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Always on the lookout for what to hang from the ceiling of our venue, a friend sent along a link to Frazier and Wing. How beautiful are these!! I can see them hanging above and around the bride and groom during the cermony, and then scattered around the reception venue.

{all images via Frazier and Wing}

What do you think? How else could you see these used?

A couple weeks after Matt and I got engaged, I traveled home to Louisville with the mission to find a reception venue.  We got engaged on August 22, 2008 and set our wedding date for July 25, 2009.  We had to base the date around Matt’s work schedule - which meant I was deciding when we got married based on the NBA Draft, Summer League, etc.  Late July worked for everyone - my only issue was the heat.  An outdoor reception was not an option.  My mom made a few appointments for us and off we went.  The first place we looked at took about 3 seconds for me to decide it wouldn’t work.  But the second space, well, it was The One.

The Henry Clay was built in downtown Louisville in 1924 and was only turned into an event space a couple years ago. I loved the history of it. I loved the colors. I loved the character.

The walls in the main ballroom are gold tones. Instead of fighting the room’s natural beauty - gold, ivory and black became our wedding colors. I eventually added in blush pink to soften the decor. Below is the inspiration board I designed soon after booking the space.

Next up: we talk paper!

I am not sure how I came across this blog, but I believe that finding their logo is an omen:

{ images from Orange Blossom Ink }

Seriously, someone’s trying to tell me to go with this orange blossom thing…so off I go for some orange inspiration!

Recently I have been seeing lots more oranges (or kumquats) used on tables or flower arrangements:

{ photo from Details Details via Style Me Pretty }

{ photo by Josef Isayo via Style Me Pretty }

{Read the rest of this entry…}

Even though my wedding was more than a year ago, I still hear from brides every now and then who were inspired by one element or another from my wedding – and it absolutely warms my heart to know that my wedding played even a teensy tiny part in helping to inspire a fellow bride.

So when I heard from Heather, who was inspired by the lilacs that I used in my bouquet, I couldn’t wait to see how she put her own spin on things for her wedding.  Heather was kind enough to send over some photos – courtesy of Lindsey and April from Sweet Monday Photography – from her wedding:

{Heather’s gorgeous bouquet was made up entirely of purple lilacs}

{the floral centerpieces for the reception were also made using lilacs}

{Read the rest of this entry…}

Here are some things I am loving this week!

source-project wedding

Love this idea- Having different soda bottles lined up at the reception- a Soda bar! And this would give a shout-out to my hometown fav - Faygo!

Source- can’t remember I think wedding bee

{Read the rest of this entry…}

With 11 months to go and the school year right around the corner, I’m a bit more antsy to make some more decisions about the wedding. I’m not talking about cake flavors or napkin folds or anything, but I feel like it might be good if I had SOME sort of idea of what this whole shindig should look like, right?

I’ve spent hours upon hours looking at beautiful weddings and have bookmarked hundreds of inspirational images or articles that I’ve loved (I know y’all feel me), it really is just too much fun! But how do I choose what I actually would like at OUR wedding? I find it insanely challenging to take all the elements that we love and put it into one cohesive look for our wedding. We just like too much of this stuff. All you creative people out there…too much coolness!! I think the biggest challenge of all is making sure that everything blends in with the venue itself. How do these wedding stylists do it??

Enter Beth Helmstetter (and on my birthday too!). I have been absolutely obsessed with inspired by this wedding since I saw it a week ago on Style Me Pretty (see also II, III, and IV). It fits our secret garden meets Mediterranean rustic vibe perfectly…AND there are succulents!

Photography is by Steve Steinhardt and the event was designed by Beth Helmstetter.

{Read the rest of this entry…}

As I mentioned before, our engagement pics are coming up!  Needless to say I’ve been spending lots of time recently searching some of my favorite photographer’s blogs for inspiration.  Now I am definitely not planning on handing my photographer a list of “must have shots” or poses….I 100% believe that you hire a photographer for their artistic talent of “seeing” great shots….not just for their fancy camera.  With that said, I also believe that pictures should portray who you are as a couple.  Whether that involves wearing certain outfits, a specific meaningful location, or your favorite activity.

For Lance and I one thing specific pops into my head….Husker football.

Our shared affection (read: obsession) for Nebraska football first brought us together in Utah…and every game-day since we have spent dressed in red head-to-toe cheering on our favorite (college*) team.  (In fact, we are squeezing our session in while we are back for the home opener over labor day weekend!)  I thought a fun way to incorporate this in our e-pics would be to throw the old pigskin around a bit and/or get some fun shots around Memorial Stadium!

{Read the rest of this entry…}

I ran across this great post on The Nichols blog and I was instantly inspired!

Now that we have decided to have the wedding at our family cottage, this post was exactly what I needed to see in order to get my mind in wedding cottage mode!

{Read the rest of this entry…}

So how do two stridently independent and opinionated lovebirds get married in the age of Platinum Weddings, anyway? Like so many things that would follow, we found our inspiration in the world of wedding blogs.

After months of floundering for a wedding vision that felt like our own, I stumbled upon a blog post featuring a wedding “monogram” that looked like a campaign logo. I was instantly, head-over-heels smitten with how un-wedding it was. After all, politics run through both of us. I’d been writing about candidates long before I was old enough to vote, and the two of us never would’ve met at all had Trevor not been working on a political campaign. The discovery of that logo put the entire wedding planning process into focus for us. Suddenly, we weren’t grasping for wedding ideas anymore, but were full of them. The idea of a red and blue wedding felt fresh and new to us - neither of us had ever seen one before - and we loved the challenge of making sure it didn’t look too “4th of July” by using a palette of shades and a slew of mix-and-match patterns.

Blue would work wonderfully with our beachside location, and also meant that Trevor could wear his grandfather’s seersucker suit. Strong punches of red suited my sensibility perfectly - in flowers, on tables, and most importantly, in a killer pair of red satin heels on my feet! Very quickly, our wedding vision started to feel more like us than like a “normal” wedding, which was exactly what we’d wanted all along. Here’s our original inspiration board, featuring the wedding logo that kicked the whole thing off:

Meanwhile, in other stroke of blog-world luck, I won a contest online where the prize was a custom wedding logo designed by the one and only Amy Beth Cupp Dragoo of ABCD Designs (now a contributor at EAD Living!). I couldn’t believe my luck - we finally had our wedding inspiration, and now we had a super-talented designer on board to create our official “campaign logo,” too! Over the phone, I laid out our election theme for Amy to explain why we wanted her to design a campaign logo for us instead of a typical wedding monogram. Amy didn’t just get it, she loved it. Here’s the “campaign logo” that Amy designed for us. More than any other single detail, this logo set the tone for our crazy election-themed wedding:

Adams-Hanger ‘09… the ticket of a lifetime!

Next up: From logos to letterpress!

One of my favorite elements from my wedding - and still one of our most cherished wedding keepsakes - is our ketubah:

{photo from author’s personal collection}

A ketubah is a Jewish marriage contract but can be a lovely tradition to incorporate into any wedding.  The wording can be adjusted and customized as you feel appropriate or in consultation with your officiant.   Ketubahs were originally developed to specify the rights of a woman in marriage and her husband’s obligations to her, but have envolved in recent years and are now commonly used by couples as a declaration of their commitments to each other in their marriage.  The ketubah is signed by the bride and groom, two witnesses, and the officiant in a small ceremony just before the wedding, and then is traditionally read aloud to all the other guests during the ceremony.

One of the first ketubahs that inspired me while I was doing research for my own ketubah design was this ketubah from Sam and Dave’s wedding on Something Old, Something New:

{Read the rest of this entry…}

I have a love/hate relationship with inspiration boards.  I LOVE to look at them….but I somewhat “dislike” making them…am I the only one?  Maybe it’s because I’m so critical of my own work that I never seem to be happy with the balance of the boards that I make…but the ones I’ve seen around the blog world…absolutely inspiring.

Well shortly after booking the venue (we’re talking hours here) I decided to just get on with it and make my own…knowing the venue along with the look and feel I was after.

(Oh did I mention our colors yet?!?…yeah ok well there’s a quiz at the end…see if you can figure them out on your own ;) )

OK my first go:

row 1: style me pretty, jennifer brum, saladito’s flickr photos via a farmhouse wedding row 2: browers photography, amy squires, TBC row 3: style me pretty, jcrew, punam bean photography

{Read the rest of this entry…}

 I absolutely LOVE when bridal showers or bachelorette parties have a project, craft or activity.  This love does not extend to games, because, lets face it-bridal shower games are pretty horrific for the most part.  

A dear friend of mine has started a business called Wine and Designs.  I went to her house for lunch last week, and she had painted a glass for me with my married initials on it, and I LOVED it!  I think it’s such a cute thing to do with your bridesmaids or just some close friends.  Here are some ideas I came up with in a google image search:

I found it’s important to keep it simple if you’re not super artistic like me.  I love this one:

How cute would it be to make these for each of your girls, and have it look like them!?

Ok, so here’s my attempt.  The lighting is terrible, so the colors look wrong, but it’s kinda cute.  The letters are SO hard to do-so when I do another one, I’m probably going to stay away from writing anything…

Have any of you done this before?  It seems to me like the grown up version of paint your own pottery places.  Plus, you can do them at your house-and as soon as you’re finished painting you just bake them in the oven.  They are even dishwasher safe!  You can find all of the supplies here!