On The Way To Paradise

I'll try to check in from time to time but if I don't get the opportunity to I just wanted to say that I hope that you all have a wonderful week!

Image: Phil Poynter

Happy Friday!

Happy Friday everyone! I'm so excited...only one more day until we're in paradise! I have lots of errands to do today but I'm happy to say that I'm finally feeling better. And just in time :)

Hope all of my friends in the states have a wonderful memorial day weekend. Summer's almost here! Enjoy everyone!

Image: Vogue Boho in Paradise by Inez and Vinoodh

Look Out! I'm Feeling Inspired...

I never really considered doing much DIYing for the wedding since my time is pretty limited but after a seemingly never-ending search for shoes, hair accessories & sash options, I've started to entertain the idea. Of course being housebound the past few days and with the upcoming vacation I feel like I have all the time in the world to take on projects. Let's see how long this lasts...

Check out some of the great ideas I've uncovered during some recent blog stalking. As I've mentioned before I'm absolutely in LOVE with the Louboutin Petal Sandals but the color isn't right. Erin over at Lucky Me posted this great idea for a DIY Louboutin!!!! I have to give this a shot!

Inspiration

DIY version

And then I found this great idea for making satin ribbon flowers on Inspired Goodness. I've been stressing so much about finding the perfect flower accents...would they be the right color, fabrication, size, etc. If I take this project on myself I can guarantee that I'm getting what I want. I just hope I like the end results. I guess it can't hurt to give it a try. If I fail I can always try again, right?

I love this sash!

I just hope I still fell this inspired after vacation!

Real Life Wedding - Melissa & Erik

I was so excited to find out earlier today that my friend Melissa's wedding would be featured on Style Me Pretty. Melissa & I used to work together at Maybelline and she had a jaw dropping gorgeous wedding at a vineyard in the Hamptons last year. Check out SMP and Fred Marcus Photography for more of their dreamy photos.

Images: Fred Marcus Photography

Caribbean Calling!

St. Thomas here we come...only three more days! Unfortunately I'm home sick with strep throat right now but I'm on antibiotics so I'm hoping I'll feel much better by Saturday.

Image: Isabel Lucas for Vanity Fair

Dreams Do Come True!

It's a DIY brides dream come true! M&J Trimming, or Trimming Mecca as I like to call it, the premier trimming resource for brides, wedding planners, fashion, interior & jewelry designers and DIYers, is opening a Bridal Salon in NYC on June 1st. I've been going to M&J for years to peruse ribbons and other trimming for my job and I'm thrilled that they have finally hired a Bridal Consultant since I am now considering a little DIY myself for Ally's custom flower girl dress sash as well as for our hair accessories & possible shoe accents. If you're in the NY area you should definitely check it out! I promise you will walk away with endless inspiration.

Bridal Hair To Die For!

This is exactly how I want my hair to look on wedding day. Of course I might have to add a few more inches but this is the perfect loose tumbling wave look I'm looking for.

I'd like to add a couple of chiffon flowers like these from Oh My Deer to complete the look.

Images: found here and here

Making Progress

Happy Monday everyone! Hope you all had a great weekend. We had an extremely eventful and productive one. Firstly, as you can see, I tried my dress on! I decided to let you have a little sneak peak :) It was the first time I had the opportunity to see it since January and I'm happy to say, I still love it. It's very simple, but it's just right for me.

So, like I said, it's been eventful, and I don't want to leave anything out so I'll start from the top. On Saturday we decided to take our flower girl, Ally dress shopping and we just happened to find ourselves shopping at the same bridal salon where we purchased our dresses from. As I mentioned before, my dress came in well over a week ago but I haven't scheduled a fitting yet because I still haven't decided on the shoes. As you could imagine, the suspense was killing me so I just had to try it on shoes or no shoes!

After that excitement, we ventured on to find Ally a dress. I don't remember if I've mentioned this before but Ally is Antoinette's six year old daughter, our best friend who just passed away last month. As I said before, the weekend was eventful and this certainly was an eventful experience. I'm gonna try to keep this short and spare you some of the gorry details.

Well she was a dream child at first. She tried on about seven or eight dresses with no complaints at all. She was having a great time, she was loving every one she tried on and she even did a little dance for us in each one. Everything was going perfectly and we ended up narrowing it down to four dress. There were two that I was absolutely in love with, one that I hated, it was a horrible shade of pink that did not go with our color palette whatsoever and it had a ridiculous amount of beads, and one that I was pretty indifferent about. So naturally what happens is that Ally decides that she LOVES the horrible pink beaded dress that didn't even fit her. The dress that I hated! I couldn't, for the life of me understand why she wanted that one. When she tried the dress on it was actually hurting her because it was too small and the beads were scratching her skin! Why would she want to have that dress? So, as you could imagine, things ended up taking a sharp turn for the ugly. She ended up throwing a fit in the store, hysterical crying, laying down on the floor, refusing to take the dress off. And it killed us to see her so upset because we knew the real reason she was acting out was because she had just lost her mother. It wasn't really about the dress. But there was no way we could make her undestand that. So after about a half hour of antics we gave in and compromised and bought her the dress I was indifferent about, her second choice and my third choice. I wish I had pictures to share but it really wasn't a photo op moment. It's an ivory dress with ivory grosgrain spaghetti straps an a grosgrain bow. It's a little too plain compaired to what I was envisioning so I decided that I'm going to liven it up a little bit. Yesterday I bought a wine colored sash that matches the girls dresses and I think I'm going to see if I can find a light pink chiffon peony and have a seamstress attach it to the sash.

So that was Saturday and the fun filled dress excursion. Yesterday was a better day. We made a lot of progress and now I'm feeling pretty good about things. We went to Bloomies and finalized our invitation design and placed the order. We should have the first proof by the end of the week. I am sooo excited and I can't wait to see what they look like! I think they're going to be absolutely perfect!

After Bloomies, we headed on down to Gracious Home and while we were browsing we found the perfect solution to our cocktail hour table centerpiece dilemma. Aquamarine mercury glass votives!


These aren't the exact ones but you get the idea. I'm can't even tell you how excited I am to cross that task off our list. We've been trying to think of more affordable alternatives to bud vases and I think we came up with the perfect solution. We're going to put two mercury glass votives on each table, they were only $2.99 each! and then have a hurricane with a burgundy pillar candle in the center of the table. Our venue provides the votive candles and clear glass votive holders so we'll probably put a few clear glass ones on each table as well.

So all in all we had a pretty productive weekend. We'll try to get a few more things accomplished over the next few days...shoes & hair trial appointments and then Saturday we're off to sunny St. Thomas for a much needed vacation. Let the countdown begin!

Image: found here

Busy Busy

Image: found here

Happy Friday everyone. Sorry I've been absent for a while. It's really been a hectic week between being sick and wedding and work so I've been a bit ovewhelmed. Unfortunately we ended up canceling our engagement photoshoot for today because I am still pretty under the weather. We'll just have to reschedule for early June after vacation. The good thing about that is that we should be nice and tan and relaxed so the pix hopefully will turn out good :)

We have a busy weekend on tap. Tomorrow we're planning on going flower girl dress shopping and we really need to try to finalize the invites by Sunday too. Oh and I'm still desperately searching for the perfect shoe. I think I'm making this a lot harder than it needs to be but I just can't find anything that I like.

Here are a few of the options I've been considering. Keep in mind, my ideal shoe would be burgundy, feminine - ie petals, flowers or bows or something of that sort, and ideally comfortable.

Christian Louboutin Petal Sandal

I absolutely adore these shoes! But they're not the right color. They're so perfect that I would take them in a second if they came in ivory but I think the pink is just too yellow for my color palette and I don't want to introduce another shade. Someone suggested that I get them hand painted burgundy but there's no way that I would risk that.

Christian Louboutin Glittered Platform Pump

And I think that these are fun. But they're not very bridal, are they? And when I showed them to Jen she said, and I quote "what is our wedding, the wizard of oz, dorothy? no ruby slippers." So I guess that's the end of that....

Christian Louboutin Satin D'Orsay Pump

These are really pretty but I think they're kind of plain in white or ivory. I guess I just really had my heart set on color. Should I have these dyed? I'm just terrified of a bad result. And what if they bleed? I would be horrified.

Image: found here

So now I'm thinking maybe I should just get a basic ivory shoe and add color with a flower clip-on? Problem is, I haven't been able to find a clip on that I like either. But I really don't know where to look. I searched Etsy and haven't found anything.

I hope that I find something I like this weekend and that I can just get this over with. Who knew that shoe shopping would be such a chore? If you guys have any suggestions, I'd love to hear them!

Hope you all have a great weekend :)

One Step Closer!

Sorry for the late post today. I started the day giving an 8am breakfast training of the Wholearth product line at the Rockefeller Center Anthropologie store and my day hasn't slowed down since! By the way, I have to mention that it was nearly impossible to control myself being in that store before regular business hours. Can anyone say PARADISE?!?!

I just have a second but I wanted to say how excited I am about the NY State Assembly passing the Marrigae Equality Bill last night! One house down, one more to go!

On another note, invitation shopping was very exciting last night. We were at Bloomies for over 2 hours! I'm happy to say that we've definitely narrowed down our search...we're just waiting for a few more paper options to come in from the designer. Once the swatches come in we'll finalize the design and hopefully we'll end up placing the order by the weekend. I can't believe how difficult this has been! I'm thilled to announce that the invitations will have a couple of aquamarine crystals so needless to say I'm a happy girl. Thank you darling for giving in :)

I'll be back soon with more details about the invitations and the never ending shoe search.

Image: found here

Invitation Inspiration

So tonight we're headed to Bloomingdales to finally select our invitations. We've been searching for months but we've had a really hard time finding anything that we really like and that we both agree on.

Well time's almost up so this weekend we did a pretty extensive search and we finally found some ideas that we're liking.

We really like the pearling details on the side of this invitation and the foil accents. It's simple yet very elegant.

And I love the swarovski crystals on this invitation and I also love the silk folio it's incased in but Jen doesn't really love it and I know that will be too expensive so I'll get over it.

And we're in agreement about liking pocket folds like this one and the ones over at Jill Parkin Designs.

I have no idea what we're going to see tonight but I hope that we're able to find something that we're both happy with. This is one task that has been weighing on us for a while and I can't wait to finally check it off the list. Wish us luck!

Images: KK Bloom , Nickelsons Invitations and Renaissance Writings

Mellow Monday

Happy Monday everyone. I hope all of you Moms out there enjoyed your day yesterday. I'm feeling pretty under the weather today and will be spending most of the day in bed resting up for a big week ahead. Tomorrow we are going invitation shopping at Bloomingdales and Friday we have the engagement shoot. And I need to go shopping at some point to try to find those perfect shoes that I keep dreaming about. I would love to find something like these above. How adorable are they?

Image: found here

Desperately Seeking

I'm on the hunt for the perfect shoes & the perfect engagement shoot outfit. Watch out! I'm on a mission!

Hope everyone is having a nice weekend :)

Image: found here

My Dress Is In!

OMG I'm sooo excited! Jen just wrote me to let me know that the bridal shop called and my dress is in! I didn't think it would come in this early! I've been stressing about it for months because I couldn't really remember what it looked like. I mean I had an idea but not a crystal clear picture of it. Anyway I want to call and make an appointment for a fitting but I just realized that I need to get my shoes first, don't I? And I don't know where to begin there. I have an idea of what I want but I haven't found the perfect shoe yet. I better get on it right away! Yippeee!!!

Oh and isn't the Galliano dress above just gorgeous? I came across it on Once Wed the other day and have been dreaming about it for days.

Image: Ashley Garmon

Happy Friday!

Happy weekend everyone! It's been a long week and the sun is finally out so I'm thrilled that it's finally Friday. Hope that you all have something fun planned. Enjoy!

Image: found here

Flower Girl Frocks

Oh I just love these Monsoon flower girl dresses. When I first started looking at them I thought that they were maybe a bit too mature for a young girl since I wanted every single one. But the more I look at them I'm thinking that maybe I want to dress too young for my age :)

We still need to take Ally, our flower girl, dress shopping and I'd love to find her something along these lines.

4 MONTHS!

I didn't realize until I received numerous emails today from different planning websites, but it's true! We're getting married 4 months from today! Oh boy I'm starting to feel a bit overwhelmed again. Ok deep breaths. We'll make it through and it will be fabulous, right???

Image: found here

Here's Hoping....

Can it be true? They're saying there's a possiblility we might get a break of sun today before the rain sets in again. I think everyone around here can use a dose of some much needed sunshine. At least the people I've been dealing with, that is....

Image: found here

Sunny Day Sorbet

Mood: happy, lighthearted, girlie, spring outdoor wedding
Color Palette: juicy tangerines & lemons mixed with soft pastel sorbets

Images: Top row from left: girl, candy Rebecca Thuss & roses Martha Stewart Living, girl
Second row: cupcakes, girl
Third row: candy
Fourth row: shoes, flower votives , petal path, sorbet Martha Stewart, flowers

Cinco de Mayo Cocktail Time!

Cinco Herradura Cocktail

Ingredients:
- 1 1/2 oz Tequila Herradura silver
- 2 oz pineapple juice
- 2 oz cranberry juice
- Splash of lemon-lime soda
Garnish: fresh lime wedge, green, red and white sugar for rimming

Stir the tequila, fruit juices and soda together in a tall glass. Garnish with a fresh lime. Rim a third of a tumbler with lime and dip in green sugar. Rim the adjoining third of the glass with lime and dip in white sugar; rim the last third and drip in red sugar. Pour drink in rimmed glass and serve.

Source: Cocktail Times

The Countdown Officially Begins

I know this might be a bit premature but after countless dreary rainy days in NY I've decided to start the official vacation countdown. In 18 days we'll be on the beach in St. Thomas at our timeshare for 9 days! It can't come soon enough.

Image: found here

Decisions Decisions

We finally booked our engagement photoshoot with our photographer Daniel Krieger for the afternoon of May 15th!!! We're so excited about it and we can't wait to see how the photos come out. Only thing is that we're up in the air about location right now. We're torn between the Flatiron District & Union Square in Manhattan or DUMBO in Brooklyn.

Originally we had our hearts set on the Flatiron/Union Square area because we frequent those places quite often and the Flatiron building itself and the angles of that intersection are fantastic.

FLATIRON

Image: found here

But then our photographer suggested DUMBO as an alternative. At first we weren't too keen on the idea because we're not really Brooklyn people. Now I'm not saying anything negative about Brooklyn. Some of our closest friends live there and we like going on over but we just don't do it all that often and we figure that these photos should represent us and our life together. But then we started to ponder the idea and we decided to do a little research. Well, we ended up discovering that you can get some really amazing photos of the city and the bridges from DUMBO. And of course now I'm thinking that maybe that's the better option.

DUMBO

Image: found here

Image: found here

Good news is we don't have to make our final decision until the day before the shoot so we have a bit of time. So while we mull it over I think I'm gonna start to take a poll. Which one should we choose...Flatiron/Union Square, our neighborhood playground or DUMBO's awesome city views? I'd love to hear what you guys think!

I Heart Her Too!

Jen tried on sunglasses similar to these the other day and said that she sees hearts when she looks at me. Too cute! I'm so lucky to have such a romantic girl :)

Image: found here

Soggy Sunday

I guess we have to pay for the gorgeous weather we had last weekend. Perfect time to organize. We made a list of everything we have to do this month for the wedding and we're in the process of booking our engagement photo session. Things are getting exciting!

Image: found here

Season's Cleanings

Happy Saturday everyone. It's a gloomy day in NY today and my girl is working all day so it seems like the perfect time to take on the much dreaded seasonal closet switchover. I don't know why I dread it so much. Maybe it's because I always feel guilty when I discover how many unworn clothes I have with tags still attached. Or maybe it's because I never feel like having to try on the enormous pile of clothes to see if they still fit or if they're still relevant. Or maybe it's because it always takes the ENTIRE day! Nevertheless, I always end up feeling good and almost giddy at the end of the process when I feast my eyes upon super neat, ever so organized, quite possibly even minimilistic looking closet. Me a minimilist? Could it ever be??? And every single time I always vow to myself that I'm going to keep it that way forever. Now let's see how long it lasts this time. Wish me luck!

Image: found here