Fair and Carnival Weddings

Yesterday's post got me thinking about fair themed weddings. As I was looking for pictures to fill in a fair themed inspiration board, I realized that there is a difference (to me) between a fair themed wedding and a carnival themed wedding.

My idea of a fair themed wedding is full of warm cider and hot cocoa. It is held in late September or October. All the decor has hay bales, corn stalks, pumpkins, etc. It is not a Halloween wedding, just fall and outdoors. When I think of it, it makes me feel all cozy and warm inside. Here is my inspiration board for a fair theme. One thing I couldn't find was hay bales, but I envision that being crucial.



I would TOTALLY do one of these weddings if I could, but hopefully I will be teaching away with my own class, so I don't believe that it will be possible. *sad face*

My idea of a carnival wedding would be a summer wedding in July or August. It would have all kinds of lawn games and prizes and ferris wheel decor. There are all kinds of interesting snacks, such as corn dogs, ice cream, fried dough, whatever you think of when you think of carnival food. Here is what I came up with.



Peanuts are another thing that I think of. I wouldn't do this one as much as I would love to do a fair themed wedding, but it would be pretty cool! Hope you like these ideas! Enjoy your weekend.

Updated Look

In case you couldn't already tell, I redid the look of the blog. I am pretty excited about it. Let me know what you think! Hope you like it!

Irresistible Things

I was surfing on Twitter and came across this Etsy store called Hey Yo Yo. They have some adorable things that are wedding related and some, not so much. But since it is so cute, I am going to share it all! What I was originally looking for were those paper straws that are so adorable. I am thinking about our wedding colors, which I will make a post on later. But I loved these:

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When I saw these it almost made me wish that we were having a fair themed wedding for a minute. Fair theme would be perfect for a fall wedding. I could just imagine it. Maybe I will make a board for it a little later!! But I loved these things:

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I also found some festive things for the season. I love this time of year!! They would be perfect if you were having a Halloween party or something. Here is what I found:

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Hope you liked my selections! Have a good Thursday!

Minted Invitations

I recently won a Minted giveaway on a blog called Ever Ours. Minted is a stationary website that has beautiful invitations, but they are out of my price range, so it was a wonderful giveaway to have won. I think that I will plan on using it for my save the dates because the more research I do into DIY invitations, the more excited I get about creating them (see earlier post on being over-eager). Of course, as soon as I heard this news, I had to rush over to Minted and pick out a few things that I liked. Here are some of my selections.

These I picked because I liked them and they were fun, but they don't fit into the whole scheme that I picture for my wedding.

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These would fit more into the general feel of  what I want for my wedding.

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But these save the dates are more in my price range, but I love them a lot!!

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What do you think? Hope you like them. If you don't there are plenty more choices on the Minted website. Go check them out! Happy hump day, everyone!

Ceremony Songs

I have been thinking a lot about ceremony music. I am somewhat scared of picking songs for the reception because I do not know music AT ALL, so I will be needing some help with that. But I had (what I thought was) a brilliant idea for the period of time when guests are milling about before the processional. I thought that putting some old love songs on and letting people talk and whatever. I love the love songs that were sung by people like Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Dean Martin. Here are a few ideas that I had.

I also wanted to throw a few Moulin Rouge in there because, honestly, who can resist Moulin Rouge?

On second thought, as I was listening to some of those older songs, some of them might be good for the reception and get some of the people that may not normally dance off their butts! (Such as, possibly, my grandparents!) Plus I would really like to hear and dance to some of those, but I wouldn't be able to if I was in another room freaking out because I was about to be married!!! We shall see. What kinds of ceremony songs and reception songs do you think would be good?

Struggles

I am so excited to start with everything that I would like to do for my wedding, but with it being only a little under two years away, I am unable to start! All I can really do is grab inspiration for what I would like, but if I look for inspiration for too long, then I will end up with too many ideas! (Sometimes I feel that it is impossible, but actually, it is! Go figure!) I already feel so scatterbrained because I have so many different ideas, but I also want to make sure that I remember everything.

What got me thinking about this was that I found so kraft brown bag paper yesterday with matching envelopes and got so excited. Josh is sick of me talking about things that are not happening for a while, so I could only mention it to him. I couldn't gush over it like I really wanted to. I realized that I can't actually use these for at least a year and a half. This is good in one respect because I don't have any money to buy anything right now, but also it makes me sad! Anyway, that is my rant for today.

Luckily I have a blog that I can rant about, gush over, enthuse about, etc. anything that I want. With that being said, here are the papers that I found!

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Bonus! It is environmentally friendly. The envelopes looked cooler than the paper, so here it is! I love it (if you couldn't tell.) Thanks for listening to me in my time of need!

What's Involved?

Lately I have been thinking about all the things involved in planning a wedding and everything that goes into it. I feel as though I need to start a list that I keep adding onto whenever I remember something else that needs to be at the wedding or that I want at the wedding. Ugh! So much to remember. Ok, so here is the first draft.

FLOWERS

• bride's bouquet
• bridesmaid's bouquet 
• boutonnieres
• corsages
• petals

CEREMONY

• music
• chairs
• something to mark the aisle
• readings
• officiant
• programs
• fans?
• dress/other attire
• suits
• bridesmaids dresses
• bride sign
• vows

RECEPTION

• music
• caterer
• linens
• china/glassware/silverware
• rentals (tables, chairs, tent, dance floor)
• centerpieces
• lighting
• place cards/menu
• cake/cutter(?)
• alternative desserts
• favors
• cake stands
• decor
• photobooth
• guest book

MISCELLANEOUS

• photographer
• nails
• hair
• make-up
• signs (to find location, to ceremony)
• website
• invitations
• save the dates
• marriage license
• wedding night room
• registry
• rings
• thank you notes

Oh my. I feel so much better having all of that out of my head. Sorry that this isn't a great post, but I feel as though it is something I needed to do! If you notice anything that I missed, please help and post anything that I have forgotten! Thanks!

Re-purposed Furniture

I love the idea of using re-purposed furniture as decor. It would be so fun to search through garage sales, antique shops, and thrift stores to find the perfect furniture to use in your wedding and then be able to use it in your home later on. I just imagine looking at the furniture years down the line and remembering your big day and all the memories coming back to you. It is a wonderful daily reminder to keep the memories alive in your day-to-day life. Since I live in Seattle and our wedding will be held in Connecticut, I don't really have this luxury. But I can still enjoy other people's weddings who use this technique! Here are some pictures that I found.

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Hope you enjoyed these as much as I did! Happy hump day!

Ribbon Flowers

Happy Tuesday!

A few weeks ago I came across this video on how to make ribbon flowers from Love, The Yes Girls. I got hooked on their blog before I was engaged because they mainly deal with proposals, but all the girls are either engaged or already married, so it is worth some time to check it out every now and then. Sometimes they have some nice things on there.

Anyway, these are the DIY instructions for the ribbon flowers that I wanted to try out.

So I made some with some old ribbon that I had lying around (and it just so happens to be right around autumn, so maybe I will make some more for festive decorations). It was so easy and to make one took about 30-50 seconds. I think that these are a winner! I would love to put some of these around the tables, or maybe hang them from the ceiling, or, I don't know. But making them is addictive and so fun, so I would like to use them for something.

Here are some that I made.

I definitely like the solid color rather than the patterned, but I wanted to show you a picture of both so that you could decide for yourself. 

I also made fabric flowers, but I didn't have any fabric, so I used a ribbon without the wire. This was ok, but I would use the fabric because it has a thicker and chunkier appearance that I like a lot better. All you have to do is tie a knot on the end and twist. Make sure that you glue while you twist, otherwise your flower will not stay together.

I attached it to a pencil so Josh could have it. I am sure that he appreciated it a lot. :) He did, however, like the idea of a "office garden" that he quickly set up so that we could snap a few pictures of his brilliant idea. 

If you happen to have a girlfriend (wait, fiancee, it's so cool to say that still!!) with lots of time on her hands (me) who can make you all kinds of ribbon flowers, then this is a pretty cool idea. It was Josh's idea to use the terra cotta planter as a pencil holder, which I like a lot. You may want to use one that has not been outside all season, though.

So that's my first "trial." I may have to make more of those flowers though. They are so fun to make. Hope everyone has a great day!

Venues

Happy Monday everyone! Hope you all had a good weekend. I wish that the weekend was longer. All the Mondays that I don't work I wish Josh was home to keep me company!

So our wedding will definitely be in the Summer of 2013. We need some time to save up some money and figure out where we are going to be in life. But I am excited because we have (what seems like) all the time in the world to search for the best deals and decide what exactly it is that we want.

There is just one thing wrong with time: I want to do it now! I have been doing research and I love all the little parts of planning a wedding, such as the invitations, favors, decorations, flowers, etc. But I am not looking forward to all the research and work to put into choosing where to have the wedding, who the photographer will be, and what kind of caterer will be in our price range. It is so frustrating because I want  to start visualizing the wedding in my mind, but I can't do that if I have so many options! But as Josh constantly reminds me, we are lucky to have so many options. (He is slightly sick of me hemming and hawing over where to have our wedding. Yes, already. I tend to lay it on kinda thick.) So we have a few options of venues.

Option 1:

My mother's backyard. They just put in a nice big deck and have a nice layout for the wedding, but I would like somehting a little more woodsy and there aren't many trees in the yard. There are plenty around the sides of the property, but I wanted something a little more ... enclosed. One thing that would be kinda cool is that maybe we could go into the field behind my parent's house for the ceremony.

The downsides of this location is parking. There is NO parking around my house. I live on a slightly busy street so we wouldn't be able to park up and down the sides of the street. It's a pretty big con, but maybe some people will have some suggestions! I also think of my parent's house as a laid back place where people go to have a couple beers and burgers. That's awesome, and it's something that I love about my parent's house, but not for my wedding. But then again, maybe I could get used to it. Who knows.

Option 2:

My grandmother's backyard. They have a lot of beautiful gardens and huge trees that provide lots of shade, so having a middle-of-the-summer wedding wouldn't be completely dreadfully hot. It has the general feeling that I want for my wedding: laid back, but still a wedding.

The downside is that there is only one bathroom inside the house on the lower level. This is more fixable than the parking problem at my mother's house, such as asking family to use the upstairs bathroom and making signs for guests. That's really the only downside, though they have less flat land, but that is also easier to work around.

Option 3:

An outside location. I am thinking maybe a house or something like that. I have a story of someone in San Francisco who nabbed an estate on craigslist for under $3,000 that included all the tables, chairs, china, glassware, etc. So if I can find something like that, it would be excellent, because the second most expensive thing of the backyard wedding is the rentals.

The downside of this: still need to pay for a caterer, which is more expensive than I can imagine.

Anyways, that's what I have been struggling with over the weekend. I am not sure if a banquet hall is for us, but I am open to looking. I just don't want this to go on forever! I would like to get to the fun part of the wedding planning! Any suggestions for me to get the crazies out of my head? Have a great Monday!

Seed Favors

Sorry for not posting yesterday. It was a lazy day. Today I have something to share that I think is a fabulous idea. I always liked the idea of seed favors because the image of my wedding will be like rustic-garden-elegance. (That's for right now anyways, by the end of wedding planning my description could be ten words long!) But these little seed bombs are so cute and easy to make. I could just imagine them in a little burlap bag with twine tied around it or something. They look kinda ugly, but that's why you put it in a bag!

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If you are interested in these, the instructions to DIY are from No Impact Bride. Enjoy!

Hairstyle

I was looking around on Style Me Pretty and I found this wedding where the bride's hair is AMAZING! I decided that I would like my hair to be like hers (right now, anyway, I am not sure how I will feel when I see the next hairstyle that I like!). It is effortless-looking and out of the face, which is just what I would like. Of course I had to make a style board of the pictures!


It's gorgeous, but it helps that the bride is gorgeous also! I just would like the gathering of hair to be a little higher because I want to wear my veil underneath it. I never understood the brides that pay all this money to have their hair done and then cover it up with a veil!! It is too gorgeous!

Wedding Pie

So I know that this isn't a new idea, but I think it is pretty cute. Wedding pie has been around for a while as an alternative for people who don't really like cake. Personally, I don't know how you could not like cake, however I am not a huge pie person either. Yet, when I stumbled upon these cute little pies, I couldn't help but have a little sigh that I don't like pie because it is so darn cute!

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Another thing that I thought would be really cute favors, even DIY favors if you have the patience for it, would be these pie pops.

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Pretty cute! I couldn't possibly imagine having pie at my wedding, but these are so adorable for anyone who does enjoy pie!

Honeymoon

So Josh and I have been talking about honeymoon lately (because what is more important really?). I think that we have officially decided that we are going to not take a full honeymoon after the wedding. There are a few reasons for this. 1) We want to be able to enjoy our honeymoon and not settle for something just because we can't afford what we really want. 2) We will have more vacation time. 3) More time to save money. We would like it to look something like this:

The cool thing is that we can still take a mini honeymoon after the wedding, but we will have to eventually make our way back to Seattle after Connecticut, so that means that we can basically go anywhere in the US. I am thinking maybe San Francisco or anywhere really! The possibilities are endless! It is very exciting!

It's official!

It has happened. I am officially engaged!! It happened Thursday, September 8th, 2011 at about 6:30pm PST. I am the luckiest girl in the whole world! So here is the story.

From the very beginning, Josh and I had been into shopping for rings together, but we weren't really ready to commit yet. We had a ring picked out that we both liked, but two weeks ago, we realized that the price had gone up. WAY up. Like, $2,500 up. That was way too much of a price gap for us, so we were pretty bummed, but decided that the following weekend, we would head to the mall and scope out different jewelry stores for new ring ideas. Well, we ended up with more than ideas, Josh actually bought a ring.

So it would be ready the Thursday after we bought it and Josh needed me to pick him up from the mall because he doesn't have a car, and there wasn't a direct bus home. I was a little miffed because I didn't want to be totally in on the whole process. We got home and he told me to start chopping vegetables for a new recipe that he wanted to try while he looked it up online. I was done chopping the things that he wanted me to, so I went to the other room to see if there was anything else that he wanted me to do, but there wasn't a recipe on the screen at all. He had put together a slide show of pictures from things that we did in the past and even had slides with blank spots to represent things that we were going to be doing in the future. He had little conversations that we would have in the future and .... ahhh I loved it. It was so very him and so very me and so very us together. I sound so cheesy, but it was wonderful. So while I was watching this slide show, he was in the other room changing into a shirt that I LOVE on him. He came in when it was done and got down on one knee!! Yay! If he hadn't done it that night, then he probably wouldn't have surprised me at all. I am so glad that he did!

The ring is beautiful and it is so much better than the original one, so it is kinda a blessing that the original one fell through. It is simple and elegant, which is exactly what I liked about it! Here it is:

I know it's a lot of pictures and I seem completely materialistic and self/ring-obsessed, but it is kinda intricate and I wanted to show you all of the different aspects of it!

I also couldn't help but take a pretty ring shot! Hopefully a professional can do better...

So after that we went out to eat dinner at a place that was recommended for special occasions by my friend, Heather. It's called Melrose Grill in downtown Renton. It was delicious and I had a fabulous cocktail and salmon. Yum.

This was after we got done with dinner in front of the restaurant. It's the only picture of us that we have to capture the moment. Sorry for the quality.

We had a fabulous evening and night. I am so lucky to have such a wonderful finacé! 

Props to Ever Ours

I wanted to give some props to Lydia over at Ever Ours for posting this wedding. This is one of the first, if not the first, wedding of two women that I have seen. I also love the tone of the post, as I didn't even realize that they were two women until I looked at the pictures. Lydia delicately told their story and showed their beautiful wedding pictures. They look so happy to be celebrating their marriage with their families and they are a beautiful couple! I wanted to share a few pictures with you.

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And this one was too cute not to share:

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Hop on over to Ever Ours to see the rest of the pictures and read their story! Enjoy!

DIY centerpieces (cont)

I saw these on Love and Lavender just now and couldn't help sharing these (seeing as I just made a post about it). They are so adorable. Personally, I prefer the wood piece underneath the vase as opposed to the book, but that's just my taste. They were too cute the pass up.

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This is not a new or uncommon idea, the the books would be more endearing to me if they were meaningful to the couple (maybe with a note attached as to why it is important for guests to read) or vintage or relating to love or life. I don't know if these were important to the couple, but to me, if I was a guest at this wedding, I would enjoy the decor of the books more if there was some meaning behind. But the vases are super cute! Enjoy!

DIY centerpieces

I saw a wedding on Sparkle and Hay that had centerpieces that were completely DIY-able! That sparked my interest in small and unusually-shaped vases, so I made yet another inspiration board.

Besides being completely DIY, another great thing is that you can look at yard sales without much effort at all (vases are usually a pretty common find, I have found some pretty cool looking ones for about $0.25). They are a super cheap and DIY alternative to expensive florist centerpieces.



The two pictures on the left are the vases from Sparkle and Hay. Aren't they adorable? It is so great because you can go into the garden and pick a few flowers, stick them in water in some awesome vases and have them in your wedding! (Speak of which, anyone have any ideas on how to keep flowers alive longer?) Happy Thursday everyone!

Rustic Inspiration Board

This is what my general idea is for my wedding. I love the name cards that you can't really see in the middle picture, but that middle picture is basically what I am basing my entire idea off of. I like the wood mixed with the ribbon and the lace with burlap. It is a rustic elegance, which what I think that you would basically describe my wedding style as.

Sorry that I didn't cite these. I didn't have an intention of posting them when I found them. Most are from Love and Lavender and Sparkle and Hay.

I also love the dress! I hope that I will be able to find something like that when I start dress shopping! Hope you enjoy it!

Welcome to Color and Pearls!

Hello, and welcome to my new blog. I wanted to start this blog to have an outlet for all of the inspiration that I have been accumulating while looking up information about weddings. Yes, another wedding blog, aren't there enough out there already? The answer to that question is yes, so this is meant strictly as an outlet for all of the creative energy that I have going on inside me. So, if you like it, stick around, if you are sick of wedding blogs, that's ok too, and thanks for stopping by!

So, the obvious next question would be: am I engaged? Sadly, not yet, but it is coming soon! My boyfriend, Josh, and I have been living together for the past year, though it feels like so much longer. I do know that he has purchased a ring and it will be on my finger soon! As excited as I am, I am trying to enjoy the simple life before we become engaged and married and have children (eventually).

Now I know that I sound like a high school girl that is dreaming about her big day, all whimsical and whatever, but I will try not to be that girl from this point on. This is just an outlet to share ideas and maybe get some feedback about what looks nice and what will fall flat on it's face.

Anyways, thanks for reading and I will post some of my inspiration a little later!