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Weddingbee Blog
When I last left you, I was armed with my doodles and heading off to visit some vendors who might be able to help me with our paper products. As fun as it might have been, I did not think that I had either the talent or tools (no Cricut or Gocco for this girl) or time to conquer them on my own!
I started with a trip to the new Paper Source store in Center City on my walk home (dangerous…dangerous, I tell you).
When I walked in, there was only 1 employee in the store. She was helping a customer with thank you notes, so I perused the invitation books and waited. As I was waiting, a number of other customers came in, so I maintained my spot but tried to catch the employee’s eye so that I would be helped next. About 10–15 minutes had passed at this point. No other employees had surfaced. and although it was getting a little frustrating, I was still hanging in there. There were a lot of pretty things to look at, after all.
Time to get to what was/is probably my favorite part of the wedding-planning process—paper products!!
I love paper. I have a ridiculous collection of stationery (including way too many thank you notes), and if you put me anywhere near a Paper Source or Papyrus, I’m guaranteed to walk away a little lighter in the wallet.
Last Christmas I think I sent over 100 holiday cards. (Imagine the bill at Papyrus.)
So clearly the wedding would be no exception. Before choosing anyone to help with the execution, we had to get our design ideas clear.
We decided to have our wedding brand of “modern elegance” define our paper choices.
…to register.
I’m sure it is not a shock to many of you ladies that I had to beg and plead Mr. Turkey to help put together our registry. The conversation* went something like this:
Miss Turkey: I’m thinking we should probably register.
Mr. Turkey: OK.
Miss Turkey: I’m thinking we should probably have between two and three registries.
Mr. Turkey: OK.
Miss Turkey: I’m thinking we could go next weekend.
Mr. Turkey: WE???
I’ll save you the rest of the conversation, but basically I had to “reward him” for each of the three places we registered.
To make the registration process as painless as possible, I did a couple things before involving Mr. Turkey in the details. In terms of registry locations, I netted out with Macy’s, Pottery Barn, and Williams-Sonoma based on what we needed and our personal tastes (e.g., Crate&Barrel was a bit too “minimalist” for us).
To say I was excited about our NYC shopping trip for dresses (of the wedding and bridesmaid variety) would be an understatement. The purpose of the day was to choose the bridesmaids’ dresses and narrow down my choices for a wedding dress.
Success would be walking away with a wedding-dress choice (that could be purchased closer to home) and ordering the bridesmaids’ dresses.
We started on super-early trains—converging upon NYC from Albany, Baltimore, Boston, DC, and Philadelphia. Our first stop was Kleinfeld for wedding dresses!
Why am I sharing this photo when the post is about bridesmaids’ dresses?
Well, I ended up (despite insisting I wanted to buy a dress in Philly) saying YES to a dress at Kleinfeld. I will not be sharing my dress until after the wedding, so you’ll have to wait until May.
Featured on Weddingbee
All-Inclusion Invitation Suites
“Make an elegant invitation statement without the fuss. Stylish invitation sets with matching envelopes, reception and response cards included.”
The bridemsaids had spoken. No preference on color, but they wanted to pick their own dress style. Fair enough. I was loving all the weddings with “mismatched” dresses.
All the women look comfortable in their chosen dresses—picking designs that best flatter their figures. Isn’t that what everyone wants? My bridesmaids range in height from 5′ to 5′7″ and cover almost every shape and size in between. My maid of honor is on the taller end of this spectrum and, as a tall girl myself, I didn’t want her to be worried about a wardrobe malfunction due to a super-short dress!
So now the challenge was to pick a color as well as find a designer who had multiple styles to choose from (in the same fabric).
So…we have a venue and we have a style…but how to execute?
WARNING: PHOTO-HEAVY POST AHEAD
As I mentioned, with our venue the issue was going to be controlling the vision. With the potential for there to be multiple vendors for the reception design and execution alone, we needed to think about how everything would remain cohesive and not turn into a garbled mess.
We spoke to the Kimmel Center and asked them if they could recommend any vendors who could “do it all.” In other words, were there companies that could help us with everything from flowers to chairs to forks and china? There were (hooray!), and so we decided to narrow it down to two that had done business with the venue and visit them one spring weekend.
I went armed with two things when visiting these vendors:
1. My wedding brand (modern elegance)
2. My binder of wedding inspiration
Oh…and 3. My mom and Mr. Turkey
When asked about the wedding I showed them photos around overall inspiration that I had compiled in my wedding binder, of bridesmaid style, food, and flowers.*
We were looking for them to tell us what could be done and see if they understood what we wanted. A fairly simple conversation, but our thought was that we could tell if there was a good “vibe” between us.
The first stop was Evantine. We had a feeling we would be “WOWed” by this visit, judging by what we had heard about their work and seen on the blog. I mean, check these out:
Place-card table at the Project H.O.M.E. iCare gala (at a private farm) / Image via Evantine Design
Create the honeymoon of your dreams.
That’s not a typo up there. I meant to type wedding bRand.
As a marketer, when I thought about our wedding, I thought about it the same way that I think about my brands (well, aside from the fact that I’m a bit more emotionally attached to the wedding): What does our wedding stand for? How do we want our wedding to perceived? What would be the visual elements of our wedding?
While going through these questions (don’t worry, I didn’t make him white board it out), Mr. Turkey and I came up with a single phrase to use throughout the planning process: Modern Elegance.
So, it sounds nice and all, but what exactly does modern elegance mean? What does it look like? How will our guests feel it?
When we left off, I was off to bed with a full belly of yummy Mexican and fun drinks. The next morning we took our time getting up and then headed out for a Bloody Mary brunch. I promise you, the entire weekend did NOT revolve around drinks.
As brunch was winding down, the girls handed me a present…a picture frame. I opened it from behind, but when I turned it over…Surprise #3!!
AHHHHHHHH
Do you need a closer view?
I’m not great with surprises. I usually manage to figure things out beforehand—the engagement being an exception. However, little did I realize that just a few months later, there would be another surprise.
One May day, I received an envelope with a typed address on the front (no return) and this inside:
“What in the world?” I thought as I saw the card…the inside wasn’t much more help!
Once my bridesmaids and Momma Thimble were dressed and ready, all hands were on deck to help me into my dress and to share the big, (fluffy), wonderful, highly anticipated moment when I became a bride.
NY MoH helped me get my dress down from its hanging place. No one was too keen on me standing on a chair to get it, but I can be pretty stubborn.
We were very excited about our venue and the fact that we were working with empty space. However, we quickly discovered that with the plusses…also come minuses. For those of you brides considering a similar path, let me break out the yellow legal pad (HIMYM, anyone?) for some pros and cons.
PRO: Make it your own.
Everyone wants their wedding to be their own and to never hear things like: “Oh—so and so did that, too” or “That looks just like so and so’s centerpieces.” Especially if you share a venue.
Our hope was to reduce the chances of hearing those dreaded words about our reception. As you can see from these two photos below, despite sharing a space, these two weddings have very different feels—one simple and elegant, one fresh and rustic.
Before I get to my invites (we’ll get there eventually—haven’t even shared our save the dates yet), I thought I’d share my “experience.” Warning—it’s minimal.
One of my bridesmaid duties in a wedding this past year was shower invitations and, needless to say, I set myself some lofty goals to create a high-quality product for the bride-to-be. I didn’t totally DIY the invitations, but many of the elements are DIY.
For context, the bridesmaids chose coffee as the primary theme for the shower. The bride was a huge fan of coffee, and we thought the color of the caffeinated beverage (brown) went quite well with the scheme chosen for her wedding (purple and gold). So, when starting the invitation journey, I searched online for any options with a coffee motif.
I found, quickly, that this was an uncommon theme, which meant some creativity and flexibility was in order. Ultimately, we decided upon these invites from Papeterie* featuring a pot and using purple, brown, and gold.
Hate to blur it…
But an invitation was only so much in the greater scheme of the suite I had in mind. First, we needed to type up directions to the location and explain the contents of the envelope. I have shared my invitation suite online here (albeit in altered form to be generic). The suite also included recipe cards.** I created a template to be 4 x 6 and put in space for well wishes beyond the recipe itself. Each recipe card has a different image, either wedding or coffee related. It’s easy enough to change the images—just make sure they all have the same dimensions. For both the directions and the recipe cards, I used card stock for printing and cut them with different decorative scissors.
So all the bridesmaids had accepted…now what?
I was starting to think about bridesmaids’ dresses, but with all the inspiration and options out there, it was impossible to narrow down. I decided who better to ask for feedback than my bridesmaids themselves!
To get (honest, open) feedback, I decided to prepare an anonymous questionnaire via Survey Monkey. Judge away, but Survey Monkey was an amazing resource to me during business school—to choose team leads for projects, resolve team issues, and, most importantly, collect data.
Image via Survey Monkey
My goal was simple: see if there was any sort of consensus on color or style for the bridal-party attire (dress, shoes, accessories). Let’s face it, it’s rare for a bridesmaid to rewear a dress, no matter how thoughtful or stylish a bride is. By asking these women, my hope was that this was a step in the right direction in minimizing the chances of simply contributing a dress hanger to their spare closet.
So, here are the details of the survey. (If you’re nice and read to the end, you can even see the results.)
I’m saving you all reader space here by consolidating the dress searches that didn’t result in purchase into a single post. You’re welcome.
I had NO idea what kind of wedding dress I wanted. None. OK—that’s a lie. I knew I wanted it to be white. But in terms of silhouette…no clue.
Since my mom was in town a couple weeks after our engagement (and we had the venue and band locked in), we decided to go try on some dresses. I thought it was absolutely crazy to try on dresses that soon, but we made a strict “no purchase” rule.
Part I
We decided to visit Bridals by Danielle in the Washington Square section of Philadelphia on a Saturday afternoon. The store.was.hopping. Although there was only one bride trying on gowns in the main area, it’s not that big of a space, so with her seven onlookers, it felt a little crowded. However, they were not lacking for dresses. Apologies in advance—no photos were allowed.
Planning a wedding isn’t easy. Let’s face it, a lot of feelings come out and relationships (and wallets) are strained during this otherwise joyous process. Sometimes this comes from tough relationships between daughters and their mothers.
I can say, now nine months in, that my mom and I are no worse for the wear despite the ups and downs that have come before us. I’m not going deep on you right now, though. Instead, I wanted to talk about how my mom’s excitement and involvement in our wedding planning has brought us closer together. You heard how she helped secure our venue, but coming up next is her best effort yet.
Granted, I am biased, but I wanted to share with you the details of our party as they may serve as great inspiration for any events you may be hosting.
To celebrate our engagement, over Easter, my mom invited family and friends north for a little soiree. I knew she was taking it to the next level when I saw this.
That’s right, my mom made envelope liners!
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