JOURNAL
Elevate Your Wedding With a Lounge Seating Area
Get Cozy
Wedding lounges are one wedding trend we can definitely get cozy with! Think of these as a little living room for your guests. A place to relax, mingle, and connect with old friends!
As well as bringing your unique style to your wedding, lounges show guests how thoughtful you are as hosts to go above and beyond to provide special touches to the day.
Your venue may provide a lounge area but if not, rentals of unique, sofas and arm chairs to create a special space.
Here are a few of the lounges we’ve designed for our most stylish brides and grooms:
No matter you wedding style or location, there is furniture that will fit your aesthetic, decor, and details.
7 Things To Do After Your Wedding
With so much planning going into your wedding day, the weeks after your wedding may leave you feeling a little disjointed. But it is important to remember that your wedding tasks are not all complete. there are things you need to do after you return from your honeymoon to preserve your memories and honor your guests and family. We’ve compiled a list of the 7 tasks you need to take care of the weeks following your wedding.
Your Dress
There are a few options for what to do with your dress after your “I dos”. You can sell it, donate it, and even “trash it” with a fun photo shoot. But if you have decided to keep your dress, find a trusted cleaner to clean and preserve your dress. Wedding dress preservation and standard dry cleaning are not the same so be sure to do your research and find an experienced specialist who can treat your most precious garment with the care that it deserves. The sooner the better. There may be invisible stains that will start to damage the fabric so we recommend getting your dress to the cleaner as soon as possible.
Your Bouquet
When it comes to preserving your bouquet, there are more ideas than ever floating around.
Traditional drying and pressing are beautiful options, but you can also have your flowers turned into a gift or keepsake to display around your home. Flowers can be turned into paperweights, resin letters, or even wearable lockets. Small gifts made from your florals can be a nice way to say thank you to family members as holiday gifts.
Your Cake
Traditionally the top tier of your wedding cake can be frozen and eaten on your first anniversary. In fact 49% of 2019 brides and grooms made this plan. While this is a fun tradition, frozen cakes are less than fabulous. Now days, bakers are happy to make you a FRESH anniversary cake (a smaller version of your wedding cake) to commemorate the event.
Thank You Notes
It’s important to remember that even in this day and age of digital communication, thank you notes should still be handwritten. According to the Emily Post Institute “contrary to popular myth, the happy couple does not have a year’s grace period in which to write their notes. All thank-you notes should be written within three months of the receipt of the gift.” Write early - Thank you’s can and should be drafted AS your gift arrives. Additionally, share the load with your new spouse over a bottle of your favorite wine while listening to a mix of your wedding songs, and make writing these notes a fun event.
Review your Vendors (Yelp, Wedding Wire, The Knot, Google)
Remember back when you were choosing your vendors? You may have read reviews from their previous clients. From venues to florists, to photographers, to caterers, to planners… most of your vendors will have accounts with major wedding sites such as The Knot, Wedding Wire, and other business sites such as Google and Yelp. Giving them a 5-star rating and review will help them to book more amazing clients like you. Think of this as a thank you note to your vendors. They will GREATLY appreciate your review.
Order your Wedding Album and PRINT your Photos
You’ve likely purchased a wedding package through your photographer that includes prints and an album. But if you just received the digital files, make sure printing photos is a priority as well as backing up the files in a few places. We recommend a combination of an external hard drive as well as cloud storage. You and your children will enjoy these for years to come so make sure to have prints in your home as well as a beautiful album to remember your day.
Take your Parents out to Dinner
Your parents want nothing more than to spend time with you, and what better way to say thank you for all the help and support they gave your during your wedding planning than to take them out for a nice dinner.
Step Up Your Wedding Signage to Suit Your Style
While most wedding decor is purely decorative, wedding signage has the added bonus of being utilitarian. It serves to tell your guests what is coming up throughout the day. Wedding signs can help to add to the aesthetic as well as set the tone for the day.
When having our design meeting, we discuss color palette, metal tones, and alternative textures/surfaces. Guests like to know where to go and what to expect and choosing signs that fit the style of your wedding serves as a twofer!
What Type of Signage do you want at your wedding?
One way to approach your signage is like a road map through the day. Use signs to let guests know if you desire to have an unplugged ceremony, or if you want them to share photos of your day with a unique hashtag. You can also let them know what’s coming up with signs pointing to lawn games during the cocktail hour, or sparklers during the sendoff.
Sparkler Send off
Quote
Unplugged Ceremony
What materials do you want your signs made out of?
Which materials you use say a lot about your style. Our current favorite is frosted acrylic but that style is often paired with our more modern couples. We want to celebrate your style! Some of our favorite material options are:
Wood
Chalkboard
Poster
Metal
Acrylic
Mirror/Glass
Wood
Acrylic
Chalkboard
What is your wedding style?
Do you define your style as rustic, modern, boho, or vintage? What types of signs you display can help show your guests what your style inspiration is.
Here are 4 bar signs, 4 different ways:
Where to source your wedding signs
A quick Pinterest search will show you how many vendors there are making wedding signs. The beauty is, there are sign vendors to fit any budget. Having worked with many professionals in the industry, we’ve compiled a list of some of our favorites:
Etsy
Hey Halle
Letters & Dust
Fest Paper & Design
Crave Design
We would love to speak with you, learn your vision of your wedding and help you design your day!
Tips For Choosing Wedding Day Suits for You and Your Groomsmen
I’m not going to lie, the focus of a wedding always seems to be on the dress. There are several shows on TLC that involve entire families sitting in a store, waiting for her to try on the dress while the mother has a fight with the sisters and then everyone finally makes up when she comes out in the perfect couture gown. They gasp, they cry. It’s the one. They pull out their credit card, and everyone goes home happy.
SCENE.
This is not what groom shopping looks like. Sometimes it’s a few weeks of googling pictures of men, mysteriously looking off into the distance, posing in a suit without socks, like this guy:
And then trying to figure out if your fiancée doesn’t want you to wear socks? And possibly lose 20 pounds and wear makeup? It’s all pretty confusing.
There are a few step-by-step guides out there, that have a more detailed approach. One of the best guides I’ve found is this one from The Knot, which provides everything from fabric to cut. However, let’s find a place to start! Take a breath. A lot of this is logical, and you’ve been dressing yourself for years at this point. Hopefully.
Let’s discuss the main THREE things to start with when you’re thinking about dressing yourself and the men in your party.
Thing One: How formal is your wedding?
Ok, so although this might be a no-brainer for those who frequently wear suits, I will tell you a story. When I got married, my wife and I planned a wedding in July, in the summer, at 11am. Every wedding I’d ever been to had a groom (and groomsmen) in a tux, so I fought for my tux! It was my time for that bow tie! Well--she won, and I ended up in a suit.
Now that I look at those pictures I realize I would have looked weird at 11:00am in a tux, so I’m grateful she won that fight. Please don’t tell her that, though.
If you don’t trust me, ask Martha Stewart. Tuxes are for evening, and for more formal weddings. So rule number one, if your wedding is in the morning, outside and casual, go for the suit. If you’re not sure what the difference is between a suit and a tux is, read the article.
Now, there are all sorts of suits, so you can choose something that fits your body type specifically. You may be thinking that it’s all about her dress, but you want to look as good as you can. We’ve all seen these two fits, right?
This image is taken from a great article, by the art of manliness. This article goes through each and every thing to think about with fit. How do you know if a sleeve is too long? How do you know if the shoulders are just right? You may think you know, but it’s great to look in pictures and see if you can figure out whether your suit might need to be altered.
This site, as well as many others, suggests that buying a suit and having it altered is far superior to renting a suit. So that leads you to thing two.
Thing Two: Who Are Your Groomsmen?
Something that I think gets forgotten while dressing the men in your wedding party is, “who is standing up there with you?” I mean, you know what you look good in, but it’s a great idea to make sure that you’re working with a suit that will look good on your party.
As long as your fabrics and colors match, you can be a little flexible in terms of the cut of the suit, and the jacket. In fact, I’m not against the whole “mismatched” groomsmen look, so I recommend checking that out as well, but make sure you stay within the rules.
If your groomsmen are your best friends, certainly have them help you look and get their input--see what their thoughts are on the suits, and if possible, do a little bit of a guys’ weekend where you shop together, and pick something everybody likes. After all, unlike a bridesmaid’s dress, a groomsman may wear this a few times.
You may want to bundle in the whole “suit-shopping” thing with a chance to thank each groomsman for helping with the wedding. I bought each of my groomsmen a jersey from our favorite team. But of course, you can search around and find personalized gifts, in person or at a good site for groomsmen. Having something handy to thank them avoids that last minute “oh crap” dash for something before the big day (trust me, there will be enough of that already).
Thing Three: What is Your Budget?
Budget, budget, budget! If you’re planning a wedding, this word basically flies over your head every time you close your eyes. But of course it’s true, make sure that your budget is determined before you start your suit journey.
Buying a suit (one you like well enough already) and then having it altered is a great way to save some money. If money is no object, of course, you can have a suit built for you, but off-the-rack is always a saving, and that gives you the possibility of buying suits for all your groomsmen as well, and then leaving their own alterations to them.
In a perfect world with none of that budget stuff, you could probably just buy suits for all of them, pay for the alterations, and look like the cast of entourage walking slo-mo down the aisle.
Steve Granitz/WireImage via Getty Images
I bet they’re all wearing socks.
But chances are, you have some sort of budget and so do they. This leads me back to buying some off-the-rack stuff, preferably with or for your groomsmen, and asking them to pay for some alterations, so they will look their best. They can do that at home (in case they’re traveling to you, which face it, they often are). Here’s Esquire’s take on finding a good suit that won’t kill your budget.