FINALLY...Our Save the Dates!

Right after we got engaged last September, I began thinking about what I wanted our Save the Dates to look like. I looked everywhere and finally decided that I wanted something simple and beautiful with a pretty picture and sweet words! I have been reading wedding blogs for way too long, and happened upon a graphic designer named Emily McCarthy who is absolutely amazing. After seeing only one invitation by her, I just knew I had to have her make my Save the Dates! She is the Graphic Designer for Swoozies (one of my very favorite stores) and is so incredibly creative! Here are a few invitations she has designed that I am in love with!









These are only a handful of examples of the wonderful work that Emily can do. Check our her website to see all of her work! I want to host a lot of parties just so I can get her to design more invitations for me! Please use her if you need any invitations or announcements in the future!

Now on to our Save the Dates! I sent Emily the picture that we wanted to use from our Engagement Session with Allison, told her what our colors were, and told her the wording; and she came up with the most perfect thing! The front is very simple and beautiful and the back is just so sweet. It makes me cry every time I read it! I hope everyone loves them as much as I do!

Front:


Back:


The text on the Save the Dates is chocolate brown, so I decided to get chocolate brown envelopes. I spend months teaching myself the Copperplate style of calligraphy (something I've always wanted to do) and set out on the HUGE undertaking of addressing the 150 envelopes. I had no idea how long it would take when I started; but boy am I glad they are all done! It's a good thing I was waiting until September to send them out because it pretty much took me MONTHS to finish them! They turned out exactly how I wanted them to! Here is a blurry cell phone picture of one of the reject envelopes:



I have never been more glad to finish a project before! I popped those suckers in the mail today, waved goodbye, and said "peace out!"

Colors!

I found a realy fun website called ColorCombos and decided to make a wedding color combo of my very own! It's hard to see everything together in my head and even harder to try and explain to people; so here it is!



We will be using champagne/almond and ivory as the bases of almost everything, will use chartreuse in some of the linens and other decorative things, and will have a tiny bit of my favorite color pink in some flowers. Can't wait to see how it all pans out on the big day!

Trolley!

Our reception venue, The Duncan Estate, won't be able to hold all of our guests' cars and since our bridal party is so large, we decided to rent a trolley. I love the old nostalgia feel of a trolley and think it is a lot more fun than a limo or a bus! We are using Main Street Trolley in Spartanburg and I am so excited about it!



Most of our guests will be staying at the Marriott in downtown Spartanburg, so the trolley will be running back and forth from there to the Duncan Estate throughout the night and will also transport the wedding party to and from the reception. I am hoping we can take a lot of fun pictures with us and the trolley!

Where did Summer go???

Wow! Is summer really almost over?!? It sure did fly by! I have been working way too much but have gotten a lot of wedding stuff done! I can't believe it is finally less than a year away; a little over 9 months to go! :)

One of the major decisions we made this summer was the bridesmaid dress! The bridesmaid dress from before just wasn't cutting it, so we decided to do something totally different! I have had my eye on the LulaKate boutique on King Street in Charleston for a while now. I made a visit there over the July 4th week with my mom and two bridesmaids, Elizabeth and King. It was such a wonderful experience; they treated us like queens! The store is absolutely precious and we had so much fun looking through all of the dresses. The girls tried on what seemed like a million dresses, but none of us could decide which one we liked the best.

I have seen a few weddings that have used different bridesmaids dresses in the same color and thought that was so neat. I know all brides say this, but I really want my girls to be able to wear their dresses again after the wedding. They are all going to choose their own knee length style of dress in the color of Almond (which is a gold/champagne color.) They all have different body shapes and I know they will feel much more beautiful if they can pick a dress themselves; I know I would! Elizabeth and King both picked very different dresses and they look absolutely incredible on them. I can't wait to see what the other girls pick!

If you have never been to LulaKate in Charleston; you MUST! The LulaKate line is also featured in all Bella Bridesmaid boutiques all over the country. Here are a few pictures showing real LulaKate weddings from their website. Enjoy!

I'M IN LOVE...

...with this video!

WARNING: You WILL be drooling after watching this!

Super 8 Film, Charleston, super cute song...what more could you ask for???

I have always been in love with A Bryan Photo but this just takes the cake!

ENJOY!

Megan & Mihir Sunday Wedding 8mm from A Bryan Photo on Vimeo.

MUST. HAVE. THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!

My new obsession: Milk Glass!

After my last post about centerpieces, I have become totally obsessed with collecting milk glass vases, glasses, and pitchers. I have been so lucky and have found some great pieces for really cheap! I'm so excited that not only will they be beautiful and unique at the reception; I'll get to keep them and enjoy them for years to come. I think I have around 50 pieces at this point, so I think it may be time to stop! (My mom DARED me to buy any more! haha!)eBay is where I found most of everything. The prices I found were amazing! I got a set of 8 milk glass goblets for $12 and a beautiful small milk glass pitcher for $.99!

We decided to do a little trial run in our kitchen just to see what some of the vases looked like together. It turned out exactly like I wanted it to! We used pink roses from the garden but will be using white and green flowers at the reception. I love the look of the varying heights of vases and the warm glow of the tealights surrounding them. Also, they will be sitting on either champagne or pear green table cloths, so the white vases will really pop! We are doing all of the reception decor flowers ourselves, so it's good to know this was so easy!

Here are a few pictures:







I was just playing around one day thinking of how I was going to display my collection after the wedding, and found so many great inspiration pictures. I can't wait for us to have our own place and hopefully I'll be able to do something like these:






Today is June 1, which means the wedding is just about a year away! YAY! :)

Without You

I absolutely LOVE Brooke Fraser; her voice is amazing and her songs are so wonderful. I found this song yesterday and cannot stop listening to it. It is so incredibly sweet! It would be such a great first dance song!

"Without You"

The sky opens up over me and you

And you don't seem to mind that we're soaked through

You kiss me in the rain, I forget what I'm moaning about

And I know I wouldn't be the same without you

[Chorus]

I wouldn't be the same without you

I wouldn't be the same without you

I laugh at my own jokes and what I deem to be clever wit

And you don't seem to mind that I'm so stupid

You kiss me once again, I forget what I'm babbling about

And I know I wouldn't be the same without you

[Chorus]

I couldn't replicate your touch or love anyone again this much

But I wouldn't be the same without you

I wouldn't be the same

I wouldn't be the same

I wouldn't be the same without you

Without you

Without you

Without you

Centerpieces!

In keeping with our "Southern Soiree" theme, we've decided to use a mixture of milkglass vases, mason jars, and mint julep cups for the flower centerpieces at the reception. All three have so much southern charm and will be the perfect eclectic centerpiece! We will be using all white flowers to to tie them all together.

I've been in love with milkglass for as long as I can remember. I have always wanted to collect it and decided this would be a good way to start! My Mema (grandmother) found two bud vases at a flea market nearby, and that made me think that I should look at The Salvation Army for some more. I sure did get lucky! I found six beautiful milkglass bud vases and nine funky glass vases for $24! I would love to find some larger milkglass vases but I will definitely be going back to the flea market and The Salvation Army to keep looking!

I haven't started collecting mason jars or the mint julep cups yet, but I'm hoping it will be as easy as finding the milkglass! I'm sure I can scrounge up a few mason jars from my mom and Mema (I'm pretty sure they are in every southern household) but I have no idea where to get mint julep cups! I sure would love to have real sterling silver ones with our new monogram but seeing as how they are hundreds of dollars apiece, I'll stick to the cheap ones for now! Time to do some research!

I also found another really good idea online about the bridesmaids bouquets. I hated for the bouquets to just be tossed to the side during the reception, and tried to figure out a way for them to be showcased. I found out that many brides have vases with water set up at the reception waiting for the bouquets when the bridesmaids arrive at the reception. How smart! We will be doing this at nine different tables (having a million bridesmaids is paying off! ha!) and I'm so excited they bouquets won't be wasted! Here are some examples:

More to come on what those bouquets will look like! :)

Reception Venue

I fell in love with The Duncan Estate the first time I saw it and knew it was the perfect place for our reception. It is an absolutely breathtaking old white Antebellum style home that is exactly what I envisioned for my southern dream wedding. I do love ballroom weddings, but I have always wanted my reception at someplace kind of different and unique. Most of the festivities will take place in the backyard under a permanent tent and on the lawn, and the food and cake will be inside (away from the South Carolina heat!) I'm really looking forward to figuring out all of the decor and personalizing everything for our special day!

We have been looking at the Estate for a while now and I am so excited that it is officially ours for June 5, 2010! It makes me feel so much better now that we have it booked. We're still working on the ceremony location and hope to have that figured out in the next couple of weeks!

Our Colors

I have known that I wanted the color green in my wedding for as long as I can remember. I knew I wanted colors that would be classic, timeless, and elegant; and I hope that is what we ended up with! I found the most beautiful champagne colored bridesmaid dresses and that solidified my choice in colors! We will be using this dress from Mori Lee's Ava Collection. It is the exact champagne color that I wanted and hopefully the girls will be able to wear it again!


So, we decided on using green (pear green, to be exact) and champagne as the main colors, and we will also have white and ivory throughout also. Here are a few of my color inspiration pictures!

I have been collecting these pictures for years (mostly from theknot.com) so let me know if I use one of yours!

We have also found the most beautiful invitations ever and decided that we had to have them! I have been searching all over for many months to find invitations that I aboslutely loved but also were in our price range. I knew I wanted something classic but also something that was a bit different! I won't be able to show them until we send them out, but they include my 3 favorite things: a beautiful script font, champagne color, and a lace design like I mentioned in another post! I hope everyone loves them as much as we do! We will have them in our hands by the beginning of August so I can start doing the calligraphy for the envelopes.

Monograms!

Anyone who has met me knows how obsessed with monograms I am; so of course I had to get some monograms made for our wedding! We will be using them on things like napkins, signs, etc. and I am so excited! I found the sweetest girl on Etsy.com and picked 6 designs from her website, http://www.pinkdesignevents.com/, and she made them special for us! It's so much fun to get some of these little details taken care of! I can't decide which one is my favorite because I love all of them!

Obviously, we have decided on our colors and the date and that is very exciting! We chose June 5 because we had some family members and friends graduating from high school and wanted to make sure they were able to make it! Hopefully all graduations will be done by then! We are touring our possible reception location this weekend and if the parents like it, it is a GO! I can't wait to have both the church and reception site set in stone so we can relax.

More about the colors later!

OUR PICTURES!!

Our fabulous photographer posted some of our pictures today after just having them taken yesterday! We had such a wonderful time with her and her boyfriend, Kevin! She took us all around downtown Greenville and showed us some really neat spots! The pictures are more than we could have asked for and we are so excited to see the rest!! Thanks Allison!! Here are a few: