I Bought Some S**t from the Thrift Shop

Hello everyone! Mr. C and I have been on spring break this week and have used this time to get a couple of important wedding tasks crossed off the to-do list. Mr. C has ordered his wedding band, I signed a contract for wedding hair and makeup (my trial is next month, exciting!), and we scoured the local thrift stores and antique markets for a few things to add to our wedding decor.

Have you heard the song "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore? (Warning, has some bad words!) Yeah, that's pretty much us but instead of buying clothes (and believe me, I have found some bargains) -- we are buying milk glass, silver platters, table mirrors, and any other bric-a-brac we think fits with our wedding theme. "I'ma take your grandma's glass, I'ma take your grandma's glass, no for real -- ask your grandma -- can I have her milk glass?"

I found these cute domed glass dishes for a steal at a thrift store. Now imagine them on a dessert table and stacked with colorful macarons! I think they are so pretty and dainty and they fit the theme of our wedding perfectly. 

I bought these cute little figures for $3 and I thought they would make the cutest cake topper! 

This little trinket box is going to hold our wedding rings! I thought it would make a really nice keepsake after the wedding. The inside is lined with light blue satin but it  needs to be cleaned up a bit before the big day.

Next up, my massive collection of silver platters and vanity tabletop mirrors. This picture doesn't even show my entire collection! My idea is to have all of the milk glass and votive candles arranged on and around these mirrors and trays on each table. 

Here's some of my milk glass with the votive candles to give an idea of our table centerpieces. We now have around 110+ pieces of milk glass!

If you remember, here was my inspiration for centerpieces: 

1) Image via: StyleMePretty / Photography by: Chenin Boutwell

2) Image via: 100LayerCake / Photography by: Erin Hearts Court

3) Image via: Ruffled / Photography by: Jeremy & Alicia Brown

I found these wire hanging wall baskets at Hobby Lobby for $5 each. I bought 12 of them and I plan to stuff them with moss and use them as aisle decor! My only complaint was the big gaps in the woven vines, but that is why we are going to use moss to fill in the gaps and make it look fuller. 

Here is my aisle decor inspiration:

Image via: Wedding Chicks / Photography by: Aya Photography / Floral Design by: Ella Bella Floral & Event Planning

And that's about it! I can't wait to sell all this stuff off after the wedding though. It's taking up some serious space in our two bedroom apartment.

Crafting the Save-the-Date

When we first set out on our wedding planning journey I was adamant about creating all of the paper goods and stationary myself. This was inspired partly by the need to save money and partly by my stubborn desire to have total control over the creative process. Our first challenge arrived in the form of the all-important save-the-date cards. Mr. C and I knew we wanted something unique and personalized, but let's be honest, that usually costs a pretty penny.

Never one to back down from a challenge, I took this task into my own (in)capable hands. Never mind the fact that I am not a graphic designer. Or the fact that, at the time, I had no idea how to use Adobe Illustrator. I've been using some iteration of Adobe Photoshop since high school. But Illustrator? It's a different beast entirely. I find Photoshop intuitive but Illustrator takes training, practice, and patience. I was lucky to have the help of a friend who happens to work as a graphic designer. Some one-on-one training supplemented with a few YouTube tutorials and I was on my way. But even after finishing this project, the pen tool and I are not friends. "Oh, you just need some time to get used to it," my graphic designer friends have told me. No. The pen tool is evil and should be destroyed.

But before we can get to my trial-by-fire experience with Adobe Illustrator, I need to start with the inspiration. With the overwhelming diversity of save-the-date options, colors, and designs out there, it was hard to narrow down exactly what we wanted. We started by deciding the most important aspects we wanted to incorporate into this project.

1) Incorporate the Look / Feel of the Wedding: 

The save-the-date is really your guests' first taste of your wedding style and theme. As such, we knew that it was important to incorporate a some of our wedding colors as well as images that evoke a feeling of Versailles or Marie Antoinette.


2) Size Matters: 

I have seen a lot of adorable save-the-dates. Everything from origami, animated flip books, "mix tape" CDs of music, mini calendars (like Mrs. Green Tea's!), and more! Mrs. Duckling made her wedding date into felt numbers that are pulled out of a tiny envelope. Who could forget a date that adorable? Mrs. Eagle designed her own save-the-date magnets. Check out this adorable save-the-date where the couple asked their guests to "pencil in" their date. Adorable but not very cost effective, unfortunately.

Image via: Style Me Pretty / Photography by: Pen / Carlson  / Planning + Design by: Birch Design Studio 

Then you have the standard photo postcard that many couples opt for these days. This is a very simple and painless way to create your own save-the-dates. The best part is that your friends and relatives will have a great photo of you and your fiance to display on the fridge. There are loads of examples available, but I love our own Mrs. Turkey's! Unfortunately, ever the overachiever, this seemed like the easy way out to me. Also we may have been slacking on having our engagement photo session. Whoops!

Honestly, the decision here came down to money. We didn't want to spend a lot of money on elaborate save-the-dates or the postage required to mail them. A simple postcard made the most sense to us, plus it meant that maybe we could spend more money on the invitations down the road. Mrs. Snow Cone gave some great tips on how to save money when ordering postcard save-the-dates.


3) Personalized: 

Incorporating cameo-like silhouettes was my idea on how to personalize our design without including a photograph. I was really inspired by these two save-the-dates, one from Minted and the other designed by the groom of a wedding I spotted on SMP. They do double duty in adding personalization along with a little 18th century flair. It seemed like the perfect solution for us!

Image source via: Minted

Image source via: Style Me Pretty / Photography by: Stephen Jerkins / Stationary by: Nick (the groom)

I'm still tinkering with the design, but I'm nearly finished with our save-the-dates. It only took me, oh, two months to sit down and finish them. I've been slacking Hive, it's true. I hope to reveal them to you soon along with the details on our wedding website which I've also been working on. Since our save-the-dates will have our wedding website address, that needed to be completed before we put our save-the-dates in the mail.

What was your save-the-date inspiration?

The Siren Call of Milk Glass

I don't know how it happened, but somehow I fell into the milk glass wedding trend. I didn't even know what milk glass was a year ago and now I have quite the collection of it gathering dust on top of my bookshelves and kitchen cabinets until our spring wedding. I think that's a pretty common trend in the wedding world: the photo booth or the blue mason jars that you never knew existed before being engaged are suddenly huge priorities. You must have them. But you had never heard of them just months earlier. 

Image via: Ruffled / Photography by: Jeremy and Alicia Brown / Floral design by: Mum's Flowers / Event design by: Vintage Whites Wedding Rentals 

I blame the internet. Actually, I blame the internet for a lot of things, but especially for my milk glass obsession. Using milk glass as wedding decor is nothing new; it's definitely been around for several years. I'm also not the first Bee to obsess over milk glass. If you want to learn more you can check out Ms. Gazelle, Mrs. Pretzel, Mrs. Archer, and Mrs. Magic's posts on the topic. I know it's nothing special or new, but you know what? It's been a lot of fun looking for milk glass. Maybe that's part of the appeal because it's fairly cheap and somewhat easy to find. It's like a wedding decor scavenger hunt! I've even gotten friends and family in on it too, even coworkers. A sweet English teacher down the hall brought me an entire box of milk glass pieces a few weeks ago, just because she thought I would like them. How sweet is that?

When I have some time, I will take some photos of my collection. Until then, there's plenty of milk glass inspiration available online.

1) Image via: StyleMePretty / Photography by: Chenin Boutwell

2) Image via: 100LayerCake / Photography by: Erin Hearts Court

3) Image via: Ruffled / Photography by: Jeremy & Alicia Brown

Interested in starting your own milk glass collection? Here are some places to start looking:

• thrift stores
• flea markets
• antique stores
• yard sales
• eBay
• vintage shops 

The cheapest places to find milk glass are definitely thrift stores like Goodwill. They sell most items for dirt cheap, but it might mean picking through a lot of random odds-and-ends to find what you are looking for. I once bought seven milk glass vases from our local Goodwill for a total of $3.50.

Buying some of the more generic pieces for cheap meant I could splurge on nicer pieces at antique stores, pieces that I will most likely keep after the wedding. But going to antique stores means wading through lots of weird stuff, like clown memorabilia. And creepy naked baby dolls. Seriously guys, I want to collect all the clown memorabilia of the world and throw it into the sun.

The stuff of nightmares. Personal photo, unfortunately. 

Anywho, where were we? Ah yes, milk glass. Blue milk glass is definitely the hardest to find. If you've got to have the blue, I would definitely check antique shops and eBay. I found a few nice pieces in California, one here in Georgia, and I bought three on eBay. I want one blue piece for each table, so I will need to add a few more pieces to my collection before May. I think that's a job I can handle!

Are there any wedding trends you are buying into for your wedding? If it involves clowns, I don't want to hear about it.

The Wedding Colors Chose Me

Do you ever feel like wedding planning is turning you into someone unrecognizable? I look in the mirror and I hardly know myself these days.Okay, maybe it's not quite so dramatic, but I do want to state for the record that I've never been a big fan of the colors pink or orange. Then one day I was browsing one of the big wedding blogs when I saw an inspiration shoot that awoke all the silly girlishness within me. Suddenly I had to incorporate the color pink into our wedding. PINK. And peach. And salmon. And a lovely cornflower blue I'm a little obsessed with at the moment. Who was this person who wanted pink and orange tones popping up on her wedding day?

Our color scheme! (personal photo) 

So what images inspired this about-face in color preference? Well, let me share them with you!

Image via: StyleMePretty / Photography by: Corbin Gurkin / Event Design by:  Maine Seasons Events

This image has it all -- gorgeous ruffled garden roses in peachy, pinky hues, and that pop of blue from the delphinium. When you see the rest of the inspiration shoot, you will weep silently to yourself. At least, that's what I did when I first saw them. You see, they seem to be the perfect inspiration for my Marie Antoinette countryside wedding theme. 

Let's ogle some more images, shall we? Mmm. . . wedding inspiration. . . 

Image via: StyleMePretty / Photography by: Corbin Gurkin / Event Design by:  Maine Seasons Events

These images sent me on an insane hunt for the elusive blue milk glass you see in these photos. I now have a collection of around six or seven pieces. Ideally, I'd like to have one blue piece for each table. These images also had me second-guessing my choice to avoid using gold in our wedding palette. I am going to try to switch the gold out for small silver accents, but I'm worried it won't have the same rich glow that these images evoke. Either way, gold is one of those colors you have to treat carefully. I don't think I have the designer skill to balance it right without it looking garish. Besides, I think stepping away from the gold allows more of that casual countryside feel to shine through and less of the rococo gilded opulence you often think of when you think of Versailles. 

Right now our centerpieces will be a mix of white milk glass, blue milk glass, and little tarnished silver pieces made up of sugar and creamer containers, and a few odds and ends I've found at local antique stores or the flea market. I've also collected some vanity trays and mirrors to use as a base for our centerpieces. 

Oh, and did I mention we are going to DIY our flowers? Yeah, that too. Because apparently I am insane. I'm hoping the whimsical country feel of the wedding will mask my lack of experience when it comes to flower arranging.

So while the above inspiration images are my ideal, my Holy Grail of inspiration so to speak, I think the reality will look something more like this (obviously with more blue and less yellow): 

Image via: StyleMePretty / Photography by: Amie Schroeder / Floral Design by: Hana & Posy

I am actually quite proud of the collection of white and blue milk glass Mr. C and I have amassed over the past few months. That collection will require an entry of its own soon!

Did you find that wedding planning caused you to seek out colors or inspiration that you would have otherwise ignored or disliked?

Wedding Inspiration Fit for a Queen

In my last post I described my wedding vision: Marie Antoinette at the Petit Trianon. But how exactly does that translate to wedding decor? I think it's time for a montage. Yes, a wedding inspiration montage. (cue inspirational 80's music)

Sources: Cakes, Cupcake Toppers, Flowers, Art, Tablescape

This is where I started, with some of the classic colors associated with Marie Antoinette: bright pinks and sky blues. Unfortunately I think it would be way too easy to go over the top with pinks and blues, so I decided to find a way to tone these colors down and get back to my original inspiration. Here is the result:

Sources: Ribbon Garland, Milk Glass Vases, Bouquet, Marie Antoinette (personal photo), Tablescape

As you can see, I added softer pinks and blues and found images that included peach and cream tones as well. I keep coming back to that iconic portrait of Marie Antoinette--the slate blue of her dress, the delicate cream lace, that blushing pink rose in her hand which echoes the color of her cheeks. It evokes all the lovely colors I hope to represent at our wedding. And with that, here is our wedding color scheme: 

Color scheme by me!

I never would have imagined that I would include any pink or orange tones in my wedding, but one inspiration shoot changed everything and set me on a mad hunt for blue milk glass. But I will save that for another entry!

One thing that will definitely not show up in any of our decor, paper goods, or signage is the phrase, "Let them eat cake." Marie Antoinette never uttered this famous phrase so often associated with her, but she has been branded with it in every high school history text book. In fact, as soon as you mention Marie Antoinette, people immediately think of the spoiled, out-of-touch queen of the French Revolution, snubbing her nose at the starving peasants by insisting that they eat cake if they can't find bread. You can read more about it here. 

How did your wedding inspiration evolve over time?