My fiancé is a law student in another state. The long distance portion of our relationship began in August, when he started school. We were living only 15 or so city blocks from one another when we got engaged and throughout the first 3 months of our engagement. The whole 2000 miles between us was quite the change.

The trick to this whole planning thing for me has been including him without interrupting his vital study time.Because we had to learn to carve wedding-planning time out of his schedule, we quickly learned how to focus on the point and then come to an agreement in a matter of minutes.

I’ve decided that the true genius of design is decision. Decision is what makes something truly special because it eliminates the ‘everything else’ that crops up as a result of careful research.

In an effort to give Superman a choice, I researched around 75 bakeries and narrowed it down to 40, then presented him with those options. He was overwhelmed and I translated that as disinterest. He became frustrated and after some thoughtful discussion, he said something brilliant.

“We can’t do everything. We have to pick what’s best. Best for us; Best for our wedding, yes, but best for our time and schedules.”

This outlook was new to me and oh so very helpful in the many discussions since. I just have to keep in mind that sometimes, protecting our stress levels and schedules is just as much a design decision as protecting our need to have the best baker in the city.

The stress of planning a wedding can be compounded by so many everyday requirements. I’m glad to be planning a wedding that reflects where we are right now, with all the challenges and difficulty this time includes. Will it reflect a couple who had hours and hours to call every baker in town? No. It will reflect a couple who made stylish choices in the face of other responsibilities and pursuits. I hope, and oh how I know it will reflect a couple deep enough in love to withstand a 2000 mile separation. A couple prepared for a lifetime of obstacles and happiness.

I love sparkly.  And it’s rare that one can find sparkle done up all tasteful-like.  It often winds up looking garish.  The creativity of mixing floral and jewelry really appealed to me.

{Bridal Party Tees}

But since I wasn’t certain I could pull off the look with my overall theme, I wanted to DIY some to just get a sense of what they’d look like before I invested in the real deal.  For a total of $2.27 at the local craft store, I got some floral wire and some pretty lil sparkly beads.  I took the floral wire and folded it directly in half.  Then I threaded the bead on the wire, and moved the bead to the crease of the wire.  Then, using some needlenose pliers, I twisted the wire until the bead was trapped on the crease and I was left with a pretty stem of single wire with a bead at the end.

The picture isn’t that great (I am not a photographer), but you can sort of get the gist.

For the price I mentioned above, I got 16 stems.  The nature of the stem makes it easy to put it through the center of the flower or into a bouquet.  Either way, a subtle option to create a bit of sparkle.

I’ve always loved a good wedding.  And wedding traditions have survived because there is a sense of community about them.  In starting a new life with my fiance, I wanted to start some new traditions.  We kept some: I’m wearing white, we have Bridesmaids and Groomsmen, I’m carrying a bouquet, the list goes on.  I wanted to share the ones we’re changing, though, and hope that you might share some of yours in return.  I think the free exchange of ideas engenders some sparkling creativity. And we can always use some more sparkle, right?

Bouquet Toss

I’m an older Bride with older single friends (many are Bridemaids), so this tradition scared me a bit.  But I didn’t want to eliminate that beautiful bouquet going to someone else at the end of the evening.  The Anniversary Dance seemed the perfect way to solve both dilemmas.  We’ll have all the married couples who wish to paricipate gather on the dance floor for a special dance.  The first pause in the song will have the Emcee asking couples who’ve been married less than five years to step off the dance floor for a moment, the second pause will have couples married less than ten years step out, and it will continue until the couple who has been married the longest will remain.  This will be the couple that receives the bouquet and an invitation to share a word of advice about making a good marriage last.

Garter

When I explained to Superman that I felt pretty weird about having him search under my skirt in front of a lot of people, he agreed.  His suggestion was that we replace this tradition with ‘Toss the Bridesmaid’.  I did not agree.  We decided that instead of this dance, we’d have our Groomsmen seek out a partner for a snowball dance.  We wanted to reiterate to all our guests that it really is a small world, and we all get to know each other through someone else.

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This may not seem like a post about wedding design.  But hear me out: Organization and Design are like twin sisters - they look a little different, but they come from the same gene pool.

It starts with office supplies.  At the beginning of each school year, I loved going school shopping.  Not for the new clothes, but for the paper clips. (For you gals that feel me, how awesome was that Back-to-School themed wedding that circulated the web a few months back?) So, choosing a wedding planner was something I anticipated almost as much as choosing a dress. Yay!

But then I got to the bookstore.  And to the online stores.  And to the specialty stores. And to the Bridal Shops.

It wasn’t so much that the planners weren’t good – they all had exceptional features. I was just overwhelmed by the number of planners I’d have to buy in order to get the features I truly wanted.  With all the productivity gadgets and methods on the web, you’d think we’d have found one that catered to the-most-important-party-of-one’s-life, right?

Wrong.  Though there are sooo many apps and books out there designed to help a Bride plan, few are intended to actually help her get from plan to actually doing stuff.  I’ve heard some really good recommendations on tweaking available options and some even better suggestions on creating unavailable options, but in the meantime, I’ve created my own little system.  I used methods that were invented for other purposes.  And I actually had so much fun putting it all together.  I present in this post Kate’s-Exception-Wedding-Planning-System! I hope it helps with your planning and gives you that giddy feeling I got when I went shopping for paperclips.

Or not. *wink*

I started with Microsoft’s OneNote.  Delicious little notetaking device.  Here is a screenshot:

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I chose a photographer with a lot of trepidation.  Many of my close friends had nightmare experiences with their photographer.  So, when I called Angie at Sweet Memory Garden, I had a list of questions 3 miles long.

Some of the questions were as simple as ‘Where did you study photography?’ and some were more complex ‘What light do you feel is best for shooting someone who has a very yellow skin tone?’  She answered each question patiently and had a completely casual tone, as if we were old friends discussing our upcoming reunion.  She put me at ease and that was why we chose her.  That was the most important thing about choosing her, too: trusting my gut.

Planning a wedding involves so much advice and so many people telling you that you ‘have to’ this and ‘really should’ include that.  My photographer Angie gave me a really good feeling and I’m so glad I had that experience up front.  From then on, whenever I had anxiety about a vendor or a decision, I wouldn’t just brush it off with ‘it’ll be ok…’  I really listened to myself and asked the question ‘Why am I so anxious about this?’  Every time I asked that question and took a moment to just listen to myself, I could hear an almost audible, calm voice responding with a clear answer.

I just love it when wedding planning helps me learn a skill set I’ll use in future ventures!

Another example of listening to my gut was finding the material for my darling dress (can’t show pics, cause the fiance may be reading – Hi, Superman!)  I have a very talented seamstress, and I had a specific pattern for the dress.  I wanted to find the perfect material and an exhaustive search of all the fabric stores in my city convinced me that I’d be finding what I needed online. More searching there, though, and I was disheartened.

I landed on an eBay page with some viable options.  However, they weren’t right, either.  The doubting folk around me told me I should just settle for what was available.

I didn’t listen.

I emailed a lovely woman named Tresa and just asked if she had anything akin to what I wanted.  Several email conversations and one helluva search on her part later, and I had exactly the kind of fabric I’d been searching for. Had I listened to the naysayers around me, I might have been wearing a dress I merely liked, rather than loved.  Tresa worked the miracle because I asked.

Both Tresa and Angie were experienced, but that was not what made them qualified to participate as a vendor in my wedding.  Each new vendor I choose gets the same evaluation: does my ‘gut’ like them?  Do I feel comfortable with what they’re offering and how it is being offered?  It’s a simple thing, but whoy, has it made a big difference!

What difficult decisions have you finalized by trusting your instincts?

Let me guess.
1 – Your future mother-in-law wants to choose the band for your Reception.
2 – You can’t see how the designer colors you’ve chosen will go with the hideous carpet at the church your dearest friend wants you to choose.
3 – Your hates-marriage sister wants to sing “My Humps” at the Reception.
4 – And the Best Man rolls his eyes anytime you interrupt Xbox time to ask the Groom if he prefers the Etsy cake topper to the Vintage one his grandmother wants to provide.

This is some of the best stuff a wedding can provide because believe it or not, there’s a plethora of design inspirations in each encounter with our ‘dearly beloved’. It’s really all in the right question. And the best news of all is that you get to both ask AND answer this one:

What will this encounter inspire me to add to my wedding?

This isn’t optimism run amok, it’s inspiration infused in every moment of planning.
In the cadence of the great Yoda: Simple it is.
Right? OK, OK, I know. You’re creatively challenged already, and you’re wondering how it is the clever people work magic turning straw to gold. Let’s just practice by changing some of the challenges I listed above into a design opportunity that us simple folk can invent.

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I’m a gal that loves to plan. My childhood games could have put many of ‘The Apprentice’ challenges to shame.  One thing I’ve loved planning since I was a child is my wedding. And in all my years of planning, my wedding gained and lost a few thousand elements.  There was one point where I wanted to incorporate a pink bicycle I found at a boutique.  That was quickly discarded when I met a boyfriend that hated bicycles (I broke up with him – really, who hates bicycles?)

One element that has remained consistent is the lack of cake.
It’s not that I dislike cake.
It’s that I didn’t want to be the bride that had cake.
(Nothing against brides who have cake – you gals have got it going on! It just has never been my style.)

When my darling fiance proposed, we talked about the kind of wedding we both envisioned.  He knew about my obsession with planning and I knew about his obsession with keeping things laid back. Between the two of us, we knew that we wanted a party, rather than a ‘reception’. We also knew that we wanted to infuse that party with our personalities.

In this first post, I want to tell you about our first deviation from tradition: No cake.

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