Novelle Bridal Experience

I'm spending a quiet Sunday morning with my puppy, eating breakfast and watching Say Yes to the Dress. It brought back all these wonderful and not so wonderful emotions about my own wedding dress. Remember when I put in my wedding dress order back in January? I fell in love with the very first dress that I put on. It was a Priscilla of Boston Vineyard collection dress full of beautiful lace with absolutely zero glitz or sparkle, exactly what I was looking for. It made me feel so beautiful the moment my consultant zipped it up that it brought tears to eyes. I committed the cardinal sin of trying on a dress that was out of my budget, but after working out a great deal with Novelle Bridal, I took the $2500 plunge. Deposit was put down and the dress was ordered 8 1/2 months before my wedding. 

Fast forward to August. I get a message from the store owner, asking me to call her. When I called back, the owner wasn't going to be back till the following Monday and I was going to be in Mexico for that entire week. I end up getting in touch with her after my Mexico trip in mid-August. She tells me that there is an issue with my dress order and that Priscilla of Boston was on a trunk show when my order was put in so my order was somehow missed. She reassured me that they put a rush on the order and it would arrive by September 5th. She also gave me the # for the Priscilla of Boston rep in case I wanted to call and check up on things. So I call the rep the next day and try to get more information as to how the dress order was missed and the girl was no help. She said the original girl that was dealing with my file is no longer with them so she doesn't have any information to provide to me. I asked if there would be compensation and she said no because I am Novelle's customer and Novelle is their customer so any compensation would be through Novelle. She also confirmed that the dress wasn't going to actually arrive on September 5, but rather it was going to be shipped out of their warehouse in the States on the 5th. I requested to get the name and # of the rep's supervisor and she said she would get back to me. 

A few hours later, I get a message from the rep. She tells me that the supervisor and Novelle worked out a deal and that I should call Novelle to discuss it. So I call Novelle and the owner tells me that she feels really bad this situation happened and it shouldn't happen to any bride so she's offering me $100 store credit towards accessories. She tells me this is out of their own pocket. Novelle knew I had my eye on one of their $300 lace veils, but they must've been insane to think that I was willing to drop another cent in their store. I tell the owner again and again I'm nervous about the dress coming in so late and that I've lost all faith in them especially when she couldn't even get the ship date correct. She reassured me that she received a confirmation email about the Sept 5 date but another phone call later, she re-confirms that it is indeed the ship date and not the arrival date that she was reassuring me about. The deal from the rep ended up being another minor credit on the dress. I don't remember exactly what it was anymore, but it was along the lines of another $100. 

It's a Friday and after a long phone call with the owner, yet again, we come up with several solutions. 

1. I wait and hope the dress comes in on time and Novelle will cover all costs of my alterations. 

2. I buy the sample dress for $2000 so I have time to find an independent seamstress to alter it for me. 

3. I cancel my order. 

I ended the call with the understanding that I would get the weekend to think about my options. That evening, however, I get a call from the owner's husband. He starts off the conversation with saying how he heard that I was very upset and if I had any other questions for him. I told him that I just wanted to take the weekend to think through my options to which he responded, "What options do you think you have?" I tell him and he quickly corrects me saying that cancelling the order is not an option. The phone call went downhill from there. He informs me that my only options right now are to wait until the dress gets here or walk away from my deposit. I'm absolutely livid at this point and I will always remember the hot angry tears as I slam the phone down and cry out to Jamie my tears of frustration. 

Meanwhile, I'm telling everyone at work about my situation and my coworker tells me she also bought her dress from Novelle. She ended up purchasing a lace dress from them and although her dress was just over $1000, alterations were $700. She had it taken in and straps added. The seamstress told her that the straps were simple to add and it would be done quickly. After not hearing from them, she calls Novelle and they tell her the alterations aren't complete yet. Something that should have taken a couple hours is now taking over a week. She ends up getting her dress Friday afternoon right before she needs to leave town for her destination wedding. I brought this up to Novelle as another reason my confidence in their store has dwindled. Their response, "She never told us she was leaving town on Friday." ... 

On the following Monday, Jamie decides to go into Novelle to get everything in writing because their promises mean nothing now. He calls me from the store and tells me the owner is telling him the store is guaranteeing the dress to arrive no later than September 16th. If it doesn't arrive by then, I get a full refund of my deposit. The $200 credit will not be available if I choose to get the alterations covered. The owner also quoted Jamie a higher price for the sample dress than what was told to me before. I'm again very frustrated that Novelle is changing their word again especially when a part of that credit was apparently offered by Priscilla of Boston. My friend and I drive down to Novelle to meet Jamie. He tells me that the owner's husband is coming as well. He also tells me that he had yelled at the owner for the dress being late, in front of all the customers. 

When the owner's husband arrives, we all sit down to try and discuss the situation. It started off with Jamie and her husband arguing about whether the dress was late or not. The owner refused to admit the dress was late. "Late by what definition? I consider the dress late if it doesn't arrive in time for your wedding." Novelle originally told me the dress should arrive by mid-July. Now they're saying it should arrive by Sept 16 for my wedding date of October 1. The conversation quickly escalates to yelling and both men are so visibly upset that both their hands are shaking. I think because they were both upset, I actually managed to stay calm. I told them why we were upset and they kept asking what I wanted. My friend finally stepped in and said what I want is my deposit back, that I don't want the dress anymore because it no longer has good memories associated with it and it doesn't mean the same to me anymore. The husband's response, "I'm not a psychologist so I really don't know what to tell you to make you like the dress again." ... What. The. Eff.

I gave my closing argument. I told them that what I want is peace of mind. I want to get a refund of my deposit and I don't care what I get married in anymore. All I want is a dress, physically in my hands so that I can get started on my alterations. I reasoned with them that once the dress does come in, they can still sell the dress as a sample dress for a price that is almost identical to the price they were going to sell it to me for. (They had given me a 15% discount because of the Priscilla of Boston sale.) The loss to them would be very little, if any. I also asked them to disregard the business aspect for a moment and just think about me as a stressed out bride. They listened and told me they would think about the options and get back to me the next day. 

The next day, I get a call from Novelle asking me to go in. The owner tells me that they have decided to give me a full refund of my $1500. I'm ecstatic and relieved. After I leave the store, I call Urban Bride Delivered, which I've contacted prior, and ask her if I can swing by to try on some dresses. I end up finding a lace dress  that has sparkle and beading. Not my first love, but like I said before, I just need a dress at this point. For $500, I jumped and bought the consigned dress. 

The Priscilla of Boston Vineyard dress ($2675) and the Alfred Angelo consignment dress ($500)

 After $500 of alterations, the dress was brought down by over 4 dress sizes and all the crinoline layers were removed. I still loved my dress and at the end of the day, everything worked out.


What I learnt from this experience: Bridal stores get a confirmation fax/email once the order is submitted and they do not generally follow up or check in on your dress till close to the estimated ship date. I never did see the confirmation that Novelle claims they got. I'll never know if a confirmation was ever generated if Priscilla of Boston is saying an order was never placed. For all the brides out there, be diligent in checking up on your dress status. I was busy with my friend's wedding and just never got around to calling Novelle when mid-July came and went. I figured they would call me and when they did, instead of hearing that my dress was in, I heard that my dress wasn't even ordered. I definitely do not want this to happen to anyone else. 


A week later, I hear on the news that Priscilla of Boston is announcing that they are closing all their US stores to focus more on David's Bridal. They were going to fill all the orders that have been placed, but will not be taking any new dress orders. Wow. 

365 Photo Project - Photo 14

This photo was actually taken in the fall just after our wedding. I was really disappointed that our photographer didn't ask me for my engagement ring for the ring shots that they took. Jamie spent a lot of time looking and I love my rings so we decided to take our own ring shots! Looking at the photo now, I wish I had rotated the wedding band just over a touch so you could see the detail on the side. I think the detailing on the actual rings are what make the rings unique. We had originally tried taking shots of the rings by hanging them on some berry branches but the branches with actual berries were all too flimsy to hold up the weight of the rings. After numerous failed attempts with the crappy branches and bad lighting, I gave up. As we were coming back up the dog trail, the sun was setting and I saw a beautiful log. People around must have thought I was crazy because I was laying on the ground in an off-leash dog park in my wedding dress with a camera in hand, with a man (presumed to be my new hubby) standing behind me holding a superstore grocery basket and dog. I'll share that story later. 

Boutineires

One couldn't have a fabric bouquet and not have fabric boutineires right? I applied the same concept of melting polyester fabrics to create the flower. Family wore the red flowers which I made with melting organza fabric I found at Dollarama. My brother and SIL helped me cut a gajillion circles of various sizes to create over 50 boutineires (we have a lot of family). I also made my brother and SIL cut fabric leaves out for me but when you try and assembly-line mass produce something, quality starts to go downhill. I went back and did some trimming of the leaves to create the shape I wanted. I used hot glue to glue all the layers of the flower together. The leaves had a thin metal wire attached to the back so it would stay straight. I left the wires from the leaves long so I could wrap floral tape around the bottom. The wires were unfortunately really skimpy looking so I had to glue extra triangular pieces of leftover fabric to create that typical look. To wear them, I hot glue gunned clasps on the back so we wouldn't have to use those pokey scary pins that always seem to poke the wearer. 

 Jamie and his two groomsmen had special white organza boutineires with the pop of a red leaf to tie all the colors together. Jamie originally wanted to wear a red bow tie but I vetoed it. I think a bow tie seemed too formal for a fall wedding. Especially since it was outdoors. I will still make him his bow tie to wear for another occasion (that post will come when I actually get to sewing it). 

A good number of boutineires were leftover from my family not wanting to keep them so instead of throwing them out, my friend suggested I post them on kijiji. I'll give that a go in the spring and see what happens. Happy belated new year everyone! Back to the grind as usual tomorrow. 

Fabric Wedding Bouquets

From the moment I got engaged last October, I knew I wanted to make a fabric bouquet. There were a number of reasons for this. Firstly, I hated the idea of dying flowers. Just. Plain. Wasteful. Secondly, I really wanted to make my wedding meaningful to me and handcrafting the bouquets did just that. I started off experimenting with polyester fabrics when I made some satin flower pins for my girlfriends that attended my stagette.

With the same idea in mind, I set out to create a variety of different types of satin flowers. I love the look of the melted edges of satin. It made each flower unique in it's own way and no two flowers would ever look the same. I purchased some white, ivory and champagne colored satin along with some organza and tulle. I tried cutting out a bunch of different shapes to see what they would look like melted. I ended up using a lot of circles, ovals, and flower shaped pieces. Some used only one color of satin while other flowers used a combination of fabrics and colors. 

That was a quick photo I took with my phone one night. I used a hot glue gun to attach all the pieces, something that saved me loads of time because with the original flower pins I made for the girls, I hand stitched the petals together. Not smart. After making what seemed like a hundred individual flowers, I embellished them with some bling. Some had rhinestones in the middle and some had glass beads. Flowers can't be flowers without stems so I attached floral stems that I purchased at Michael's and Dollar Giant using floral tape and more hot glue. Then I bunched them all together to make my wedding and 2 bridesmaids' bouquets. 

I made my bouquet bigger than the rest,  2 medium sized bouquets for my bridesmaids and one itty bitty one for the bouquet toss.  I didn't want a red bouquet and after looking at pictures of red and white bouquets, I decided against that too. To incorporate red into my bouquet, I just wrapped the stems in a red satin ribbon. They turned out way better than I expected. Future plans for my bouquet you might ask? I was hoping to make a shadow box with my wedding stuff... Haven't gotten that far yet though.

Liz's Garter

It's super past both mine and Liz's wedding but I still want to share some of the crafting that was done for our weddings. Garters aren't all that expensive but I really wanted to make one for Liz. Why you might ask? What didn't I want to make for our wedding? I thought it would be super easy to do. I had a general idea of how to piece it together so really... how hard could it be? 

Well sadly, I thought that the elastic lace would create enough of a band to go around the leg. As you can tell from the picture, that itty bitty amount of elastic from the lace just wasn't going to cut it. So after sewing it the first round, I had to go back and find some actual elastic to sew onto the garter. Wasn't easy considering my needle wasn't made to go through such thick material and I'm just not all that great at sewing. In the end, it all worked out. Just don't look at it too closely. I tried to disguise my bad sewing job with a nicely tied bow!

After sewing one garter, I definitely didn't want to sew another so I told Jamie that he must catch the garter at Liz's wedding. Catch it he did! Phew!

It's been a loooong time coming. One year of planning and wedding crafting led up to one amazing day. I am officially married! 

Beach Wedding Signs

My BFF got married last week in Mexico and I know that she had looked at some of the beach signs on Etsy. I wasn't sure if she ordered them or not but took the gamble anyways and decided to make one for her to use on her special day. To start off, I printed out what I wanted the sign to say in the font I wanted. 

 Next I cut out the letters with an X-Acto knife to create a stencil. 

 Jamie cut out some plywood arrow signs and we painted them with white acrylic paint. The stencils were trimmed to fit on the sign and taped down. 

 After everything was secured, we sponged on black acrylic paint. 

 Let the paint dry and careful remove the stencil. 

Buy hanging hooks to attach to the signs so that you can tie ribbon to both signs. Jamie pre-drilled holes and then screwed in the hooks on the tops of both signs. You'll need to do that if you want to hang the signs somewhere. You could also nail it to something but we didn't want to bring a wooden take or hammer/nails to Mexico. 

We didn't know if we'd be able to point people in the right direction with the signs because we didn't know where we would find something to hang the sign on so we did the stenciling on both sides. =) Thanks bridal party for leaving all the leftover crafting supplies at my place! They came in handy! 

My BFF!

Last weekend was my BFF's bridal shower. Now it's less than 3 weeks to her wedding day in Mexico!!! We booked Culina Highlands for a private function and it turned out great. The brunch was super delicious and we finished the day with a candy buffet. How can you go wrong? Here's a few photos from the day. 

Elizabeth's Beautiful Bridal Party. 

This photo was the day after I got engaged. That was last October. Now these two BFF's are getting MARRIED!!! 

Engagement Photos!

Kathy is awesome and was able to edit our engagement photos super fast!! You can find a little snippet of them here! Enjoy! 

Wedding Update!

So I'm stressing out again because we figured out that we need to make another 42 invitations... =S I vow to never make a wedding invitation again after this. On a funner, brighter note, Jamie and I did our engagement shoot with Katch Studios a few weeks ago and I just wanted to share the engagement teaser photo we were shown. It really is a mega teaser. 

Ribbon, Cards and Flowers! Oh my!

I spent the last few days making some thank you cards and I cleared out a lot of Fabriclands in Edmonton because the ribbon was buy 1 meter get 3 meters free. You read that right! Buy 1 get 3 free! Here's just a few pictures of what we've been working on. 

Surprise Bridal Shower.

I mentioned a couple posts ago that my lovely work family threw me a surprise bridal shower. We had some delicious food and some fun games. Many of you have probably played the "make a wedding dress with toilet paper" game but perhaps not many of you have played the greener version of it. The girls at work know I'm a bit of a recycling nazi so instead of toilet paper, they used newsprint paper from The Edmonton Journal! After we were finished, we just threw the whole lot into a recycling bag. Much nicer and more sanitary than reusing toilet paper. If you're wondering where the inspiration for the dress came from, it's from a show called... My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding on TLC. Apparently they love big slutty dresses on there. That's why my cup size grew to a C in this photo. You can't see it, but they also made my butt grow a couple sizes too. 

Daisy's cousin also made me a stunning cake. It was her first time using marshmallow fondant and it turned out amazing. The cake was an Oreo cake. Thanks again work family. You guys rock!

Engagement Celebration!

It was super busy last weekend. Jamie and I had our engagement party with roasted pig and all with the family. Afterwards I got a lovely surprise bridal shower from my work family. It was a great weekend. Here's a few photos from the engagement celebration.

 Can you believe the size of that pig Jamie is carrying? That's considered a small pig and it was $130 from a place called Tasty BBQ in chinatown. 

 Traditionally the groom comes to the bride's house bearing gifts on platters. So the different platters shown above have things from fruit, tea, buns, abalone, to homemade coconut sticky rice. 

Jamie's family's tradition is to get the bride earrings. Originally they were going to pass his grandmother's earrings onto me but his mom didn't like how they looked so she bought a new pair. We'll keep these for my future daughter or daughter-in-law! 

 After the gifts have been exchanged, it's part of Vietnamese culture for the bride and groom to present my parents with tea. It's to thank and honor them for giving me life, raising me and shaping me into who I am today. After they finish the tea, it's good fortune to give back a red pocket. 

After all the little traditions were complete, it was time for a feast! 

Marco?

Polo! I'm here, I'm here! Just wanted a quick update on invitations! They are done and now I'm just working on addressing them all. The process was very lengthy. It took hours and hours but we finally reached the finish line with these suckers. I figured out why the invitations took so long! Each invite consisted of 14 pieces and for the Vietnamese/Chinese invites, throw in another 2 layers for a whopping 16 pieces! The amount of stamping, gluing and assembling was insane. I went through those 36 yard long glue rolls like it was free! 

And while I was cutting, Jamie took on a part of the favors. Making 250 little "Thank you" tags. 

24 More Invites!

You read that right folks! After hours of slaving away at the bloody invites, I have 24 more left to make. It's been a very long road. I had a nice stretch of days off and have been working on invites every day. All that work leads to something else... Sugar cravings! Jamie has been so strict on his diet and he's seeing a huge payoff. His last update was almost 20 lbs!! How amazing is that?! He's also craving refined sugars so what'd we do this evening instead of working on the 24 invites? Baked! I was craving brownies with a glass of milk and he decided to make carrot cake. We made 2 versions of carrot cake. One was flour free (can you guess who made that one?) and it consisted of ground flax seed and protein powder. The other one just had whole wheat flour with less sugar and oil. 

What's all that white stuff you ask? Nope, it ain't dandruff. It's salt. I love brownies sprinkled with some salt and unfortunately we are out of the coarse sea salt so that's why it looks like white powder instead of those pretty little salt crystals. I originally started off eating half a piece. I ate that with some vanilla ice cream. Then I ate the other half with a glass of milk. By the time I finished that last half, I still had half my milk left so I decided to cut another half. It definitely hit the spot and now I feel like I'm 20 weeks preggo.

Chinese Invites Part 2

Me and Chinese invites are not jiving very well. They are the bane of my existence right now. GRRR!!! Good thing I have my cousin in Hong Kong that can help me read/type up the words I need. And can't forget good old Google Translate. That has also been a live saver. Remember my first attempt at this darn invite a few weeks ago? 

I think we finally got it right now. After many edits and driving my cousin and I crazy, we hopefully have the final draft here. 

Invites Progress

Not a lot of pictures to post but I thought I'd share with you how the invites are going. 

Jamie has become my little stamper and I've been the cutter. He's actually ridiculously fast at stamping and is now very proficient at using the Stamp-a-ma-jig! I chose to be the cutter and we've got a little assembly line going. He actually stamps and glues faster than I can cut! Here's the unassembled pieces of our invitation. 

Now I told you how we managed to make 24 invites so far, 20 of them being Vietnamese. Here's a picture of the 20 Vietnamese ones we made. I don't think the plain English ones will have that double happiness seal. It'll likely be our monogram because I made Jamie make 100 of those suckers!  

Chinese Invites

Can you believe that in 5 months, I'll be Mrs. Khau?!? 5 months from now at this time we'll have already exchanged our vows, eaten dinner, cut the cake and likely toasting or dancing! Bah!!! There's so much left to do! I've just spent the last 3 hours sorting out these blasted Chinese invites!!! Man, it is not easy trying to make things look pretty. Thank goodness my word program was able to read the Chinese font that my cousin from HK, Michelle, sent me. Hope everyone got out and enjoyed some of the sunshine this weekend! 

Favor Boxes!

I was poking around Michael's this week and you know how it goes. You wander around just hunting for something to spend your 40% off coupon on. This was no different, except I had more than one thing I wanted needed. Luckily there was also a 25% off your entire purchase coupon so I hunted just a wee bit harder. Wandering down the wedding aisle, I stumbled onto favor boxes. There were all sorts! Square, plastic squares, reusable bamboo squares, pillow boxes etc etc. I wanted to spend very minimally on the containers that would hold our favors because I know people just throw away to packaging. The sale sign said $21.99 and with my extra 25% off coupon, it was a steal of a deal for each pack of 100. That'd work out to $0.16/box! Not too pricey but also not that cheap... I asked Jamie's mom to see if she can pick up cellophane baggies in Vietnam. I was very specific and even gave her a sample of the high quality cellophane I wanted. If she managed to find some at a sweet deal in the right size... Actually by the time I see them, she would have already purchased them and flown back to Canada with them! I may just need to use them because I'm technically stuck with them! Lets just keep our fingers crossed that they are either gorgeous cello bags or she didn't manage to find any. 


The wedding is really starting to stress me out. I've had 3 wedding nightmares so far and they were all the same theme. C.H.A.O.S. I can't wait till this wedding business is done!