Monday, December 21, 2009

Wedding Wednesday --- Two Days Early

Oh girls.....

The wheels they have been turnin'....

A week or so ago Ben informed me that Christmas day would be exactly 6 mos. until our wedding.

Say what?!?!?

How did we get here so fast? It seemed like yesterday Ben and I were excitedly reminding each other that we were one year out from our wedding back on June 25th - and just a week ago when Ben was on bended knee asking me to be his wife. However its been nearly a year since Ben proposed and the wedding and all the work that goes with it is tip-toeing forward.

Reminded of this I suddenly felt the reemergence of wedding excitement and stocked up on the latest editions of wedding mags and dug in hoping for inspiration - and ladies - inspiration I have found.

And it all started with Wedding Star magazine....

And these accessories for our candy bar:


A closer look at the theme:



I loved the very pink, retro candy shop look of these bags, tags, and other printed goods so the wheels just kept turning from there.

I started thinking that I could use items from this line for escort cards and thought; wouldn't retro malt shop themed escort cards look super cute hanging from a clothes line like this:





with these:


Over one of these:


With some of these (and some of their pink garden friends):

Everyday June annuals planted in big pots and placed at the base of the fence.


Hmmm ... so at this point I took a moment to reflect and realized my vision was starting to take on a very retro bubble gum meets 50s dream house ... I could really work with this ....

So then I started thinking about our ceremony flowers ...

Currently we have a proposal drawn up where we will be spending beaucoup dollars on huge,elaborate arrangements for our ceremony colonnade. Couldn't I just take the summer annual idea a bit further and plant my own flowers for the ceremony?

Something to the effect of:


Not only would this be more cost friendly- but how nice would it be to return home from our honeymoon to find our wedding arrangements lovingly placed on and around our porch? We could enjoy them the entire summer!

This is our ceremony venue set up or another wedding:



I was daydreaming about the wedding today and decided to put my dreams into a design involving flower planters- laugh if you want but my non-artistic self drew a picture today :


Its a little hard to see but my vision includes one rectangular flower box up top, 3 square planters, floating candles in clear cylindrical vases between each column and those little squiggly colored things on the runner are the rose petals that are in our original flower proposal. I've always wanted a sea of rose petals - but my question is....will they look out of place with the rest of our flowers being garden annuals? The same question remains with the attendants flowers so opinions would be MUCH appreciated!

You also can't see that in my picture I've strung artificial butterflies...that may be too much but I've seen it done before and thought it looked really pretty...

So now that my outside decor has changed my indoor decor is starting to evolve as well.

One of the biggest peeves I've had with my venue was the promise of "fresh floral center pieces in our personal style and colors".

My foot! When we met with the florist we discovered we could only choose between like 3 different designs. None were great (even though they do fabulous arrangementsO
but the one that made me want to barf the least was this one:


(I know its still pretty terrible)

We decided that to improve this design we would emerge the roses in water and float a candle on top. I could live with that I suppose....

Well imagine my surprise when we received the proposal from the florist that charged us $10 a table as an upcharge just for the stupid candle to our "free" centerpiece. Garbage. I figure I can do better and add more of a punch for not many more dollars.

My ideas are:

A: To continue the potted annual flower theme

or

B: Buy/rent some of these:


Decorate them with some of these:



Fill them with this:


And surround with these:

Either to drink out of or to do a little something like this:


I thought I would like them to drink out of but the more I look at them as votive holders...




The more I like them!

So there are my 6 month ideas.

Thoughts?

Does it work? Can you follow my concept? Does the bubblegum shop work with the garden style or do they compete too much?

Ladies I gotta tell ya - I'm so afraid my ideas won't communicate and it will end up looking like big ole' mess. I'm nervous to make any absolute decisions because I know there are no do-overs!

We're getting down to the wire now though- its time to decide. Its now or nothing....

What do ya think?

Miss Amber Lane