With the Oscars last night I got to thinking about the other dresses I will "need" for wedding celebrations. With showers, parties and our rehearsal dinner approaching there our lots of excuses to buy more than one white dress.
Source: Alice & Olivia
Source: BLHDN
Did you wear a white dress to your other wedding festivities? Where did you shop?
In the spirit of Valentine's Day, this week I have been looking at ways to subtly add hearts into our wedding without being overly predictable or cutesy. I love a sweet heart as much as any other girl, but want to incorporate this idea with an element of restraint so as to keep it from looking like a Valentine's explosion. Here are a few creative ideas I found to add some extra love to your special day.
Wedding attire: I would love to create our own heart patch with our initials and wedding date.
Add some love to your sole! These awesome heart stopper pads on the right will help you stay upright down the aisle and while you are breaking it down on the dance floor.
Darling Details: (above) Ring pillow, heart touches on envelopes, photos props, (below) heart confetti, guest book, and garland.
Are you adding any heart details to your special days? Happy early Valentines Day to you and your sweet!
So happy to say that we can now check wedding photographer off of our to-do list! This week, we booked the amazing Hugh Forte to photograph our wedding. Hugh first captured our tummies with the mouthwatering photos he shoots for his wife's Sprouted Kitchen blog. After learning that he was an equally talented wedding photographer, we knew that we had found our match.
Source of All Photos: Hugh Forte Photography
With so many talented photographers, narrowing it down to one was a surprisingly long and critical process for us. What I hear the most from recently married friends is that your wedding day is one of the quickest most surreal days of your life. You entrust your wedding photographer with documenting all the special moments that fly by so quickly. If your photographer can't capture the moment, it will be gone forever. Yes, I am being a tad dramatic, but really it is an amazing amount of pressure.
Source of All Photos: Hugh Forte Photography
How did you pick your photographer?
I love color, so the process of selecting wedding colors seems like a daunting task. The again, what are wedding colors really for? I have read that the purpose of selecting wedding colors is to set the tone for your wedding reception and tie everything together, but if you have a good aesthetic for color does everything really need to be so matchy matchy? So far The Perfect Palette and Design Seeds are my favorite sites to search for color inspiration.
I love turquoise or aqua with a bright coral or yellow.
Source: Design Seeds
I also like the look of a cool grey accented with muted colors.
Since our entire wedding will be outdoors, I like the idea of playing off natural colors too.
How did/are you picking your wedding colors? How many are too many?
Okay, so, I’m going to admit it: I have never been one of those girls who has dreamed about her wedding day since she was a little girl. When I got engaged last November, the questions started piling up fast. “Where will you get married?”, “What do you want your dress to look like?”, “What is your vision for your wedding?”. Almost 9 months later (yes, I realize 9 months is an entire engagement period for some couples), I still can’t completely answer any of these questions, but I certainly have a better idea of what I want and how to best make it happen. I never thought that I would care as much as I do about my wedding dress. I started my search by aimlessly and casually browsing through Bridal magazines mentally tearing apart everything I saw. Searching for wedding dresses on Pinterest only confused me further, because the styles and silhouettes I was gravitating towards were all so different.
Source: Dove Sparrow Photography, Watters Brides, Samuelle Couture, Jenny Packham, Lindee Daniel, Melissa Blackburn
After looking at three bridal shops (Panche Bridal in Santa Barbara, Lovely Bride in Los Angeles (my favorite shop!), and Camarillo Bridal in Camarillo), I discovered that I have expensive taste. At each shop, the dresses that I liked most were on the higher-end of my dress budget, and I was not completely in love with any of them.
The search continued while I was visiting some friends in San Francisco a month ago and decided to try my luck at Glamour Closet, a discount bridal shop that sells sample wedding dresses at up to 75% off retail. I was in luck! I walked away with a Monique Lhuillier lace corset (very similar to the photo below) at a price too good to pass up and a new vision for my "wedding dress."
I had never thought about looking at two-piece dresses. I had wrongly mentally labeled them as 90's prom dresses gone wrong. But, once I started trying on two-piece dresses, I began to see how this concept would give me more flexibility, more creative control, and maybe even keep me within my dress budget.
And so, my search for a perfect bottom continues. I am leaning towards designing my own (maybe even two: a long skirt for the ceremony and short skirt for the reception) with the help of a local tailor. The following are my inspirations so far.
Source: Sarah Seven, Bonzie on Etsy, Carol Hannah
Have you thought about or gone the two-piece dress route? Do you have pointers for designing your own dress? Am I crazy??
