Wedding Season Recap: Highlights and Cool Things We Loved

Hey Friends! How is everyone?  How's wedding planning going?  Fantastic?  Hooray!

So with this wedding season drawing to a close, I thought that we could recap some unique and lovely elements from a few of our fantastic weddings this season.  We've had a lot of fabulous weddings from a bunch of brilliant, creative brides, so it's only fair that we share some of their cool ideas with you!

I'll start with Joanna & Mike's fantastic Blumen Gardens wedding, which was full of personal touches from the bride. Joanna had TONS of creative ideas for her centerpieces and decor, but my favorite element was probably the head table decoration.  She had collected hundreds of glass bottles before her wedding, which we combined with candles to create a stunning and nontraditional head table. It looked absolutely AMAZING.

The next brilliant bride we'll talk about is Gwen, who married Mike in a breathtakingly beautiful ceremony at Acquaviva Winery.  Literally guys, THIS is where they got married:

That picture is just an iPhone, no filter, taken with my very limited photography skills, so even though it's gorgeous, trust me: it was even prettier live.  And Gwen and Mike's genius was not limited to venue selection! They also were very creative when it came to their guest book which (how fitting!) was a wine barrel. Guests loved signing the barrel, and BONUS!, Gwen and Mike now have an awesome piece of home decor covered in memories from their happiest day.

The final wedding that we'll touch on in this post is Amy and Jason's, which just happened this past weekend! The weather was perfect for their outdoor ceremony at Burpee Natural History Museum. The couple very elegantly incorporated an artichoke theme into so many elements of their day, including the floral arrangements! The bride and bridesmaids all had artichokes in their bouquets, and centerpieces incorporated artichokes as well.  Here's the purple artichoke arrangement that hung on their ceremony arch:

Amy and Jason also made sure their guests were never hungry.  Immediately following the ceremony, guests walked out to find the good folks from Dairyhaus in Rockton ready to serve them delicious ice cream flavors selected by the couple!

And that's just the tip of the iceberg, friends! We've had so many wonderful weddings this season, full of a million little elements that made each one memorable in it's own special way.  We'll share more delightful details in posts to come, and hopefully we'll be able to touch on each and every wedding.  THEY WERE ALL SO PRETTY, YOU GUYS!

But for now, we would love to hear from you! What are some special wedding details that you've seen, or that you will be incorporating into your own wedding?  And don't hold back, because we LOVE this stuff! 

You're Engaged!! Now What?

You're engaged!!! Congratulations! I hope that you are reading this in the midst of champagne toasts and glitter and cheers, and that you're as elated as you deserve to be. Bask in the glory of your new engagement.  Stare at your left hand for hours on end.  Introduce your fiancé to strangers on the street, just so that you can say, "This is my fiancé." Dedicate huge portions of your life to watching TLC wedding shows, and justify it as "research."  Buy a wedding magazine at a grocery store. You can do all of that now.  It's okay, because you're engaged.  YAY!

Brief pause for introductions:  Hi! My name is Michelle Ruby, and I'm Amanda's assistant.  I'm going to be posting weekly updates to this blog, with tips, tricks, and useful info about planning weddings and events.  And (bonus!) I'm recently engaged just like you. So we can go through this whole super fun, sometimes stressful, mostly awesome wedding planning process together.

If you're anything like me, part of this engagement bliss is a new found ability to openly, proudly, completely legitimately plan your wedding.  You know that Secret Board on Pinterest covered in wedding dresses, cakes, and blue satin peep toe pumps?  All of those pins are actually relevant now, and you want the opportunity to put those ideas into action!

However, if your first planning impulse is to run to the nearest florist to create mock-ups of those gorgeous peony centerpieces that you saw on Four Weddings, you might want to take a step back.  Calm down.  There's an order to the planning process, and as beautiful as they'll be, centerpieces don't come first.

Here are some things that it makes sense to start doing right away:

•  Make sure everyone knows each other.  Your family and friends are going to be spending a lot of time with your fiancé's family and friends now, so it's smart to make sure everyone is well introduced and feeling comfortable around one another.
• Have a date in mind.  It's a good idea to have a general range for when you would like the wedding to be, but if you can, leave it as tentative in order to make the venue booking process easier.  If your dream venue is booked on your first date option, it's nice to be able to ask about the weekend before or after.
• Figure out who is coming.  This is an important one, because it sets the tone for a lot of other decisions.  Are you inviting 50 people or 500?  Are you going for intimate and serene or big and festive? The number of people that you invite will be integral when making a budget, picking a venue, and establishing what kind of wedding you want to create.  
• Establish a budget.  Even though this sounds like so much less fun than the centerpieces, it really is a good idea to get some numbers decided upon.  Make sure that everyone is on the same page about who is paying for what, and about how much things will cost.  Getting this out of the way right at the beginning will save you huge headaches down the road.
• Hire a coordinator. And by that I mean La Di Events, if you haven't already. And if you have already booked with La Di Events, I commend you. You are obviously a brilliant decision maker with excellent taste who is in great hands. That is a completely unbiased assessment. 
• Start checking out reception and ceremony sites.  Those places book up fast, so there's really nothing too early when it comes to reserving your venue! If you've checked out a few venues and you find a place that you love, I suggest calling dibs on that venue for your date as quickly as possible.

Once you get these big ticket items checked off of your list, you can move on to all of the the fun wedding details that you've been dreaming about.  And if you've already done all of that, good job!  You are one organized bride.  You have our full blessing to get back to designing your centerpieces.