Our Save the Dates

Today I wanted to share the vision behind our save the dates and some photos! The photo above is what our cards (front and back) and envelopes ended up looking like. The black and white heart tape wasn't part of it--I just had to cover up some personal information for the photo :) Also, if you tilt your head and read the address, it's a made-up one just for fun! But it gives you an idea of how we addressed everything.

I love paper, and writing letters to friends and family is one of my main hobbies. So when it came to planning out our save the dates and invitation suites, I knew I wanted them to be really special and meaningful. There are SO many things you can do with save the dates these days--you can make it into a magnet, do online save the dates, and a couple of people even suggested that they aren't necessary (with love, I disagree). I knew for mine I wanted to stick with a regular paper invitation style, but I thought that save the dates were the perfect time to go a little more bold and fun than I wanted for our actual invitations (which will be a mostly black-and-white, classic style). 

I designed our save the dates through Artifact Uprising, which is a company I've loved for years and ordered a lot of printed photos and photobooks through. I thought it would be fun to use a photo of us on the save the dates especially since I knew I wouldn't want to include one on our invitations. Our good friend Molly sweetly met us for brunch and then took some photos of us hanging out in Elysian Park for us to use on our save the dates. Here were some of the outtakes that we didn't end up using (but also loved):

Once we settled on which photo to use, I thought the rest would be easy . . . until we had a mishap that was totally my fault! Grace posted about this in her Instagram stories a few months ago, but I forgot to put the date of our wedding on our save the dates. Literally the point of sending save the dates is to let people know the date of your wedding in advance. And I just completely forgot to put it on there! I ended up hand writing in the date at the top of each card, as you can see in the photo at the top. I had a few people tell me they thought it was intentional and added a sweet personalized touch. I'm not sure if I believe them, but I'll try to choose to think that :) Ultimately, it was a good learning lesson that something like a save the date mishap is not even close to being the end of the world in terms of wedding planning.

When it comes to mail, stationary, and invitations, I believe that the packaging is almost as important as what's inside! Seeing a beautifully addressed envelope with interesting stamps in my mailbox always makes my day, so I wanted to provide that for our guests when they received our save the dates and give them a glimpse of our wedding style. I used a metallic gold pen to address our invitations and picked a suite of three stamps that I used on each one. Here's a tip if you love the look of multiple stamps, but the weight of your invitation only needs 1 forever stamp: the US Postal Service website has tons of low-denomination stamps you can order online! I used stamps that were only worth a few cents in addition to forever stamps, really just for decoration and to say a little bit about ourselves.

I used the National Park stamps as our main stamps, as a nod to our love for camping and trips to national parks with our dogs. Then I added low-value seashell stamps, reflecting the fact that we're getting married in Malibu, and 1-cent apple stamps, mostly because they were cute and only 1 cent each. But also, fun fact, one of the first conversations I had with Grace's mom was about our favorite varieties of apples. So I like to think it's a wink to that, too!

We also ordered a few sheets of international stamps. It's only $1.50 to send a letter anywhere in the world! So cool. For our international guests, we just used those. Some of our invitations actually made it to London before they made it to some of our stateside guests.

Thanks for reading! I hope to share more wedding updates and details soon!

Wedding Planning Update #2

I just realized how long it's been since I wrote an update on planning our wedding! We are now just over 4 months out, and SO much has happened since I wrote my last post about planning.

I have been using a system where I wrote down EVERYTHING that has to happen by our wedding day, which was somewhat overwhelming but good, and then broke it down by month. Then when I make my monthly goals each month, I remind myself of the wedding action items that I designated to that month back when I first started planning. This has been so helpful to make me realize what needs to be prioritized each month. I also generally about once a week try to plan out one "detail" for our wedding. Examples of details include: gifts for my bridesmaids, my day-of-wedding gift to Grace, how to display seating charts, what drinks to serve at the bar, etc. Focusing on one per week is very manageable and fun!

Here's a rough list of everything we have accomplished since I last updated this blog about wedding planning:

• Made an appointment for an initial consultation for premarital counseling (required by our officiant)
• Booked our honeymoon flights and some accommodations (I am so excited to write a whole post about honeymoon planning!)
• Decided on some key details (some I'm keeping a surprise for our guests, so I won't describe in detail here)
• Booked our hotel accommodations for our wedding weekend
• Decided where to get our wedding cake (still need to do tasting and decide on final selection)
• Sent out save the dates
• Designed our wedding invitations and accompanying paper suite
• Booked our florist
• Booked our caterer (SO excited for our wedding food)
• Negotiated to get group rates for hotels and provided info to our guests
• Created our wedding website (I just used the same website builder as I used for my blog, so they look similar and it was super easy)
• Registered for gifts
• Booked our wedding reception band and ceremony musicians
• Booked my East Coast AND West Coast bachelorette weekends (yay for double the bachelorette parties, haha!)
• Started preliminary discussions with our officiant about how we want to structure our ceremony

Whew! I feel kind of tired just looking at this list. It's definitely a lot of work, but I honestly love it so much. Planning my wedding has been one of my biggest dreams my whole life, and to be in the thick of it is pretty surreal. 

In case anyone is curious or in a similar season of life, here are some things I've learned over the past few months:

Catering is hands down the biggest expense. I'm sure there are some people for whom that's not the case, but for the most part, this is far and away the most expensive part of our wedding. The cost was kind of shocking at first, but once you think about the fact that you're feeding 200 people a nice meal, it's not as surprising. I have heard that the food is also one place you really shouldn't skimp, because it's something people will remember about your wedding. We ended up contacting 3 different caterers and while they were all similar in costs, what made us pick the caterer we did was the creativity they displayed. With roughly the same amount of money as the other caterers, they wrote a specially customized proposal for us with fun infused waters and juices for when our guests arrive on a hot day, s'mores toasted to order for the evening, and a ridiculously delicious tasting with fun and interesting items, not your standard protein, vegetable, and dinner roll situation. I don't want to give away our whole menu because I love the idea of surprising our guests with fun details, but I will do a whole post on food after our wedding is over!

One other note on catering: we found that a good way to save money is to have the dinner be buffet style rather than plated. While plated is more elegant, our wedding is going to be an al fresco summertime celebration, so a buffet seemed to fit (whereas an elegant ballroom wedding might feel weird with a buffet). At least for the caterers we spoke with, having a buffet rather than plated saved literally THOUSANDS of dollars. 

Send lots of pictures for inspiration when talking with vendors. We found our florist through our caterer, as they often work together. When we started talking with her, we sent tons of pictures of what we had in mind (let's be real--what I had in mind. Believe it or not, Grace does not have a scrapbook of dream floral designs hidden under her bed, haha!). I think this helped so much because from the minute we got a first draft of a proposal from our florist, it was exactly on point with what we wanted. 

This one is a screenshot from our florist's own Instagram--I sent it to her to show what I already liked from her work and would love for her to recreate for us.

Just like how if you have a particular hairstyle in mind, it's a good idea to bring your hair dresser photos to show what you want, you should show your vendors tons of photos of your style and vision. A talented vendor will be able to incorporate this with their own style, not just do straight copies of what you send them. This is also why it's a good idea to screenshot some favorites from the vendor's Instagram, etc., to show what in particular draws you to THEIR work and what kinds of things you would like to see at your own wedding.

Your fiancee will probably surprise you with what they care about. Don't get me wrong, Grace reminds me every day that she is very excited to finally be married. But out of the two of us, I'm the one making day-to-day wedding decisions and the one who has strong feelings about flowers and details like that. But every now and then, Grace surprises me with something she randomly cares about! For example, I was looking at mock-ups of invitations and liked both of the below (spoiler: neither of these are our invitations, as I'll explain):

Sorry for the grainy quality; these are just pics I took of my computer screen. Anyway, Grace vetoed both of these because she was not a fan of the calligraphy/brush lettering. We ended up going with a very classic invitation instead that I am in LOVE with, and ultimately I'm happy Grace spoke her mind. But that said, it was just surprising and funny that she had a strong opinion about this. If you're in the boat of the person who is taking the lead on planning, I think it's helpful to defer to your fiancee when they pipe up with opinions, especially if it's rare that they have a strong one. 

Honeymoon planning is the perfect antidote to any stress over wedding planning. I'm happy to say that I have not been very stressed throughout the wedding planning process. But sometimes it can get a tad overwhelming or my eyes just get tired of looking at countless different options for things. I have found that planning our honeymoon is the perfect solution for that stress! Even though the two are highly linked, planning our honeymoon is a totally different thing for me mentally. There's also a lot less to plan (which is almost ironic, because we'll be on our honeymoon for two weeks whereas our wedding is just one day. Ha!). Now that I have our flights booked, I'm so excited to book accommodations and make a handful of reservations for things little by little like I did for our Alaska trip. 

Don't assume that people (especially your wedding party) don't want to help out and celebrate with you. Since I have not had many close friends get married yet, sometimes I feel like I'm kind of navigating in the dark in terms of what's appropriate to ask of guests, wedding party, etc. I am super self-conscious about expecting people to spend money participating in our wedding. The thought of asking our bridesmaids to buy expensive dresses makes me cringe, and I wanted to do an East and a West Coast bachelorette so that people wouldn't have to travel too far depending on which coast they live on. All of that being said, I think it's good to remember that these are your best friends and they WANT to be part of your wedding day! I was so self conscious about one of my besties flying down for my bachelorette and also flying for our wedding that she snapped me back to reality and reminded me: "why wouldn't I come to your bachelorette??" So that's been a good learning lesson. I still am erring on the side of trying to be conscientious about other people's schedules and budgets, but I think it is possible to err TOO far on that side.

Case in point of super thoughtful, and willing to help, bridesmaids: one of the gals in our bridal party (on Grace's side) lives in Canada and wanted to order her dress from a company that does easy shipping there, and so she mailed me fabric swatches so I could see them in person before she ordered! We have the best bridesmaids :) And bridesmen. Or brides butlers as I call them.

Registering for gifts is fun but honestly VERY tiring! Not to sound ungrateful in any way--people's generosity with our wedding gifts blows my mind and we've already received a bunch--but just something to factor in if you're going to make a registry! We registered first at Crate & Barrel and we had to take a coffee break in between and then a few times of plopping down on couches in the store and resting. I laughed when after 2 hours, I looked at our list and we'd only registered for 40 items. (Not that 40 gifts isn't a huge luxury to receive, but I want people to have a bunch of options and price points when they look at our registry, so 40 is a bit low for 200 guests!!). We ended up doing our other two registries--at Bed Bath & Beyond and Anthropologie--online. And by we I mean me. It's fun to have the scanner and walk through the store and check everything out, but it's truly exhausting so that's why we opted to build them online for the second two.

Speaking of gifts, one of my oldest and best friends sent this as a surprise engagement gift recently--I can't even believe how thoughtful and special!

That's about all I can think of right now with wedding planning! We are very excited to go back to our venue in a couple of weeks with my mom when she visits. I have a feeling April, May, June, and July are going to FLY by. And then it's time to get married!

Will You Be My Bridesmaid?

I'm back with another wedding-related post! Now that we are in the full swing of planning for our wedding, I've realized how hard it is to blog about it because I want things to be fresh and fun and surprising for our guests! For example, we had our catering tasting a couple of weeks ago, and I took photos of everything so I could blog about it . . . but then realized I want to make sure our food is a surprise :) And of course I took a ton of photos of wedding dress shopping, but that has to stay a surprise too! So, I think I'll be doing a ton of planning recaps in late summer/early fall once we're married and back from our honeymoon!

But one thing I realized I could already blog about is how I asked my sweet bridesmaids to stand beside me on my wedding day. I sent out care packages to everyone in October, so they've all long ago received them and happily accepted my "proposal."  I wanted to write this post as a quick inspiration for anyone looking for a relatively simple way to do something sweet for your besties who are going to be in your wedding! This one is also a good option if your friends don't live in your city.

Let me back up and say that Grace and I are having a BIG wedding party. We each have 10 people on our side. I'm sure some people will roll their eyes and say that's excessive, but here's the thing: each of these people are INCREDIBLY important to us, and we can't imagine not having them in our wedding. Plus, I've wanted to incorporate Southern traditions into our wedding where possible, and having a large group of bridesmaids is super Southern. I've regularly seen weddings in the South with 15 or more maids, so don't hate me, haha!

Grace and I handled inviting our 10 to stand beside us separately. A lot of Grace's people live overseas, so she went with a simple heartfelt handwritten note, which I thought was so classic and sweet. It also would have been too expensive to mail care packages to different countries like I did with my people (who all live in the US).

When thinking about how to ask the people on my side, I knew I wanted to send something fun in the mail. I love the idea of having a lunch or cocktail party and inviting your bridesmaids to ask them all together as a surprise (I love this styled shoot inspiration on that idea), but the problem is that my bridesmaids live in 6 different states. My wedding will pretty much be the only time they'll all be in the same place, so having a party with all of them was out. 

I thought about what the people in my bridal party would find special, and I decided to curate little care packages for each of them. I went to stores like Anthropologie, Paper Source, and Dylan's Candy Bar to find cute trinkets and candies that I thought would make them smile. I also ordered customized scratch-off cards with each girl's name from this Etsy shop (shown in the photo above). The gold hearts on the cards scratched off with a penny to reveal the words "Will You Be My Bridesmaid?" or in my sister's case, "Will You Be My Maid of Honor?" I thought the scratch-off element was so fun and added a bit of surprise even though I couldn't surprise people in person.

Speaking of the cards, if you notice that there are only 9, the reason is because my brother is my bride's butler! When we were little, I always knew Blair would be in my wedding, and my sister came up with the name "bride's butler" as the boy version of bridesmaid. (Get it, maids and butlers?) Of course, boys can be bridesmaids, too, but I've always thought that bride's butler is super cute and that's just what I'm calling him! I didn't do a personalized card for him, but I'm finding special ways to incorporate him into my day.

Anyway, I had so much fun shopping over a few days and finding cute things that each girl would love. Here's a picture of a few of them:

Once I had all the gifts, I picked a handful of items to put in each care package, and I slipped the personalized cards in too. In each card I wrote a letter talking about all that their friendship meant to me, and why I wanted them to stand beside me in my bridal party. I also included a penny in each envelope so they could scratch off the message and not have to hunt for pocket change!

I bought some boxes and bubble wrap and assembled everything myself. Then Grace sweetly helped me carry it all into the post office to send around the country. I was honestly expecting to spend easily $200 on shipping all of this, but I was very pleasantly surprised that the total for all the care packages--going to Oregon, DC, New York, North and South Carolina, etc.--was only $62. I used the most basic option at USPS and they all arrived within about a week.  I also did give a couple of the care packages in person to my in-town friends.

Next came the best part: waiting patiently for the boxes to arrive so I could get excited texts and phone calls from everyone! That was my favorite part of the whole process. I am happy to say that it's been so fun planning with everyone. I have the best friends in the world, and they've all been amazing with picking out bridesmaid's dresses and just generally being SO supportive.

One last note about choosing who to ask to be in my bridal party: that was really tough. Grace and I both struggled to narrow down our groups (we could have easily gone to 15+ each . . .) but ultimately we thought about various phases in our lives and chose significant people from those. For me, I asked: my 2 siblings, my 2 oldest best friends from growing up (who I've known even longer than my own sister), 2 best friends that I lived with in college and 2 other best friends from college (both of whom played a role in me and Grace starting to date), and 2 LA-based friends from Elon as well. I decided to keep the group to people I had met through Elon or earlier. So even though I have amazing friends from law school, working, and other aspects of my life, I kept it to those groups of people in order to keep the size reasonably manageable. I know some people just do their sister and one best friend, and that's awesome too! And many people choose not to have a wedding party, which is another option. One thing I've learned from wedding planning is just to scrap any traditions that you don't particularly care for. For me, though, asking my best friends to be part of my wedding was one of the things I was most looking forward to about being engaged. If you're in the same boat, I hope this post provides some inspiration for how you can ask them in a special way! More to come soon on wedding stuff.

Initial Thoughts on Planning a Wedding

When I started this blog, I did not picture it involving wedding planning updates (also, I wasn't engaged at the time!). That said, I’ve had a few people ask me whether I’m going write them . . . So I’ve decided to! I hope you enjoy reading this series and that it is encouraging to anyone planning their wedding or dreaming about wedding planning in general. I am figuring out things as I go, so I would absolutely love to hear tips and ideas if you’ve been through this before!

The collage at the top of this post is an inspiration board I made to guide our vision for our wedding. I really recommend making one if you’re in this season. For one, it’s just a fun “task” as far as wedding stuff goes, and also, it’s really helpful to be able to send to potential vendors to give them a quick glimpse of the aesthetic we’re imagining for our day.

Also, I should note that just for the sake of keeping some things private, I’m going to share certain details until after our wedding. Specifically, I have decided not to put our exact wedding date and venue on the internet for just anyone to find, even though I love sharing in this space. So if I’m vague about some details, that’s why! But there’s a lot about the process that I can still share without giving too much away.

In the almost three months since getting engaged, we have:

• Set our wedding date and booked a venue
• Asked our wedding party (20-strong!) to stand beside us
• Booked our amazing photographer
• Booked our wedding coordinator
• Found my wedding dress (that part was just me, since Grace won’t see it until I walk down the aisle. Her attire is still TBD).
• Gathered a lot of inspiration and ideas, started making our guest list, and made a lot of decisions that we now just need to execute (i.e., music, food, florals—we haven’t booked those vendors yet, but we have a strong sense of what we want)

I posted on IG this pic I snapped at the bridal boutique the day I found my wedding dress--don't worry, none of these are "it"!

Of course, I couldn't shop for my own dress before looking through my parents' album for inspiration. Doesn't my mom look so classic?!

When I write out all that we’ve accomplished in terms of wedding planning, I feel pretty proud of us! It can feel like a never-ending sea of tasks, but I can honestly say it’s all awesome and so fun and exciting. In a season where a lot is changing and we’re both SUPER busy with work, wedding planning is such a great escape from “real life,” and not at all a burden right now. As the time gets closer I might be eating those words, but Grace is the most easygoing person to plan a wedding with. I try to take my cues from her :)

So what’s next? Finalizing a guest list and sending out save the dates is at the top of the to-do list. We still have time, but that’s one thing I’m starting to feel anxious about getting done, especially since we have so many people traveling from overseas or across the country. And, booking the other major vendors (catering, florals, a band, and probably some rentals) will happen pretty soon I hope.

Another fave from my parents' album.

To round out this update, I’m going to answer a few of the questions I have gotten the most since starting to plan our wedding:

How long of a timeline do you have?

I am so ready to marry Grace! I’ve pretty much always known that I did not want to have a long engagement. It’s totally right for some people, but for me, I wanted to make it happen as soon as possible. That timeline turned out to be about 9 and a half months from when we got back from our Alaska trip (where we got engaged). I think it would be pretty stressful to do it in a shorter timeline—plus, a lot of the best vendors get booked far in advance! So even making it happen on about a 9-10 month timeline is a little tight, but I’m so glad we’re doing it this way.

How do you find the major vendors like venue and photographer?

This is the question people have asked the most so far. What I can say is thank goodness for the internet! I found our venue from searching wedding blogs (Style Me Pretty is one of the most useful and comprehensive in my opinion) and spending a lot of time pouring over photo galleries and reviews. I knew the general area where we wanted to get married, so I zeroed in on venues in the area, and then I reached out to about 5 or 6. We planned site visits at 2 to start with, but we ended up booking on the spot at the place we did our first site visit! And just cancelled the other one. It was perfect, and we didn’t need to see any others.

We also found our photographer online and booked her after a phone consultation. I think a photographer is probably the vendor we were pickiest about, especially because Grace is not a fan of the “traditional”/super posed wedding photos, and yet I didn’t want anything too artsy or that wouldn’t look classic in 50 years. I think we found the PERFECT happy medium and I am so excited to have her capture our day.

For our coordinator and all of the other vendors we plan on booking, we have gone through our venue and just asked who they recommend. It’s really helpful to ask your existing vendors who they love working with. I think that’s the best way! It also saves you a ton of time of google searching and hoping you’re making the right choice.

How are you staying organized?

I am using two physical wedding planners. I know, two?! But I have found it extremely helpful. Right after we got engaged, I bought the Southern Weddings Planner online because I love their magazine, and the planner itself is just beautiful (I know I’ll keep it as an heirloom, and I love the idea of my children leafing through all the magazine clippings I cut out and dreams I wrote down). And, my friend Irina sweetly gifted me The Knot Real Weddings Planner. I actually LOVE using both! They are written by different magazine publications, and they both have really good ideas. I feel like I’m getting a bigger cross-section of expertise by using both of them. I also now buy a wedding magazine pretty much every time I’m in an airport or browsing at Target! Though some of them feature kind of ridiculously-over-the-top weddings, I still like getting ideas from them.

What has been the hardest part?

Making our guest list. It’s still not complete, and it’s really difficult. I’ve heard pretty much everyone who’s planned a wedding say that’s the hardest part.

What are you most looking forward to?

I think both Grace and I are really excited for catering and cake tastings! That seems like it would be the best part of wedding planning. I am also super excited for the moment of seeing our invitations all addressed and stamped and putting them in the mail. I love paper and stationary, so that’s very special for me.

Have you planned your honeymoon?

I thought so . . . and now I'm not sure. Right after we got engaged, I suggested to Grace that we go to [destination] for our honeymoon (I'm keeping this a surprise for now, just because I look forward to writing LENGTHY posts dedicated solely to our honeymoon planning!). Grace was totally on board and I told our family and friends that we would be going to [destination], leaving a couple of days after our wedding. But right as I started to look into finding the best places and making reservations and buying plane tickets, I weirdly had a change of heart . . . and now I'm considering something totally different. Grace is the sweetest person on earth and will go along with whatever my heart desires. I wish I could take two honeymoons, because I'm having the hardest time choosing! I know this is all vague, but I'll share more soon. Maybe I'll even do a poll to try to get some advice. It's a good problem to have, but it's tricky!

Thanks for reading. I'll share more soon!