Ways to Remember

After a very productive email session, sparked by Mairead showing me the live stream of puppies, I have had a few ideas for wedding guest books and such.
Originally, I like this idea that I had seen on a DIY wedding site. I thought about asking one of my artist friends to make one for us:

The leaves are actually finger prints! You have guests sign their name under it. I think it is such a great idea because it is something you can frame and display, rather than having a book with just names in it.

Mairead and I also discussed terrariums and find even better ways of filling them. In this search, I came across this amazing print:

It is sooo sweet and I love the quote! Then I thought, well, should this be the print that we use for the center of our "guest picture" and have everyone sign the matting that we would put around it? Example being:

I thought that I would have to choose one or the other, but then I thought maybe we could do, just in different ways. We would do the tree with just names, then have an empty terrarium jar and the print on the table with a sign asking for love advice.

After the wedding, we could attach the best answers onto the matted frame for the print and...Voila! 2 pictures to hang and remind us of our special day.

Granted, I know that not everyone will do both, or either, but I would love to have some momentos!

Late night Baking!

We got an early wedding gift in the mail this week... our Kitchen Aid! It is all that we had hoped for and we finally got to take it for a drive tonight!
I had updated my favor idea to marshmallows instead of french macaroons, due to the brittle nature and complexity of said macaroons. This is what we are going for:

And this is how we did it:

(forgive the low quality blackberry photos!)

We got a very basic recipe off of the internet.

Now, we just have to wait and cut them into squares in the morning!

Good night, everyone.

Almost 3 months to go!

I'm watching Marie Antoinette again today. It just gives me peace to watch such a beautiful movie. It has been a busy past 2 weeks, as we traveled back to Texas for 5 days, then hit the ground running with work and wedding plans.

So, right before we left for Texas, I attended a meeting for work, which had quite a few wedding vendors that realized I was getting married in the area. I know these women were trying to help, but to these professionals, the idea of a home-grown wedding caused them to gawk and make many suggestions of how thing should be done.

By the end of the meeting I was scared that my wedding would be a disaster! Luckily, the trip home and a budget talk with my mom cleared the air and I am on a fast track to getting all of the details squared away!

Yesterday, I believe that I squared away a cake. We have a tasting on Tuesday, but I am very excited to have found a cake that I had in mind. I have wanted a fondant icing, three tiered cake with red velvet flavor and raspberry filling. The first cake below is the shape and simplicity I want, but the second is the color I was thinking of, a sea foam green.

On another note, flowers have been on the top of the list. I didn't realize that you had to book flowers so far in advance! I called the place I had in mind and they said they were booked through October!

I went to a local store that our business orders through a lot, which was nice because they did offer me a 15% discount on my oder, but the price seems a little outrageous, especially just for bouquets and 3 corsages.

One of the women that I had meet at the vendors meeting did point me in the direction of a photographer, which we are heavily considering. I think that I will bite the bullet and get a professional photographer, especially with the countless warnings of "you never get the moment again." I would still love my photographer friend to do day-afters.

I'm not sure if I have ever talked about the day-afters, but it is something that I really want to do and the reason why we didn't do engagement photos. Here are some done in and around Chicago:

I will be happy when we finalize the photographer!

Lazy Sunday

The main thing I have been thinking about in the last week are photographers. It is becoming more clear to me that of all the things that we are expending on, photography is of most importance to me. A girl that I work with is a student photographer. She was very exited to hear about our wedding and offered to photograph it, if we would like. She is a pretty passionate person and I have seen some of her work, but she has never done a wedding. She has agreed to sit down with me and go over all of the ideas I have and what style I like. Right now, she is on a trip to India for a month, but when she comes back I think I will spend some time with her to make sure we are on the same page.
There is such a difference, though, between good and bad photography. A few examples:

Good:

And Bad:

The quality of this one isn't bad, I just don't like the cheesy pose!

Poor lighting!

So, I guess I have something new to worry about until my friend gets back from India!

All that Glitters

As I mentioned the day before, this blog has been my "happy place" as far as being able to post inspiration and whatever catches my eye. Since my trolling began, there are a few sites that I regularly frequent, so I thought I would share some.
But before I do, I was having a thought today about what the "ideal" wedding is for a woman. When I was searching through dresses, I came across a few duplicates of the Sex and the City Dress. Now, don't get me wrong, the thought definitely crossed my mind if that was the route I wanted to go, but really, what would be personal about that?

It is unquestionably a beautiful dress, but I think it takes away the point of it being a day about you and your husband; rather, it is a day you got to wear the "sex and the city" dress.

However, I surely have my ideas of what a "bride" looks like. For not having liked my former step father at all, he had a mother that had some beautiful old gowns and a classic bridal portrait. I wish I could find that picture, but it has been stuck in my head as what a "bride" looks like.

Call me old-fashioned, but I love all of these pictures! I will say that when choosing my dress, I kept in mind a classic style.

Now, for the sites that I am a little obsessed with:

The Princess Blog is one of those site I happened upon that is an explosion of color and happiness. The girl that keeps it has a an affinity to the color pink and Disney World.

Another of the sites that I look at is Ghastly.

It is actually a girl that is a few years younger than me that I went to high school. It is a little angsty at times, but I appreciate her point of view. About 20% of her blog is pretty dark, but otherwise, interesting photos.

That is all for now.

Ohhh, and I heard back from Anthropologie and they are selling me the poms for around 15 poms/$25. It's not quite free, but a hell of a deal considering they normally cost about $10/pom or take about an hour to make just 1.

I'm picking them up today!

Even though it was 2 degrees yesterday in Chicago, I decided to face the cold and go downtown to see one of my lovely friends I made abroad, Emily. It was nice to catch up with her, as it had been way too long. We talked a little about the wedding planning, and after we parted ways, I stopped off at Anthropologie to take a look at the holiday sales. Within the first minute I picked up one of my favorite things that I already own:

Of course, the one I already have has an "H" on it, but I picked up a "J" one for Jonathan.

With wedding talk fresh on the mind, I looked up and saw their huge decoration for the season, paper poms! Now, most people don't get too exited by paper poms, but as a bride who is looking to make their own and know how much tim it takes to make just one, the sight of hundreds was beautiful!

I immediately found the manager and inquired how they dispose of such displays. She them told me that one customer had already laid claim to some of the poms for her wedding, but that because there were so many of them, there was a high probability that I could have at least some of them.

Hey, I will take what I can get!

Here are a few examples of poms used in other weddings:

I think they would be great as isle runners, like this:

I hear back from Anthropologie tomorrow, as the store designer is in and will be able to tell many how many she can hold for me.

Last night we finally got to watch a movie I had heard of, but never found the time to see in theaters. For one, it had a limited release, so there was one theater in Chicago playing it at times that I was normally working.

It is a film following the editor of Vogue, Anna Wintour. Apparently, she is the inspiration for the book The Devil Wears Prada. What's funny is that her office even looks like the office they designed for Meryl Streep in that movie.

Anways, the documentary was amazing and had such a great way of telling the story of how their biggest issue of the year gets put together.

One of the more interesting people in the movie was Grace Coddington, who is the creative director. She is in charge of the main photo shoots for the magazine. Above is one of her shots that she actually used one of the documentary guys to be in a shot that made it in the magazine. 

I also like Grace because her job was to think of the most beautiful and creative things, and put them into pictures. It is probably one of the hardest jobs to do.

This movie also sparked my love for all things pretty and reminded me of one the vogue shoots that will remain in my mind for awhile.

When Sophia Coppola's, Marie Antoinette, came out, Vogue did a shoot at Versailles with Kirsten Dunst.

I'm pretty sure that the last dress inspired my wardrobe on using red, white, and pale blue as primary colors at the time the movie came out.

It is all so pretty! One of the things that I have loved about planning this wedding and starting this blog is all of the beautiful things that I have found in life. Not just in things off of the internet, but in nature and daily life. I have started to pay more attention to it all.

 I think next time I will share some inspiration sites that I have found.

Oh, and last thing, I have to mention that I climbed a 5.11b today, which is a pretty big deal, in my book. It was hard, but realizing that I could do it was amazing!

I have tomorrow off, so hopefully that means another blog post!