dresses are in

Right after Christmas I got a wonderful call from Bella Bridesmaid letting me know that our bridesmaid dresses were in and that they would soon be shipped out to all my girls. Woohoo! Everyone has them by now, so it's time to make some decisions about the rest of their ensemble.

First I narrowed down our shoe options to silver or raspberry and asked my lovely ladies for feedback and opinions. Although the raspberry would be an awesome pop! of color, it would probably look best if all the girls had the same exact shoe or same exact raspberry color. That seems like too much thinking, searching, stressing. So silver it is!

Jewelry?? Well, MOH Ash had the fabulous suggestion of maybe incorporating raspberry into the jewelry. That got my wheels turning and reminded me of this beautiful berry colored hair flower that my co-worker wore at her wedding in October - from ban.do. My mom and I had already discussed possibly making a fabric flower of some sort to either go on the girls' sashes or in their hair. Perfect solution. So...silver shoes, silver jewelry (if they want to incorporate the raspberry into the jewelry, great, but not necessary) and maybe some raspberry flowers. Done and done.

(dress, flowers, shoes 1, 2, 3)

How did you decide on your girls' shoes and accessories? Did you give them guidelines or leave it all up to them?

a pillow for our ring bearer

I don't think I have introduced you all to our ring bearer yet.

Meet E, the future mister's nephew:




Adorable. Don't you just want to pinch those cheeks?

Anyway, since we've had a super long engagement, we haven't yet officially asked E or his sister, M, to be in our wedding party. But we're now past the six month mark (!) and will be seeing them for Christmas. The future mister and I have set quite the precedent with asking the rest of our wedding party, so I thought it only appropriate to put on my creative thinking cap and come up with something cute for the little ones, too.

For E, I purchased The Best Ever Ring Bearer book:


And this weekend, I made him something he can practice with:


For the pillow, I used my hot glue gun to adhere two pieces of felt, left a little opening so I could stuff some polyfill inside, and glued on some felt leaves, a flower, and a piece of twine. I think I might check at Michael's or the Dollar Store to see if they have some plastic rings to complete the look.

Did you do anything special for the little ones in your wedding party?

bridesmaid shoe-spiration

As of Wednesday afternoon all of the bridesmaid dresses have been ordered! They will all be wearing LulaKate dresses in different shades of blue. I'll let you know what we ended up choosing for the final colors a little bit later. For now, though, let's talk shoes. I'm going to let my lovely ladies pick their own shoes (or wear ones they already have), but I'm having a hard time deciding which direction I want to take. The choices are endless, I guess, but I've narrowed it down into a few different color categories - silver, gold, pewter, nude/beige/ivory, or something fun like raspberry or fuchsia.

1. BCBG Mirna 2. Butter Claudia 3. Nina Papina 4. RSVP Sadie 5. Brigitte Bailey
6. Nine West Accolia 7. Badgley Mischka Randall 8. BCBGirls Ariel

1. Nina Culver 2. Naturalizer Prissy 3. Anne Klein Frolic 4. Anne Klein Kalei
5. Nina Forbes 6. Naturalizer Princeton 7. Me Too Sweet

1. Nina Electra 2. Romantic Soles Hailey 3. Isola Dolce
4. Etienne Aigner Vivica 5. Lovely People Karen

1. Nina Fulvia

What color do you think would go best with light blue/aqua/robin's egg blue dresses? Did you have your bridesmaids wear the same shoes or did they pick their own?

cake toppers

Since I seem to be on a roll with wedding accessories/decor inspiration, let's move on to cake toppers.

Le Petit Oiseau
Charming and cute, but pricey

Lollipop Workshop

Super sweet, but also pricey

Bent Branch
Adorable!

Lilly BonBon

Another cute option

Kiki La Ru
I just think these look fun and very rustic/vintage

The toppers above are all very lovely, but my favorite is most definitely this one:

(source)

When I was an itty, bitty girl (about 4) I saw a picture of the most beautiful Barbie in a magazine (probably the Sears Christmas catalog).

Happy Holidays Barbie 1989

I was in love and it went straight to the top of my Christmas list. I was already a huge Barbie fan, but that Christmas started almost 20 years of collecting. I have every single holiday Barbie from 1989 until 2008, in addition to a few others. So, of course, the 1960s (reproduced in 1997) Barbie and Ken wedding ornament is my top pick. I'm not exactly sure how the future mister feels about my preferred pick, which is probably why I haven't made any decisions yet.

What do you think? Should I go with Barbie and Ken or keep looking to find something we both like?

garters

Here are the garter inspiration photos I sent to my sew talented mom recently:

(source)

(source)

(source)

As you can see, I'm keeping with a more vintage look. I love that the last one is tied on with a velvet ribbon, which matches my favorite ring bearer pillow. For the garter toss, I think I'll have my mom whip up something a bit more plain and simple, or perhaps something to commemorate the future mister's love of sports.

(source)

(source)

What did you do for your garter(s)?

sew talented

My mama can sew. I've mentioned it once before - here - but I'll elaborate. When I was two or three, my mom made me a Cinderella costume for Halloween. This wasn't your ordinary Cinderella costume, though. Half was rags and the other half was a pretty dress. I really wish I could show you a picture, but the only one I have is in my room at my parents' house. UPDATE: I found the photo! My mom had already scanned it in for me and I just now realized that it was saved to a USB drive I had in my possession.


Then, in 6th grade I got the grand idea to be Little Bo Peep for Halloween so that I could trick-or-treat with my "lamb." Well Little Bo Peep isn't the easiest costume to find in stores, so mom made it.


For my freshman year in college, my mom made me a duvet cover and pillow covers because I couldn't find anything that I liked for my twin sized bed. It was blue plaid on one side and white with blue, green and pink dragonflies on the other. And when I moved into an off-campus house junior year, she made me another duvet, bed skirt and pillows for my full sized bed. I loved this fabric so much, that after college she tore the duvet apart and made me more pillows for my couch and window coverings. These pillows and curtains currently reside in our guest bedroom/craft room/my office since they're on the girly side and not gender neutral enough for the living room.



Last summer, after we moved in together, mom came to stay for a week and whipped up some pillows and drapes in this pretty blue, green and tan paisley print. Love.



How is any of this wedding related? Well, mom is offering her sewing talents for the wedding! So far, she'll be making my garter and the ring bearer pillow - I'll post some inspiration soon.

something borrowed and something blue

Over Easter weekend I received two fabulously thoughtful gifts from my future sister-in-law. And they just happen to be something borrowed:

(source)

and something blue:

(source)

The sweetest thing about the etiquette book is that it has been used by my FSIL and some of her friends and each bride wrote her wedding planning advice in the front cover. So I'll have to do the same before passing it on to the next bride. Such a great idea! Thanks again, Katie!

What are your olds, news, borroweds and blues?

if the shoe fits

I think I found my wedding shoes. They're not only peep toes, but also the absolute perfect shade of robin's egg blue. Behold:

(source)

There's only one problem. The heels are 4.5 (!) inches. Between me and the future mister there's only a difference of about 3 inches. My consultant at Kleinfeld's suggested I find a kitten heel. Do you know how difficult it is to find CUTE kitten heels?? With a peep toe? Nearly impossible! So a 2.5 inch heel sounds pretty reasonable.

Well, the shoes above are from ninashoes.com. They have tons of different styles and colors and you can even design your own shoes! I was seriously considering this, but that option doesn't have a style that I absolutely love or the Easter Sage color (above). Here's the style that I do like:

(source)

What to do? Well, I sent an email to customer service to see if they would be offering any other styles in Easter Sage. Surprisingly, I received an email back a little over 12 hours later. It said that they would indeed be offering that color in more styles, but not for another 2 months. Perfect! So I signed up to be on their email list and will check back in a couple of months. I'm keeping my fingers crossed!

Has anyone else had difficulties shopping for wedding shoes? Any suggestions on other places I should look for cute, low-heeled shoes?

dress me up in pearls

The future mister and I have been invited to a wedding in January. The ceremony is at noon and is being followed by a luncheon and waltz at the Deerpark Restaurant on The Biltmore Estate in Asheville, North Carolina. Although the events are taking place in the early afternoon, I found out from family that it will still be a fairly formal event. After looking at TONS of dresses, I finally decided on a simple black dress that I'll probably snazz up with colored shoes or a fun wrap. As far as jewelry goes, I decided on these beautiful vintage style pearl earrings (and matching bracelet) from etsy seller Jewelry Designs by Janice Marie.

(source)

Don't you think these would be great bridal jewelry as well? Or even perfect as gifts for your bridesmaids? To top it all off, this seller specializes in custom orders for brides or bridesmaids.