Nick & Allie’s Wedding ~ June 6, 2009

So as you know from one of my previous posts, I have asked my bridesmaids to choose their own brown dress for the wedding. Most girls have chosen one and they are all SO cute! Here is what has been chosen so far, which will all be tied together by the girls wearing cowboy boots!

Georgette & Charmeuse Dress from Nicole Miller.

Embossed Cotton Lorelei from JCrew.

Maggie London Silk Chiffon Halter Dress from Nordstrom.

Silk Tricotine and Chiffon Sophia Dress from JCrew. 2 of my girls might be wearing this dress in different fabrics!

Embossed Cotton Swing Dress from JCrew.

Nicole Miller Silk Twist Dress from Nordstrom.

Eyelet Smocked Dress from VS. My junior bridesmaid is going to be  wearing this!

And my sweet flower girl will be wearing this adorable Tiered Cotton and Lace Dress. From Strasburg.

I am so pleased with all the dresses and am glad I decided to have the girls choose their own. Its so much easier than searching the web and bridal shops for bridesmaid dresses that will look good on everyone. Its nice to know that the girls can find something they love and can hopefully wear again (I dont want to be that bride that says- “oh its something you can definitely wear again” becuase while it would be ideal, it rarely happens). This way they pick something that flatters their body and in a price range that they are comfortable with. Now, if I could only motivate my mother to find a dress! Also, we’ve got to figure out what the groomsmen will be wearing!

For some reason I am obsessed with the idea of a really cool and unique guest book. I’ve had trouble coming up with the perfect idea, but surely one of these would work…

This is one of my favorite ideas right now. It is the most unique guest book I have ever seen. Nick could probably even make one of these for us. This one is from an artist on my favorite new website ETSY. It would be cool to use this as a guest book and then add pictures of us on a few pages using photo corners.

I like this and seeing as though we are having a country wedding, it might be perfect. If we could find a wagon like this, it could be really neat. We could use one of the whiskey barrel tables to hold to guest book too. Found here.

From here. This would be neat. We could make a photo book of all our favorite pictures (since we aren’t doing an engagement session) and put it out for friends to sign. My friend Mary makes photo books as a keepsake for each year of her and her husbands life. She makes them over at snapfish.

I am thinking about asking a cousin of mine, who loves to take pictures, do this for me. It would be really neat to have polaroids of all the guests. The guests could then sign the white part below the picture and we can put them in a book. From here.

This picture is one I found on my photographer’s website, whom I plan to write about in a post soon. This idea is really cool. Guests can sign one of many bottles that Nick and I can enjoy each anniversary for years to come. See my photographers website- McCoy Studio.

Anyone have any other ideas that I could add to my list of choices?

Nick and I sent out our save the dates a few weeks ago and we absolutely love them! Our friend Lynlee took the picture of us, probably 2 years ago. She took it without us even knowing about it. It looks like it was posed but it wasn’t at all. That was just us hangin’ with the horses- back when I fit into my skinny jeans! Another cool thing about this picture is it was taken at the farm that we are getting married at. We are so lucky to be getting married on a farm where we spent so much of our time getting to know each other. It is going to be perfect! My brother Austin helped me make the save the date in photoshop…he’s great with all those computer skills. We made them on our own and then my mom had them printed for us at her office. For less than $20 bucks we made 240 save the dates and by sending them as postcards we saved on postage- postcard stamps are only $0.26 per stamp. Here is a shot of our save the date….(sorry that my images are fuzzy here).

I was able to figure out how to use mail merge in excel to print all the addresses on the back of the postcards and then I also put this vintage looking postcard-with-a-feather graphic on the back….courtesy of Martha Stewart (here). No one probably even noticed it but I thought it was such a nice little touch!

i haven’t been good about blogging this week….sorry to all of my 2 readers….hahahaha! i wasn’t sure if i wanted a getaway car because knowing nick and i, we will be closing our party down. but, it does need to end at some point and usually the best way to end a wedding reception is to have a formal exit…so i’ve been dreaming of ideas for a cool and unique getaway car that could actually take us to our hotel destination (i thought a tractor, a horse drawn carriage, or even a golf cart would be cute….but not really functional). here is what i have come up with.

from here

got this from some car website (sorry that i cant remember)

nick would love this! from here.

here

Picking the bridesmaids dress was definitely an interesting experience. I had an idea of what I wanted….something that would go with my wedding dress perfectly. I envisioned something flowy, romantic, and country  all wrapped into one. I looked for months but couldn’t find exactly what I wanted until I opened up one of the lastest Martha Stewart magazine and found this…

here ~ I mean, this dress is AMAZING. It is my dream dress. It fits perfectly with the theme of my wedding except for one tiny little detail that relates to the ever-important, dare I say, BUDGET….this dress would have cost each maid $294! and I just couldn’t bring myself to do that to my friends. I just felt that it was too much to ask. Oh well, it can just stay in my dreams. It’s such a beauty! So, due to the price factor, I moved on….started looking for something else that would work and I stumbled upon this little beauty…

here ~ I love this one too! Its so pretty. I am so into the romantic lace look. However, as luck would have it we ran into a snag here too. This dress is on clearance and there are very limited sizes. I have 10 bridesmaids and getting all the right sizes just didn’t work out. I was so upset! These dresses would have been perfect and they only cost $70. Oh, I wish I would have found this sooner! I kept looking for pretty brown and lace dresses and couldn’t find what I wanted…so I totally changed my vision. I fell in love something in blue and white…

here ~ Its so different and fun and bright. It seemed to fit a June wedding just right. I got really excited and ordered all the dresses the day I found this. We got them in the mail and tried them on and found that they were WAY too short on all my tall girls and EXTREMELY unflattering! ANOTHER disappointment. I must admit I had a bit of buyers remorse after purchasing this dress as it would have completely changed the feel of the wedding. So, when it didn’t work out I wasn’t completely distraught. That day I decided that I should just move on to my original idea….to have all my style conscious beautiful bridesmaids pick their own dress…something in brown and above the knee that would flatter them each individually. I love the idea of each maid being able to show their own personalities with a dress they love. Surely this option wont fail me!

Lessons learned:

1. Don’t get too excited about a dress that could possibly be too expensive.

2. Be wary of ordering dresses on clearance as they may not have every size available for a large wedding party.

3. Don’t change your vision unless you are 100% sure you will love it as much as the original vision. You could regret it later.

4. Order ONE dress first to see if it will work. Pick your tallest friend to make sure it will fit her. Tat will save you from paying to ship them all back if they don’t work.

5. Trust your instincts and also trust in your friends ability to pick something beautiful and unique to themselves.

Its that time of the year…its cold out….working long hours…..and the wintertime blues are startin’ to kick in. All would be well if I could just getaway for a week! Somewhere sunny, warm, and stress free would be nice. I am lucky that I have a honeymoon coming up in June, but OH it would be so nice if we could win this amazing contest and go for free!

Visit Sunglasses Warehouse’s Giveaway Website for your chance to win this contest!

I really love the idea of natural textures and materials used in our wedding. Take a look at these awesome wood elements….

from here

from here

who knew…inlaid wooden rings!!

more wooden rings

ring pillow here

LOVE THIS- we might make one! From here.

so cute! Here.

I have been inspired to write my very first blog about my wedding planning experience. It’s been fun reading so many others and this would be a fun way to collect all my ideas in one place and share it with, well, anyone interested….

So….here we go…..

I never really thought much about my wedding until I actually got engaged. I guess I thought it would be bad luck or something. Little did I know, the more you thought about it before it actually happened, the easier it would be to make decisions within time constraints. I did know one thing. I, or should I say we, wanted an outdoor farm wedding. Nick and I love the outdoors. We spend a lot of our time out in the country and riding horses…so what could better than a wedding on a farm? We are so lucky to have such great friends to host this wedding for us. Mrs. Gale, we appreciate you so much! Thank you!

Here are some ideas that have inspired me the most so far….

I love these whiskey barrells! Our friends have some at the farm where we are getting married and we plan to  borrow them for cake tables at the reception.

from here

from here

Mason jars with candles and country flower arrangements would be perfect. We’ve already started collecting them! We also want to use glass pitchers for centerpieces.

from here

from here

from here

from here

That’s it for now….its getting late. Thanks for reading my first post!