Wedding Website

So I need a non-fugly wedding website. That will let you be very controlling and annoying. I like to control and annoy. I don't like eWedding. It's kinda icky. Anyone have any ideas? I really just want it for very very simple things, the kind of things I could print out and send to out of town guests like "here are some hotels, here is the nearest airport, there is going to be a brunch" etc. Thoughts? Feelings? Thanks.

Inspiration

Peonie's shoes are inspiration. Only cheaper. Photo by her. Obvi.

Inspiration Board, Barn Part III

I promise I will try to credit pictures in future. I really will.

Or or or

Or I could find a way to plant heaps of wild flowers around the barn and maybe do flower beds where people are going to be walking up to the barn......

more at Maya's Flickr found via another fantastic Hannah at Seeds and Stitches

Projects

I want to start doing obscene little crafty things. Like sewing lots of tulle flowers like the ones above to put on my bridesmaids heads and finding WEDDING SHOES and I feel like I should start making hundreds of miles of bunting or buying lots and lots of those little papel picado flaggy shenanigans and pouring hundreds and hundreds of little candles. But I need to wait a little while. I need to wait until we establish a font and or script before I worry about programs, or even our wedding website. I need to collect more jars before I go ahead and start pouring candles, I need to actually make sure the flower girls get their dresses before I make them flowery headbands, and I need to buy a dress before I stress out too much about shoes. Maybe I could make a veil... Or I could vacuum the bedroom floor and clean the bathroom. Hmmm.

Inspiration Board, Barn Part II

Can't credit because the sister sent it.

Go, Look

There is also this fantastic barn wedding. Barn weddings should be fun and light and silly. Like this one. APW and Meg continue to deliver the bestest weddingy loveliness around.

Inspiration Board

One of my sisters, who is 20, found a bunch of barn inspiration boards and emailed them to me. I don't know where they came from but she's got the idea. Only summerier and pinker and laughier. You get the picture.

Summer Dresses

When I lived in England my best friend and I were obsessed with watching Whose Wedding Is It Anyway? (because we were poor as anything, very lonely, cold as hell and enjoyed watching other people go crazy, we are not necessarily proud of this time in our lives). Our favourite episode was about Valerie Vazquez. She was the cutest thing that ever happened, perfectly dressed, had great hair and an awesome laugh and totally made us die with jealousy a bit. She had awesome dresses for every vendor meeting, wore four inch heals and never stopped smiling. I want to be Valerie Vazquez in my wedding planning shenanigans. I want to wear this dress to meet with a florist (or since I might be driving to Potomac to buy in bulk maybe I'll wear this dress to do that) or to go and talk to the baker. Or maybe to the rehearsal. Yay for summer weddings that allow me to be a slightly paler, chubbier, not quite so gracious and smiling Valerie.

Diamondy Shiny Pretty Things

Kate Szabone has shipped my engagement ring. It looks like this. Dearest Darling David had the good sense to let me pick it out so we and Madame Szabone together talked about what we wanted and this luminousity is what we got. I'm excited. I want it to arrive and live on my finger and make it pretty.

Lovely Lovely Ink

Besty Dunlap has pretty pretty pretty calligraphy. Hannah loves the calligraphy. I want lovely envelopes, lovely place cards, lovely lovely lovely Reserved signs for the first few pews for our families. Maybe Hannah should learn to write prettily or get a friend with pretty writing to help (you know who you are)

Going to the Chapel

It's been a not so awesome week. Jobs were lost. Cars broke down (cars plural, jobs lost was just one) and headaches won't go away. But we got the wedding date locked in. We got the church booked. It's teeny and tiny and sweet and in the country and the drive from the little country church to the barn will be pretty and leisurely and hilly and woodsy. Unfortunately I take terrible pictures so these aren't the kindest of the church but you get the idea: small,

country, white, and built in 1862. Yummy happy joyness.

Wine

We like cheap wine. We buy it by the case. We like it better than wines that taste twice as much. We are, as I have said before, very young. Since we are doing the reception in my parents old barn we can buy our own wine by the case (and beer by the keg and scotch and vodka and gin etc by the handle, we know and love our alcohol) and I think these fantastic labels stuck on our cheap out bottles would be LOVELY.

Now the question is: to pick one for the red and one for the white or to just randomly throw a bunch on a bunch of different bottles. And what to write on them? "Hannah and David 7/17/10" is just not that cool. Any thoughts?

found via I-DiY

Excuse Me

Bridal Magazines suck. Not a little. A lot. Not a little. I know we are all always talking about how much they suck but seriously. They. SUCK. They aren't just bad self esteem machines (also: Dear J. Crew and your sample size eights, eff the eff off) but they are full of stupid things, and ugly bikinis that say 'Just Married' on the bum and articles about Fun and Flirty Fuchsia weddings (Not all weddings need to be formal and sophisticated! Embrace your flirty personality! Have a Lingerie Shower!! and SEQUINS on everything) and they seem to think that David should wear an effing white tux (also: Tuxes make me sick a little bit) and I think anyone would be SHOCKED by the tulle. Seriously. (please note that I like ruffles a lot, I just bought a ruffly shenanigan of a skirt for which I assume I will be judged harshly, but swags of tulle in churches make me ill). No wonder we are all constantly referencing Martha, because she is the only one who doesn't tell us to drape tulle or dress our biddies in SHINY SHINY SHINY hot pink with rhinestones.

Here is my real conundrum: I'm kind of quirky. I bought a tutu, I'm having my reception in a barn, and I really want my westie in some of my wedding pictures (she's crazy cute) but I really also want to have invitations Amy Vanderbilt would fully support and I want to say EXACTLY the Roman Catholic nuptial vows said by my great grandparents in NY in 1890. I want flowers and something blue and I would really like to wear my grandma's veil. The Blogs are really not sufficient. ESB is awesome but she's not the whole picture I'm looking for. So please traditional wedding media, stop sucking. Or suck a little less? Martha Stewart weddings doesn't come out often enough.

Shiny For the Toes

Slightly worse than the J Crew yellow pretties and also completely inappropriate for my barn wedding reception are these shiny shiny shiny Christian Louboutin Glitter Slingback Platform Pumps for $745. But they are terribly shiny, and terribly pretty. And David is tall (6'5" holla back) and I am only sort of middling tall (5'9.5") so I kind of want to be slightly closer to his eye level so perhaps spending a jillion dollars so I can be taller is sensible? If I just want to be taller there are always these:

I had a pair of these Capparos in black my senior year of college. They are fuchsia and high and $73. Maybs.

OR these, from Kurt Greiger for £19.99. Pink pretty shenanigans are always so appealing.

On My Feet

So how about sunshine yellow shoes that don't cost $235? I'm feeling cheap and stingy and these stupendous yellow shoes don't really sync with cheap and stingy.

On My Head

I want a veil. Not a big one, a tiny little banging awesome one. Like Katherine (shut up I love her) Heigl's. Maybe with a big flower. Or a thistle. Or some feathers, like the above on etsy.

Found any pretty ones?

Little Girls

This plus

This plus

a pair of these plus

one of these a piece equals the cutest flower girls ever

Dear Mr. Boddington

I love David a lot but will you marry me? K. Thanks.

Love and kisses,

Hannah

xoxoxox

Mr Boddington's Bodacious Stationary (not really the name but WHATEVA)

The Children

I feel like every time read Dear Abbey there is some shenanigan about "my sister won't speak to me because I won't let her brats come to my wedding" or "my brother is marrying some b*tch who won't let me bring my precious bundles of joy to her wedding". Children and weddings are an issue. To have them? Not to have them? Whose to have? What to feed them?

We are having a small wedding (seriously. small) and including everyone's children would be an increase of 31% (my godmother's children alone would increase the guest list by 10%). We are having David's siblings' children come to the wedding reception because they are going to be IN the wedding (and those five children are going to eat grown up food and try very hard not to go into any of the off-limits because of danger areas of the barn) but we've been trying to think of something to do with the children of out of town guests. Babysitter at a hotel? There is now a thought that perhaps we'll hire a couple of babysitters to occupy with pizza, games and pool at a nearby condo (another idea for out of town guests: condo for the young and broke who don't mind sleeping on pullouts, 13 to a condo).

Are you having/did you have children at your wedding? The thought of my tiny, teeny wedding disappearing is just a little too upsetting to bear.

Photo via Lillian and Leonard, it makes me think that little people at a wedding would be nice. The thought of those little hands in broken glass in the off-limits areas of the barn makes me think it would not be so nice.

Look, Go

Maybe it is just because it's very cold, or maybe it's that the Westie has a chattering jaw and the cat has a cough and weddings are stressful and expensive and we are experiencing guest-list inflation but this January seems heavier than most. This is a good wedding for January. Go. Look.

Bridesmaids Option #1 of 93,462,534

Other than the cost, bridesmaids dresses have been my least favourite part of wedding planning. Here is a thought. Just one. One of many many many thoughts. If you are a bridesmaid and you don't have anything nice to say.... SHUSH.

via J. Crew, because realistically, I know it's lame but they have pretty dresses and pretty colours and options under $200

Guestbook

Guest books suck. This is well regarded as fact. Which is why there are typewriter guestbooks, and index card guestbooks and why Martha (why do I LOVE YOU SO EFFING MUCH WOMAN?!) has an entire photo gallery of crazy-ass suggestions.

Liz at Chic on the Cheap is a genius and made a photo book of pictures of family weddings going back to the early 1900s that people could thumb through and look and and sign. Apparently it hangs out around their house and people look at it when they come over. Holler. I especially like this idea since all four of my grandparents are "no-longer-with-us" and it I like the idea of placing our wedding, our marriage within the greater context of our families. I am the oldest daughter of an oldest daughter of an oldest daughter of an oldest daughter. My mother married a foreigner and my grandmother did too. Let's acknowledge and rock these things in a guestbook. Please.

Deanna, the very very cool illustrator who documented her wedding shenanigans here, and her husband put together a book of photos, movie tickets, receipts, notes and letters and used that as a guestbook. Much much cooler than a typewriter (note: typewriter is super cool, just don't understand what I'm going to DO with all that typewritten paper. What to DO with it is the issue, ditto index cards and vintage postcards).

So dear David: Can I please have some wedding pictures from your family past? Since I have a lot of mine floating around.

Pictures: Top is Mum, June, the third generation to wear that dress, bottom is my great-grandmother, also called June, the first to wear that dress.

And Maybe

And maybe these, hundreds of them, and several of these. All hung at different levels from the barn rafters. I think that might make the idea of a barn wedding slightly more fan-effing-tastic. As would real glasses and spoons.

I promise I will start remembering where pictures came from. Martha pouffs are clearly from Martha

Barn Wedding

I am currently living in my parents summer house. There is a pool (frozen at the moment) and a barn, empty of cows. the top of this barn is big and lofted and full of hay. If I removed the hay and hung lanterns? I am very sick of caterers and site fees and all the big-picture-type-shenanigans. Which makes me think that a barn, in summer, with a view of the mountain and hundreds of candles and snapdragons in old bottles and maybe some caramelized onion and goat cheese tarts, maybe that would be a good idea for a wedding reception. What do you think?

Grandma, Grandpa, Fifth Avenue Hotel

Grandma and Grandpa are obvious, behind them Grandma's only cousin, her godfather and, looking like he was having a grand old time with white hair and specs, her father (my great grandfather).

Grandma and her father. Grandma was only 5'4" and I was taller than her at nine years old so her dad must have been an absolute tich.

Grandma's dad (Harry Sr) gesturing like a mad man and Grandpa's mother (Marion) laughing at the mess her son had gotten himself into. Please look at Grandma's face in the corner, looking like the cat who caught the canary (as she would say)

My grandmother, Mary Virginia, married my grandfather, Edmund, in 1947. They got married at Saint Patricks and then had their reception at the Fifth Avenue Hotel. Grandma was a pretty elegant lady and Grandpa was a pretty cool guy. I love everyone's faces in these pictures, especially hers. Can my wedding look like this please? Or just feel like this? And can my father make faces like his grandfather did? Maybe my mother could wear as crazy a hat as Edmund's mother did? Yes, please.

Please excuse the very very poor quality of the photos, my scanner isn't very ancient photo-compatible so photos of photos will have to do.

Biddies of the Bride

Today I may have said "It's my wedding, forchristssake!!" and stamped my foot. About bridesbiddies' dresses. Lets find these for Hannah's bridesbiddies please. THANKS.

Pretty Bridesmaids via Perfect Bound

I Doux

I am getting married. I like wedding blogs so I'm writing one. You might like to read it. Just maybe.