Life. Love. Lipstick.

I see so many wedding photos on a daily basis.  My Google Reader is inundated with photo after photo, all beautiful.  I see so many beautiful images that I end up just skipping through most of them in a daze.  However, once I reached a post by Vue Photography, this first image of the bride jumped out at me and I had to read and look through the entire post.  So glad I did!

I love this beach wedding, full of beautiful and vibrant colors.  It features bridesmaid dresses in my favorite color, and what appears to be a seriously fun reception!

You really should add Vue Photography to your feeds if it’s not there already!  Never a disappointment!

Today I ran across 3 very different and amazing weddings, all which had one thing in common: awesome fashion sense!

First up, captured by Ashley Brokop, is these dashing men in suspenders in khakis.  The entire wedding of Lizzy and Johnathan is so darling.  Do yourself a favor and check out the compilation done by Southern Weddings.

Once again, let’s give it up for stylish grooms.  Now, it is entirely possible that the bride was behind the idea to wear such an awesome jacket and pocket square.  Regardless of whose idea it was, I’m loving it!  You also will not want to miss the ceremony photos from the wedding of Breanna and Charlie, shot by my favorite beach wedding photographer, Paul Johnson.  It’s truly breathtaking!

I found a dreamy set of photos on Style Me Pretty, and while not my personal style, the dress worn by bride Elle is so romantic and beautiful.  The photography alone, by Twin Lens Photography, is enough reason to go check out this post on SMP.

I decided to ask a few of my friends for pictures and details from their weddings.  The first of these is from Leigh Ann, a gorgeous Southern Belle who had a traditional wedding in Mississippi.  

Wow.  What can I say about this wedding?  Seersucker suits, eyelet dresses…. It is so full of personality and even though I don’t know the couple, I can tell their wedding design totally reflects them.  

yet another stunning job by the geniuses at Our Labor of Love.

go check out the rest of the post.  You’ll be sooo glad you did!

So, we (I) changed our (my) minds again about a small wedding vs. an elopement.  

We have decided that we (I) may regret not having the whole celebration if we don’t have it.

I’m very excited about this, and eager to put down a couple of deposits so that I don’t change my mind again!  Um, I mean, so we don’t change our minds!

As for the details, we don’t really have any yet… spring or summer ’09, 60 guests, lots of budget and DIY things going on!  Stay tuned!

Oh, how I love me some ring shots.  I’ve come to realize that I pretty much like 2 types…

Quirky-

And downright beautiful art, suitable to hang as a huge canvas above the mantel-

And this, my friends, is my absolute favorite one to date… both witty AND beautiful art-

Photo credits:

• Next Exit Photography
• Studio ATG
• Whitebox Weddings
• Susan Stripling
• Blue Nalu Photography
• Anna Kuperberg

I am quite possibly the most indecisive bride-to-be on this planet. I just posted recently that after much thought, I decided we would have a small wedding rather than just elope. Well…. Now I’m not so sure. After making the guest list and reaffirming that we could definitely do a small wedding, I started daydreaming about eloping again. I feel like once I get moved in with Dustin, the wedding is going to feel unimportant, and I’ll be just as satisfied with an elopement. But I’m not sure! Will I miss out on having our friends and families there? Or will we have the wedding and feel overwhelmed, crowded, and broke?

I love the thought of having my parents and brother and my closest friends there. My mom helping me into my dress, my best guy friend Brandon seeing me all dressed up, seeing Dustin’s expression as I walk down the aisle toward him… these are all moments I dream about. I want to dance with my new husband to a special song, show our guests a good time, and give them a glimpse at our love. I want great photos that tell the story of the day.

I also love the romanticism of eloping, with a modern twist. Dustin and I would have a private ceremony, just the two of us plus the minister and photographer. We’d dress in nice, informal clothes, write our own vows, and have beautiful imagery to document the day. We’d celebrate with friends and family a few weeks later with a casual party.

Both scenarios have great appeal, and I constantly flip-flop between the two!

Has anyone else gone through this? How did you make your final decision?

From the first day Dustin and I discussed getting married over a year ago, the guest list was a source of stress for me. We knew from the beginning that we could not afford to have a wedding with more than 50 or 60 guests. Not only did we want to have a small guest list for budget reasons, but I love intimate weddings.

I have a very large, very close-knit family. The way our family dynamics are, if I invite one of my mom’s brothers and his family, then I have to invite all my mom’s brothers and their families. This equals out to around 60 people… without even beginning to invite my dad’s family, Dustin’s family, and friends. I played around with guest lists when I was bored, trying to cut out people and see how small I could get my part of the list. Fast-forward to last week. I decided that to avoid drama and unnecessarily hurt people, there needed to be cut-off criteria. We decided that I would invite immediate family and my very closest friends. Dustin can invite whomever he wants, since he can’t even think of 20 or 30 people he would invite. His family is very different than mine. Plus, he doesn’t care a thing about hurting people’s feelings over something he thinks is silly.

I am very satisfied with my list, and while I know some of my family will not understand (I come from a small Southern town, where weddings are held at the church and fellowship hall, all food is finger food made by family, and it’s “the more, the merrier,” complete with an invitation in the newspaper and on the church bulletin board), I know I made the right decision for myself. Sure, we don’t even have a date yet, so the list is bound to be tweaked a little. But it sure is fun to plug the names into the spreadsheet Dustin made for me! If anybody would like a copy of it, email me. I’m happy to share.

Now, if I could just get Dustin to make his list [you reading this, babe? ]…

This is it! This is exactly what I envision for my own wedding – intimate, cozy, us. And ideally, in my own home. Kudos to Merry and Mark for pulling off a wonderfully personal affair. Merry even made her awesome dress and the cake!

See the blog post in its entirety here.

Note to Our Labor of Love: Seriously, now… you’re just showing off! The beautiful imagery you consistently create? Ridiculous.

I posted recently that Dustin and I finally got engaged. Now comes the fun part…. the planning!

I have put off posting about this, because since we first started talking marriage over a year ago, we (okay, I, considering Dustin has expressed several times that he can go either way happily) have gone back and forth about whether we should elope or have a wedding with guests. As with any major decision, there were multiple pros and cons for both choices.

As for eloping, it keeps costs way down, meaning we can afford the most important element to me, a good photographer. It also means that I don’t get caught up in inviting Aunt Ingrid and her family out of politeness, my college roommate because I was invited to hers, and my friend who lives down the street. Ok, so none of these situations are anything I’m dealing with, nor do I know anybody named Ingrid. However, there are similar issues with the guest list if we chose to invite guests. Eloping also means that the focus stays where it should- on the fact that we have chosen to live our lives together as husband and wife, instead of on linens, favors, registries, and buffet vs. plated dinner. Honestly, I think one of the biggest things for us is that eloping means we can get married very soon. There are other positive points for eloping, but those are the big ones for me.

Eloping is certainly not without cons. I would hate to wake up in 3 years wanting to have a vow renewal (which are completely ludicrous, i’ll post about that another time) because I really wish I had gotten to have the whole wedding experience. Also, I am completely enamored with weddings and all the love that surrounds you on your day. As I mentioned in a previous post, I long for the emotion of the wedding day. I want to share that day with those who have either shaped me to be the person Dustin chose to marry, or have played a part in our relationship. I think it’s becoming obvious as I type this that I have made the right choice for us… we’re having a wedding.

Now, as a compromise between a wedding and elopement, we’re having a VERY small, intimate wedding. This ensures that we’ve invited only those we can’t imagine the day without, and that costs stay down. I still don’t think we’ll be able to afford our dream photographer, but we’ll see. I’m just thrilled to have something to go on! Right now we’re thinking next spring for a date. First things first though… I have to move 500 miles so I can finally live with the love of my life!