Married my tall, blonde, non-smoking, harmonica-playing, Brad Pitt

 … about organizing the wedding… 

Wedding is magical, and saying this I not only mean the wedding day but the whole preparation process as well. Sometimes the magic disappears, when one gets too much into the administrative-messy-fussy logistics, but here is my moto for the weddings “If you want magic, create magic”. 

So this is how it worked for us too. 

Not to say that I am not goal oriented, but I have always given more significance to the making-of process rather than final goal. I mean, of course I cared that the wedding day (as a goal) went smoothly and happily for all wedding participants, but at the same time, I didn’t want to be a regular exhausted bride looking forwards to the wedding just dreaming of having some rest after.
So I created the Magical making-of process myself.
Of course the most important magic component is the wedding dress…~the Bridal Gown~… so I started with it 10 months before the wedding. Yes, exactly… 10 MONTHS.
And of course, never married before and never been really much into the wedding things, I started with wedding salons :)
I remember one cold winter day I entered the first wedding salon for the first time in my life… I walked around, saw some dresses, wedding accessories, etc and all of the sudden I had my first bridal moment… yes I started crying…I was like “I can’t believe, I am a bride?!... Is this really happening, am I that grown?!... aaaaaaa I want my childhood back!!!” … and I rushed out of the salon, and this was the last time I ever visited any wedding salon :) … but not because of the emotions but rather about the dresses… softly saying…I found nothing to my taste or anything close to what I wanted, so here I decided to spent my time not on the visits to wedding salons, but on creating my dress. I totally loved that process and I had time for really making a lot of experiments, researching on designers, drawing-redrawing dresses for a month, than the design of the dress was created.

      Making-of the Bridal Gown                                       

Here, of course, I would like to extend my full-hearted words of gratitude to Ellie Saab for the inspiration I got from his divine creations while creating the design of my dress.

#1 Tip
Here I would like to share a piece of advice/recommendation/whatever you want to call it with you girls:
The wedding dress is FAR NOT the cheapest thing in the wedding, so if you eventually decided to make a wedding dress on your own, you do not necessarily turn to one of the local famous and great designers for making it, but a good tailor could be fine too :))  that was what I did, I was the designer of the dress and my tailor just perfectly implemented all my ideas on the dress and it worked out as I wanted in every small detail :)
#2 Tip

Start the dress making of process not less than 6 months earlier before the BIG day, for you to feel on the safe side about the time and if something doesn’t work out the way you wanted you still have time to change it.

The next stop in the preparation process was the …~Wedding Invitations~… we actually started elaborating the idea of the invitation 4 months earlier, as we knew we would have some guests to our wedding from abroad, we wanted to send them invitations earlier so that they could proceed with planning their trips. 

We came up with the idea that we definitely wanted to have a special postcard with our photo to pass the word of our wedding to people and they would definitely keep  photo/postcard as a good memory of a special event.
So we started having photo-sessions with some of our friends, and eventually we selected the photo that met all our expectations and made the postcard with it.
NOTE: here I say WE because when you are together and when you are doing things together there is no ME any more :) … but on the other hand, HONESTLY men are not really that much into hand-making things (you know what I mean ;))), don’t get disappointed here girls, just make sure you have enough time for creating things on your own. Yes!  creating hand-made things is pleasant, special, beautiful and NOT expensive, but it takes a loooot of time.
So here is what I did eventually did with the invitations.
I printed the photo, made a cover of it with parchment paper, fixed the cover with a hand-made, little, purple flower and wrote the inviting text on the back of the cover with grey pen :)

Invitations making-of

#1 Tip

Yes, you can do all the above mentioned stuff but also let me tell you that it’s quite OK  just to have an online invitation with nice/funny text and disseminate it through mails. It saves a lot of time and energy, believe me.
We actually decided to have only online invitations, but I was so inspired by my friend’s hand-made beautiful wedding invitations that I couldn't help creating one for us.

According to Armenian traditions, by the end of each wedding the bride and groom should give small wedding presents to the guests called …~ TAROSIK/Տարոսիկ ~… to pass the best wishes to all the single guests and wish them the soonest marriage. Actually according to the tradition there should be something sweet in the gifts in order to pass the sweetest wishes to the guest :) … (I will not go further with it, just Google it for more information :)

So I decided to create them with ceramics as a souvenir  with our graphical sketches on it and our love formula: T+L=<3 for people to hang on the wall.

Tarosiks making-of

Here I can not help but SHOUT OUT LOUD ~THAAAANK YOU~ to Nana Tarracota, the most beautiful, cute, hard-working ceramics teacher of mine who gave me ceramics classes every day being on the last month of pregnancy :)) and guess what, once we were done with all the Tarosiks, little Argishti was born right on the next day :))) 

The creation of Tarosiks was such a big inspiration to me, that I am definitely going back to ceramics right after my Honey Week :)

#1 Tip
If you want to create hand-made wedding gifts, start doing it earlier than planned. Don’t leave anything for the last month. As I mentioned before, creating hand-made things takes a lot of time.
#2 Tip
Well, according to the tradition, Tarosiks should be given only to single ladies wishing them the soonest appearance of the prince in their life, but it’s very nice when every family or a couple present at the wedding has one as a good memory of the day. It’s very optional, up to you to decide, but it’s really nice to have a small present to give to every couple, family or person present at your wedding.

...Here let me pass on to sharing general organizational tips with you...

#1 Tip
Wedding should have a style
Retro, funky, modern, traditional, etc. Think of the style that fits you the best and apply it to the whole wedding. The thing here to remember is that the style you create should be applied not only to the wedding gowns of the bride and groom but can easily be applied on the dress codes of the guests and all the small details of the wedding. Everything should be done in ONE manner, ONE language and ONE way.
We were more of the Retro style, we were dressed so, had a Retro Car and corresponding music in our weddng.

 

Yerevan 1965

Chaika

NOTE: It’s important that the style of the wedding fits to your guests as well or they feel comfortable with that, otherwise it might not work, or might work but not in a positive way. (You know what I mean)

#2 Tip
The photographer and the camera man are as important as the Bridal Gown
…and I totally mean it. Very subjective and very personal opinion but… “Why to have a good wedding if you don’t have good photos afterwards?!”

#3 Tip
Subscribe to Wedding Newsletters
You know when you are in the wedding preparation process you can’t help but read wedding blogs, view wedding collections, etc… so here I decided to subscribe to my favorite Vera Wang online newsletter and was getting nice wedding tips, ideas, recommendations on weekly basis in my mail box. You can always find something useful there.

#4 Tip
Have Detailed and WRITTEN Budget with action plan of the day
This is the part when you really need to sit down together, talk and put down to paper everything you talk about. I have to say this was the hardest to manage in our case, because we both were really busy and could hardly ever manage to meet to talk about planning. Every time we met,  we couldn’t help but enjoy each other’s company and nothing more than that. As for the planning, the Planning of the Planning was always planned for “TOMORROW” :)
But here comes the 21 certury’s advancements in the technology: Thanks to the Google online working tools we actually had a very effective and detailed planning of the budget, action plan/to-so lists, day plan/agenda, guests names and their tables allocation, transportation and even the playlist ONLINE.
So don’t put off anything for tomorrow if you can do it today. And DO IT today ONLINE and/or OFFLINE.

#5 Tip
You are THE BRIDE and not a HIRED wedding organizer!!!!
whatever doesn’t work out, IMPROVISE!!!! 
Nothing in life goes smoothly all the time, and neither does the organization of the wedding. There might be moments of despair, exhaustion, over pressure, things wouldn't work out the way they should… LET IT GO… and moreover have some time for yourself, do whatever makes you feel good (yoga, swimming, massage, etc). If you don’t want to be an exhausted and stressed bride on your own wedding, better don't be :))
For example, the wedding first dance was a TOTAL improvisation in our case… not because we never practiced it before, WE DID…but we never practiced the dance WITH the Bridal Gown… so this is how we improvised it :D

#6 Tip

Music insures the mood of the day
Music is the main key of each party, so if you are making a playlist of your wedding, better that you take into account the preferences of the majority of the participants about the music. I mean people of older generation might not like to listen to rock, house, etc  all the time, so if you care that they also enjoy their time at your wedding, make sure you have music corresponding to their preferences as well. If you don’t really care how they feel, better not inviting them at all :)

#7 Tip
Say proper goodbye to you single life
I am very lucky to have friends I have and to have had the most awesome bridesmaid of all times :) So they prepared the Girls-Only PARTY of my life with tons of cute, little, sexy present and a little bit of extreme. Guess what... I had my first RIDE on the MOTOR BIKE!!!!! YES!!!!
The moment I felt absolutely free (strange feeling to have right before the wedding but it had it :)))
That was THE DAY of my life... :* LOVE YOU GIRLS for making my day and Special thanks to Areg for the beautiful ride I had :)))) !!!! ~ UNFORGETTABLE~ 

the best possible Hens-Party

10 more seconds and I'll have my first ever bike, EXCITEEED

#8 Tip Be Motivating, Encouraging and Inspiring
We ladies are very emotional and we are lucky to be able to express our feelings openly... shout, cry, laugh, scream… whatever… unlike our gentlemen, so really be motivating and encouraging so that they feel your support.

#9 Tip
Do something memorable
I am lucky to have my friends and I am even luckier that they were with me on my special day. All of us at some point were involved in the AIESEC International Youth Organization and got friends within that organization. Of course, on such an AIESEC wedding, we couldn't help but perform our most favorite AIESEC dance of all times. 

Enjoy the Dance, enjoy the prep process, enjoy your big day and enjoy your life :))) 

~ Wish you togetherness forever ~

p.s. I am happy to share more photos of the big day HERE.