Jamaican Honeymoon

I cannot say enough great things about Jamaica. The food, music, people and scenery were all amazing. We especially loved our small, all inclusive resort in Negril. The Caves is made up of 12 cottages, some common areas for dining, spa and beautiful private nooks built into the cliffs for lounging in the sun and diving into the clear blue Caribbean.

Wedding - Thank You!

For those that are interested and don't feel like scrolling through, I've included links to the wedding recaps.

Part 1: Getting Ready & First Look
Part 2: The Ceremony
Part 3: Portraits
Part 4: The Reception
Part 5: Jamaican Honeymoon

I wanted also to give a little shout out to some of the fabulous vendors that made our day so wonderful.

Photography by: Nate Henderson Photography

Flowers: A to Zinnias

Reception Venue: Vic's on the River

Ceremony Venue: Davenport House Museum

Dress: Enzoani

I am so thrilled that my favorite wedding blog, Style Me Pretty featured our wedding.

Wedding - Part 4

The Reception Decor:

This is where most of my DIY work happened. I cleaned up the vintage birdcage and added moss and the felt birds that my mom made. The tables had the chevron runners and the yellow table numbers I made and the milk glass vases I collected. The signature drink - a margarita (it was Cinco de Mayo after all) was served in a mason jar with gray striped paper straws. The escort "cards" were a hit. As soon as we entered the reception room, I noticed that many of our guests were wearing the flowers. It was so special.

Wedding - Part 3

Portraits

Wedding - Part 2

The Ceremony

The ceremony was held at the Davenport House Museum Garden. 

It is a beautiful walled garden just off Columbia Square.

Wedding - Part 1

May 5th, 2012

After stressing over the possibility of rain in the forecast, I woke up early on Saturday morning to sunshine and not a cloud in the sky. It was blazing hot but I did not care!

They're Here!

I am so excited that the invitations that we've been slaving over for months have finally arrived! We couldn't find a design that we liked and everything I sort of liked, I wanted to customize so we decided to design our own. We also went through a fantastic printer and saved tons of $$$! Check out Mercurio Brothers if you are looking for affordable digital and letterpress printing.

DIY Table Runners

I've been obsessed with everything chevron for a while now so when I came across this photo - I knew I had to have chevron table runners for our reception.

Cards are for the birds!

I'm not really sure where the idea of using a bird cage to collect cards at a wedding came from. A quick google search did not reveal anything either. I knew that I wanted to use a bird cage at our wedding but I wanted it to be a real cage and not one of the white metal ones you find at Michaels. So I hunted the internet and scoured flea markets until I came across this little wooden gem on Etsy.

It needed some clean up but I knew it would look great on our gift/ cake table.

First I washed the cage. Then I cut a piece of foam to fit in the bottom of the cage and covered it in moss. A gray satin ribbon and a chalkboard sign with felt flowers complete the look.

Make You Feel My Love

Beautiful

I'm crazy for paper crap!

I have lost my damn mind. Invitations.. reply cards.. info cards.. envelopes.. it is all so beautiful and so effing expensive!!!

To check out my complete obsession - visit my pinterest board on the subject

Every time I think I've narrowed things down, I see something new and the search starts all over again. And the worst part is - NO ONE CARES!!! Invitations are kept by the bride and moms.. that's about it. Why am I obsessing over a piece of paper that will get thrown away?

Because I am a designer.. and crazy.. that's why.

The search for the perfect earrings

I don't really wear earrings. My ears are tiny and I find it difficult to find earrings that don't look ridiculous or uncomfortable on me. I wear a pair of diamond studs 99% of the time, so when it came time to hunt for bridal jewelry, I was stumped.

I wanted a vintage inspired (or actually vintage) look to go with my dress. Here is what I came up with.

Clockwise from left: Ann Taylor, Anna Bellagio, Regina B, Christina Garcia, Nadri via QVC, Christina Garcia, Nadri Via QVC

But these were either too expensive, too large or not quite right.

Then I came across these lace inspired beauties! Not too big - and a great complement to my dress!

Nadri from Nordstrom.

I can't wait for my dress to come in so I can try them out!

Pinterest is my new BFF

Have you heard of Pinterest? If not, be prepared for the sudden realization that hours have passed and you have spent all of your time in the black hole known as Pinterest. It is uh-mazing! Not only is it already full of inspirational, cute, beautiful, funny etc.. images but it is a place to store and catalog your own collection of images!

It basically allows you to browse the web and save images (AND LINK BACK TO WHERE YOU FOUND THEM!!!) all in one place. You can catagorize them and create "boards" of your images and then if need be, you can later go back to the source.

I've been using it to create wedding inspiration boards and having so much fun!

Save the Date!

We are essentially having a destination wedding which means we need to send out "Save the Dates" 6-12 months in advance to give guests amble time to plan and book travel arrangements.

I had a really difficult time finding just the right design that would convey the type wedding that we plan on having. We wanted something that felt equally traditional and modern.

And this is what we came up with! We decided to combine elements from designs we liked and create something ourselves.We used Photoshop to create the design and had it printed onto postcards through Vistaprint.

Where to say I do? (and party)

Now that we've narrowed down the city, my fiance and I needed to book the venue and book it fast! Savannah is a big time wedding destination and Spring is prime season. We hopped on a flight to SAV and had a whirlwind weekend of venue, photographer and wedding coordinator shopping.

I design hotels for a living which has resulted in the side effect of being incredibly picky about hotels and I've come to detest hotel ballrooms. Our venue had to have some character!

So with ballrooms eliminated, that left us with only a few but excellent options.
- restaurants with event space
- outdoor venues
- museums and museum houses
- raw event space (think old brick warehouses or old train station turned museum)

I'm going to walk through each one because I would have loved to run across something like this when I was venue shopping. So Savannah brides - this one's for you.


1. Charles Morris Center
This is a raw event space with a catering kitchen. It is stunning, big and in a great downtown location. It wasn't right for us because it was more expensive than our other options, it wasn't available on our date, and it was actually too big for us. This would have been fantastic if we were to have 150+ people and a big band though so if that is more your style, check it out!



2. Ships of the Sea Museum
This is an outdoor venue with a huge garden (mostly a rectangular bricked area perfect for a tent) and the attached museum house. We really loved this place. The garden is beautiful, the museum is very cool (filled with huge shop models and the house itself is an architectural gem) and the staff were very helpful. We were hesitant to do a 100% outdoor wedding because we were concerned about rain and I wasn't thrilled with the tented look or expense. Again, this would be perfect for another couple - just not us.



3. Garibaldi's Restaurant
This space is stunning! It was just a little too fancy for our taste.




Ok.. I'm starting to feel like Goldilocks at this point

4. 10 Downing (the top floor of Churchill's Pub)
This place is fabulous and the banquet manager, Mark is awesome! We love it so hard! Unfortunately it is too small for our wedding reception but we love it so much that we've booked it for the rehearsal dinner.



5. Vic's on the River
WINNER! This place has it all: A fantastic menu, river view, old world charm, wood floors, ceiling beams, exposed brick, huge windows, chivari chairs! We are so excited!



And after falling in love with our reception location, we had one more stop. (where to say "I do"?

6. The Davenport Museum Garden
First of all, it would be silly to talk about getting married outdoors in Savannah and not mention the ridiculous amount of lovely options (21 garden like squares throughout the city) and Forsyth Park. They are all perfect and affordable outdoor wedding locations. We wanted something a little more private and the Davenport Garden fit the bill.



Another fantastic and often blogged about venue is the Harper Fowlkes House. It is an amazing wedding venue but was a little too much for our budget and we'd have the outdoor weather/ tent factor again so we decided that it wasn't for us.



Other Non-Hotel locations to consider
- Roundhouse/ Railroad Museum
- Telfair Museum
- Paula Deen's "Lady & Son's Restaurant"
- Some B&B's have great event space for elopements and intimate weddings

I'm Engaged! - Time to get crafty!

I recently got engaged (yay!) and wanted a creative way to ask my girls to be bridesmaids. We're having the wedding in Savannah, GA where we went to college. Savannah is a beautiful historic city with southern charm so I wanted something to fit the setting.



My mom has a collection of vintage handkerchiefs so I asked her to send me a few.



I ordered a custom rubber stamp from www.rubberstamps.net and used an ink pad to stamp the fabric.



I used Kraft paper cards and a white pen to write my message.



I cut shapes with my Sizzix die cut machine and used some hemp cord to put it all together.



Simple & sweetly Southern!

Wedding Planning 101

I'm a researcher and planner by nature so when I got engaged, I dove in head first to wedding planning land. It can be overwhelming but incredibly fun too! There are so many wonderful tools out there to help DIY planner brides like myself so between that and by BFF Google - we've accomplished so much!

The first steps of wedding planning are figuring out the three main factors
- Budget
- Guestlist
- Location

The thing is, you can't really figure out one of these three without the other. They all directly relate to the budget.

In my case, we had a rough budget and guestlist put together pretty quickly. The location was going to be a major factor in making things work. We live in Los Angeles and after doing some venue shopping online, I quickly realized that there was no way we could afford the kind of wedding we wanted to have in Los Angeles. The next logical step is to look somewhere else.. somewhere less expensive.



The natural choice for us was my most favorite city. Savannah, Georgia. It is where my fiance and I went to the Savannah College of Art and Design (me for a BFA in Interior Designer and him for a MFA in Visual Effects). We didn't actually meet until we had both moved to LA but the city will always be special to us as a reason for meeting each other. Not only is Savannah stunningly beautiful, but it is WAY cheaper than LA! Woohoo!

So we nailed down the Location, Budget and Guest list.. We've poured the foundation; Now lets put up some studs!

Atomique47 Goes Bridal!

The Atomique47 shop is taking a little break while I juggle my full time interior design career with wedding planning. I don't want Atomique47 to go completely dark so I'm going to share my wedding planning process here.