One of the only upsides of being in a long distance relationship is frequent flyer miles. LOTS of frequent flyer miles. After over 5 years of cross country flights and extra credit card points, I've accumulated over 150,000 miles. I've known all along (well, since we got engaged) what I wanted to do with all these miles: Go on an awesome honeymoon!

We're approaching 6 months out from the big day so we thought we ought to solidify where we wanted to go. We took into account time of year, desired activities (adventure travel vs. lounging), food, culture, and ease of travel. We considered New Zealand (yep, we had enough miles to get there for free), Thailand, Portugal, Croatia, but ultimately decided the time of year was too perfect to neglect one of our favorite places on the planet. These are all scenes from our destination:

Source: Japan Guide

Source: Aura Tachibana

Source: Jennifer Chong

Source: Kinfolk Magazine

I'm sure its been a pretty easy guess, but we're headed to Japan!! New Zealand was the runner up, but with 11 days to travel we decided it was just too far to go. United has a direct flight Seattle to Tokyo so the great thing is we can have an exotic vacation without spending too much time actually travelling.

Source: One Kings Lane

Even though we've both been, we feel like there is SO much more of the country we want to see and experience and we're super duper excited. Plus, it will be cherry blossom season. I already know I am going to take a bazillion photos. Our plan is to start our trip in Tokyo, then spend a few days up in the mountains near Nagano soaking in hot springs, then head to Kyoto to experience the amazing temples, and finish up in Osaka which is the foodie capitol of the country. If anyone has any Japan travel recs, send 'em my way. You can also follow my Japan Honeymoon pinterest board.

In the months leading up to our engagement, I started pinning images here and there that I knew I would want to fold into our wedding day. I snuck them onto boards called “Sparkle” and “Party Time” but really, I had our someday wedding in mind all along. So when we got engaged, of course the first thing I did was to bring all those ideas back together into one board called “The Big Day” and started to pull out my very favorite images to I could put together a cohesive idea of what I wanted. I wanted to start being able to show people my overall vision in one place.

Source: Ruffled Blog

As I pulled out my favorite moments, it was interesting to see the evolution of this inspiration as Erik and I worked together to decide what our wedding day would be like. I don't think a lot of people talk about how these things come together (since it doesn't just happen out of the blue).

Our first inspiration board was put together entirely by me, and it looked like this:

Sources: Tealily Photography, Ely Fair Photography, Ashley Meaders, Found Vintage Rentals, Design Sponge, The Rubbish Revival, Jeff Loves Jessica, Beautiful Days Events, Spencer Studio, Alexandre Weddings, Kinfolk Mag, Jonathan Ong Photography, Domus, Juli Vaughn, Sweetapolita

I thought it was so pretty and was what I’d envisioned in the types of spaces we were hoping for our venue. But when I showed it to Erik the reaction sort of fell flat. Sure, he thought it was “pretty”, but he also felt it was a little boring and a little too natural. After all, we knew we wanted a city wedding in the springtime just after he gets home from the Navy, and we weren’t planning on a outdoor summer affair. I swapped out some of the more earthy inspirations with a little bit more fun and funky and came up with this:

Sources (In addition to above): Todd Pellowe, Jeff Loves Jessica

And again, his reaction wasn’t that “Yes! This is OUR big day”. He simply said to me, yeah, its pretty, but where are WE? Where is the COLOR? And that’s true, I love bright bold jewel tones, and so does he. My house is certainly not the monochrome modern oasis that you might expect of an architect. And he doesn’t really have that typical bachelor style.

We went back through my pinterest boards together and when we passed this palette he said “Now, I like that!” Which was a pretty cool moment, having him get really excited about our big day. So, I went back through one more time and picked some bolder images and folded them in with the light and texture we’d loved from the beginning.

And voila! Our full inspiration came to life. Its not THAT much of a departure from where we started, but its much more “us” which really makes me happy. And it taught me a good lesson at the beginning of the whole process – which is to really consider decisions about who you are as a couple and not just what the industry or websites are telling you is pretty.

Sources (In addition to above): Bespoke Glass, Marilyn Nakazato, Canary Grey, The Creative Parasol, Sunday Suppers, Nine Cakes, Aurelio Zen