Vintage Inspiration

I know, I know, I've been keeping you all in suspense over which dress I picked. I promise, Part 4 is coming. But for today, I thought I'd share some of the beautiful vintage inspiration boards I've been hoarding in my favorites. If you'll remember, Fiance and I finally decided on a wedding theme almost by accident! Since then, I've been scouring various wedding sites for inspiration!

Here's a collection of my favorite inspiraton boards...and hopefully I'll have my own put together soon!

From snippet and ink, inspired by the pretty little veil in the top right hand corner. Now, who doesn't love the iconic black and white phot in the bottom right hand corner of this board? Must. Have. Wedding Picture. Like. That. I also love the locket, the idea of having a pretty piece of jewelry with something hidden inside. They remind me of the prayer bracelets I used to have as a kid. FMIL has offered to make jewelry for myself and my bridesmaid and floated the idea of lockets. Will have to ruminate more on that...

I loved the wedding dress featured onVintage Glam, by Ashley W. who was applying for a guest blogging spot. So romantic, isn't it? The whole board is a bit rustic for my tastes, but I love it anyway. Sweet, romantic, simple.

Another vintage glam board, this one by Christine. I love love love this board. The key in the bottom right hand corner...I have a thing for old keys. Definitely don't have any way to incorporate it into our wedding, but I love the picture. One of my favorite pics on this board is the second picture in on the bottom. We were already planning on hanging pictures, but I love the old frames and black and white/sepia prints featured here.

This lovely board is from The Bride's Guide. Once again, I was drawn to the old timey pictures. The colors are fantastic, too...I love the beige, champagne and ivory colors. Really gives it the old/vintage feel. And even though I'm not a fan of hats, I love the half-veils that just reach the lips. Mmmm...I definitely want a little birdcage veil for myself. Also, Fiance loves it when girls wear gloves. I told him I'd compromise and wear a pair for our first dance at the reception. I truly love how cohesive this inspiration board is.

And one final board, again from vintage glam, this one by Vanna. I love everything about this board! The music sheet, the hairstyle, the car, candlelight... I also loved the description of this board: "Vanna and her fiance are going for a 1940’s wedding with a vintage Americana twist (think a wedding being held for a WWII soldier and his USO sweetie). They didn’t have a traditional engagement story, and their wedding will follow this trend by throwing a fun fete for their 150 guests." 1930s/1940s are my favorite vintage years.

Interestingly, none of my favorites (i.e. the ones featured above from Vintage Glam) made it onto Vintage Glam's guest blogger list. So sad for me as I was really hoping to see how their weddings turned out as compared with their inspiration boards. But all ten finalists were truly great and I look forward to reading more from them!

Okay, must stop drooling over inspiration boards and get to more pressing matters. Like confirming our ceremony site!

Picking out my wedding dress -- Part 1

Despite the terrible reviews David's Bridal gets in just about every forum I've looked at (including yelp, bridal bargains, google reviews, etc...) I decided to take my chances. DB was the first place I went dress shopping and found my dress almost immediately. I did visit one other bridal shop, but did not find anything within my budget (and, quite honestly, didn't really find anything I even liked there).

About a week after my fiance and I got engaged, one of my best friends and I spent a morning at DB to try on dresses! I called to make an appointment and the girl on the phone told me to print out my favorite styles from their website to try on. Unfortunately, I honesty had no idea what I wanted. No clue at all. I've never been the type of girl who has spent her life dreaming about her wedding, sneaking peeks through wedding magazines or sketching her wedding dress in the margins of her class notes. And there are so many styles and choices out there! What's a girl to do?

source

To make matters worse, I am by no means a fashionista. I buy things that I think look good on me, but I have no idea what "a-line" means! So when friends started throwing words out like "trumpet" or "mermaid" or "bias cut" or "corset" (okay, that one I knew) I panicked a little. "How will I ever find a dress if I don't even know what I'm looking for? And I can't use the right terminology to explain what I like and don't like?" I wondered.

Now, I'm an indecisive sort and it's always hard to pick any one thing whether it's a movie to watch, a book to buy, or what to eat for lunch. So I went through my typical route and started eliminating styles that I didn't like. And I slowly learned some fashion terms.

Styles I vetoed (all images courtesy of DB):

I didn't like the skirt on this dress...also known as a "pick up." I did end up trying on a couple with this style, but only because the consultant kept bringing them over to me and I didn't want to be rude. I think I live for other people's approval...even the bridal consultants who work on commission.

I also didn't want anything too "princess-y." No full ball gown type skirts, no feathers, and no tulle. Now, this decision was made partly because I'm not real into the princess look...it's just not my style. I did once buy a prom dress with a big full skirt, but I was 16...and even then, it wasn't really my style (but I was still figuring all that out). The other reason? I'm super tiny! I'd just get way too lost in a big poofy skirt.

I realized fairly quickly that I didn't want anything that had too much embellishment, at least embellishment that was super obvious. So, nothing that was overly beaded, lace or sequined. No surprises here, since all of my clothes are generally very simple and classic looking.

These three got three big "no!" responses from me. Just too over the top and detailed for my liking. (Especially the first two which featured the aforementioned "pickup" style skirt.) Initially, I also thought that I didn't want a white dress. I just felt that stark white wasn't a good color on me. So I was leaning more towards ivory and champagne. I felt like I wanted some color on the dress, too, and was strongly considering a sash. I wasn't too sure about the train, but was leaning against it. Most wedding dresses have trains, though, so I knew I'd probably have to at least try on dresses with the train.

So, after my initial narrowing down of styles, my summary: No "pick-ups," no tulle, no full ball gowns, little to no embellishment, and something off-white. After eliminating these styles, it was time to start looking into things that I did like. But we'll save that for Part 2!

...And you can totally shorten the dress and turn it into a cocktail dress!

When I first asked one of my dear friends to be a bridesmaid, she happily agreed. She excitedly asked me about a few details of the wedding then asked, "Have you seen the movie 27 Dresses? If you haven't, go watch it and remember that your bridesmaids are supposed to be your friends."

Keeping in mind that I want my bridesmaids to be happy with what they were wearing, especially since they are shelling out their own money to pay for these dresses, I tried to keep them full updated. I also wanted them to have a say in every aspect of the wedding that was going to affect them -- the dresses being one of these major points.

I thought it was going to be difficult because my four bridesmaids are so completely different from each other in skin color, hair color, taste and style. I figured that the dress style wouldn't be an issue because I was going to pick a color and let them pick their own dresses. I was, however, concerned about the color. Originally, I planned to pick one color and fabric and let each bridesmaid pick whatever style they wanted (with my approval, of course!). But then, when I went into David's Bridal to look for wedding dresses, I saw a manequin using two colors for the bridesmaid dress and fell in love. It's called Dress Up Your Dress

Source: David's Bridal

The dress in the shop was a beautiful chocolate color with pink accents and really caught my eye even though I wasn't interested in those colors! I ended up buying some fabric swatches in the colors that I liked, took pictures of them (because the colors online and in the catalog look tons different than in person!) and e-mailed them to my bridesmaid and told them all to pick a color (or two) and I would go with the majority.

Turns out there were 3 votes for pewter and 3 for serene (I have four bridesmaids) which made my decision super easy. Luckily for me, it was my favorite color combination too! While I waited for my bridesmaids to e-mail me back with their choices, I was secretly wishing for either serene with capri or serene with pewter. I didn't want to influence their choices at all so I kept silent until they each got back to me. When my last bridesmaid called to tell me her favorites (she liked serene with capri and serene with champagne then said, "I guess I just really liked serene,") I seriously squealed with delight. "That was my favorite too!" I replied, happily.

I wanted either all four of my bridesmaids to have the same color dress with the other color as the accent or have 2 girls wear serene dresses with pewter accents and 2 do the opposite. I was afraid that 3 and 1 might look a little weird (especially since I'm not having a maid of honor) and again lucked out -- 2 wanted serene as the main color of the dress and 2 wanted pewter.

I absolutely love how you can personalize these dresses by picking either a cuff, sash or peek-a-book skirt (or a combination of these accents)! (The serene color is much closer to a teal and darker in person.) I sincerely hope that my bridesmaids really can wear these again...