anoisette

My friend Tracey sent me a whole pile of inspiration boards from snippet & ink. She’s all about the fantastic ideas and resources! Anyway, I just wanted to share a couple of my favourites:

Love this navy and lavender combination. I also really like the idea of the navy suit with the lily of the valley boutoniere! Navy isn’t a color I had considered for a suit…

Apple green and black, a nice crisp and modern combination. What can I say, I like green… A lot!

So the invitation road, like the dress road, has been a long and twisty one. When I was in Calgary I went to a very lovely shop called Box Paper Scissors. The person there was really nice and helpful and they had absolutely gorgeous designs and ideas for wedding invites of the pocket fold variety. The only problem was if one wanted to DIY, the materials were standard sized card that one would have to cut to size themselves. I balked a bit at the work involved in that, having gotten a taste of it from doing our Save The Dates. However I still wanted to DIY as much as possible because after getting a quote from Zing Paperie here in Coal Harbour for a lovely but very simple invitation that was a lot over my tiny little budget, I figured DIY is all I could afford.

I got tired of trying to talk myself into going to Bridal Row all the way in New Westminster again to go to Paper Poet again, because the first time I was there they didn’t have any information I could take home (or on their site) and mull over, figure out what I wanted based on what sizes and colors they offer, how much it would cost, etc. And the second time I tried to go there, they were closed. Enter Cards & Pockets, which I found out about through Style Me Pretty, where another Canadian bride used them for her super gorgeous invites that she designed herself. After reading a little bit more about them on the Weddingbee boards, and also seriously loving that their papers and mats come cut to the right size, I decided to order a sample kit and some extra color swatches. Well it only took about a week for it all to arrive and so today was work on the invitations day.

I bought the corner punch a while back, and wasn’t sure how I felt about it anymore but the boy decided he wants punched corners, so that’s that. I just happened to have the ribbon from a different project so I played around with it a bit, but I’ll probably go with a blue or a green for the ribbon color. I still have to come up with something for the RSVP cards, but I’m pretty happy with my progress so far!

I just found out about these awesome wall decals by a local Vancouver outfit called Surface Collective. I just love wall decals; they’re really quite easy to apply and they can make such a dramatic difference to a space. And the best part for us renters is that they also come off fairly easily. You can check these guys out at their studio in Gastown, or retailer near you. Anyway, I am now off to Granville Island to enjoy the sun and hopefully find some cherry blossoms.

I’m thinking about painting our apartment so I’ve been looking at paint chips. Then it occurred to me that those nice little cards they put together with paint colors that look good together are perfect inspiration for a wedding palette. So is the Color Studio at Brides.com.  Now I’m not sure though if I really ought to be thinking about painting our apartment with our wedding colors? Could be a bit much! Sometimes I think I want to wallpaper it with something that would look totally rad in photos, like this Lucinda Photography portrait. I love how everything works so well in this photo, from the green couch to the lily of the valley boutonnière and of course the awesome wallpaper.

I really enjoyed the DIY Wedding Favors series over at Style Me Pretty. A lot of those ideas could also be used for other occasions or even little Christmas presents. Some of my favourites are the Custom Seed Packs, Spice Jar Favors, and Tea Tins. Currently I’m thinking our favors will be based on the Spice Jar Favors, just because I love how they pull double duty as place ard holders.

I was just playing around with the fantastic pattern maker at bgpatterns.com and was pretty impressed at how easy it is to make nice patterns I’d actually want to use! It would be the perfect place to make a quick background for say your wedding website. If only they let you download the patterns in a higher resolution so you could use them on your invites as well… Anyway, the site is super easy to use and you can pick from a very nice selection of patterns, pick the color, the size, the texture, and a whole lot of other stuff that makes it so easy to end up with something you like! Even if you don’t have an immediate need to make a pattern, it’s a lot of fun to play with.

I thought it was a neat coincidence that two of the blogs I follow posted about the same designer in the same week. Vancouver based Henderson Dry Goods creates these gorgeous wood jewelry pieces and “an interesting assortment” of other things. See more photos at Nokomis (hi Jessica!) and poppytalk.

Last week while on my way to meet my friend to go dress shopping, looking out the bus window The Wall Flower Modern Diner caught my eye. It looked like a good brunch spot, so I filed a mental note to check it out some time. Anyway, just today I came across a few reviews on it from vancouverisawesome.com and vancouverslop.com. Looks kind of hit or miss, sadly.

One of the things I hate about flying is how you have to get to the airport so far in advance of when you are actually leaving that you always end up sitting around waiting. Well on my recent trip to Calgary, I actually didn’t mind waiting at YVR so much because they now have free wifi that I was able to use on my iPhone, and also I found a really sweet spot to wait around in the international terminal. There’s a quiet little upstairs part to the food court with plenty of empty tables and natural light. The perfect place to sit back and catch up on your rss subscriptions before you have to mosey on over to your gate.

Ok, it was totally a mistake to put off dress shopping no matter how much I was dreading it. I’m now starting to feel a wee bit stressed about actually finding one. The first thing bridal store staff tell me when I walk into the store is that since the wedding is in August we are Out Of Time and my only option is to buy a dress off the rack and have it altered. It is too late to order one. Wedding dresses take 6 months to make! Or something.

Anyway, here are a couple more I tried on (and liked):

This Venus dress is pretty cute, my friend found it and told me to try it on. It’s simple and I think it would suit our garden wedding nicely. I wish it had a little bit of a train though, just a little bit, because I kind want one. It’s the only time in my life I will ever be able to wear a dress with one!

And this one is Brookelyn by Maggie Sottero.

I’m really drawn to dresses with those ribbons at the hem it seems, and this was no exception. I tried it on in white/white and it was pretty nice. The skirt is really really really full though, and it has a big gorgeous train. That to me made it seem a bit over the top for a small garden wedding. It’s a gorgeous dress, but too formal for me.

I’m going to Calgary for a few days and I think I will do some power-dress-shopping there. Crossing my fingers that I will find something!