obviously some rules were meant to be broken

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:

  1. no buying wedding magazines. i could browse through them to my heart’s content at the bookstore but they could not leave with me.
  2. 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?

scarletalleyorb

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!

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whose wedding is it anyway?

i was talking to the boy one night about random things as we usually do when he asked me if my friend from college had set a date yet for his wedding.

i told him how their planning had grown “stagnant” and he couldn’t believe how hard planning a wedding could be. he made it seem so simple: pick a date, who to invite, location, select invitations and, there, you have a wedding.

but it’s harder to plan a wedding. besides, not everyone has the time during the day to just sit and cull ideas together like i apparently manage to do. and some people don’t have the obsessive planning trait that i have. i like to call those people “normals.”

there are a lot of little things that go into a wedding. you have negotiate the guest list issue with two sets of parents and all of their “friends” and suddenly an intimate wedding with 100 of your nearest and dearest has exploded into an “event” of nearly 300 people, most of which you don’t know. then there’s the deceptively simple act of picking a date. april 25th won’t work because your great-aunt agnes’ gout flares up in april and she wants really badly to be at the wedding and it’d be rude to exclude her so just push it back to may 16th. except may doesn’t work for your cousin, who’s also a bridesmaid, because she has finals and is graduating from college that month, so why not push it up to march 28th? but your cousin’s cousin is getting married in march and why would you want to “steal another couple’s thunder?” so let’s try to push it back to august 15th. perfect except august 15th totally isn’t going to work because its bad luck.

and that’s before you factor in a venue, invitations and the rest of the guest list. oh, and all those other details that shape this oh so special day.

Continue reading

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pretty sewn bags

this is one of the reasons i love the internet. it makes researching SO MUCH FUNNER.

i know funner isn’t a word but bear with me. i literally just saw this on ten thousand only and now the gears are working.

courtesy tto via greeting arts

i wouldn’t have even THOUGHT to sew glassine bags but you know it looks perfect.

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more papery goodness

sometimes i am so really glad we’re not planning our wedding for real because if we were, i would have been so screwed.

you know how you pick something out and think, “this is it. this is the greatest thing ever!” and you’re happy with it and go about life as normal until you see something else that makes you take back everything you said about that other thing? that’s what happened to me while i was reading $10,000 wedding [tto for those in the know] and she showcased a new invitation designer, kimi. kimi was previously featured because she turned an ordinary wedding dress from target into a one of a kind work of art. seriously.

courtesty of tto

[source: tto]

she’s a designer by trade and thanks to requests from friends, family and friends of friends and family, she’s launched her own invitation design company, printable press.

printablepress

[source: printable press]

she’s singlehandedly made me rethink how i want our invitations to look. back to the drawing board i go.

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