Guess who is tying the knot!

My soon to be Brother-in-Law Eric and finance Caitlin are getting married in Carmel in January. Not to mention my BFF/Maid of Honor/soon to be Sister-in-Law getting married in Feb! Following them are a few of my close friends! Yep-2010 is going ot be an exciting year.

This brings me to my next point, WHERE should I have my wedding??? Carmel, Monterey, Napa, Los Gatos and Saratoga are definitely on my list of places to check out! Here are some spots in Carmel that I found and really loved!

Anyone have any recommendations in Northern California??

I'm very excited because Abby from Style Me Pretty said she would give me her recommendations for incredible wedding venues!! YAY! So next week I will show some of the besties!

PS: Pretty soon I will have my wedding blog all set up so I can blog up a storm about my fantastic and ridiculous wedding plans! Until then, I hope you guys enjoy all this talk about weddings!

Very exciting news!

We are engaged!

A Thursday evening after putting up our Christmas Tree and decorations, while on his lap and he pulled out the little white box and said the words, "Will you marry me?". My favorite part? Seeing him right before with a smile on his face very excited for what he was about to do! He had the cutest face ever!

He did an amazing job of picking something that was exactly what I wanted, all by himself! I will eventually post better pictures, but I can't even stand how ugly my hands are in pictures!

So, save the date, March 2011. Of course I have already set up my blog to post about the many adventures of planning our wedding! I can't wait to get going on that! Maybe I will be a Wedding Chicks or Wedding Bee bride!!!!! Ooooooh, the possibilities!

With our birthdays on Monday and Wednesday, Winter on the Runway so close, and some great friends of ours also tying the knot, this is a very exciting time in our lives! And just think, we get to spend many other exciting times together for the rest of our lives. :)

Wedding Wednesday - It's all about the Cake

As some of you may or may not know, I have an obsession for weddings. A wedding blog and various ideas are in the works to satisfy my cravings for gorgeous weddings and showcasing them! With Winter on the Runway coming up so quickly, my little side project has taken a bit of a backseat. However, Wedding Wednesday is still in full effect!

So, let me show you one of my favorite parts about a wedding (like I could pick just ONE favorite).

Cake!

Studio Cake, located in Menlo Park, CA is a friend and future vendor of my wedding blog extravaganza. Right now, though, she is simply (and always will be) an amazing artist and cake creator. We both share an extreme love for square cakes, so I found it fitting to display a few here!

And I just love the creativity of her work. Look how pretty it is!

Wedding Wednesday

I first saw these amazing bouquets on Wedding Chicks. I went right to the website and ended up e-mailing the company. The nicest girl Fantasy Floral Designs responded to my price inquiries.

My thought process: Have each of the bridesmaids hold one of these and I will hold a real bouquet. I should have waited until I received the pricing info before I went ahead and added this new idea to the plans.

Pieces like the ones above run for about $1,000. Well, not that I could justify spending that much on my bouquet, there was absolutely no way I could justify spending that on the bridesmaids! They do have another option which I think is a rather personal idea and sounds pretty awesome actually. You can send over a collection of your own brooches or vintage brooches. I know that my grandma had about a million brooches so using those would add a personal touch to the bouquet. The price for that is $300.

Inspiration Board :)

Credits: Sara Remington (2), Love Life Images (2), Dollface Studio, Millie Holloman Photography, Zoeica Images.com, A Bryan Photography, Suthi Picotte

Credits: Suthi Picotte, A Bryan Photography (2), A Bryan Photography, Amanda Kraft Photography, Suthi Picotte, Meg Baisden Photography, Corbin Gurkin, Tanja Lippert

This is a bit of what I have been working on over at Style Circle. The top one is my personal collection of pictures I would love to create off of for my wedding, and the bottom two are just awesome photos I found!

If you haven't noticed, all the boards have sort of the same feel, and more or less, the same color scheme. I guess I am not good at going outside my box!

Ahh....Cakes

Have I strayed Wedding Wednesday away from "aspiring designers" enough for all of you? I guess I just get carried away with it all the beautiful wedding stuff. Hopefully you all enjoy it as well, because this is just so fun for me.

My search for cakes all started when I kept seeing cupcake wedding cakes. I wondered if people actually did that, and if this new trend was actually a good idea. I mean I just love cupcakes, but for a wedding cake? I just don't know about that.

I started off by looking at traditional wedding cakes. I love these ones, very classic!


My two fave circle cakes are below!


As much as I love the above cakes, I have always been one for a square wedding cake. I think they look incredibly chic.

(I love this one beyond belief!)

The next two I found are not traditional "square".

AND THEN - I came across square cupcakes! And honestly, who does square cupcakes like ever? So, this is definitely an incredible idea, and look at how amazing those square ones look!


While we are on the topic of square cupcakes, I found these which are just darling. I don't know about "wedding cake" material, but maybe a bridal shower or something. Still, these ones are great too.Ok, so I started looking out for cupcakes and found some equally cute ones. I love that each would have a little cake topper, and you can always put a mini cake for cutting, etc.



The good thing about cupcakes is that you can get a bunch of different flavors, colors, etc. which means you have a little bit more freedom to create exactly what you want.

So what do you think?
Cupcakes or traditional cake?

Wedding Wednesday

Today, I dream about dresses. Yep - Dresses! Get ready because I have some beauties for you.

Dress Couture

A while ago I decided I was going design my own wedding gown. I had the perfect concept of what it would look like, and what I would look like. Over the years that image has stayed with me, though I have made some minor changes to the overall look. Oh, and I always told myself that the gown I designed would be created by Melissa Sweet. I love love love her gowns!

Beautiful huh?

And I love the idea of a low back and buttons all the way down the back like in the picture above. (This is the best pic I could find, but isn't my idea the dress)

Bridal Couture has been changing and I am starting to find some "out-of-the-box" items that I just love! And in one fell swoop, Vera Wang stole my heart and changed my entire idea of wedding dresses!

(via Bride Chic)

I am in LOVE! I know it is different, but it is so beautiful and so unique actually.

Bridesmaid Couture

As far as bridesmaids, I have some different ideas. BLUSHLESS is one of them. These two dresses below would be great for bridesmaids, I especially like the one with the silver top. It would even match my Vera Wang in my pretend wedding!

The other idea I like is something I found in an Oscar de la Renta fashion show from maybe 3 seasons ago; bridesmaid dresses with a collar. This is the best pic I could find of this, but you can get the idea. Maybe a bridesmaid dress would be something similar to the picture below, only short?

Here is one last idea. Mixing different colors together. So chic.

Check out BLUSHLESS on aspiringcouture.com

Guest Blogging

Today I posted about weddings over on the Invited blog!

Invited is a event design and production company based out of Washington DC.

Check out my guest post today over on the Invited blog and let me know what you think, OK? I posted about wedding details and how they make your wedding unique.

Wedding Wednesday - Inspiration!

For Wedding Wednesday this week, I have put together some of my all time fave wedding ideas! A lot of these come from Etsy, or independent designers, so I thought it would be a great thing to share! The top one is more of ideas I am putting together for my (non-existent) wedding. The second are strictly Etsy finds.

And if someone wants to recommend a better inspiration board creator, please go right ahead! I am not all too happy with these, and another that I made won't save to the desktop.


Enjoy!

Links:

Sign
Feathered hair piece
Name tags
Earrings
Lights
Boutinerre
Invite
"I do" place holder

PS-Sorry about being MIA. I took a long weekend, and it has taken me a few days to get back into the groove!

Wedding Wednesday - THE dress

I am so excited for today's Wedding Wednesday because I have an awesome guest blogger. Her wedding blog has quickly become one of my favorites! I think her and I have such similar style, so if you like my blog, I am sure you will like hers as well! You have to go check out Wedding Fresh!

She brings up a very interesting point on this post, that the dress is actually a focal point of the wedding. I don't know how many brides actually think that way, but it seems like the dress is one of the last things you get! Read on and see what I'm talking about.

Wedding Wednesday with Weddings Fresh

Hi! My name is Dani and I am from Weddings Fresh. When Allison asked me to come and talk weddings over here on Aspiring Couture I was so excited to share some chic wedding style alongside wedding fashion! I can't ever get enough of wedding gowns; in fact I have been tempted on numerous occasions to buy a couple of them at sample sales even though I am already married! Married girls, you hear me? :) It's dangerous to look at these things all day long, but I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do!

As a wedding professional I strongly believe that two elements of a wedding must, absolutely, without a question fit together: a bride's wedding gown and her wedding site. Once she has nailed these two pieces down, there is a much easier transition into choosing the decor and creating wedding ambiance. The bride needs to choose these as a foundation for her own personal style--it is so important to know your style or your wedding can look disheveled and you may even as well! So today I have brought with me examples of these two elements coming together. I hope you enjoy, and thank you, thank you Allison for having me!!

#1-- zinke design blog, badgley mischka

#2--southern weddings, franc sarabia

#3--southern weddings, monique lhuillier

#4--style me pretty, christos

#5--style me pretty, vera wang

#6--project wedding, kenneth pool

#7--project wedding, monique lhuillier

#8--country living, oscar de la renta

#9--martha stewart,manuel mota

#10--coco & kelly, jorge terra


Thanks so much to Dani from Weddings Fresh for this inspirational post!