Pink Holidaze

Have I ever shown you all more of our wedding?  I might as well while right after our anniversary.  These are very disorganized and random shots of our day from friends (one of my biggest regrets is not buying the digital copies of our professional photos!), but I thought I'd share!  It honestly was the most incredible day and SO much fun.  Even still, I can't think about it without my heart growing incredibly warm.  :) {Our venue was Point of View in St. Louis, MO ;  Flowers by Bloomin' Buckets ; Linens by BBJ Linens ;  Music by Swing Cat Swing ; Dress by Monique Lhuillier ("Solange") from Saks Fifth Avenue ; Hair flower and veil by Saks Fifth Avenue ; Bridesmaids dresses and going away dress "Courtney" by Coren Moore  from Berrybridge Bridal ; Shoes, earrings, and bracelet by J.Crew ;  Makeup by Looks by Lisa ;  Hair by Jaime Plemon; Cake Topper by Teena Flanner (from my brother and SIL's wedding!);  Cak...

I finally had my wedding dress cleaned and boxed up after all this time.  It's now all sealed in tight with the veil and fascinator.  And I'm happy it's safe, but having it a box makes a me a little nostalgic.  I loved wearing that dress.  And I loved picking it out with my mom and Elaine.  When the lady brought it out, I didn't think much of it at first.  But then I tried it on.  And I felt like a princess.  And in the end, I loved it best because it was simple, but incredibly well made.  The subtle, perfect seaming and the thick silk covered buttons had me sold.  I felt secure in it.  And happy.  Very happy (but that wasn't because of the dress :).  I hope it can bring someone else joy someday.

More paper.  Excited.  I think wedding planning was totally more like shopping for art or, at least that's how it felt.  So, when I was super struggling to figure out what we were going to do for our programs and menus...scouring for something gorgeous that fit in our budget and our time frame...I struck gold.  In the form of Erin at Lucky Luxe.   Somehow I happened to stumble upon her blog and saw that she was starting to offer print at home packages.  Again, Erin does a lot of awesome letterpress otherwise!  It was a perfect solution and her designs are absolutely stunning.  She worked with our very crunched time line (and my late responses...eeks) and came up with something really, really wonderful.  Not only did I love the way it looked, but it felt really special and personal...like it really expressed us.  So much so that Zach has some of those flowers tattooed on him!  One of my favorites on her site are the screen-printed hankie invites!  These are bad pics, but here they ...

Here's another recent post from 100 layer cake...a fun  tour  of  Cheree Berry 's St. Louis Studio. Yay! She's by far my favorite stationer and super, super sweet. Her designs are modern yet whimsical and the color combinations are always amazing.  Cheree did our invitations and it was probably one of my favorite parts of wedding planning (you can see her wedding  here !). We used one of her already existing designs and although I'd die for letterpress, it was quite expensive.  So, we went with a flat printed design and couldn't have been happier.  The quality was amazing and the wee little foil-stamped bee made me oh, so happy.  I would have looooved for her to do everything paperish for the wedding had it fit in budget-wise, but we were really happy with the other items designed by a few different artists.  Here was our invitation! Love paper, love weddings. :)   I just saw a  different rendition  of this which I think is...

Quite excited for Megan's arrival this evening.  Megan is one of the most impressive people I know.  She single-handedly keeps in contact with almost EVERY single person she's met, AND she sends them all birthday cards.  Megan even sent us cards for every single holiday while we were living in Morocco!  I can't tell you how much that meant when we were starved for some small token of America.  Oh, yeah...and she came to visit us.  :)  She's one of those friends who you can pick up with where you left off, and I'm so grateful for that.  Here are some of my favorite moments with Megs (and some favorite life moments). A quick trip to New York our senior year... Eating dinner on the square in Marrakech... One of Megan's goals while visiting was to ride a camel!  We had to bargain a little for a cheaper ride. At the wedding... Yay!

(Photo copyright of CLC Photography) So, I ran into our florist ( Bloomin' Buckets ) right after Christmas while we were in the STL and it totally made my day (well, that and the fact that Zach and I were enjoying a day in St. Louis together :).  She is one of those people from the wedding who we simply "clicked" with all around.  From the time my mom and I entered the door at our first appointment, it was clear we were in good hands.  Her little studio consisted of a wonderful white couch and inviting, bright ribbons hanging everywhere. Here were some of the inspirations we gave her for the wedding.  They started like this...      (Image 1: J. Crew, Image 2: Artfool, Image 3: via StyleMePretty , Images 4, 5 by Livia Cetti of The Green Vase via Martha Stewart Weddings ) Barb  was so easy to work with and to be honest, I don't really remember worrying about how the flowers would turn out because she had such a similar aesthetic.  Eve...