Wedding Wednesday: Planning & Inspiration

I admit that I was always the girl who dreamed about her wedding. I have been mildly obsessed with weddings for years. I had even been planning the event prior to meeting my husband. Of course, it's amusing to look back now and see what I really did compared to my "dream" wedding. But as a girl who loved weddings, I collected inspiration for years. For today's Wedding Wednesday, I wanted to share with you the resources I used throughout my wedding planning for planning and inspiration.

First up, the magazines!  I loved those 400+ page volumes with their ads galore and an occasional article thrown in. I loved to pull pages out of them and file them away.  Here are the ones I read...

Martha Stewart Weddings (1-year auto-renewal)
What isn't Martha and her team of minions an expert on?  I loved Martha Stewart Weddings even if the ideas were insanely too DIY, fussy, or just plain expensive.  It's a great magazine to get dress ideas from, just don't get too attached if you're on a dress budget of say less than $5,000. I actually got my subscription free from My Coke Rewards.  Finally, my Coke addiction got me something!


Bridal Guide (1-year auto-renewal)
Bridal Guide is a good resource for all brides. I found lots of good inspiration in this magazine and they actually acknowledge that not everybody wants to spend $25,000 on a wedding. I got this subscription free too. I think it was through one of those free magazine websites where you fill out a survey to qualify.


Brides (1-year auto-renewal)
I actually had a subscription to Modern Bride (through My Coke Rewards), but when they stopped publishing Modern Bride, they sent me Brides. Lots of pretty ads and the occasional helpful article. They can get a lot out of budget range, but there are always was to do things cheaper.

My mom wanted to buy me a wedding planner when I got engaged, but I just ended up using the free wedding planner from Russell & Hazel.Check out their wedding planning templates HERE. I just printed the ones that were relevant to my wedding and organized them in a 3-ring binder I bought at an office supply store. Super cheap and actually helpful! More than one vendor marveled at how organized I was with my binder.

My mother did insist on buying me a book, so I picked out this one

The Knot Complete Guide to Weddings in the Real World: The Ultimate Source of Ideas, Advice, and Relief for the Bride and Groom and Those Who Love Them.

I liked it because it had things to look for and questions to ask vendors. I read through it a little and did refer to those questions when planning vendor interviews, but other than that I didn't use it much. I passed the book onto my brother's fiancee when they got engaged.

After checking it out of the library, I really wished I had gotten this book:

The Knot Book of Wedding Lists
I loved having checklists and lists when wedding planning and this book is full of them! It has lists for every aspect of planning and I really found it helpful since I really had no clue what I was doing!  It also had those vendor questions I loved so much from the other book.

To be honest, most of planning and inspiration came from the internet. I had organized folders on my computer full of pictures I had saved from the internet. I had a bookmark folder of wedding websites I read I started using a Google Reader to keep up with the wedding blogs I found. The internet is a bride's best friend. It's how I found most, if not all, of my vendors.

Here's my list of wedding websites that I still read nearly 8 months after my wedding.

• Weddingbee - Can I just gush about my favorite website for a minute? Real brides, in various cities around the world, planing every kind of wedding imaginable and they share it all with us! I found lots of inspiration from the Bees and I still read it. I love their message boards. I am still posting there only now I'm sharing my own wedding. I had dreams of becoming a Weddingbee blogger, but it turns out I was a terrible wedding blogger and I just couldn't do it. Ok, I'm done...on with the list!
• Once Wed
• Style Me Pretty
• Snippet & Ink
• Ritzy Bee Blog
• The Bridal Wishlist
• Project Wedding Blog
• Elizabeth Anne Designs
• Southern Weddings Magazine
• Wedding Chicks

I also read the message boards at The Knot, but I don't post there. Their local boards are actually usually pretty helpful!

Have any wedding resources I missed? Share them in the comments! 

Pinterest Sunday

Time for my weekly Pinterest roundup! Every Sunday, I share with you a few of my favorite finds from the previous week.

First up, something fun for Doctor Who fans.

Source: etsy.com via Jenn on Pinterest

Fans of the 10th Doctor will remember the Doctor's famous Timey Wimey Detector from the episode "Blink." (A.k.a. The scariest/creepiest episode of Doctor Who ever. Seriously, I screamed when I watched it & I refuse to watch it ever again.) Anyway, I found this necklace on Etsy and I just love it. It's a subtle, classy nod to my favorite show.

Next, a recipe I'm dying to try!

Source: traceysculinaryadventures.blogspot.com via Jenn on Pinterest

Soft pretzel bites!  M and I love soft pretzels and these look a bit easier to make than actual pretzels.

Next, it's time for a cute picture to make you smile!

Source: zooborns.com via Jenn on Pinterest

Seriously, how cute is this baby rhino? I found the website Zoo Borns the other day and now I check it everyday to say "awww." Baby animals can make any day better.

And bonus pin this week!

Source: modcloth.com via Jenn on Pinterest

I found this dress this morning and I can't stop looking at it.  I love it! (Although, I'd love to see it in some other colors...maybe a nice pink?) Really considering this one for my brother's wedding now.

My New Favorite Store

I mentioned a few weeks ago that M and I went to Ikea on our vacation to pick up some new stuff for our house.  Our closest Ikea is a 2 1/2 hour drive, just outside Chicago. Obviously, a trip to Ikea is a day trip and requires planning. Sadly, we cannot just decide to go to Ikea on a whim.

On that last trip to Ikea, I also planned to visit some other home stores that were in the area that we do not have in our area. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to visit one of the stores, which made me sad because the stores we did visit were such a bust. Luckily, we had a chance to go back to the area a couple weekends ago and I was able to visit the store I missed.

It is now my favorite home store.

HomeGoods is run by the same company that runs two of my favorite bargain stores, T.J. Maxx & Marshall's. We have 2 T.J. Maxxs and 1 Marshall's in driving distance, but sadly no HomeGoods. Unlike those two stores, HomeGoods only sells items for the home.

At first I thought it would just be a bigger version of the various home items I see at my local T.J. Maxx and Marshall's. A messy, jumbled collection of knick-knacks, kitchen items and weird art. How wrong I was! The store was very neat and organized. They had all kinds of departments. Tableware, cookware, bedding, bath, decor and lots of furniture! They had a whole section of lamps. M and I even found the lamp that we bought at our local T.J. Maxx last fall.

My favorite part? The furniture! They had several Lane recliner chairs that would be perfect for the reading corner I'm trying to make in our living room. Sadly, none of the chairs were the right colors for our house.

So what did I get?

I picked up this green wooden bird for our living room. He was only $6. (Please ignore the crappy table that was in the only good light at the time.)

I picked this up for dining room. I haven't decided yet where to hang it, so no pictures of it on the wall just yet.

I'm now obsessed with trying to get back to HomeGoods. The closest ones are by Chicago or down by Indianapolis. Either way, not a quick trip! Maybe I should start a letter writing campaign to bring one to the area.


 HomeGoods and their parent company have no idea I even exist.  All opinions in this post are my own.

Wedding Wednesday: Ring Shopping Part 2

When we last left off, M & I had discovered that our favorite local jewelry store was closing and have a huge sale...

So Thursday finally came and M and I headed downtown for the jewelry store. We got there before the scheduled opening time of noon and already we could tell there would be a crowd. We actually ended up parking a couple blocks away as the store's parking lot is quite small. I don't know the exact time we walked into the store, but it was already open when we arrived. The crowd must have been bigger than they thought and they opened early.

The store was packed and I had to fight my way through the crowd to get to the bridal cases. June, the saleslady we worked with previously was helping in that area, so we were glad to work with her again. Since the there was such a crowd and few salespeople, we had to wait our turn. While we waited to talk to June, we browsed the cases. I picked out two settings that I wanted to take a closer look at when it was our turn.

Everything in the store was marked with the original price and the new sale price. I confess that I pretty much only looked at the sale price. I was looking for something relatively inexpensive. As a result, I did not know how much my setting originally cost.

June was finally able to help us and she remembered that I wanted a princess cut diamond. Turns out, they only had 2 loose princess cut diamonds left! June immediately told us one of them was flawed and told us we wanted the other one. Um, OK! (I should mention that M is the supervisor of the jewelry department at a department store, so he knows a bit about diamonds.) Anyway, June took out the settings that I wanted to see and placed the loose diamond in them so that we could see how it looked.

They both looked very nice and I did like them both. They were very different from each other and both were unique rings that I had never seen before. I am terrible at making decisions and it was hard for me to chose right then. I felt very pressured to make a choice because June had other people she still had to help. She never rushed me, but the crowd was making me feel closed in and uncomfortable.

June asked M which one he would have picked if he had come in alone and he picked the simpler ring. I decided that I had come in alone, I would have picked the fancier ring. (I have expensive tastes...I had a feeling that was going to become more and more apparent throughout the wedding planning.) So, we decided to go with that ring since it obviously the ring I loved.

June wrote up the order and told us the earliest we might have it was Saturday. And just like that, we had an engagement ring!

A few days later, when M went to pick it up, they gave him the appraisal. He told me the amount and I was shocked. I really did have expensive tastes! But, M paid less than half the appraised value. We lucked out on getting a gorgeous ring and a bargain price. I hoped that was one of many bargains we'd get for our wedding.

Here's a personal photo of the ring.