Thursday, December 13, 2012
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
i love ikea
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Found some fun stuff at Ikea this weekend! I think the candlesticks are very simple and sweet and loved it with the white candles, but they also had purple and green in exactly our colors so that could be an option too... I also loved the boxes because I think they may be perfect for simple centerpieces, especially if we do family-style seating (which is what we're leaning towards at this point). I think we could incorporate both by using the boxes to create small groups of people within the longer table, and cluster the candlesticks around the boxes and/or spread them out a little bit more. For the boxes, we were thinking about either planting plants in them that would flow down the sides of the box OR "planting" 3 candles in each box (because 3 is a perfect number for anything in life) then packing moss in and around the candles in the box. The moss could also continue along the table to make a bit of a table runner and we could place random pillar candles of varying heights along with other fun "enchanted forrest" type things in the moss as well.... Liking this, my mind is racing ahead as I'm writing!
Throughout this last weekend my mom and I mulled over a TON of different ideas, especially for the tables/centerpieces, and I think the above ideas may be the best so far because it is SIMPLE. I'm all about it, let's see how long it sticks for : ) Also one last little teaser, I found an AMAZING grouping of inspirational pictures on a certain DIY website and am thinking that I'm going to use at least 3 of the ideas for bouquets, boutonnieres, and more.... I'm going to be a bit secretive with this one because it is so rad that I would rather everyone be surprised at the wedding. As time goes on I will share a bit more and will for sure spill the beans if we ended up going in a different direction with these certain elements. Much love!
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Invitation Time
Alright, let's get down to business. I'm on a tear right now to try and find our invitations, mainly because we really need to get the Save the Dates out to people and I would like to hopefully have them coordinating with the invites a bit. After a good hint from my co-worker, my Mom and I decided to go to Michael's to see if we could find any print-at-home invites that we liked. Surprisingly I liked a lot of them! I thought for sure I wasn't going to like them and was worried that my printer would be lame and they wouldn't look professional but after perusing the options I think it might work out. After we got home we looked more at michaels.com and then on random sites for inspiration, the following pics have certain elements that I love:
I love the different fonts and also the pic of the map, it has a modern, playful vibe that I'm really into right now. I think I would like to take the written part and put it onto something that had one of our engagement pics because I think those are going to turn out AWESOME! Below is another inspiring Save the Date:
I love the picture at the top and the writing is absolutely GORGEOUS (too bad I checked it out and it costs like $100 to use the font!). I think I wouldn't do the strung-out-date thing because it looks like a lot of work, but the actual card itself is done really really well. Instead of the date on a string I would put a mini March 2011 calendar with our date circled in red, I have seen it done before and think it looks awesome. I tried playing around in photoshop for about 30 minutes and honestly have NO idea how that bride made those herself, she is obviously more technologically inclined than myself.
So after looking at all these other types of invites I found myself back at my recently-crowned "favorite website of all time": etsy.com. I was browsing wedding invites on there and! Low and behold, I found awesome hand-drawn customized invites for not that much more than what we would have bought at Michael's. You can see this particular vendor's shop here and below are some of her specific designs that Jake and I are liking right now:
Love the little bird on the RSVP card on that last one! So this is what we're thinking about right now. I love love love the idea of getting our invites off etsy and also think that these in particular fit with our design aesthetic (don't laugh, we're slowly creating one!).
I think this is it for now. Any feedback/links to other resources is greatly appreciated! I'm spending the next week or so just getting ready for school and working on wedding stuff while Jake is in Colorado so please, feel free to distract me with pretty things to look at! Much love : )
I love the different fonts and also the pic of the map, it has a modern, playful vibe that I'm really into right now. I think I would like to take the written part and put it onto something that had one of our engagement pics because I think those are going to turn out AWESOME! Below is another inspiring Save the Date:
I love the picture at the top and the writing is absolutely GORGEOUS (too bad I checked it out and it costs like $100 to use the font!). I think I wouldn't do the strung-out-date thing because it looks like a lot of work, but the actual card itself is done really really well. Instead of the date on a string I would put a mini March 2011 calendar with our date circled in red, I have seen it done before and think it looks awesome. I tried playing around in photoshop for about 30 minutes and honestly have NO idea how that bride made those herself, she is obviously more technologically inclined than myself.
So after looking at all these other types of invites I found myself back at my recently-crowned "favorite website of all time": etsy.com. I was browsing wedding invites on there and! Low and behold, I found awesome hand-drawn customized invites for not that much more than what we would have bought at Michael's. You can see this particular vendor's shop here and below are some of her specific designs that Jake and I are liking right now:
Love the little bird on the RSVP card on that last one! So this is what we're thinking about right now. I love love love the idea of getting our invites off etsy and also think that these in particular fit with our design aesthetic (don't laugh, we're slowly creating one!).
I think this is it for now. Any feedback/links to other resources is greatly appreciated! I'm spending the next week or so just getting ready for school and working on wedding stuff while Jake is in Colorado so please, feel free to distract me with pretty things to look at! Much love : )
I am a mover, shaker and decision-maker
Hey all! It's been awhile (my fault, I know!). The exciting thing is that I have a lot to report. I think I will do a quickie double-blog to report on recent decisions and then to post some inspiration for our save-the-dates/invites. So! Recent decisions that have been made: booked for El Cap Canyon, bought my wedding dress and booked and started shooting with our photographer! First, we have booked El Capitan Canyon. I am so so excited for this location because I think it has EXACTLY the right feel that Jake and I want for our wedding: outdoorsy and family/friend-oriented.
Second: I bought my dress!!! It is a Pronovias from 2006 and I got it at a sample sale in Santa Barbara. I tried on a few newer dress that were absolutely gorgeous but I new nearly the instant I put this dress on that I loved it. The longer I wore it the more I could envision myself walking down the aisle in it, and when I spoke with my Mom about adding little handmade touches to it (flowers made by my mom, changing the neckline to sweetheart and changing the back to V-shaped) I knew I had to have it! It is ivory-colored and made out of raw-silk; definitely fitting the "natural homespun" feel that Jake and I have agreed upon. I really just love that I am going to be able to take the dress and make small changes to it that make it mine. So excited!!!
So lastly, Jake and I officially booked our photographer. As I mentioned before, we have chosen Josh Gruetzmacher, who I went to high school with, and we have already taken our engagement pictures with him! We shot them in Santa Cruz, where Jake and I met, mainly at the UCSC campus. We drove up to campus and immediately found an old barn that we shot at for about 30 or 40 minutes. I was freaking out the whole time, especially when we went into the barn, because I am NOT a rule breaker! Fortunately we didn't get caught and we got to take some cools pics in front of old farm equipment like this one:
This was one teaser that Josh posted on his blog, I will post more as we get them. We also shot in the redwoods, at Merrill College and at the Meder Street Park on a quilt that my Mom's grandmother had made. Can't wait to see them!
So that's about it so far. My MOH Ali has been searching high and low for bachelorette party locations, which has been exciting... Since I'm not a "bachelorette party" kind of person I think we are just doing a girls weekend away or something, which is definitely more my style than craziness in Vegas or something like that! Also my Mom and Grandma are down visiting right now while Jake is in Colorado and we have been hot and heavy on the wedding planning. I think we chose colors today (purple, green and a little bit of golden-yellow to accent) and scoped out invites. Speaking of which, see above blog post!!! Hasta for now : )
Second: I bought my dress!!! It is a Pronovias from 2006 and I got it at a sample sale in Santa Barbara. I tried on a few newer dress that were absolutely gorgeous but I new nearly the instant I put this dress on that I loved it. The longer I wore it the more I could envision myself walking down the aisle in it, and when I spoke with my Mom about adding little handmade touches to it (flowers made by my mom, changing the neckline to sweetheart and changing the back to V-shaped) I knew I had to have it! It is ivory-colored and made out of raw-silk; definitely fitting the "natural homespun" feel that Jake and I have agreed upon. I really just love that I am going to be able to take the dress and make small changes to it that make it mine. So excited!!!
So lastly, Jake and I officially booked our photographer. As I mentioned before, we have chosen Josh Gruetzmacher, who I went to high school with, and we have already taken our engagement pictures with him! We shot them in Santa Cruz, where Jake and I met, mainly at the UCSC campus. We drove up to campus and immediately found an old barn that we shot at for about 30 or 40 minutes. I was freaking out the whole time, especially when we went into the barn, because I am NOT a rule breaker! Fortunately we didn't get caught and we got to take some cools pics in front of old farm equipment like this one:
This was one teaser that Josh posted on his blog, I will post more as we get them. We also shot in the redwoods, at Merrill College and at the Meder Street Park on a quilt that my Mom's grandmother had made. Can't wait to see them!
So that's about it so far. My MOH Ali has been searching high and low for bachelorette party locations, which has been exciting... Since I'm not a "bachelorette party" kind of person I think we are just doing a girls weekend away or something, which is definitely more my style than craziness in Vegas or something like that! Also my Mom and Grandma are down visiting right now while Jake is in Colorado and we have been hot and heavy on the wedding planning. I think we chose colors today (purple, green and a little bit of golden-yellow to accent) and scoped out invites. Speaking of which, see above blog post!!! Hasta for now : )
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
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!!!
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!!!
it actually happened...
I am happy to report that, almost a year to the day that Jake and I got engaged and a measly 7 months before our wedding, Jake and I have booked our first vendor! That's right folks, an actual decision has been made. We need to sign the contract and mail in the deposit but essentially it's a done deal: Josh Gruetzmacher (a VERY talented photographer that I went to high school with) is going to be shooting our wedding! Jake and I met with him last time we were in SF and loved the vibe we got from him and everything that we talked about (and his pics, ob), so after getting the money situation figured out with my parents we were able to finally lock down a price and move forward with booking. Also as a result of this, Jake and I will be taking our engagement pictures next week! We are meeting Josh at 2:30 in Santa Cruz and taking our pictures on the UC Santa Cruz campus because (1) That is where we met and (2) It is one of the most beautiful and diverse locations I can think of : ) Where else can you be within walking (or hiking, depending on how you feel about hills) distance from old barns, ocean-view vistas and beautiful redwood forests while surrounded by the nostalgia of a place where you spent 4 years turning into an "adult"? Banana Slug territory, of course!
So now that our money situation is getting straightened out, a lot more decisions such as these will be made (for those of you who haven't planned a wedding and aren't independently wealthy: figuring out money/budget stuff with family sucks. period). I have an appointment to try on dresses (yet again, fingers crossed this time!) AND we are going to our (hopeful) venue tomorrow to meet with the events manager so Jake and my mom can see it in person and we can get moving with booking it. The venue is perfect for us: it's called El Capitan Canyon, located about 10 minutes north of Goleta (aka Santa Barbara for those of you who don't know central coast geography) and right across the beautiful 101 freeway from the Pacific Ocean. You can check out the website for details, but basically El Cap Canyon has about 200 cabins and tents located along a creek that goes through a mile long canyon, it's awesome. For the wedding we will have the top 1/4 mile of the canyon reserved for the entire weekend, which includes cabins around a meadow with a yurt and fire pit and picnic benches and 17 miles of hiking trails : ) The cool thing (or difficult, depending on how much of a Debbie-Downer you are) is that every guest HAS TO stay on the property, so basically Jake and I are envisioning a long weekend with 150 or so of our closest family and friends hanging out and having fun with us, pretty sweet huh? We think so : )
There! Fun new information has been reported. It is really starting to feel like we are actually going to get married... I think that after Jake's brother has wedding #2 this weekend (Jake is the best man) we can take a deep breath and really start to focus on getting everything together. I must say though, my goals was to get some major stuff figured out before school starts on August 30th, and though this "figuring out" has really all happened in the last week or so, I think I'm actually attaining my goal. Despite this, I think it's only a matter of time before I have to hire a planner because, as I keep saying, once school starts my brain has only about 10% availably for anything non-teaching related! Good thing we are getting the major stuff booked now...
I think that's about it for now, I haven't been sleeping well lately and should probably go to bed. Who knows, In less than 24 hours I could possibly have both a wedding venue AND a dress picked out! Actually that being said, the adjective "indecisive" was not used by accident while titling this blog, so I'm just going to stay hopeful that the venue at least will be taken care of tomorrow : ) Goodnight world!
So now that our money situation is getting straightened out, a lot more decisions such as these will be made (for those of you who haven't planned a wedding and aren't independently wealthy: figuring out money/budget stuff with family sucks. period). I have an appointment to try on dresses (yet again, fingers crossed this time!) AND we are going to our (hopeful) venue tomorrow to meet with the events manager so Jake and my mom can see it in person and we can get moving with booking it. The venue is perfect for us: it's called El Capitan Canyon, located about 10 minutes north of Goleta (aka Santa Barbara for those of you who don't know central coast geography) and right across the beautiful 101 freeway from the Pacific Ocean. You can check out the website for details, but basically El Cap Canyon has about 200 cabins and tents located along a creek that goes through a mile long canyon, it's awesome. For the wedding we will have the top 1/4 mile of the canyon reserved for the entire weekend, which includes cabins around a meadow with a yurt and fire pit and picnic benches and 17 miles of hiking trails : ) The cool thing (or difficult, depending on how much of a Debbie-Downer you are) is that every guest HAS TO stay on the property, so basically Jake and I are envisioning a long weekend with 150 or so of our closest family and friends hanging out and having fun with us, pretty sweet huh? We think so : )
There! Fun new information has been reported. It is really starting to feel like we are actually going to get married... I think that after Jake's brother has wedding #2 this weekend (Jake is the best man) we can take a deep breath and really start to focus on getting everything together. I must say though, my goals was to get some major stuff figured out before school starts on August 30th, and though this "figuring out" has really all happened in the last week or so, I think I'm actually attaining my goal. Despite this, I think it's only a matter of time before I have to hire a planner because, as I keep saying, once school starts my brain has only about 10% availably for anything non-teaching related! Good thing we are getting the major stuff booked now...
I think that's about it for now, I haven't been sleeping well lately and should probably go to bed. Who knows, In less than 24 hours I could possibly have both a wedding venue AND a dress picked out! Actually that being said, the adjective "indecisive" was not used by accident while titling this blog, so I'm just going to stay hopeful that the venue at least will be taken care of tomorrow : ) Goodnight world!
Monday, August 2, 2010
possible colors?
inspiration while folding laundry, if we wanted to go with push-pop-bright colors :)
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