My inspiration and plans......

The day is fast approaching. For anyone who wants to have an idea of what the wedding will look like I've created an inspiration page.

The wedding will be held indoors at the Weddings of Wayzata Chapel with the reception to follow at the Wayzata Country Club.

My dress will be similar to the Lela Rose dress in the center of the picture. My dress is made out of silk noil (some people call this raw silk) with alençon lace appliques that my mom cut by hand from a large piece of lace she bought at Ginny's Fine Fabrics & Support Group. The appliques are hand stiched over the shoulders and creating a dramatic applique/vine look down the hip of the dress. Vera Wang has done similar things in her Spring 07 bridal line.

I'm getting my hair done in the spiral chignon, with a birdcage veil if I can figure out how to make the darn thing. I went to the Clinique counter last week to have them show me how to do more dramatic makeup for a wedding so I can practice; I looked like a prostitute. Guess I'll go back to figuring it out on my own. Of course Ben said I don't need make-up, what does he know!

The bridesmaid's dresses are from Anthropologie. They are a little short, but hopefully they'll work out alright. I wanted the girls to be in party dresses so they can dance the night away with me. My mom made new sashes out of aubergine silk charmeuse.

The guys are all wearing dark chocolate brown suits with ivory shirts. Ben had a custom suit made at Top Shelf in Minneapolis. The groomsman purchased dark chocolate brown suits from Men's Wearhouse. Ben will have an ivory tie and the groomsman will wear an aubergine tie we just bought from Macy's yesterday.

We're making our own bouquets and boutonnieres and altar floral arrangements... we'll see how that all goes. My grandma has a family friend, Bonnie, who can purchase flowers for wholesale prices from Koehler and Dramm. We went there to scope things out a couple weeks ago, HOLY MOLY that place is awesome. It's like discount Pike's Place on uppers.

Most of my floral inspiration came from Waterlily Pond;I plan on attempting to recreate this design- (http://waterlilypond.com/images/bouquets/bq9.jpg) I'm not sure if I want to mess around with using real succulents at the wedding because I have no idea how they'd hold up in a bouquet, so I've ordered some fake succulent stems from Barnard Ltd.

Ben and I spent hours ripping birch bark off fallen trees at my grandma's house this summer. We rolled and folded them into cones and we're going to fill them with greens,grasses and flowers and hang them with aubergine grosgrain ribbon from the ends of the pews. I love fiddle head fern, stellata pods, pampas grass and purple fountain grass.

As for the table arrangements, we're putting succulents in small urns and making candle holders out of birch logs. There is a gold/wheat colored square on top of the ivory table clothes, with either 3 or 5 candles perched on top of the birch logs cut in heights between 3 and 6 inches.

Rather than numbering the tables we've lettered the tables. I bought some wood letters at Michael's and painted them dark purple. We'll probably end up just leaning the letters against the birch logs. The place cards are made out of buckeyes that I picked from the tree outside my office. We cut a slit in them and put the place card in the slit. They stand up really well and I'll probably end up taking the buckeyes home after the wedding to put them in a glass hurricane or vase.

It sounds super earthy, but hopefully we can pull it all together. I'm referring to the wedding as "handcrafted." I'm not worried, I just don't want it to look homemade in the sense of "arts and crafts time!



Websites:
Weddings of Wayzata - http://www.weddingsofwayzata.com/wow/
Wayzata Country Club - www.wayzatacc.com
Lela Rose - http://www.lelarose.com/
Ginny's Fine Fabrics & Support Group - http://www.ginnysfinefabrics.com
Barnard Ltd. - http://www.barnardltd.com
Waterlily Pond - http://waterlilypond.com/bouquets.html
Koehler & Dramm - http://www.koehlerdramm.com
Top Shelf - http://www.topshelfinc.com
Anthropologie - http://www.anthropologie.com
Michael's - http://www.michaels.com