Showing posts with label bridesmaid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bridesmaid. Show all posts

Featured Wedding of the Week: Old Fashioned Seaside Elegance

Saturday, February 19, 2011

It's Saturday, which means one thing. It's another edition of Inspiring Pretty's featured weddings! As always, if you'd like to have your wedding showcased, please submit it to us here. Now, onto the prettiness.
This week we'll be exploring the classic beauty of a simple, old fashioned seaside affair. This wedding is beaming with natural themes and simple traditions from years ago. Notice the bird decorations and small, simple flower arrangements. There's also gorgeous streamers and feathers, traditions dating back centuries to celebrate the couple as they leave the church. Like a classic event, nuptials took place in the church, and also dating back centuries, the wedding party marched in public to the reception celebrating the marriage. The rest of the gorgeous and down-to-earth party can be seen even greater in the photos!







































































pictures courtesy of Stylemepretty

Featured Wedding of the Week

Saturday, February 5, 2011

We are so excited to begin this new weekly post! Weddings are one of those things that add beauty to lives. By sharing how some have made their precious day perfect, you can inspire others to create a special day all their own. What we will be doing is highlighting a different wedding every Saturday. For now, we will be scouting the web for weddings that tug at our heart but we would eventually love to share yours! So, whether you were married last week, last year or 50 years ago we would love for you to share your day with us so we can share it with our Inspiring Pretty readers. Simply submit your wedding here and we'll check it out!

For now, here is a wedding I found at Love and Lavender. It is actually the wedding of the creator of the site Aileen and her husband Ben at the Beau Lodge an hour and half north of Seattle. What caught my eye was the simplicity and down-right old fashioned backyard wedding feel it has. And that's exactly why I chose it.

Starting with the floral arrangements. These bouquets - made by the bride, bridesmaids and mother of the bride - hold simply white roses, pink ranunculus and those sweet yellow billy balls. So backyard bushel, yet colorful and elegant.

I think that fun bridal party photos are the best! Since these two had a croquet area set up, it's fantastic that they took advantage of it. They didn't try to create an elaborate backdrop, but just used the clearing and gorgeous greenery to make a memory that lasts a lifetime.


The guestbook is where people can take all kinds of liberties and be as creative as possible. Aileen and Ben decided to have people write on notecards giving advice, well-wishes or their own memories of the couple. This is a great way for your guests to feel like they'll have some impact in your future. My favorite parts are the wooden sign and the roses sitting pretty in a glass jar. Effortlessly delightful.

Held in this gorgeously vintage suitcase are wedding programs, made by the bride and groom themselves. The pinwheels were also. These two are rather crafty....

The ceremony has no floral arrangements, no trellis. The focus is completely on what's happening at the end of the aisle. No one will be able to take their eyes off the glowing couple.

The table decorations make me squeal out in excitement. Again, we find these wildflowerish arrangements inside glass jars and milk bottles, but the key to this set up is the colorful array of books which lend, ever-so-slightly, to the backyard barbeque feel.

Congratulations to Aileen and Ben for an old-fashioned meets weathered-chic wedding. Oh yeah ..... and for getting married!


Wedding Trends: Bridesmaids Dresses

Friday, December 3, 2010

Moving back to the subject of wedding attire, we’re moving onto bridesmaids’ dresses. Sometimes being a bridesmaid is equated with being drafted. You have to do what you’re told from your commander (the bride) and are given tons of duties that don’t involve your agreement. Now as bridesmaid, you usually don’t mind this because it’s your friend. The situation gets sticky though when it’s time to walk down the aisle in a hideous garb that some people would call a dress. Luckily, the trend seems to be shying away from ugly dresses on the bridesmaid to make the bride look prettier. So that’s good news for those on bridesmaid duty. A major trend for bridesmaids in wedding ceremonies (and in all of the wedding itself) is making the bridesmaid comfortable. This means allowing them to wear what they like (usually within the brides’ taste). The major fad is small variations among the dresses or different dresses altogether among bridesmaids. So if you’re about to be a bridesmaid, don’t sweat just yet, you might get to choose what you wear.

Traditional bridesmaid dresses are very uniform. It’s one dress, meaning one style and one color on each woman. It’s as if it’s done so you can be spotted among the other guests at the wedding. In the most recent years, this very steady fixed fad has had some twists put on it. Some that aren’t wanting to stray from tradition completely are using the same dress buy varying small details of it on each bridesmaid. For instance, the dresses will be the same length and shape, differing only in the straps. One may be strapless, another halter, and another tank top. Another fad is to have the same dress but in a few different colors. Or lastly, a fun light-hearted trend that is still obeying tradition is to have two or three colors of a dress with two or three different types of straps. It’s definitely more comfortable for each woman than the traditional one-dress-for-all model, but still shows that thought and care for matching attire were taken into account.

For complete rejection of tradition, some brides are opting to allow their bridesmaids to wear a dress of their choosing. This is usually done at very casual weddings, though. There are usually still some restraints on the bridesmaids, because weddings are meant to be classy, no matter what the motif. Dress of course match the overall wedding design, but bridesmaid are left to themselves to find a dress. This is done because the dresses don’t need to be the same length, shape, color or design. They just can’t be completely conflicting with each other, but if bridesmaids stay within the wedding design, this shouldn’t be a problem. This is the newest trend for bridesmaid dresses, but that doesn’t mean it’s the most popular. It is truly only for very casual and often modern weddings. It’s not a returning old-fashion, but actually an emerging one. So in a way, it is one of the only aspects of the wedding which conflicts with the overall trend of returning to simple elegance and old-fashionedness. It’s more of a ‘get together and wear what you want’ feel, hence exceptionally casual.

No matter what trend of bridesmaid dresses you choose to have, be certain that you are happy with it. Your style and wedding design will greatly factor into what you choose to do along with the comfort and style of the bridesmaids. After all, they’re your closest friends and family, so put them at ease, so they can enjoy your big day as much as possible.