Deciding on Galleria Marchetti in Chicago as their venue was one of the easiest choices for Emily and Tom. It wasn’t as easy, however, for Emily to keep Tom from wanting to hang streamers from the tent. Either way, their colorful wedding looks like it was a blast! The florals by Fleur are stunning (love the limes!) and Emily’s necklace makes me want to dig through my mom’s jewelry and find a brooch to steal just so I can have it made into my own necklace by Elva Fields. The couple is very lucky to have some extremely helpful friends. Emily’s sorority sister, Amanda Hein, took great photos of the day, the one of the bridesmaids shoes is my fav!

Photography - Amanda Hein \ Flowers – Fleur* \ Venue – Galleria Marchetti \ Wedding Planner – Five Grain Events \ Wedding and Bridesmaid Dresses – J Crew \ Groom and Groomsmen Suits – Mens Wearhouse \ Bride’s Necklace – Elva Fields \ DJ – James Mastrino \ Lighting – The Meeting House \ Hot Dog Cart - Carts of Chicago Catering \ Stationery – Stephanie Cosgrove \ Bride’s Shoes – Kate Spade

*denotes EAD featured vendor

When thinking about who I wanted to be at my wedding, there were some women who I absolutely wanted to be there and be a part of the celebration. These ladies have been a part of my life for a long time, even as we have been separated by distance and life circumstances. But for my wedding, I knew the traditional bridesmaid role just wouldn’t work (for a variety of reasons…). I still wanted all these women involved, so I had to get creative. Instead of bridesmaids, I asked them to be—

My Something Blue!

I pulled out my handy dandy Silhouette cutter, and make this cute card:

Inside I wrote this:

Dear [name],
In my life, I have been fortunate enough to find myself surrounded by some amazing women who have shaped me into who I am today. [specific example]  As I prepare for another milestone in my life, I wanted to recognize how important you have been in getting me to this point. So I ask: Will you be my Something Blue?
A Something Blue
Attends my wedding as her fabulous self
Wears something blue that makes her feel beautiful
Participates in the celebration some way, from handing out programs to performing a reading to making sure guests are shaking their groove thing!
Joins me for a photo shoot for posterity a few hours before the wedding
I hope you will be able to participate in our special day as recognition of how important you have been in my life.
Much love,
Kim

Lucky for me, they loved them! Now I can’t wait until we can all get together to celebrate!

How did you ask your ladies?

For this really sweet bridal session, not only were different shades of ribbon (I love ribbon!) used to create a super pretty backdrop, but they mixed in some beautifully delicate lace as well! I love the idea of using natural twigs and branches as ribbon wands. A very sweet bridal shoot by Ampersand Photography and a really fun DIY idea!

The following DC wedding vendors contributed to this bridal portrait session:

Photography – Ampersand Photography \ Floral – Jan Williams Florals \ Gown – David’s Bridal \ Bakery – Colonial Cupcakes

So I have a problem, I love our wedding pictures so much (thanks to our amazing photographers) and I had a really hard time cutting down which pictures to post. So, I hope you are all ready for an overload of amazing photography! For our wedding recap posts, I’m going to go through the day in pictures so you get a feeling of how the day actually was. If you haven’t read my previous post about our venue, you can read it here.

First was getting ready. The bridesmaids had a gorgeous private room in the clubhouse where we spent nearly all day getting our hair and makeup done, snacking on delicious treats and relaxing. I knew this was going to be a long day for my bridesmaids (there were eight of them, so they had a lot of down time in between hair and makeup appointments), so I ordered canvas bags with their names on them and filled them with snacks, water, an itinerary for the day and a ceremony program. Strangely, I was relaxed all day…until 20 minutes before the ceremony! I had never felt that nervous before in my life. It was that feeling where you are weak, shaky and your throat is dry no matter how much water you drink. To top it off, I cried my eyes out when I left the room and saw my dad. My nervousness and tears were in no way because of doubt or fear. I had spent an entire year planning and preparing for this one day and it was finally here. I was feeling excited, joyfulness, nervousness, relief and love. Lots and lots of love.

And now, the big reveal of my dress…here it is! I decided on the Watters Victoria gown and I couldn’t have been happier with it. I wanted an all-lace gown with some sort of unique detail. The three-dimensional flowers really made the lace dress more modern and fit the look and theme of the wedding.

I also wanted to have special meaning behind my something old, new, borrowed and blue. I actually included what all of these items are in the ceremony programs (which I will share with you in a future post). My something new was my veil. My mother made it and it was exactly what I had in mind! Fit perfectly with the dress. She also made my garter which had a piece of my dress on it along with a piece of her dress. I guess this would fit in the new and old categories, but I’m most excited that I can someday pass this along to my daughter. For my old and blue, I had brooches from each of my grandmothers on my bouquet. My something borrowed was a vintage purse from my sister-in-law (and matron of honor). She used it for her wedding and I was really excited that I was able to use it as well.

I loved my hair! My friend and personal attendant, Jenn did my hair and made sure my veil, hair and later on, flowers were in tip-top shape all night. She is incredibly talented, I can’t believe she was able to create exactly what I had wanted. My makeup was done by Mac makeup artist, Elisse Valdez and she was simply amazing! She knew exactly which colors would work best on me and how to give me that ‘classic beauty’ look. I wish I could just have these two get me ready every day!

I cannot begin to tell you how beautiful my bridesmaids were that day! I was absolutely in love with their Jim Hejlm dresses and it looked amazing on every one of them. My matron of honor wore a different style, but they were all in a stone color. I had a hard time deciding on this color, but in the end, it was perfect. I am so thankful for all of my bridesmaids. They worked really hard to help my parents with setup and made it possible for us to put on this entire wedding without a coordinator. They forced me to eat lunch that day when I couldn’t even stomach looking at it and they were 100% there for me when I went into my nervous mode a few minutes before the ceremony…even when that meant I just needed space. ;)

I was absolutely in love with our flowers for the day! Gina from Fiori Floral did a spectacular job and truly saw our vision for the day. Originally I had wanted peonies for my bouquet. That was the one place we were going to splurge and have peonies. I couldn’t wait, it was something that I thought about and made me excited to see on that day. About a week or two before the wedding, Gina let me know that she was unable to get ivory peonies because of all the extreme cold weather this year. I was bummed, but she was so wonderful and helped me figure out how to give it that same look and feel. I have to say, I love my bouquet more how it turned out than how I think it would have looked with peonies. That is one thing with flowers, they aren’t always available, so you have to be sure to have a florist who is willing to roll with the punches with you and figure out a fabulous alternative.

Can I just say one more time how much I loved my hair? Jenn is a rockstar!

Now don’t think I forgot about the guys. From what I hear they had an even better space to get ready in than the ladies! They arrived later and spent the afternoon eating lunch and having a few drinks. I hear Mike was very calm, but that is how he is with everything. He’s so level-headed and calm. During his brother’s best man speech, he called Mike a silent leader. This couldn’t describe him any better and I’m so lucky to be married to a man like this.

We spent a lot of time debating on colors at Men’s Wearhouse. The people that worked there tried convincing us that since my dress is ivory, the guys needed to wear an ivory shirt. To me though, they just looked so yellow (especially since the back of the ivory vest was pure white). I even brought my wedding dress in one day to see how the ivory and white shirts looked next to my dress. In the end, we decided that Mike would wear a bisque colored vest since it was our favorite color and pattern. I have to say, he looked incredibly stunning!

I’m so excited to share the next part of the wedding with you, the ceremony. Plus I will be sharing all the details that we had spent so long planning and creating like our family wedding pictures and how the giant black boards turned out. Stay tuned!

{All images by Davis Photographers}

We have a tasty (pardon the pun) little engagement shoot to share with you today! Mindy and Mark love to cook together so they brought in Amanda from Swoon Over It to capture some of the sweetness. These two are adorable and their food looks delish, so fun!

The following Philadelphia wedding vendors contributed to Mindy and Mark’s engagement session:

Photography – Swoon Over It \ Event planning – Danielle Pasternak Events