Ribbons and vintage and lace, oh my!

As happy as I am with the clean, simple aesthetic for our wedding... every so often, the frilly romantic in me comes out.

I'll be honest, I love Taylor Swift. And she can rock the romantic look like no other.

love story by ♥♫MaDiSoN♫♥ back@school :( on Polyvore.com

Normally, I don't dig the details/overall look of frilly weddings (and Mr. SB sure wouldn't be into loads of pink and lace and girly details). But! Drooool...... over this one from StyleMePretty.

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If I had the opportunity to do a second wedding (to the same wonderful fella, natch), it would look a little something like that. Or exactly like that.

If you got multiple takes of your wedding, would it look the same... or completely different?

Green, green everywhere...

I thought that having only one bridesmaid/MOH would make choosing bridesmaid's dresses a piece of cake. And it seemed like it was.

However.........

My mom called the other day to ask what my five other sisters should wear. I'll be honest, I hadn't given that one lick of thought yet. I started thinking and realized that the non-matchy matchy mixed bridesmaids dress look might be perfect for the rest of the fam.

The SB siblings rocking the not-exactly-matching
blue theme, two Christmases ago.

Really cute example of non-matching green from offbeatbride.
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And another from Martha.
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MOH K's dress is pretty formal, and it's important to me that she have some designation as being an attendant. But there are some cute green dresses out there that I think would blend into a beautiful, cohesive, interesting look for our family shots. I also like the idea that it will be readily apparent who is an SB sister, because I'm guessing not a lot of our guests will be wearing green dresses. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), most are on sale in the fall (when I'm looking for them) so sizing & color options are limited.

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Some of our options. Thanks J. Crew sale!

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The more I think about it... the more I like the idea that our family will have a unified look (Dad & brother/ring bearer will have green ties). I'm excited that they get to be part of the day/look/planning, even though they are not officially part of the bridal party.

Did you coordinate any other people's outfits with that of your bridal party?

Mu-zak

Pretty excited about these

I want to love Etsy. I love the idea of supporting talented entrepreneurs with unique crafts. But each time I head over to the site, I end up blindly clicking around and come out over whelmed and empty handed.

Yesterday was different!!!

I was still feeling a little down about the failed DIY fascinator, so I was searching for a non-DIY one but was more drawn to the crystal/silver hair clip/comb type accessories. Somehow (in typical blind clicking fashion) I ended up on the page for seller Lulusplendor.

Swoooooooooooon..........

Wowsers. Her jewelry (esp the hair pieces) is GORgeous and reasonably priced. I can honestly see any of the pieces below in my hair on my wedding day.

This is probably a little too much for a half up hair style, but would be beautiful if I was doing a pulled back, low style.

Ohhhh.... pretty. Cute little bird detail.

My dress has both crystal and pearl details in the lace trim.
The smaller hair pins might leave room for more options with the styling. Mmmm....

This pretty little bird's nest really caught my eye. Kind of whimsical. Beautiful.

Wowwwww... I'm pretty darn excited to select one of these little sparklers. I'm not 100% done with the feather idea, but this seller's page is bookmarked high on my list.

Did any random searches end up exactly where you wanted them??

Does anyone even notice???

I H.A.T.E. the post office. The line is always too long, too slow, and too annoying. At work, we use Stamps.com which I love as much as I hate the local post office (print postage from your desk, woohoo!). That said, for some unknown reason, I was uncharacteristically giddy about going to pick out stamps for my STDs/invites. I had high expectations of heading to the post office to sort through a whole host of beautiful options (when they ask if you need stamps, don't they pull out hundreds of them???) and sort through to find the perfect romantic color coordinated stamp for my goodies.

Right. I'm not sure where I got that idea, but reality is more like... well, normal. The line was long and annoying and the cashier handed 3 or 4 random packs of stamps to me to choose from. Luckily, I had glanced online and knew the King & Queen stamp existed (not one of the 3 he offered me). It was definitely the best of the not-so-exciting options, so I came home with a pile of them.

This year's "Love Stamp." The King & Queen of Hearts.
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I spent a little time looking online for something better. I had heard of Zazzle which has some tempting options (cutesy, romantic, custom). However, while their homepage examples look something this...
The actual product looks more like this...The barcode is pretty unattractive and the stamps cost more than two times face value. The option to upload some of our e-photos or a monogram is nice, but still that barcode. Don't like it.

So, at the end of the day, I've spent several hours (seriously??) deliberating about postage and have made peace with the relatively cute King & Queen stamps. I hope my guests appreciate all the brain power spent on that decision. :)

What tiny details drive you nuts??

A very functional little project

I was trying to think up stuff I can do during this lull in wedding planning. You know, the time where most big things are booked, but it's too early to actually start DOing anything (like seating charts or weekend itineraries or getting OOT bags together). I decided working on some paper designing that I had planned to DIY might be appropriate... which lead me to the wonderful world of escort cards.

Our caterer has asked that we designate on their escort cards what meal people chose (from our three options) or have specifically assigned seating. I was planning on assigning tables, not seats, so I wanted to try "color coding" their name to their order. I like the ideas of different colored grapes and found some various colored clip art from Microsoft online. (Classy, I know. But free, I dig that part.)

Into powerpoint I go, making little boxes 1x4" and inserting grapes & color coordinated names. I printed them out on cream cardstock, scored the top fold and it looked ok. Not great. Ok. (We're debating between the very creative "Table One" "Table Two" or the more cutesy "Cities that were important to us" for the table numbering. That's why Bridget's tag says Boston.)

Not loving this attempt, I headed onto the internet for inspiration. Our wedding is at a winery and the only alcohol we're serving is wine... glass labels/tags of some sort would be cute, no?

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Veryyyy cute. You could write/print the names on these tags and have the guests slip them on the wine stem, but the labeling-the-meal-choice isn't as obvious. And blue's not one of our colors.

This got me thinking though... wine charms! You could print the names onto a card (like the ones created by the Creative Memories tool, below) and attach it to the charm. Extra little favor! Bonus!

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They range from $5.99 for 6 for the Art Glass ones above to $15 for 6 for the pewter ones. Pretty reasonable actually. Except of course, I like the expensive ones better and was progressively feeling like the $6 ones looked cheap. And then, Michaels came to the rescue... DIY charms!

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Sorry for the poor quality, this is a blown up section of the image. But they have easy to follow DIY grape wine charm instructions on the webpage! Ok, so maaaybe they sound a little detailed, but it might be just the thing to keep my hands, and DIY/planning spirit, busy. I haven't gone to price check the components, but am pretty excited do that soon.

What projects have developed into something unexpected that is WAY better than your first thoughts?

What to look like....

I don't wear alot of make up on a daily basis. And am pretty much a big fat spaz when I try to "glam up" for big events. I've also had a hard time finding a makeup inspiration to cut out and put into my wedding binder. I want the "natural" look, but don't want to be invisible in photos. I want my long hair half way up, but mostly down, with a spot for a hair flower.

The only person whose look I consistently love is the Jim Hjelm model. Man, she's gorgeous.

(I can't find her name...)

Realizing that setting your goal as "I want to look like this professional model" is a little risky, I've been looking for a real wedding with my vibe. And I found her! Stephanie and Sean's wedding was posted on Style Me Pretty and more fully on their photographer's blog.

Beautiful, non fussy hair that meets all the requirements I had laid out. Darker eyes that show up in pictures, not a strong lip. She looks amazing, but not overdone. Perfect!

Great bouquet too!

I'm so relieved to finally find "what I was looking for" to bring to my hair & makeup trials.

Are you using a real person or a celeb/model as hair & make up inspiration?