Saturday I took two members of the bridal party — MOH Heather and BM Sarah — and ventured into that abyss known as a bridal show.

We had a lot of fun, and I even bought 400-thread-count, queen-sized sheets for $20. Who knew you could buy sheets at a bridal show?

We talked to every DJ in Connecticut, I think, and ate tons of cake. And got tons of comments on our shirts.

When I asked my wedding party to stand up with me, I gave them each a t-shirt with their title on the front and flowers and our wedding date on the back. I promised I wouldn’t make them wear them in public if they didn’t want to. But then we did, and everyone loved them. So many people said they had never seen anything like it before and one maid of honor got a little belligerent with her bride, asking why she didn’t have a shirt.

Heather thinks I should set up a booth at the next bridal show and sell the shirts. I bet I’d make a killing.

After the show we grabbed some lunch and then headed to David’s Bridal in West Springfield to begin the search.

I have heard a lot of differing opinions about DB, but we decided to go there for two reasons:

1. It’s cheap.

2. It’s a national chain, so Carolina can order the same dress in Virginia that we pick out in Massachussetts.

I have to confess, I’ve been dreading making a decision about bridesmaids dresses. I knew the color I wanted, but was having a hard time finding dresses in just the right shade. At least, dresses under $200 in the right shade. So I made it clear to Heather and Sarah that as long as it was green and floor-length, I really didn’t care what they picked.

They did all the work, which was great. They pulled gowns off racks and trooped into the dressing room to try them on. And we very good humored about the less flattering dresses.

In the end, they decided on the same dress, which surprised me.

Here’s the dress on Heather. Blame the photographer for the silly look on her face; she’s gorgeous in real life.

Of course they didn’t have the right color in Sarah’s size, so she had to try it on in black. She still looks stunning, of course, but I think the black has more of a prom dress feel to it.

(I haven’t learned how to make thumbnails yet, so if you want to see bigger pictures of anything I post, go to my gallery and find the right album; in this case, it’s “Wedding Prep.”)

So the dress was on sale and they ordered it on the spot. It’s going to take 12 weeks to come in. I can’t believe that.

Now all we have to do is get Carolina fitted and ordered and we’re all set.

Oh, and go through all those vendor fliers I picked up at the show. I think we now have about 20 DJs to choose from.

We have a photographer!

Marsden Epworth is the Arts and Entertainment editor at our paper. If you live in the area, you will have seen her work in Compass or on our Health page (free registration required for those links). She also has a show at the Moviehouse Gallery in Millerton (until the end of January).

Unfortunately, I can’t find many photos online. I’m trying to talk her into letting James get a website going for her. She really has such beautiful stuff. You can see a couple of her photos at Salty Plums, our mostly defunct food blog. And, of course, she took our engagement photos.

Now we have to come up with a list of what photos we want to get. Seeing how we don’t even have our schedule planned out yet, this will take some work.

But there’s one more thing to cross off the list!

We’re booked for our honeymoon! We’ll be spending Sept. 20 to 27 at the Sunsest Beach Club on the Costa del Sol in Spain.

Yes, Spain!

I am so excited. It’s southern Spain, so we can even make a day trip to Morocco. Two continents in one trip!

We’re still working on the airfare. But I already took out travel books from the library.

I have been quite remiss in my blogging duties, and I can only blame the holidays and extreme holiday inertia. I think neither James nor I moved from the computer chair or couch, respectively, for the entire week the paper was shut down.

But another reason I haven’t been blogging is because, well, things have been difficult and I haven’t known quite what to say. One of the things we made it a point to do during shut-down week was to sit down and discuss the wedding, and we’ve found that we have very different approaches when it comes to interacting with our families (we knew that already, but really butt heads over it in the last week or so).

Also, issues we thought we had dealt with, like my struggle to balance my need for independence with my coming role as a married person, are cropping up again. Guess there’s more work to do there.

We made very few decisions about the wedding, but we were able to get all three bridesmaids in the same room at the same time. I think they all liked each other. I had fun, at least.

From all of this, I’ve learned that we’ve got quite a bit of work left to do, both in the practical planning and in the emotional preparation. I think we’re up for it. If not, well, I guess something will have to give. You don’t really need flowers for a wedding, do you?