Bridal Bouquet

When I first began thinking of what my bouquet would look like, I envisioned something all white and very simple. 

A beautifully simple boquet of calla lilies:

But as my vision evolved, I became more and more drawn towards romantic bouquets with soft texture and touches of soft pink and/or green.  Here are some of my favorites:

Credits: Meg Baisden Photography

I am really looking forward to meeting with our florist/friendor over the holidays when we are in Wisconsin.  I am definitely open to her suggestions, but I am going to be armed with inspiration.  Now I just need to begin thinking about the florals for the reception.

Shoe obsessed

I will admit that I have a bit of a problem when it comes to shoes. I absolutely adore them. I have yet to own a pair of Manolo Blahniks, Jimmy Choos, or Christian Louibitons , and what better event to splurge on a pair?

I am also ebay obsessed, especially when it comes to pricey designer purchases, so I am fairly confident I will be able to find my dream shoes at a deep discount.

The first shoe I thought I wanted was the famous "stolen shoe" from Sex and the City.  (The episode where Carrie is forced to take her shoes off at a friend's party and they are missing when she goes to leave.  Yes, I am a huge SATC dork.)  I just love the silver fabulousness of them, and I can just imagine them peeking out from under my dress (when I lift it a little to show them off, of course!) 

Feast your eyes upon these!

You can usually find these on Ebay for a fraction of their sale price, if you don't mind getting a floor sample.   Unfortunately, when I tried them on at Saks, they just were not what I wanted.  I love them, but they were almost a little too bridal for me, if that makes sense.

The next shoes I tried on were these fabulous Jimmy Choos:

I really liked the gold color of these.  They are very strappy, but somehow comfortable.  However, I have not found them on Ebay at all (for an affordable price). 
So, the search continues!  I am not opposed to color and have really just been searching Ebay for the designers in my size and price range.

A little New Orleans flavor

Now that we live in New Orleans, we were thinking about how we would incorporate some New Orleans flair into our wedding.  At first I was thinking favors, but I'm not sure we are going to do favors at all.  Then one day when I was walking in the French Quarter, I saw a wedding parade!

Doesn't that look fabulous?

It is a tradition in New Orleans to have a second line parade after the ceremony.  Usually this includes a brass band, and everyone dances and waves their umbrellas or napkins/tissues while they march/dance.  This works incredibly well if you can parade it from your ceremony to your reception.

And guess what, our reception venue is only a few blocks away from our ceremony site!  So we are going to have our own version of a New Orleans wedding parade!  Ours will involve our bluegrass band and those beautiful vintage hankies.  I am also on the lookout for a bunch of parasols at a bargain price.

This is one of the parts of our wedding I am most excited for. I know that our photographer will get some amazing shots of us all marching towards the reception!

Cocktails by the lake

One of the reasons I love our ceremony site is that it is located right on a lake.


Perfect spot for pictures, no?

P and I really do not want a large space of time in between the ceremony and reception. We both dislike the idea of leaving our guests to take pictures, while they are off at our reception celebrating. So we are bringing the cocktail hour to the ceremony! Weather permitting, everyone will go outside and sip on lemonade, champagne, or a signature cocktail (yet to be determined), while we take pictures right outside! Guests can take pictures on the lake as well, or just mingle and listen to bluegrass while we capture the moments!


There is tons of inspiration for the laid-back cocktail hour vibe we are going for. I used my favorite new inspiration board builder to create this:

Now wouldn't that be the perfect way to transition from our ceremony to our reception? And just wait until you hear how we are getting to our reception...

Do you have a cocktail hour vision?

Vintage Hankies

One day, during my wedding blog searching I found these:

Style Me Pretty

Now, like I mentioned, I am DIY challenged, so I knew that I could never make these. However, it did give me the idea of using vintage hankies in place of cocktail napkins. I love this idea because it is eco-friendly and adds just a bit of a vintage vibe. I'm envisioning stacks of colorful vintage hankies on the cocktail tables! Perfect.

Here are the hankies I've already acquired (all through eBay, of course):

I still need a lot more (60 or so!), but I am an ebay-pro, so I'm not worried!

Are you scouring ebay for any vintage finds for your wedding?

Amazing inspiration board

Carly, of Inspiring Brides, made this wonderful inspiration board for me. I gave her some color details (sage, white, navy as our dark color, and touches of pink and gold) and some of our wedding details (bluegrass, the parade, no matchy-matchy bridesmaids, etc) and she created this board:

I am loving the bridesmaid dresses and the cocktail hour inspiration in this board. 
If you are interested, check out Carly's blog and contact her with your details.  She makes custom inspiration boards for brides out of the goodness of her heart. How cool is that?

Playing with colors

When we first got engaged, I got the idea of navy bridesmaids dresses stuck in my head. I thought about just picking whatever color closest to navy that J.Crew had in their dress line, and letting my bridesmaids pick whatever they wanted.

A bridal party with a similar idea:

















However, the more I thought about/looked at color combinations with navy dresses, I kept coming up with navy/yellow/white, or navy/pink/some other color. Those combinations are wonderful, but they are just not me, and just did not feel right.

So I let go of the navy bridesmaid idea and started to look at inspiration photos to see what I loved/felt drawn too. (FYI, I have free reign here as long as I don't "go overboard with the pink."  Got it.)

Here is what I kept being drawn to:

All images via Style Me Pretty

This vision was just so much more us. It's not really about the color palette (although soft green, lilac, light pink, ivory, and gold do seem to keep coming up), but more about the vision. I keep being drawn to a shabby-chic, casual elegance theme. And that is something I can plan around.

I may come up with a defined color palette if I need to, but for now, I am going to let my vision and inspiration photos do the work.

Now if only I could figure out what the bridesmaids should wear....

I dream of beach weddings...

I must admit, that long before I even met P, I knew what I wanted my wedding to look like. (That's right, it was MY wedding. I've now learned to plan OUR wedding, but that's for another post!) Because I have a touch of what my friend Abby describes as "a little bit of a hippie vibe", I gravitated towards a laid-back, barefoot beach wedding. Something about feeling the sand beneath your feet and the ocean at your back as you recite your vows to your beloved is just so perfect. For example, take a look at this:




or this:




How can you not want to grab your significant other and run to a beach to get married now?!?
-All images from the lovely Kathryn at Snippet and Ink (http://snippetandink.blogspot.com/)

But I've had to let go of my fabulous beach wedding dream and trade it for an even more fabulous vision that speaks to who P and I are as a couple. Because we are a team, and this wedding is about us. And that's what its all about.


Did you have a completely different vision of your wedding before you started planning? Did that vision change? Why/why not?