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!