Outdoorsiness

I don't think the F-Word will mind if I announce that when it comes to outdoorsiness, he's very much outmatched by yours truly. In fact, he insisted fairly regularly when we met that I was a tried-and-true hippie, which might have had something to do with my politics, love of natural foods, and my beloved bumper-stickered '88 Saab (sadly, left behind in New Mexico). My counter-point to his hippie assertions, though, could not be refuted: hippies do not wear hot shoes. I mean, really. Look around if you don't believe me.

At any rate, my non-authentic-hippie self does love the outdoors. My childhood involved a fair amount of camping, whitewater rafting, swimming, farm-rambling, etc. In college we'd drive up to New Hampshire regularly for killer day-long hikes up the White Mountains. In New Mexico, you can hike to your heart's content, and I did.

One of my favorite outdoor activities is kayaking or canoeing. I love being out on the water, so much so that I woke up at dawn every morning during my freshman year of college to row with the crew team, even though I had neither the patience nor dedication to be a true athlete or, at 5'6, the height to be great at it. But gliding on top of the water, seeing Boston wake up in front of me, was something I loved. For the wedding weekend, I'm going to organize a Saturday morning kayaking trip on the sound. My parents are big kayakers, and I have enough friends interested to make a fun outing of it. It's just incredibly peaceful out there, and I want to share it with everyone.

The F-Word? Not so much. Unlike me, he was a serious athlete. But as he likes to joke, he tried the outdoors once, and that was enough for him. So while I'm out on the water, he'll be golfing. These, then, are for him:


Via Happy Hour Bride (a new site!)















Via Style Me Pretty.














Via Green Wedding Shoes.

Not My Dress: Amsale (with bonus rant)

In another case of bridal models making dresses look icky, but real women filling them out beautifully, I offer Amsale.

Scary robot model:

























Gorgeous real bride (via Snippet & Ink), with an absolutely lovely wedding and the same Amsale gown that is perfect on her:

















As we can see now, this dress is really beautiful. (But Not My Dress!)

You know, there are countless examples of really unappealing modeling in the bridal world. One line I love uses the most sickly, prepubescent model I've ever seen in its advertisements. Why? Is that a look I'd want for my wedding day? Absolutely not. In fact, I've already achieved that look - when I came home from school sick with the flu as a 14-year-old.

Let's play The Wedding Gown Advertisement Drinking Game:

Directions: Take a look through any bridal magazine and peek at the gown ads. Take one shot every time you see:

• A bride frowning
• A bride contorting her upper back in an awkward "high fashion" pose
• A bride looking like she's about to throw up
• A bride who no one thinks will actually make it down the aisle
  
• A bride with washed-out skin and the always-fetching nude, chapped lip
• A bride with insane, just-ran-through-the-forest-in-a-windstorm hair
  
• A bride surrounded by hilariously slutty-looking bridesmaids, who look like they hate each other
  
• A bride lounging provocatively in a car near an attractive man who is most definitely not the groom
• A bride who has clearly just fled the scene with an usher or waiter
• A bride living out her fairytale fantasy with the hugest, most heinous dress you can imagine (Sidenote: These ad campaigns, usually lower-end than the rest I've listed, tend to use models that look far older than their couture counterparts. Also, tons of eye makeup. Hmmm....)

What am I missing? Does it really matter? Because I think we all know that on this Wednesday morning, we would be wasted if we were actually playing.

Hearts for a day

I am not a fan of hearts. There won't be a single one anywhere near our wedding. But on Valentine's Day, I make room for them. Happily so. Some V-Day loveliness I've seen around the web...



Ama Card. I love collage work, and combining newsprint? So up my alley.












Enough Said card. Yep, enough said.




















Love Notes. Oh, how I covet you.











Love Wins. I bought one of these for our future red and blue "remember that crazy wedding we had that time?" decorated bathroom. It makes me smile. :-)














Requisite flower mention: I'm not a rose person, either. But striped roses? Beyond pretty.

Comfortable girls

I love seeing real weddings full of personality, and I especially love weddings where the girls are grinning and laughing every time the camera's on them. I think often about something Alice Walker wrote: "If the women of this world were comfortable, this would be a comfortable world." Cut to the latest offering from Southern Weddings, where the girls in Hope and Adam's wedding radiate ease, joy, and comfort. Looks like the kind of day I'd be proud to call my own.

Thinking spring

We've had enough nearly-spring days here to warrant me so antsy for the real deal I can barely standy myself. Catalog after catalog promising warmer horizons isn't helping much, either - I'm officially dreaming of a warm-weather getaway. Next month I'm off to the Outer Banks for a hectic two days of wedding planning, but it won't be very warm there yet, either. So this week, I'm romanticizing a different Outer Banks - the one I love so much I wanted to get married there, the one without a single appointment to keep, with a whole lotta sun, and with the people I love right there with me. Courtesy of these old vacay pics, this week, I'd rather be...




...kayaking on the sound




















...swimming in the ocean















...fishing with my dad

















...exploring with anyone or no one at all















...or skinnydipping with the gals.












What would you rather be doing this week?

New favorite wedding hair

Confession: I have a terrible hair vocabulary. In a recent e-mail to the bridesmaids, I described my ideal wedding hair as a "low, loose, curly bun-ish deal with flowers." See what I mean?

I just booked a March 16 hair consultation in the Outer Banks during my whirwind planning trip, so I have a month to find some concrete examples of what I want. I have wavy hair that has a tendency to get extremely big and curly on the beach, so I'm going to embrace nature rather than fight it and opt for a beachy style.

Here's my new favorite hair, on a bride rocking one of my previously established favorite dresses. Imagine it with a little more neck showing and some flowers woven in or one large flower that's visible from most angles. I kind of like the height on this style, too - the others I like are fairly flat up top, but this seems different. And bonus: her bridesmaid has one of the flower styles we've discussed for the ladies.

(Loveliness via Style Me Pretty.)

Rainy morning respite

Via Darling Dexter: What do your Flickr Favorites say about you?

Take a look. I bet you see what I see:

Kate rocking her White (Aisle) Wedding

My girl Kate has some gorgeous wedding invitations. Right now, her invitation designer White Aisle Press is featuring them on the front of their website. Go ooh and aah at Kate's invitations ("Vintage" in gold and fuschia). Clearly, her sense of color and style is not going unnoticed. :-)

Crazy Lazy Weekend

Oh, what laziness! We did nothing wedding-related this weekend and reveled in it. In fact, we barely did anything at all. Yesterday morning, two hours of errands, then a four-hour afternoon nap. Today: morning Katy Trail, workouts, random shopping (golf bag and a new gray hoodie to replace my beloved holey one) and homestead-tinkering. In fact, we are still both wearing our stinky workout clothes, watching nerdy PBS about the "science of attraction." Scary how much comes down to ovulation. Perhaps I will shower shortly. For the first time since yesterday morning. Perhaps.

F-Word Friday: Black Tie or Bust?

Liz Lemon (yelling): "Why are you wearing a tuxedo?"

Jack Donaghy: "It’s after six, Lemon. What am I, a farmer?"

The biography that posted last Friday as an introduction to this weekly feature was, well, ridiculous. As are all third-person autobiographies really, despite Facebook’s insistence to the contrary. But the one I wrote was particularly absurd. The details are almost entirely fabricated. But the timeline, and the locations, are all factual. I was born in Philadelphia and raised in a quiet upper-middle class Connecticut suburb. I did go to boarding school, and after a year off I did enroll at and eventually graduate from Yale. All of which is largely irrelevant to a wedding blog, except for one reason: it’s my belief that I’ve spent an inordinate amount of time in, and am really quite fond of, the tuxedo.

Maybe this has nothing to do with my adolescence and education. And one certainly need not go to boarding school or college to spend several nights a year in formalwear. But with the exception of the black-tie charity events of my adulthood in Dallas, nearly all of my nights in a tuxedo came via school, and came often. There were formals, cotillions, and debutante balls in high school (which we all knew was just an excuse for us kids to play dress-up). In college, there were the formal cocktail and Christmas parties in NYC, and nearly all of my best friends from college had black-tie weddings. And I always have a great time. Everyone looks fantastic (aside from the occasional extra from a Growing Up Gotti prom episode). Honestly, I wish I had more occasions to wear one now. I owned my first tuxedo in ninth grade, and have one in my closet now, ready to slip on at a moment’s notice.

But we’re not having a black-tie wedding, and that’s a good thing. The cliché, as we all know, is that the bride plans everything because she’s had her heart set on xyz since she was 5. And that’s true for some weddings, I’m sure. But neither one of us is the kind of person to impose their aesthetic on the other….we’re not that couple. The wedding should be all about who WE are, together. It’s not hers or mine alone. I love the vibe we’re going for, and think we’re going to get it. I love the idea of wearing seersucker, and not as a gimmick but as something I’ve worn before and something that will feel very much like me. Besides, Maggie and I have gone black-tie before, and will again, if only because Maggie looked so utterly devastating in her dress the last time it happened. And, well, because after the wedding the tuxedo is going to be a little jealous....