Inspiration Wedding: Emily and Sam

This wedding nails the color and floral element we're going after. The bridesmaid dresses are very close to "Sangria," the guys are all in khaki suits, and the flowers are spectacular... incorporating shades of orange and pink beautifully. The groomsmen's ties are the exact same ties we've already purchased for the guys in our wedding. Her dress... very much the style I've been leaning toward. The outdoor setting is so dramatic here - the Sanderling deck won't be nearly as pristine, but I love their use of flowers along the runner here. My mom and I have been discussing the runner issue - I want to limit the use of white in our wedding, but could handle a white runner if it was liberally covered with flowers like this wedding. Their table settings are traditional, but really fun due to the flowers and gold chairs. And their dessert selection? Spectacular.



See more of Emily and Sam's wedding (especially the fantastic barn conversion).

Inspiration Wedding: Lyndsey and Matt

There are so many things about this wedding I adore... from the bold colors, to the home-grown charm of it, to the patterned textiles paired with small details, to her flowers, to the small sweets instead of cake, to the fabulous lighting, to the BIKE*.

What's relevant about this wedding for me is that it moves from an outdoor ceremony into a tented reception and feels cohesive throughout, using a ton of individuality. Their photography is just amazing... this bride could make anyone want to be a redhead.



For more beautiful photography and details about this wedding, see Lyndsey and Matt.

*Biking Sidenote: I had a fantasy of having the wedding at my all-time favorite place, Ocracoke Island, just so we could rent bikes for all the guests and have everyone roaming the island for a weekend. Multiply expenses and travel stress by about 1,000 to pull off an Ocracoke Wedding, though.

Words (and remaining ME)

Last night I had a huge girl moment courtesy of IndieBride Kvetch's vows forum page, specifically their "giant ceremony readings repository." I was completely teary reading some of the most beautiful words about love and marriage. It struck me: getting all our logistical/attire things out of the way early means that I'll have months and months to think about words and the meaning of what we're doing, and I love that idea.

The IndieBride forum, by the way, ROCKS. I love the community there talking about weddings from the perspective of intelligent, progressive, feminist, aware, independent women. It's the opposite of how I feel logging onto The Knot message boards from time to time, looking for vendor-related stuff or just peeking in. I feel like a complete outcast among those girls, although admittedly, an outcast by design. The attitude so prevalent in the wedding industry is that life begins and ends with that walk down the aisle, and I couldn't feel more opposed to that concept. I know that so many of us are opposed to that concept, but the industry built to feed us that line is insanely dominant. Staying real and true to ourselves becomes a conscious decision when tradition dictates that some lame DJ will announce us as Mrs. HisFirstName HisLastName, as if our identity was erased the minute we said "I do."

Some of the forums active on IndieBride right now are topics that are incredibly relevant to me: "Marriage and Feminism," "The Bouquet Toss... And Other Antiquated Traditions," "Changing Your Name," and "Ridiculous Bridal Ads and Articles." The threads and discussion in each is fantastic. All of these concepts are things I'm going to break down here over the next few months, as I find that perfect balance of frill and depth about this whole getting married thing. Actually, I think a balance of frill and depth pretty much sums up exactly who I am. ;-)

I'll leave you with one of my favorite Rumi excerpts, which gets me every time.

When I am with you, we stay up all night.
When you're not here, I can't go to sleep.

Praise God for these two insomnias!
And the difference between them.

The minute I heard my first love story
I started looking for you, not knowing
how blind that was.

Lovers don't finally meet somewhere.
They're in each other all along.

-Rumi

Save the Dates!

Our Save the Dates came in yesterday, and we're thrilled with them. They're created by Marit Hanson, who created fantastic "concert poster" invitations that served as the inspiration for these. As concert postcards, our Save the Dates are relatively inexpensive, but still entirely memorable... and they completely serve the purpose of getting the word out about our wedding early so that folks can put it on their calendars.


We wanted to do something really fun and "us" for our Save the Dates... either a live music theme or a travel theme. When it came down to it, these were the ones we wanted blown up and framed in our home... and so that was that. I love how fun and different they are. And who knows... originally we thought we'd go with fun Save the Dates and more traditional invitations, but maybe we'll do all-around fun. Kinda sounds like us... ;-)

Kudos to the great JunebugWeddings Save the Date Inspiration Gallery on flickr for tipping me off about Marit!

Wedding Colors

Ah, the ever-burning wedding color debate. Here's how ours went down:

• Outer Banks beach weddings seem to primarily use palettes of blues, browns, and natural colors (think sky/ocean, sand, and shells), but I love color too much to use those shades, and need the wedding colors to feel like me

• Green is a huge color for me, but isn't right for a beach wedding, so I ruled it out

• I love vibrant pinks, oranges, reds, etc., but didn't want our wedding to look like a fall wedding or like it should be in the tropics instead of in North Carolina

• I definitely didn't want a "pink" wedding

So with the help of Jenny Yoo and her fabulous bridesmaid dress collection, here are the official colors:

Weddingspeak: "Sangria" and "Starburst"

Normalspeak: Coral and Peach

I know what you're thinking... these colors look like pink and pink in the online swatches ("blush and bashful," anyone?!), but in real life they really are coral and peach. Really.

You don't believe me?

Here we are at Stella's in Plano Saturday morning, where my fabulous f-word charmed the staff while I tried on bridesmaid dresses and apparently excelled at being horrendously unphotogenic.

I'm modeling the long Anessa in a size too big, but the colors - Sangria and Starburst - are great. If you click for a closer look, you can see how well the dress matches Trevor's groom's tie.

We're going with the Evelyn and Patricia dresses, by the way... either all four girls in one, or two in each. Try-ons with everyone the next two weekends and we'll know!

And I know, I know...

Cheesiest. Couple. Ever.

Behold, the wedding website

Being the blogger-nerd that I am, of course I would need a wedding website! After looking into a few different companies, I went with Wedshare. They offer great planning tools and the website has lots of functionality, but to be honest, the biggest factor in my decision was the site design. There are some outright UGLY wedding website templates out there. So many companies have websites that work just fine, but you're severely handicapped when it comes to site design, which is all your guests will see and their first impression of the wedding. I couldn't deal with a site loaded with cheesy wedding iconography, generic outdoor photography, or canned tacky colors with awful fonts. I care about fonts; these things matter to me!

With Wedshare, I went with the simplest template possible, turned it red, used a great font, and voila!

We have a few pages up now to communicate the basics of the wedding and share some thoughts about travel, accommodations, and planning the weekend. Over time, we'll activate more pages - wedding party, more wedding details, more of the weekend's itinerary, etc. We've gotten great feedback so far, and from a practical standpoint, having the website means we don't need to include travel information in our formal invitations, which will save us some money.

The whens and wheres

Deposit check cashed, I can now firmly announce the whens and wheres of our wedding!

When: Sunday, May 24, 2009

Where: The Sanderling Resort, Duck, NC

Our date is the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend, which we chose for the extra travel time it afforded our guests. The Outer Banks is a really remote place, and if we didn't choose a holiday weekend, our guests would end up having to take off a day of work just to get there in time. We debated the pros and cons of using a holiday weekend quite a bit, and in the end decided that we'd rather take over our friends' and families' Memorial Day weekend (with plenty of notice, of course!) than use up their vacation time. Of course, if they decide to use their vacation time to extend their trip in one of the best places ever, they're just plain smart. :-)

Deciding to go with The Sanderling involved some debate as well. The biggest incentive remains the convenience factor: having both the ceremony and reception in one spot is easy on us as planners and everyone else as guests. The Sanderling also felt like some insurance against feeling like we needed to hire a planner. We like that they know the drill there and can handle everything for us, which is fantastic. And hey, if we can get away with not needing a wedding planner, not having to talk to a dozen vendors, not having to set up a location from scratch, not having my mom stressed out, and having a back-up plan in case it rains, I can be thrilled with the Sanderling over the Whalehead Club.

The ceremony is on the Sanderling's Oceanside Deck. While we're not right on top of the ocean, the sea is most definitely in the air and the background. The deck ensures everyone will be comfortable during the ceremony (I was worried about my grandmother getting down to a beach ceremony, for example), everyone will be able to hear the vows (because obviously, they will be the Best Vows Ever), and most importantly.... I get to wear hot shoes.

Our reception is across the street at the Soundside Pavilion. This is a great tented area that gives us the beauty and calm of the sound, the sunset right behind our celebration, and plenty of flexibility to make it our own. Our photographer, Julie Dreelin, has taken the most beautiful sunset portraits of couples on the gazebo, too.

When and wheres: CHECK! Now we just play with the details.

Alternate 'Whens and Wheres' Post:

The best proposal(s) possible

Everyone wants to know the engagement story. How did it happen? What did he say? Was it a surprise?

The truth is that the way Trevor proposed was perfectly us, but there are little details that will forever be ours alone. I like it that way.

Here are three things that I wake up every day knowing without a doubt:

• Saying yes was the biggest no-brainer of all time
• We feel like the happiest and luckiest couple on the planet
• The best thing about being engaged is that Trevor proposes to me every single day

He really does.

Every single day since he asked me to marry him for the very first time, he has proposed all over again. Some days it's right before bed. Some days it's first thing in the morning. Some days it's during a movie. Some days it's across a room. One day it was in the middle of an annoying disagreement, to make a point, and it was the cutest thing ever. He asks me differently every single day.

And every single day I say yes. That's how lucky I am.