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You guys, seriously, pay attention here. This wedding is really cute. And full of rustic barn-y loveliness that we are all totally in love with. And guess what? Jen is a reader! It is so amazing when one of our readers sends her wedding over. That’s why we’re here after all. And Jen’s wedding, on a farm in Maine (you’re speaking our language, girl!), makes us want to quit our day jobs and spend weeks collecting little pieces of ephemera and vintage jars and growing coastal wildflowers while our summer pies bubble away in the oven.

Plus she shared the video of her wedding too. NEAT!

RIGHT???

Jen decorated the barn herself with the help of her super amazing friends. Mason jars! Weedy flowers! Rusty keys! Homemade jam! Globe lights! (We can’t stop).

Her escort cards were the antique keys with farm animal tags attached. And these matched up with little stamped river rocks at the place settings, which you can see in the invite shot.

Her invites were letterpressed by Pancake & Franks.

All photography and video by Charlotte Jenks Lewis.

You can catch up with Jen on her blog, the haystack needle.

Next we’re going to show her amazing Super8 wedding movie. It’s pretty special. Like special enough to need it’s own post. More soon…

Last week Jillian met up with Carolina Della Valle of Modern Press at her sweet studio in Dumbo, Brooklyn. Her space and creativity alone are enough to persuade anyone to hire her to design their invites.

Carolina has a background in Architecture and Interior Design and once you know that you can see how her education has influenced her work. She has a decidedly clean, modern style, she loves to work with unique materials, and spends time conceptualizing each piece as if it were a little sculpture.

And, as if that weren’t enough, she does every single thing by hand. Letterpress printing, embossing, diecutting, foil stamping, plus laser engraving and cutting on a bunch of interesting materials.

She’s also the awesome kind of pack rat that keeps all sorts of interesting scraps from previous projects with the hope that she might be able to use them again.

Her approach is so thoroughly inspiring – she just likes to make things, yay! – that we can see how inspired a client would feel as they work with her on a project.

In fact, Jillian was so inspired that they discussed hosting a fun crafternoon at Carolina’s shop in the near future. Which sounds like a really perfect way to spend the day, no?

Thanks for sharing your beautiful space with everyone, Carolina!

Take a peek-sie at her work: Modern Press
Photos by Scott Clark Scott Clark Photo

Good morning, sunshines! Weirdly, we’re almost making good on our plans from last Monday. Remember the ones about always starting the week with a thoroughly inspired wedding, perhaps with a theme, and always artfully styled? Well, our reader Melissa appeared as our Monday angel this week with her divinely dapper wedding at the Montauk Club in Brooklyn.

Melissa is an art director and her hubby Vincent is a style director at Conde Net (which is the online side of Conde Nast). So um yeah, they have something to say when it comes to design, decor, and all around stylings. Can you tell?

Kay, give us a minute here to collect ourselves. You know??? Wow.

Melissa and Vincent designed their own invites and had them letterpressed by Enormous Champion. With frickin’ stunning calligraphy by Tara Jones.

And that ring pillow (that we are all dying to have for ourselves, right?)… Melissa made it. Um Melissa? Ever considered an etsy shop?

Flowers: The amazing Nicolette Camille

Dress: Amy Kuschel
Headpiece: Sara Gabriel
Both purchased from (in Melissa’s words) the lovely and helpful and well priced Gabriella Bridal Salon in NYC

Catering: Montauk Club chef Mark Usewicz
Cheese plates: Saxelby Cheesemongers
Dessert: One Girl Cookies
Groom’s Cake: Blue Sky Bakery

String Trio: Hire Conservatory Alumni

DJs: friends Emily Ryan and Michael Goodstein

Photography: Weddings by Two

And “the star of the day- our beyond amazing day of coordinator who kept the day flowing perfectly and made sure we could totally enjoy ourselves!” : Christine Viola
(pretty good rec for you Brooklyn brides out there).

Now go forth and enjoy your Monday everyone. And THANK YOU Melissa for sending your amazing wedding photos over. We are certainly feeling inspired.

Planning a backyard wedding? If not, this photo may change your mind! Backyard weddings are pretty much an option all year round in?beautiful Southern California. The couple below (Quinn & Jacob) actually live in Chicago, but got married in Jacob’s parents backyard in Orange County, CA. To see full details, check out Amanda Lynn Photography’s blog here.

The?adorable small flower pots (seen below) as centerpieces are from one of my favorite local florists, Adelaide’s . Each pot was planted with garden herbs which?also doubled as?a cute affordable way to?name your tables! You could send each of your guests home with diy?paper cones of fresh flowers/herbs to take with them as favors.?Or the Wedding Paper Diva mint tins?would be a cute addition to each place setting!

The beautiful bouquet seen below (as well as the bouquet above) are from The Designer’s Co-Op in NYC, but you could definitely bring this photo in as an example and see if your local florist can adjust it to fit your budget to go along with the garden theme.

I can already hear Mazzy Star playing while the tiny white lights twinkle…

We love this idea of a beautiful wedding dress being passed down (and personalized!) from one friend to another. Amelia’s gorgeous dress below was infused with a creative and fun twist a year later, when she lovingly gave it to her friend Catherine to wear for her own wedding. Catherine (being the creative gal she is) personalized the dress by having a tailor add a bustle using the same dress material and tacking hot pink tulle at the top and on a layer underneath. Very inexpensive and so COOL!

Here is Amelia’s dress:

and here is Catherine’s version (look at all that fun tulle!):

More details from Catherine and Brett’s beautiful Calistoga wedding to come! In the meantime, check out her awesome neck ascots that would be such a unique gift for your bridesmaids!

More of Roey Yohai’s AMAZING pictures from our client Rebekah and Manuel’s wedding this past weekend.? The bride was originally from California and she wanted the ceremony to be in a natural setting.? This park fit the bill (though, there were SOME challenges).? While I got the family and wedding party ready to process, Mayra set off to clear out the park area.? Here, her commentary:

Ceremonies are always the most stressful part of the day, mainly because they require precision. A bride has that image of walking down the aisle, and I want to make sure that I do my best to make it perfect. This becomes harder in a public space. Not only do you have to coordinate officiant, bridal party, music, and the bride, but you also have to get a handle on everyone just wandering the space. This park seemed filled with leisurely people, so I thought I would start early. So I set out with my permit to politely ask people if they could please clear the area for the ceremony. I was AMAZED that people seemed completely uninterested in moving. They didn’t care about my permit at all. Since we technically couldn’t force them to move, I tried pleading. It worked for the most part, at least with the people that would be in the way for photos.

However, once the ceremony started I was HORRIFIED to see that people stopped right behind them, came and sat behind the guests, and basically loitered a wee too close to the ceremony. I mean people, would you want a couple standing behind you and staring at you at your wedding? NO! So why do it to someone else? My blood pressure was through the roof and I literally walked around asking people to hush (kind of like a school teacher).

I was glad to see the photos and see that none of these people made it into the shots. Also, you can tell by their faces that they didn’t care how many (rude) people watched:)

Rather than a large wedding party, they decided to have their siblings as their BM and MOH as well as an additional close friend.? Rebekah chose bright pink dresses to contrast with the green of the park and together with Jessy the three of us thought these big statement pieces would be great, as they could be moved to the reception afterwards, and the petals were? a dramatic touch.? Being musicians, they hired a string quartet to set the tone.?? After the ceremony the bride and groom lead a procession back to the New Leaf where guests were met with the Rasberry Fizz and the sounds of Nu Guajiro, this awesome Cuban trio that was SO good, I went to see them again last night (and had too much wine, but whatever.)? Reception pics coming soon!

Beeeautiful engagement shoot alert! Courtney of Erin Hearts Court sent us this dreamy summer shoot of Nadia and Charles. We need to plan a romantic picnic, stat.

You can see tons more photos on their blog. There are sooo many good ones, you have to go see. Really.

For those of you considering DIY invites (and other paper projects) for you wedding, we have a resource that may come in handy. Some of you probably already use stock photo/illustration sites for your projects but for those of you who don’t, you totally should! Sites like iStock and Veer have tons of cute flourishes, borders, textures, and fonts that you can purchase relatively inexpensively. Veer is more expensive, but they have awesome fonts and nice photography. iStock requires a little more patience to wade through the crap in search of the gems, but the price is always right.

Here’s just a small sample of pretty details we found in a quick search on iStock:

You have to get creative with your search terms, and don’t forget to only search “illustration,” when you’re looking for design elements like these. We used terms like “ornamental border,” “flourish,” and “vintage label.”

bestfordress.com

Happy hunting.

Hilariously cute photobooth on Kiss the Groom

Lemony French ruffles from The Cherry Blossom Girl. More bridesmaids should dress like this, don’t you think?

Mais oui! That be-flowered veil (made by the bride herself) via Green Wedding Shoes, (photo by Mark Brooke Photographers)

Mmmmmm. Buttermilk. No need to say anything else. (via uppercase)

And finally, frosted sugar cookie topped cupcakes from the always amazing Inchmark. (there were from a few weeks ago, but we somehow forgot to post). Some excellent inspiration for homemade dessert bar?

Ooh, and our friend Audrey from Parcel Post is hosting a giveaway… and the prize is a Russel + Hazel wedding binder. Get over there!

Now go out and have a joyfully sweaty weekend in the sun.

Wow, well, this is literally the FIRST question most of our clients will ask us!! After you get uber excited and have called everyone, some reality does sort of set in and you realize, THIS IS A LOT OF WORK! It’s super easy to get distracted by the fun stuff- shopping for dresses, registries (if you consider 8 hours with a scan gun fun) and selecting flowers and decorations, but the real first thing you should do is sit down with those that you love and figure out exactly how big this wedding is gonna be! Or, more accurately, how big would everybody like it to be! Here’s the deal, the worst case situation is that you and your fiancee have been living in a bubble of love, potentially semi oblivious to the 20 2nd cousins (and their spouses) on your dad’s side who are all expecting to be invited to your wedding. And suddenly your wedding of 50 of your closest friends and family looks more like 175 and the cute little loft you found just doesn’t work. Well, I don’t need to extrapolate the nightmare of your first go-round with that conversation with your parents! The moral of the story is really this- figure out who you sort of HAVE to invite first, and then who you kind of have to invite. After that, well, now it’s the icky stuff! How on earth are you going to pay for this!? Here’s the deal, you HAVE to figure out what you can realistically spend. Between now and the day that you get married, and the realistic contributions of your parents or your fiancee’s parents, what’s realistic. Maybe it’s 30K, Maybe it’s 50K, Maybe it’s 100K or more. But either way, before you start shopping, figure out what stores you should be going into! I love me some Barney’s, but some months (like this month when I had to buy my nephew Band in a Box and a few other cutesy items) I have no business taking my butt in the store. I COULD theoretically, but it would be much smarter and less stressful in the long run to create a fabulous ensemble over at Century 21. I’m not saying you need to decide to have a discount (albeit glorious discount!) wedding, it’s more that you should figure out the comfortable overlap between how many people you need to have and what places might be lucky enough to have you there for your wedding! You may have noticed I haven’t yet mentioned WHEN you want to have your wedding. If you are in the city, there’s a decently good reason for that. If you want to get married in 3 months, well, that is your first decision. It needs to trump everything else. If you are open to a few dates, well, figure out the items above and then start shopping! Ceremony Site, Venue location, Budget and Guest Size are your happy top 4 tasks! Happy Engagement and get cracking!