2010

Bring on the new year! This site is getting a healthy dose of new ideas, a new layout and an all around facelift. Look for our new launch in 2010!

Jim & Pam

What did you think of the wedding on the office?

They have a site here.

Get Married’s Top 10 for 2010

1. Back to Basics
Events will focus on the attention to the details, the foundation of the event, not the drama or grandeur of the evening. Consider spending more on the lasting memories than the showmanship of the event. Spend a bit more than the average budget allotment on photography mediums rather than abundant floral. Or consider a bit of a longer stay on your honeymoon and a little less of a party at the reception and you’ll be grateful for your decision in the end.

2. Home Weddings Hit Home
Intimate and personal affairs in the backyard are bigger than ever. Going home incorporates the continued trend of personalizing the wedding day experience.
Smaller size guest lists, more intimate settings, grass roots weddings, elegant and detail driven, but in no way small on what counts.

3. Buttercream on the Big Day
Fondant is falling behind, buttercream corners the market.
Tools and techniques now allow for buttercream to look as smooth as fondant when applied by a skilled artist. You have the option of better flavor, more natural ingredients, and less costly cakes that no longer suffer or lack in design.

4. Favor Comeback
Personalized appreciation is back. The effect that an event has on the guests is more noticeable than ever before so the importance of a favor is felt more than ever. Be sure to appreciate to those in attendance – it’s not just an afterthought, omission, or generic item. Think local artisans, locally grown products, personal mementos, and on-the-spot print outs.

5. Nearby Destinations
Nearby destination weddings are taking flight over the exotic and far off locales. The ever popular destination wedding will remain but guests will get out of town by car (within driving distance) so couples can create a weekend, guests get an escape, but no one breaks the bank. Enjoying the US destination locations, spend within your own local economies, create a greener effect, experience undiscovered backyards, and stay sensible about cost while you’re at away.

6. Colors
Monochromatic palettes – this doesn’t mean muted colors, just single color bunches. Vibrant Colors: Orange, green, yellow, and pink. Metal Colors: Gold, silver, copper, and pewter. And black is definitely the new black. Break the rules and show off the darker side of your event.

7. Greener Conscience
Immerging will be the newest phase of eco-conscience: A better understanding of the gray shades of green. You will see more emphasis on the smaller changes that are less recognizable to the guest (i.e. cleaning green, composting, solar and LED lighting, no more oasis in floral arrangements, less catering waste). It’s no longer about making the event appear “organic” – it’s about understanding how things are made, disposed of, and where/when events take place. Learning to make better choices that are unseen by the guest are just as important as those tree-free invitations everyone is talking about.

8. Video Integration into Events
We’ve all seen the photo montages of your childhoods during dinner but the next phase in video at your event comes in several different forms. Video DJ’s are immerging, allowing your dance party to dance to the visuals of the music videos; ceremonies are being broadcast on screens for better viewing from the back; and time lapse photography is being shot and integrated into video for current day montages of you and your fiancé. Love to party? Set up crane camera and project the event as it unfolds on screens around the dance floor (budget permitting of course).

9. HD Video
Videographers have already gone hi-def. But next year all or most will make such a transition, making HD and even Blu Ray the norm in wedding videography. Upgrade now and appreciate the quality later. This also means smaller cameras on site and less intrusion into your event, all around a better (though more costly) option on the big day.

10. Visual Combinations
Professional grade still photo cameras like the Canon 5D Mark II DSLR are being released with HD video capabilities included. It is recommended to have both a videographer and a photographer at your wedding to capture every moment of the big day. Tech-savvy brides looking for a new experience, may like to experiment with a visual professional (videographer or photographer) who has this technology. In the future, you will begin to see an emergence of two-in-one companies. Companies like Engaging Films and Video Keepsakes of Beverly Hills in Los Angeles will shoot video and take stills, but use only one piece of technology.

Original article and picture from getmarried.com

My wedding update

My wedding is drawing closer and closer! I feel like every time I turn around another month has gone by.

Wedding progress has been slow because of life. Things are going by really fast here. We got a house, have started repainting and taking out floors and are partially moved in. In addition to that, my shop has been doing well and some of my pieces are going to be in a gallery for the next three months. I am very pleased and it is great for my work but makes for very slow wedding progress.

One thing I have done is get dancing shoes for the wedding. A nice pair of flats to go with my second dress. I have been keeping them in their box, because they are the only wedding thing I have at the house now and I don’t want to get them ruined and have to replace them.

That’s all the news for now. I will keep updating about the wedding progress once we get around to making some more.

Learn to dance

Youtube is great, you can find loads of wedding inspiration on there. If you need to learn to dance, you can use youtube to find some videos on the basic steps.

More second dresses

Priscilla of Boston has a whole line of reception dresses now. They have some really gorgeous dresses – no matter what category they are in. It’s nice to see a more relaxed dress for the reception.

Click here for more info. Dress picture from Priscilla of Boston

Officiants

I had a hard time picking officiants for the wedding. Not because there weren’t many – I had the opposite problem. There were so many people that I could choose and I wanted to find someone that I liked and that respected my thoughts and inputs for the wedding.

One of the guides I used when picking an officiant for the wedding was to ask these questions from Real Simple Weddings. I hope this helps you! One of the best things to remember is that this is the person that is marrying you – you have to like them and be able to talk with them, especially if they are not your regular clergy or part of your worship venue. Personality was really the deciding factor for me with a lot of vendors for the wedding – from the officiant right down to the venue.

Wedding Reading – The Notebook

This passage from The Notebook would make a great wedding reading!

Poets often describe love as an emotion that we can’t control, one that overwhelms logic and common sense. That’s what it’s like for me. I didn’t plan on falling in love with you, and I doubt that you planned on falling in love with me. But once we met, it was clear that neither of us could control what was happening to us. We fell in love, despite our differences, and once we did, something rare and beautiful was created. For me love like that has happened only once, and that’s why every minute we spent together has been seared in my memory. I’ll never forget a single moment of it.

A bloggy giveaway

Do you know some newlyweds (or perhaps you are one yourself) that would love a bit of new artwork?  Head on over to my blog Erin’s Awesome Blog to enter my giveaway for an 8×10 size print from my etsy shop Rains on the Plain.  You can hear all about it over there.

Have a good weekend!

Invitations

One of the first things people see regarding your wedding is your invitation. The great part is that beautiful invitations don’t have to break the bank and you can be a bit creative, there are invitations for nearly every theme a wedding could have.

Weddings now come with a lot of information, so the best way to supplement an invitation is to have a website and send printed information (separately from the invitation) to the less web-savvy wedding guests.

Wedding sites like The Knot, Elegala and Project Wedding often have galleries where you can view many types of invitations at once and then go to the maker’s website for more information. I think that works well for someone that is just starting to narrow down their invitation options, you will tend to find a maker that you like first rather than a particular card.

As with everything in the wedding, have fun picking out invitations and remember to err on the side of more, because it’s less costly to print more than it is to reprint!

Invitation image taken from Elegala