before i forget

Because I know I will forget to post this later slash will run out of time and have more important things to say, I wanted to make sure I shared this now. In one of my countless wedding magazines there was this cool article that I loved about a couple that essentially "branded" their wedding in order to plan out details and make decisions on invitations/decorations/ etc. of the wedding. What I mean by this is that basically the couple approached their wedding like you would approach marketing a new company: they first decided what the overall theme or message of the wedding would be (the feeling they wanted people to get when seeing their "product" aka their wedding) then used this theme to make every decision about their wedding from there on out (their theme ended up being something about "city-meets-country" blah blah whatever).

Since I have basically fallen in love with every design idea I have seen, from warm and playful kite-strewn receptions to stark grey/yellow/white and succulent table-scapes, I figured that maybe this branding idea would work for Jake and myself. The appeal for me is that once we figure out our theme (based on our personalities, what's important to us- all that good stuff) we can then say "Does this element fit into ______ theme?" and if yes then use it, but if no then can the idea and move on. Simple right?

I brought this idea up to Jake on a 6-mile hike we took last weekend (so he couldn't escape?) and he liked the idea. I asked him what he wanted our wedding to feel like and he said that he wanted it to be "natural", as in "I don't want anything there to look like it is there for a wedding, I want it to all be things we would have in our house or use again". I liked this idea and think that, being practical and nature-friendly people, it reflects our personalities pretty well. For my turn I had a harder time narrowing down my ideas (maybe someone has seen one-too-many "inspiration boards" or perused a few 100 bridal magazines? I think so...). After much thinking out loud I decided on a few key words: "sweet", "fun", and "personal". I really just want people walking away from our wedding with the feeling that they know who Jake and I are, both as individuals and as a couple, and that they see how much we really really love each other (sweet, right? sweet is a good keyword! haha).

So, what is our theme you ask? We're still thinking about it, but for right now the working title is "Natural Homespun". It's vague, I know, but we feel like it means something like "A down-to-earth way to celebrate the union of two young people who love each other and their surrounding friends and family, with as many personal/homemade elements as possible that can be repurposed and reused as we see fit". Make sense? If it doesn't now, it hopefully will as time goes on and this blog progresses... Ruminate on that, I will be back for more tomorrow!!!