Colors!

 

I was so excited to find this image board on 100 Layer Cake. It just goes to show, you really can use three colors! And I absolutely love the shade of blue used here. Love, love, love. 

Speaking of shoes (as I totally was) I like the ones in the bottom left corner here, but I'm unsure as to the heel.  I don't like heels, I avoid them where I can, and I'm trying really hard to be sure that I'm not uncomfortable on the day of the wedding. But heels are also just so very... bridal. I can't picture myself with them-- or without them! Oh, the struggle. 

The Venue Search 2/?

Our second stop on the search for a venue was Burge Plantation. And in one of those moments where I could see my personality going in a slightly different direction, I really, really loved Burge. I can imagine a version of myself descending the stairs from the porch and walking down a flower-wreathed aisle, a breath-taking Southern Belle for the day.

Or maybe that's just me really wanting to watch Sweet Home Alabama.

 

The inside of the house is not available for use, but they will open it up if a bride wants to come out of the front door before walking down the aisle, which would lead into what basically looks like a darling clearing in the woods. You can set up an aisle going the other way as well, but I prefer the backdrop of trees to the house.

 

Another option for the ceremony would be the back garden behind the house. Since these pictures were taken in January, the place looks sort of abandoned (Note: Shopping for an outdoor venue during the winter sucks! To the point where I wish we wanted a long engagement so I could see these places in the summer before booking them.), but I'm told that the flowers are gorgeous.

 

The reception space was a small, newer building, with an outdoor area as large as the indoor area. The "walls" here are actually just clear plastic material, rolled down to keep it warm and out of the weather.  There is a large croquet lawn right outside which is also available for use, and a small place to play Bocce Ball, which I've never heard of before but might be fun. 

Ultimately, what stopped me from booking Burge Plantation was that I just didn't feel like it was what I was looking for. It would have been great if I were looking to be a princess for the day, and it was worth the price-- the rental included the use of two small cottages for dressing before the wedding, and the use of one of them for the night following the wedding. But I don't want to be a princess. I want to be a bride, and to me that doesn't mean everyone should be staring at me enviously. 

I'm looking for a location where I can be a gracious host to my guests, outside in a place that's not so manicured that it's just as decorated as an indoor location might be. I don't want the guests to be thinking of the beautiful location that we have so much as they are the fun they're having. My wedding is not a tourist attraction, and I would be far more comfortable with someplace a little less showy than a plantation house.

 
That said, this place really was beautiful, and now I'm dying to watch Sweet Home Alabama!

The Venue Search 1/?

As promised, I am FINALLY posting our venue search! The first place we went was the Charlie Elliot Wildlife Center.  

Okay, so, the outside? Not so exciting. When I heard "wildlife center" I was think, well... wild life. And there is plenty of wildlife around it, but not so much around the building where they do weddings. It's really more like a conference center.

And a little bit woodsy, don't you think? I actually like the fire place, but the giant mural of the story of Charlie Elliot is just not quite my style (PS: I know that picture is blurry, but I couldn't NOT post it).  Plus, the room itself was sort of large-- the pictures I've seen were of a wedding with three hundred guests, and we're planning on having one hundred. I don't want to be rattling around the room like a hundred peas in a three hundred pea bucket. ;)

They did get points for the deck, which had a matching uber-large fireplace, and the view from the deck over the lake.

Overall, this was just not it, for me. The prices were great for catering because it's a part of the GA state park system, but the aesthetics were not really the relaxed, airy, outdoor venue I was hoping for.

Wanderings

So. I have a secret. Well, a sort of secret.  At least, it's something I don't admit very often.

Here it is: I. am. a control-freak. I am. Really. I don't like other people helping me with things that I think I can do alone. And so I'm having a really hard time with this wedding planning thing, because I know it's something I can't do alone, but I'm not really sure how to communicate my ideas of what I want to the (much appreciated) people who are helping me. Because, of course, if they're my ideas, they must be something only I can understand, right?

Well. They're not. I just need to find the words, and the will, to articulate them.

See, there's a second part of the secret. The reason I'm a control-freak is that when I let other people give input, I'm really bad at diplomatically, unoffensively, explaining that what they want to do might not be the same as what I want to do. And in general, out of anxiety over possibly being offensive, I just... do what they want. Because then they're happy. Except then, am I happy? Well, normally yes. I don't tend to worry about the smaller things. But this time I'm planning my wedding, which is a Big Important Thing.

So. I'm going to do my best to articulate just what I'm thinking. And post lots of links to pictures of weddings I love, and would like to steal ideas from, or emulate. Like this:

via The Bride's Cafe

 I love the idea of long tables. They make socializing so much easier, in my opinion, because you can seat more people per table, but the whole table doesn't have to be involved in the same conversation. Because sometimes, honestly, I don't want to talk to a whole table of people. And I like table runners.

PS: RSVPs. I am not a fan of the extra-smancy invites, as you know. I'm thinking web RSVPs, with a phone number for the older people who aren't up for using teh interwebs. So. Email? I wouldn't mind just having people email us. Or should we go the website route (which, as far as I know, costs monies)?  I have ideas bouncing around in my head about what we could do if we go with emails-- ask the guests to answer a couple of silly questions as well as simply say yes or no to being able to attend. I don't know what I would do with the answers yet, but I'm sure I could come up with something classy and exciting.  

Blog Recs, a.k.a. A Post Because I Feel Like It

So, last Friday we went with Zack's parents and checked out two possible wedding venues. The pictures from that outing were supposed to be my post for tonight, but, alas, I was already snuggled into the blankets when I realized the camera was out in Zack's car. SO. That post shall happen soon.

Instead of giving you lovely pictures of venue possibilities, I thought I would share some links to the blogs that I keep up with in the wedding planning world of the internets:

#1: A Practical Wedding Meg on A Practical Wedding does a great job of explaining how to keep your focus when planning something as large and meaningful as a wedding. She stresses that you do have to spend money, but that you can choose to spend it on the things that are important to you instead of the things that everyone thinks You Must Have. And she talks about the really important things, too, which is why this blog is number one on my list of things to read every day. Things like the meaning of the word wife, and the adventure that is being married. The concept of having a practical wedding, but a brave marriage. Go read A Practical Wedding, even if you don't care a bit about wedding planning, because Meg is funny, and smart, and snarky, and intellectual. And she brings up issues that are real beyond the one day where you get to wear a white dress (if you want to) and have everyone look at you (whether you want them to or not).

#2: iDiY i-do-it-yourself.com is a blog devoted especially to crafty, diy brides. It isn't updated too often, but there are tons of links to downloadables like labels, fonts, and invite templates, etc. as well as tutorials on how to make paper flower cones, yarn pom-poms, centerpeices, and more. Plus fun ways to repurpose old stuff that might have become trash, which is always fun for me! Updates have been slow lately, but the site is still a great reference, and there's tons of material already on it.

#3: Once Wed Once Wed's subtitle is "Designer Weddings for Less" and the site has way more options than just a blog. They have a Vendor Guide and a section for buying and selling used wedding dresses and some diy stuff as well as real wedding features. Mostly I just check the blog, which is updated pretty much daily Monday to Friday, where they feature a ton of gorgeous real weddings, all of which give me some fab ideas which are probably way too expensive for me to ever pull off, some fab ideas which I could probably make work, and lots of pictures of lovely outdoor wedding venues which are inevitably in California.

#4 Ruffled Ruffled and Once Wed together make up my daily wedding porn. Beautiful dresses, fabulous tablescapes, chandeliers hanging from trees... Yeah. Ruffled is all about vintage too, which I didn't know I loved until I started looking at wedding stuff and didn't seem to really like anything else. Ruffled also features lots of cool Etsy finds, like these vintage stamp garlands which I wouldn't use myself but love without knowing why.

#5 Southern Weddings This is a blog run by the office staff at Southern Weddings Magazine. There are a few sneak previews of stuff that's going into the magazine, but mostly this is a blog about planning weddings, with real weddings featured often as well as inspiration boards made by the girls, contests to win awesome stuff, and just plain cool finds from around the web. One of the reasons I love swsmag.com is it's the first blog I've come across where even though several people run it, I feel like it's not a generic blog. I know the posters' personalities and can tell who's writing what, which is awesome. And they really give their brides a voice, too, by asking questions about the wedding day and the planning process that invariably elicit sweet and funny stories from the bride, instead of just posting pictures of the wedding.


Well, there's your peek into what I do all day when I should be applying for grown up person jobs! Expect the pictures from our venue search up in the next couple of days. I need to get them up so that I'm not behind when we go on our second outing this Tuesday, this time accompanied by my awesome, full-of-connections father!

Dress Shopping Trip 1/?

Before anyone says anything, (including the man himself) I am trusting Zack not to follow the links on this post, since he is the one who is insisting that he can't see the dress until the wedding day. Silly traditional boy. Is it odd that I want to show him the pictures so he can help me pick something out? I'm so used to showing him everything, this keeping a secret thing is hard.

Anyway, risk of fiancé seeing the dress aside, yesterday, I went dress shopping. Like... Dress Shopping. The David's Bridal $99 dress sale goes until the eighteenth of this month, but I didn't limit myself to just $99 dresses because I really wasn't intending to buy anything right away. I wanted to see which styles I ended up liking best on myself, and I think I accomplished my goal. I tried on several styles, some which I didn't like (Two layers of fabric that end at the knee? Hello, not a $500 wedding dress!), some which I did like (Tea-length, lace overlay, sweetheart cut? Yes. Now if that skirt were just a bit fuller...), some of which I thought were massive (Is this a tent?), and some of which looked like undergarments (Not in a sexy way.).

My mother, sister, and best friend went with me. The experience of shopping by appointment for something that costs a whole ton of money was an enjoyable experience overall, and there are a full set of pictures here on shutterfly. Danielle has more on her camera, which I will provide a link to once I have them. You can probably tell which one I liked best from the amount of time I spent with it on while my mother and the attendant, Dionne, lavished accessories on me. I'm still not sure though.

Thoughts?