anastasiaehlers

here’s all the excellent online stuff i wish i knew about when i was planning my wedding.

eye candy:

• style me pretty: your one stop shop for gorgeous. great tools like the fashion lookbook and the ability to tag your favorite photos.
• the knotty bride: sure, it’s also lovely, but go here to actually read alison’s blog, not just look at the pictures. she cracks me up.
• rock n roll bride: pink hair, rad weddings.
• pinterest: stop clipping magazine pictures, start pinning photos from blogs. this site makes it so easy to organize everything you love online. no more giant bookmark lists or wasted printer ink. genius. the community is in beta right now and you need to apply for an invite. totally worth it.

practical advice:

• every last detail: one of the few wedding blogs that is not only nice to look at, it also offers tips on how to actually go about getting your dream wedding without going completely nuts.
• grey likes: another with the best of both worlds. in video format, if you happen to not be planning your wedding at work.
• martha: not that i had to even say it.

vendor searches and reviews:

• wedding wire: zillions of reviews submitted by brides. also lets wedding pros connect their “storefronts” so you can see who’s worked with whom.
• the inspired list: hands down the prettiest, cleanest, least sales-pitchiest compilation of wedding pros on the web.

everything:

• bride tide: this is a whole community that hosts links to everything–and i mean everything–wedding related.
• twitter: follow one wedding blogger and the next thing you know you’re following a hundred. sit back, relax, and get linked to beautiful things all day long.

credit

you have a style. you know how you want to spend your money. now it’s time to actually get down to business. here’s a few tips about when and how to book some great vendors.

• want a complete planning package? find your planner first and you hardly have to read the rest of this post. know that planners offer all sorts of services–if you decide that you could use some help later on or even just for the day-of, it’s never too late.
• first up is your venue. visit a bunch and pick something in line with your style so it’s easier (and maybe even cheaper!) to down the line. you’ll probably finalize your date as you book your venue based on their availability.
• find a photographer. forget the buzzwords of the industry–photojournalism, fashion, vintage–and focus on choosing somebody who takes images that speak to you. it’s important to vibe personally with your photographer, since you’ll have more fun and smile prettier if you enjoy hanging out with them during your engagement session.
• buy your dream dress, and at least know some bridesmaid dress basics–color and length.
• once your guest list starts to take a more solid shape, check out invitations. make sure to do save-the-dates if lots of your guests are traveling or you’re planning a destination wedding.
• find an officiant. it’s remarkable how easy it is to forget this part. i mean, what’s the point without an officiant? don’t forget to look into the paperwork for your license–this isn’t something that an officiant can provide for you!
• book your caterer and major rentals like tables and chairs. you may have this part already taken care of if your venue does in-house catering.
• finally we get to the really fun part–flowers! get in touch with me and let’s gush about garden roses and wild jasmine tendrils. i’ll ask about your venue, dress, and what style of tables you have. by this point, you should have a pretty good idea of what your decor needs are so it’ll make the whole process smoother.
• choose a cake. let me know who your baker is so we can get in touch if you want to use fresh flowers to decorate.
• book a DJ, band, quartet, or whatever entertainment and music you need for the night.
• take care of your favors and gifts. favors often get decorated on the DIY–make sure you give yourself plenty of time for tying 150 tedious little baker’s twine bows.
• make your honeymoon arrangements. or make your honey make your honeymoon arrangements. you’re busy tying bows and stamping placecards.

nobody wants to talk about it, but it’s the question everybody is dying to ask. what’s the budget for your wedding? how much is this going to cost me? money is always an object, so naturally, you want yours to stretch as far as you can. here’s a few of my thoughts on the subject.

according to www.costofwedding.com, the average cost of a wedding in eugene is between $14,959 and $24,931. about eight to thirteen percent of that ($1,208 to $2,014) was spent on flowers and decor for the bridal party, ceremony, and reception. click their link to learn more about what all they include in those figures.

there’s a zillion ways to break down a wedding budget. here’s one suggestion: 

• 45% venue and catering
• 15% photography and videography
• 10% flowers and decor
• 10% attire for the bride and groom
• 5% invitations and paper goods
• 5% entertainment
• 10% officiant and miscellaneous expenses

of course, your mileage may vary, especially based on your priorities. if you’re a photography buff, splurge to hire the one you’ve dreamed of working with and scale back something else. not that i’m biased at all, but i happen to believe that if you love pretty things, you should make flowers a priority. 


once you’ve figured out what you want to spend it on, here are a few tips to help you get the most out of your money.

• hire a planner. seriously. they can help you stay on budget and make smart decisions about what you need or don’t need. they’re also great at finding creative ways to work with what you’ve got. better yet, they deal with weddings all the time and are total pros at it, so anybody that alleviates that clueless, head-scratching feeling is a-ok with me.
• be up front with your vendors about how much you have to spend. this saves everybody involved time and it helps the professionals you hire find creative solutions for you. specifically talking flowers, there are so many different combinations and options that there really are flowers for every budget.
• choose your date carefully. dates around holidays will increase hotel and travel expenses for your guests and your honeymoon. valentines and mother’s day will skyrocket the cost of roses and other popular flowers. a weird consideration here in eugene? graduation week at the u of o. (or if you’re a complete flower geek like me, you choose your wedding date based on when locally grown dahlias are available, everything else be damned. true story.)
• don’t buy crap that you don’t need. this sounds simple, but it’s really easy to get inspired by something and snap it up while you’re shopping without having a real use for it. come up with a real design plan first, and tackle projects from there, one at a time.

happy planning! got any budget tips or questions? let me know with a comment! 

most every girl has done at least a little bit of daydreaming about her wedding. chances that you have the entire thing visualized are pretty slim though, especially if that plan formed before the mister came along. there is the gentleman to consider, after all. at least in a token effort.

these days, my favorite weddings are the highly personalized ones. all trends point away from just picking two colors and a silver accent and calling that a design. i love looking at a few pictures couples bring me and feeling like i know about their interests and style. but how does one begin to define their style? here’s an easy way to help organize your wedding ideas.

1. list your whatever wedding dreams you might have, from the broad to the narrow. they don’t have to match, it’s ok to put “black-tie cocktail reception” on the same page as “clothes pin escort cards.”

2. take a look at what brings you joy in life. are you and your mate outdoorsy? do you travel all over? is your house piled high with books? do you spend a lot of time playing katamari? consider any family and cultural traditions that mean a lot to you too–it doesn’t even have to be wedding-related.

3. clip and save. every day we’re inundated with images, ideas, and other media that resonate with us. once we say yes and become engaged, it’s also a lot of fun to seek these things out on the web and in print. keep track of it all by ripping out magazine photos and articles or managing your online finds via your bookmarks or a social catalog like pinterest.

an inspiration board that served as a starting point for last october’s black and white wedding

4. with your fiance, go back over your lists and the little inspiration tidbits you’ve gathered and look for a common theme. edit away things that diverge too much from this theme. ta-da! now your wedding style has a direction!

5. bring your vision to me and i’ll translate it into flowers.

another popular and helpful tool for visualizing your style is the inspiration board. these little collages easily convey a mood and communicate that to the viewers, and can be very powerful in that regard. they’re easy to come across online these days at just about any wedding blog, but my favorites are by annie at marry you me. make your own using the great tool available from style me pretty (make an account and the option to create your own boards will appear), or just browse the hundreds made by other users.

how have you come by your wedding’s mood and style? what did you come up with?

ring by erica courtney via martha stewart weddings

it’s pretty widely accepted that the holidays are engagement season. i’ll always remember my grandmother gossiping about who got a ring for christmas and if you follow anybody wedding-related on twitter you’ve no doubt read tweets of sweeping congratulations to women newly turned into fiancées. according to some statistics, fifteen percent of all engagements take place in december. this is a pretty sizable chunk considering if things were spread out evenly, each month would get around eight percent. on top of that, i’d be willing to bet november engagements take advantage of the fabulous excuse that the holidays are to put off wedding planning till next week.

once you’ve called all your favorite family and best friends and squeeed about the good news, where to take it from there gets a little fuzzy. it’s so easy to get scatterbrained about the fun stuff, the bazillion little details that are gorgeous in their own right but completely unrelated. the prettiest weddings have a consistent design scheme that seems effortlessly carried through each element. but how do you get there? over the next few posts, i’d like to help. keep an eye on the blog for tips on how to focus and streamline your design.

we just passed the winter solstice, a day which rivals christmas here at my house. today, instead of getting dark at 4:15pm, the universe graciously extends our daylight all the way until 4:16 or so. and it only gets better from there.

if i can’t have much sunshine outside, i’ll try to bring a little inside. i have no lack of christmas cheer, mind you, but i’m tired of being inundated with red and white and silver and glitter absolutely everywhere. so when i make something for myself, i invariably end up with something entirely non-seasonal, with unfussy flowers in rainbow sherbet colors.

miniature carnations, snapdragons, and leucadendron with dried scabiosa pods. on top of my trusty field guide for irony. just try finding any of these growing as wildflowers around here.

after a bit of a blog drought, here’s a long drink of fresh water. sent over by the fabulous eugene wedding photographer, anne nunn (definitely hire her if you want amazing shots of your wedding!), here’s the bouquet that i was looking forward to making for months and have been beaming about ever since. seriously, my favorite to date. this little number includes black baccara roses, burgundy dahlias, and dark dark dark calla lilies. accented with two kinds of feathers, eucalyptus seeds, and dusty miller, it’s as close as you can get to naturally black flowers. stay tuned–there’ll be more beautiful photos soon!

so with the torrential downpours in eugene over the weekend, and um, right now, there’s no denying that we are in the thick of fall. better yet, i carved a pumpkin and made spiced cider to celebrate with wonderful friends on saturday. we even went to the pumpkin patch in the rain. i can’t remember the last time i carved a pumpkin.

thanks for the leaves, neighbor

so tempting just to leave them on the counter like this.

mmm…fall

if you’re a creative, resourceful sort, you probably hand make holiday cards, refinish garage sale furniture, and generally delight in any of ten zillion do-it-yourself projects you can dream up or find online. weddings are no stranger to a bit of diy, in fact, i think it’s a lovely way to really let your personality shine through in your event. from favors to pom poms to programs to table arrangements, there’s easily dozens of ways to personalize your event with your own projects. it’s rewarding, fun, and even frugal. so how about flowers?

on the left is my lovely assistant, miss saralee

yup, i did my own wedding flowers. this makes sense. it’s what i do, so i have the answers to those questions. i also thankfully had the foresight to keep the design plan simple. the arrangements were pieces that i could assemble with the help of friends and family with lasting flowers so i wasn’t stressed out in the days leading up to my wedding.