i was browsing through weddingbee, as i do several times a day, and spotted another one of those ubiquitous inspiration boards. you know the collage of weddening goodness that somehow helps focus your wedding theme/color/feel. it’s like a color swatch for your entire wedding. i’m kind of hit or miss with the idea of needing an inspiration board. i love looking at them but would i make one for myself? do i really even need one? some days i’m completely on board with doing one and others i wonder if it’s even necessary.
what i do like about the boards is that you can immediately get the sense of what the intended mood of the wedding is just by looking at the assembled pictures. but what makes me worried is the possible disjointed feeling the weddening might have. having no clear objective or theme other than “we’re in love, isn’t it totally awesome?! where’s the cake?! w00t!” plus the many years that i’ve had to collect a bunch of different pictures doesn’t exactly lend to the most cohesive theme. what if it just looks like a bunch of stuff thrown together? and not in that kind of on purpose but not really shabby chic way.
obviously some more self-editing is in need to achieve any kind of cohesiveness but maybe i’ll attempt a board sometime soon with some of the images i do like now. i’d be interested to know if the mood i am trying to go for, something casual, kind of homey [in that love-filled warmth kind of way] and fun comes through.
i know the boy wants a wedding that has a more chill, relaxed vibe going for it. he envisions being able to hang out with friends and having a good time. no need for formalities, which works because formal isn’t our style. i think i’m going to take a cue from his wardrobe preferences: dressing down a button-down shirt with jeans. i’ll have to go back through my pictures and see what i have to fit this vibe. this is actually getting kind of fun. i curious as to what our inspiration board ends up looking like.
if it ends up coming together that is.
* all inspiration boards from snippet & ink
i was going back over some old files to see what i could stand to delete and came across some pictures of things i liked when i first started researching for the weddening.
and can i say, man, what a difference a year or so makes. seriously. it’s almost like looking back at pictures of you in high school [which, thanks to a friend on facebook, i get that lovely opportunity]; it’s not too bad but you wonder what you were thinking.
oh so the pictures. once upon a time i had a completely different version of the weddening going on, one i like to refer to as weddening 1.0. the theme [when i believed weddings needed themes] was something along the lines of “movie love” because one of my friends said the boy and i had that kind of love. anywho, let’s just say i’m glad i graduated from that hot mess. with a theme like that, you can either hit it out the park [a la a vintage hollywood type glamour] or miss completely and look like you’re the head of your senior class prom decorating committee.
needless to say i may have been the president of that committee.
i think if i were able to edit some of my initial inspirations and maybe changed the focus a little bit it could have worked but i ended up quickly abandoning the idea after the boy expressed surprise that i wasn’t going with my favorite color.
anywho, the thing that struck me [besides the fact that i wanted stargazers in my bouquet – i mean, could i have picked a more fragrant flower?] were the invitations. and how boring they are to me now.
i don’t remember what exactly appealed to me but it must have been something because i had three different pictures. and one of them even includes the fashionable tulle ribbon that i’ve since developed an irrational dislike of. i seriously think i overdosed on tulle after helping to decorate for a wedding and encountering an unholy amount of it, but that is neither here nor there.
i’ll keep searching to see if there are any other pictures from the ill-fated weddingpromextravaganza that i can share. and just like high school, i’m already kind of embarrassed to share.
if there is one unifying theme between every wedding it’s that they are entirely personal and highly sensitive things for the people involved and emotions are on high code “magenta and tulle” terror alert as is. but there are a few golden rules that people should always remember. and since i like to think that i have managed to maintain some level of perspective on the matter, obviously that should make me more than qualified to dispense with the truths.
also, selfishly, i hope by writing this i’ll be able to remember them as well.
in the interest of clarity i decided to break them up into separate posts. so this should turn out to be very fun, yes? yes!
ladies and gentlemen of the wedding class of ’09 [and beyond]. if i could offer you only one tip for the future, it would be to wear sunscreen. okay, i kid. but seriously, [but make sure you wear sunscreen] this is where the real dispensing of my opinions and ideals begin: i present to you “the universal wedding truths.”
as decided by me. of course.
universal wedding truth #1: relax; it’s just a wedding.
yes. i said it: it’s just a wedding. nothing more, nothing less. now i know it sounds absolutely absurd but hear me out right quick. strip away the decorations, the guest book, the bouquets, entertainment and any other thing you think you need and what do you have left? two people joining together as one in front of family, friends and God. oh, and a cake [can’t forget the cake]. so what’s left to freak out over? quite frankly, not much.
so while you’re in the midst of the planning storm, try to remember the reason why you’re all in a tizzy over envelopes: marrying the man of your dreams, the one that still makes your heart pitter patter every time you see him, the one you want to grow old and saggy with [quite the visual, yes?]. remember that all the other stuff are just fun extras. they’ll nice to have but they won’t be missed if you don’t do them. don’t drive yourself crazy trying to do everything you see in all the blogs, magazines and shows. and don’t lose yourself in the attempt at producing a glorious perfect event.
your guests are there to celebrate you and your sweetie marriage and not expecting you to perform open-heart surgery while balancing the national debt and doing an interpretive dance of shakespeare’s “a midsummer night’s dream” at an impeccably staged event that rivals every awards show party.
because if you can do that you’re completely underutilizing your skills just planning a wedding.
before openly researching for the weddening, i made a couple simple rules for myself to help keep the pre-engaged planning to a manageable level:
- no buying wedding magazines. i could browse through them to my heart’s content at the bookstore but they could not leave with me.
- definitely no looking at wedding dresses.
everything else was fair game. i could email venues to scope out prices to help build a budget and i could source ideas and prices for centerpieces, bouquets, invitations and even shoes. i could pretty much plan the whole thing right there. and it worked like a charm. until it didn’t.
it was easy to not buy any magazines since they tend to run on the more expensive side and you can always find similar ideas and pictures online for free. they were always a fun read though, well once you get through the gajillion or so ads for dresses. besides, i figured i got my money’s worth after flipping through it the one time and putting it back on the rack. now that says a lot doesn’t?
the dress thing was a bit harder. at first i was fine with just reading about other people’s dresses in blogs but suddenly i found myself clicking further into the links which eventually led to bookmarks. and just like that, i had broken the biggest rule of all.
though even that seems trivial when compared to the next rule i broke. yeah, i broke a rule that was even set, but really, it seemed more like a “duh” type of thing.
so here’s the story. while reading weddingbee a couple of years ago [yes, i have been reading for that long], i came across mrs. bell pepper’s post on ring holders and she showcased a ring orb that had since become uber popular around these parts, and by these parts i mean the wedding parts. because where else would this be relevant?
well isn’t it just fabulous? that’s what i thought and before anyone knew it, i had impulsively tracked down scarlett alley and minutes later i had made my first weddening purchase [which kind of makes this blog pre-engagement seem normal doesn't?]. i still think this was one of the best decisions i could have made, especially considering that they’ve been hard to come by in that tiffany blue color and copper [i’ve seen them in an equally pretty lavender color] since then.
i’ve tucked it safely in my closet and to be honest, i kind of forgot i had it until i was cleaning out my closet a couple of months back. sure it was a huge impulse buy and who knows if we’ll even use it at our wedding and never mind the fact that the boy doesn’t even know about it [well, until he reads this post that is – though remember, i forgot i bought the thing!] but it’s pretty. so very pretty.
hopefully we’ll be able to incorporate the orb into the wedding plans some way, even if it’s only for pictures of our rings. if not, then they’ll be pretty decoration for our home!