit of her work:

Engagements

Bridals. (side note: I did mine without Zach and I actually was so glad I did it this way. The first time he saw me was in the temple and was something so special and I'll always have that with me.)

2. Food. Most people come for the food anyway, right? Well Zach and I wanted something that was us. While we were dating he made waffles all of the time so we thought of doing the waffles ourselves as that would turn out to be fairly cheap. After talking it over with my mom, she really didn't want to have to deal with a huge mess and would rather be enjoying the night rather than making sure all the food was okay. So we looked for caterers. This was beyond frustrating. I didn't want to pay hundreds for some desserts that I didn't even like. We asked our favorite waffle company Bruges if they catered and they said only by food truck. At first we didn't know what to think. We were having the reception at my parents home and didn't know if it would work out. The main Bruges guy was willing to come to my house a few weeks before to make sure it would all work and was SO nice. So we did a food truck and it was probably the BEST idea we had. He also had specially made plates for my family and Zach and I which were so delicious. If you haven't ever been there, go. Right now. For drinks, Zach is obsessed with milk so we did that and then some lemonade.

My father-in-law actually made this table for us. He did an AMAZING job.

3. Easy, but still nice, invitations. I think this is a big stress of weddings. How to gather all the invites, put it together, write it all out, don't leave out anyone, etc. Here is what we did and it worked better than I could have dreamed. I had one of my bridesmaids in charge of getting all the addresses off of Facebook and put them in a word document for me. My mom just so happened to still have all the addresses from my brothers wedding earlier that year and then I had Zach's mom give us a list of addresses as well. I then put them into an excel format so we could have them printed on our invitations. As we were deciding what our invitations should look like, I was very set on NOT sitting around for 48 hours stuffing, tying, stacking, hole punching, etc. invitations. I just wasn't going to do it. We had a neighbor get married the previous month and they did a postcard invitation. We thought that was genius and decided to do it ourselves. First it saved us SO much time. All we had to do was put a stamp on it and send it to the mail. EASY. SO EASY. Zach and I did it all in under an hour. PLUS it saved us money. We used Color Quick in provo. They were cheap but still very professional and fast. We did have to do some envelopes to invite people to the ceremony but most people were family so we didn't have to buy a stamp.

Front of invitation

Back of invitation. The stamp went in the top right corner and the person's address was just a little right from my bum :)

4. Make the reception fun! I'm going to do more on the reception later but as I was preparing for my reception I knew I wanted to be able to look back and think, "That was perfect." Now lots of things will go like you didn't plan but that's okay! I would suggest a few things: ask neighbors, families, and friends to help you set up if needed. I made like 4 maps of where I wanted everything to go and handed them out to bridesmaids and family. This helped me feel like I wasn't completely loosing my mind because they could look at the map and know where I wanted something to go. We still have people tell us that they felt like they were at a big party with close family and new friends. It was perfect. Also: take some time in the reception to laugh! Do some dancing, make your first dance something fun and most importantly ENJOY EVERY MOMENT!

5. WRITE IT DOWN. Seriously. If you have a thought, write it down in the notebook. My little notebook became somewhat of a diary and went with me everywhere during those 2 months and 1 day. I could cross things off, write reminders, and stay on track.

I know this isn't a regular list like you would find on pinterest but it's what I found most important. I was quite stressed but looking back it was all completely worth it. If I could relive that day over and over, I definitely would. And that's how I think it's supposed to be.

If you have any questions feel free to comment or email me: janalehenderson@gmail.com

To come: how I got my dress for under $400 and still got to design the whole thing :)