Happy Saturday, everyone! How has it already been almost 8 months since I got engaged?! Time flies! I want to begin this post by saying, PHEW, wedding planning is exciting, but also seriously exhausting! The moment we got engaged I was already dreaming of our color palette and all the beautiful table settings. Little did I know how much was ahead of us. I do want to point out for those of you who have no idea what you want and have the budget to spend, hire a wedding planner first thing! As many of you know, I LOVE every detail of the design and planning process so we opted for “day of coordination” which actually starts the month before the wedding.
What’s the difference between full wedding planning and day of coordination?
First off, if you’re having any kind of large wedding that includes several vendors, SOME type of wedding planning is essential. Unless you have a friend or family member who is a mastermind at keeping everything organized and knowing how to talk to vendors on the day of the wedding, you don’t want to end up like bridezilla!
Both options are coordinated through a professional wedding planner. When you don’t know where to begin and don’t want to do much thinking through the whole wedding process, definitely go for the full wedding planning package. The planner will make it as easy as possible for you. They help create your timeline, decide on a theme, find vendors like catering, pastry shop, band or musician and a photographer. They make sure everyone is where they are suppose to be when they are suppose to be there!
Our first big decision was finding a venue! If you follow me on Instagram then you’ll know we are getting married in Virginia. It was quite a challenge picking out our venue without touring it first. Thankfully, my mom was able to go to a few and give us her opinions.
You pretty much need to decide on a venue as soon as you get engaged because they book up almost a year in advance. We actually put a deposit down on a venue and then a few weeks later we found the most STUNNING place ever! EEP! 6 months later and we finally got our deposit back from the first one! Phew 🙂
Once our venue was booked, we had to start looking for our vendors. The process was a bit tedious, mostly because I’m so picky! Thankfully I was because now we have a dream team! By mid February, 7 months after we got engaged, we have everyone booked. Finding our photographer was by far the hardest one for me. I can’t tell you how many hours and frustrations later it took for me to decide! Matt left that one completely up to me 🙂
Early on, I discovered Kir Tuben Photography, whose work I immediately fell in love with. We initially thought she would be out of our budget, but after taking some time to prioritize, we realized that photos of our special day was by far the most important thing to us. We cut costs in other areas in order to make it work! Always go with your gut feeling. I went through literally HUNDREDS of galleries and photographers and nobody compared to her style and way of capturing love. We cannot wait to work with her!
Now that all of the vendors are booked I’ve been spending my time curating Pinterest boards so we can keep our vision and color palette consistent. It has been my favorite part of the whole process! My vision is this: A fairytale, romantic, ethereal venue that takes places both indoors and outdoors. The color palette is pinks, peaches, whites and light green eucalyptus. Drooool!
Here are some of my inspiration photos:
PINK GLASSES | CANDLESTICKS | CANDLESTICK HOLDERS
This is the exact inspiration I showed our florist! I have so much love for this entire table setting. All the details will have rose gold, pink and white.
For my bridesmaids I’m planning on getting these exact robes from Plum Pretty Sugar. They’re gorgeous!
I’m visualizing having small bunches of flowers with pink ribbons hanging from the first and last row of chairs. We likely won’t need an arch since we’re getting married facing a gorgeous Estate!
WEDDING SHOES | WEDDING RING BOX
Isn’t this details photo swoon worthy?! I’ve been obsessed with it ever since one of my favorite bloggers, Teresa Caruso shared her wedding photos. I even have my engraved Mrs Box already and it is sooo pretty.
You can get these bridesmaids dresses here!
I’ve spent many hours on Pinterest trying to find bridesmaids dress ideas and everything about this is drop dead gorgeous. I even told our florist that I would love for our bouquets to look exactly like this!
Rose gold silverware, pink plates and blush flowers? I’ll take them all, thank you!
Matt and I decided that we wanted a classic white buttercream cake that we can add a few flowers like this too. We might even have just two tiers and then provide other desserts. Oh, we did the tasting already and it is delectable.
I definitely want to have a sign or hanging scroll with wording like this. This blush gauze wrap is so pretty paired with this sign.
Donut Sign | Gold Marble Tiered Trays | Cake Cutlery | Gold Glass Boxes
Saving one of the best for last! If I could imagine my dream dessert table, this would definitely be it! I found a budget friendly DIY plain backdrop that I plan on painting and having sticks glued in for the donuts! Yum! What do you guys think? There are so many photos I could share, but I’m going to leave the link for my Pinterest wedding board HERE.
Overall we feel really good about how far we’ve come in the planning process. There are still some big decisions left to make like the DRESS, bridesmaids dresses, finding a hair & makeup artist, rentals, linens and other smaller details. It’s easy to get lost in all of it and wind up overwhelmed, but we always remember to take a deep breath and remember our love for each other and what an incredible day it will be, even if not every decor detail is “perfect”.
Please drop your comments and advice below, I’d love to hear experiences from your wedding day! xo
You can check out my wedding video and posts Part I , Part II and Part III for a full summary of our special day!
