Out of everything that went into the preparation for our vow renewal, I probably had the most fun and least stress planning the day after brunch.  It was held at South City Kitchen in Midtown, just steps from our hotel blocks and our venue from the vow renewal the night before.

Orange as a wedding color has always inspired me, so I knew that I wanted to use it for the brunch.  It’s so fresh and clean!  I kept things super-simple, bringing in only one accent color (yellow) and using lots of fresh fruit as decor.

Each place setting was decorated with an orange wrapped in parchment paper and tied with raffia.  The leaves were goccoed with “Bonne Annee!”, French for Happy New Year, written in calligraphy by Laura Hooper (continuing the slightly-French theme that was carried through from our RSVP packets, do not disturb signs, menus, and other printed items).

{Jessica Claire}

The bar was lined with oranges and lemons, purchased from Whole Foods and donated to a local food bank after the event.

{Jessica Claire}

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Out of all of the undertakings for the vow renewal, there was one that I spent by far the most time on and was undeniably the most nervous about….

The First Dance.

The hubby didn’t have to do much to prep for the vow renewal… much except for one thing.  He agreed to learn to dance.  So for 18 months, twice a week, we took lessons at Chicago Dance and we learned to waltz.  Our coach and I and choreographed a 2 minute Viennese Waltz to “You and Me” by Lifehouse, one of our favorite bands.  I, having been a figure skater and dancer, was not at all worried about the performance, but the hubby has never performed in his life, and up until we took the floor at the beginning of the reception, we had never danced the routine in public, so you can imagine my apprehension (and his!).

{Jessica Claire}

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Have you heard of StudioWed yet?  It’s a fabulous place where you can meet many of Atlanta’s best wedding vendors all in one spot.  And what do you get when you put together the best of Atlanta’s wedding vendors?  Gorgeous tablescape inspiration, that’s what!

Meet the Summer Romance table, styled by Michelle at Lemiga Events.  This table has it all.  Peaches?  Check (it’s Atlanta, after all).

Soft yellow flowers, lemons, and blue glass accents?  Check.

Stunning calligraphy?  Check.

Here are the vendors who made this design come together:

Photography & Lighting: Blue World Studios
Table Design:  Lemiga Events
Stationery:  Smock Paper via Luxe Expressions
Calligraphy: Debi Zeinert
Flowers:  Tulip
Linens:  I Do Linens
Rentals:  Event Rentals Unlimited
Wedding Cake:  Sweet Sensations

Tablescapes provide such awesome inspiration - I hope this brought some Summer Romance to your day!

xo,
E.

While I am in the middle of planning our wedding for October, I am also a full time wedding planner.  To be honest, I get much more excitement and joy out of planning for other brides than I do planning my own wedding!  I think it’s because I don’t get stressed when it’s someone else’s wedding.  I am much more confident in my abilities as a planner than I am when it comes to making decisions for our wedding.

We were recently involved in the planning of a backyard reception after the couple were married in Vegas. The reception had a very simple budget and one goal: to celebrate their love with their closest friends and family. I believe this goal was definitely achieved!

Months leading up to the reception, clear wine bottles were collected, washed and labels removed in order to serve sweet tea…

Hundreds of hours were spent creating these lovely paper roses for the centerpieces…

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Gowns and hair and puppies, oh my!

I haven’t really talked about my hair yet.  I decided, since I was not a bride, to go with an updo, something sophisticated, but more Oscars than tiara-and-veil.  I’m also completely obnoxious about my hair not being on my face or my neck, so I spent a few months growing it out so that I made sure it would all get up and stay up!

My inspiration:

The end result:

{Jessica Claire}

I loved it.  Amber at Vis-a-Vis did a great job - I highly recommend her if you are in the Atlanta area.

While I dressed, I was accompanied by two of my besties, Marcella and Laura, the ever-awesome Jenna, my amazing sister, and yes, the most adorable pup in the world, Charlie.

{Jessica Claire}

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Try buying a house!!!  Ok, so I know I’m not the first girl to go through the process of buying a house-but let me tell you I had NO idea what it was going to be like!!  I’ve heard terms tossed around like-offers, closing costs, escrow, contingency periods etc.  I never really knew what any of it was, but now that we are going through it, I definitely had a crash course in real estate 101!!

Here’s how it happened….

We’ve looked at quite a few houses.  Hundreds on the internet, and quite a few in person.  Every house we looked at left plenty to be desired.  Because of the market, we were seeing a lot of foreclosed homes.  While I wouldn’t mind moving in to a fixer upper-Vince’s tastes definitely lean towards “move-in ready”.  Move in ready is harder to come by these days.  Most of the houses we looked at were actually so depressing.  All I could think of when walking through these bank owned properties was the people who used to live there.  The time they spent on the faux paint in the bathrooms.  The love and thought they put into remodeling the kitchen or master bath.  It made me so sad to think of where those people were and what led up to them being removed from their homes.  

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OH. My.  This was a bit of a process.  Finding my dress was literally the easiest part of the wedding planning for me.  My MOM finding a dress is a different story entirely.  

When we bought my dress my mom tried on a dress that we thought was PERFECT.  This is a picture of one similar to the one we loved:

It was brown and gorgeous, but we weren’t sure.  

Then she went to Macy’s and bought one that she thought was perfect.  Once it was home…not so much.  It is a very pretty dress, but it just didn’t say “mother of the bride”.  She’s supposed to be the second best dressed person at the wedding, right?  This dress wasn’t the one. 

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While planning our wedding-etsy is one of the first sites I would visit when looking for a particular item.  I searched etsy for someone to make my dress before I found the ONE.  I spent hours on etsy looking for just the right birdcage veil and fascinator-before I found Kasia Fink.  

Here are some of my favorite etsy finds for our wedding, and some for gifts for my maids!

These awesome custom ties from etsy seller, Toybreaker

This adorable clutch from seller, Angee W.

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So as a frequent visitor of all wedding blogs I can get my hands on, you can imagine that my “must have” folder on my computer is pretty huge.  I’ve managed to whittle it down over the past 6 months-and it now consists of only things we are actually going to have at our wedding.  Gone are the pictures of elaborate flowers, letterpress invitations, fireworks displays, and 12 piece bands.  I think it’s wise to be happy with what you have instead of pining for what you can’t.

In this notorious folder, I have a section of must have shots.  Here are just a few of the shots that I will be showing to David and Kendrick of Our Labor of Love.

Oh, have I mentioned that they are our photographers?  Yeah.  They are.  Which means our pictures are going to be awesome.  Ok, I’m done bragging.  :)

I just love this image, and I know I’ll be doing this at some point in the evening, so I’d love to get a shot of it!!

{source}

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There are lots of little details that us brides get hung up on.  When I first started planning our wedding, I wanted to do EVERYTHING I came across.  As the planning continued, I realized that I needed to pick things that were the most important to me, and go from there.  With that being said, we are still ending up with FOUR favors for our guests rather than just one.  We have the Popcorn Bar, which I’ve told you all about…and then we have these fun additions:

A basket of flip flops on the dance floor… so our guests can dance the night away…

{found here}

And a basket of pashminas!  Our venue is in the North Georgia Mountains in the fall-while the weather may be warm in late October, I’d rather be safe than sorry and have pashminas as an option for anyone who might be chilly…

{found here}

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When looking for our invitations, I knew a few things for sure.  

1) I had no desire to do them myself.  I’ve read and been amazed by so many blogger brides before me who braved the world of creating and making their invitation suites.  I had no desire to follow in their footsteps.  The process just looked too overwhelming to attempt!

2) I didn’t want anything formal, and I wanted the invitations to reflect the laid back casual vibe I was going for.

3) I KNEW I could find some amazing, unique invitations on Etsy.  

So off to etsy I went.  I searched “fall wedding invitations” and some AMAZING options came up.  After searching for what felt like forever, I found them.  As soon as I saw the picture I knew they were the ones.  

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Ok, so you have to love the movie Anchor Man to know why that title is funny-but at least I make myself laugh, right?

Guess what I got to do today?

Yup!  You guessed it!  Tell em what they’ve won, Bob…

Pictures and descriptions of my cake!  Lucky you!

I got to taste our cake today…

Ok, so I didn’t want a cake in the beginning.  I am not a fan of the cake cutting tradition, and I am TERRIFIED of the tackiness that is smashing cake in faces.  Vince promises he won’t (and I’ve threatened instant annulment if he does) but he loves a joke and a prank, and I’m still afraid he’ll do it.  I have nightmares, seriously.

My parents really wanted a cake, and since I didn’t care strongly either way, I agreed.  THEN, I came across this wedding cake, and I was excited…

{if you know where this cake is from, please let me know-I cannot find it anywhere!}

I absolutely love this cake.  We hired our baker through a recommendation.  I emailed her the picture and she said it would be no problem.  I really wanted it to be simple and rustic.

I chose the flavors-her famous sour cream pound cake for two layers, and her INCREDIBLE chocolate cake for the other two.  For the filling we have coconut cream and chocolate ganache.  YUM.  The funny thing is, we hired her without trying the cake.  I trust our coordinator, and when she said the cake is delicious I believed her.  My mom was a little less trusting.  She has been worried about the taste of the cake, so I set up a tasting with our baker for today.

She was wonderful in person and she brought us four squares of chocolate cake, four squares of pound cake-and tupperware containers of the filling.  Oh. My. Goodness.  YUM. The cake was amazing.  I brought some home for my non-sweet tooth Dad, and HE loved it.  Vince loved it, and most importantly, my Mom loved it!

Here is all that was left after we all had our turn with the cake!

Ah, what a great day.

How did you ladies chose your cakes?  Did you find inspiration or did you pick from your bakers portfolio?  Is your cake going to match your dress?  I always think that is so neat.