The Hepkers

So I've officially crossed number 9 off my pre-baby bucket list.  I was the maid of honor in my best friend's wedding!  I had this horrible dream right after Emily got engaged that it was Emily's wedding day and I had forgotten to buy my bridesmaid's dress and had nothing to wear to their wedding.  Little did I know that was a foreshadowing of the events to come...

Emily chose a very cute bridesmaid's dress maid by Lela Rose and directed us to a website, Wedding Shope Inc where we could all purchase our bridesmaid's dresses.  Well, over 12 weeks before the wedding I went to this website, put in my credit card information, and submitted my order for the dress.  Awesome - processed successfully.  Then I waited for it to arrive... and waited... and waited... finally two weeks before the wedding I started to panic.  My dress wasn't here yet.  I called the company and they told me they had sent me an email and told me they were not able to get the dress ontime and had refunded my money.  I of course never received the email - straight to my spam box.  So to cut to the point, my conversation with the customer service representative ended with me saying, "Not that you care, because you're terribly mean and your company sucks, but I'm going to tell all my friends and family how horrible your company is."  So there.  I've held up to my word and I have faith that none of you will ever buy a bridesmaid's dress from Wedding Shop Inc. 

So the story continues....I proceeded to call every bridal store that carried the designer Lela Rose to see if they happened to have a sample of the dress in the specific color I needed... wisteria.  I even got Kevin involved.  As you can imagine he got a couple weird responses when he called asking if they carried a one shoulder Lela Rose dress in wisteria.  And of course nobody had this exact dress in stock.  The closest I came was a store that had it in ivory and a store that had it in electric blue.  Somehow I didn't think Emily would be very happy with either. 

At this point I was nearly in panic mode when I contacted Bella Bridesmaid in St. Louis and for the 20th time explained my situation.  The owner of the store Carrie, called someone, who called someone, who called someone at the factory and had them overnight me the exact fabric for this bridesmaid's dress.

I had one week to get a completely custom bridemaid's dress made.  I called a few seamstresses before someone finally agreed to tackle the project.  Audrey, you're another hero.  Seamstress of the year in my book.  She constructed a dress from scatch from start to finish in less than a week.  We decided to make the neckline a little different since it would be difficult to replicate the other bridesmaids' dresses exactly and since I was the maid of honor so it was ok if I stood out a little bit.  In the end, the dress turned out great.  If you ever need to buy a bridesmaid's dress or need a seamstress, I couldn't recommend these ladies enough. 

So enough about my dress.  How about the bride's dress?  Emily looked absolutely amazing on her wedding day.  The cut of her wedding dress was modern, the lace was classic and beautiful, and the intricately beaded sash was a great finishing touch.  I though it made the perfect combination of new and old and it just looked fabulous on her.  But more importantly she was so excited to get married to Casey and I think they are great together.  So happy for you two - Congrats again!

Once again, pictures compliments of my wonderful dad, Rick Nelson:

And I'll end with my favorite picture of the wedding.  Something just struck me about this picture.  I think they both look fabulous... and the sun is shining through the trees... and they're staring in each other's eyes... sigh.  Love it.