429 Days!

I just checked on TheKnot and it informed me that Zach and I have 429 days until we get married!

Eek!!


Have you seen our The Knot personalized wedding page yet? Go check it out!

http://www.theknot.com/ourwedding/RoseBuscemi&ZachConnelly


I PROMISE that someday soon I'll actually start adding real content to it, but until then, all of my wedding info is on here. :)

Briermere Pies

I had a stroke of what I hope turns out to be genius today.

Briermere pies at my wedding.

I've been looking at a lot of amazing and wonderfully inspirational websites, and I've found that the weddings I love the most are the ones that have adorable and personal details like the entire bridal party wearing Converses or having photo walls of other family member's wedding days.

And one of my favorite things in the world is pies from Briermere farms.

So, I've decided, there will be fresh Briermere pies at my wedding.

My top choices are Peach Cream, Blueberry Cream, Apple, Raspberry Cream, Strawberry Rhubarb, and possibly a Lemon Meringue.

Of course, my pie options will be dictated by what they're serving in late April, but since they have a wide Winter menu, I have faith that we'll be able to get lots of delicious pies in April.

Farm picture from the wonderful WallyG's photostream, while the drool-inducing menu was first on Saxon Henry, a fun looking blog. The stunning picture of the raspberry cream pie is from Long Island Foodie, a blog I'm almost angry at myself for not having discovered sooner.

New Layout!

Look at my lovely new layout! It's absolutely perfect! I found it on this AMAZING Blogger layout site called Suck My Lolly. Isn't that adorable? Even though I think this new layout is the greatest thing ever, I might have trouble resisting some of the other absolutely adorable layouts. I mean, look at this and this and this and this . I want them all.

Details

Here are some of the details that didn't quite fit into my overall room theme of the last post. This is, again, a homage to Design*Sponge because they have SO MUCH GREAT STUFF on their blog and you should go read all of it and look at the pretty pictures.
The absolutely genius and adorable book book... well, I really have nothing witty to say about it. It looks perfect. And I want it. The end.

The desk also looks like the perfect combination of functionality and adorableness. I love the space and the clean white lines. I love all of the opportunities for storage and organization. I love the little candy (nut?) dispenser. I love the giant wall of personalized stuff.


This wreath is actually the reason I found this delightful blog (my wonderful friend Sam saw it and thought of me! THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU). I love that it's not a traditional holiday winter wreath with the holly and the evergreen boughs. I love that it's not a traditional spring/summer wreath with flowers and butterflies. It's perfect. It's late winter. It's the hope of spring.


And the ranunculus bouquet is just gorgeous. I love these flowers for so many different reasons, but I would love to more than anything to have little bunches of them in low vases decorating my rooms. I would LOVE to have a kitchen like this, but it would require me to gain some organization and tidiness skills that I have been lacking for the past 23 years. Maybe I'll find them someday. Maybe not. Either way, gorgeous kitchen. And guess what? The rest of the house is just as cute... wait for it... and realistic looking! It doesn't look like a display house, it looks like a real home that people actually live in. I love it.

Decorating

I've been (obviously) spending a lot of time thinking about and planning the wedding recently, but before all this happened, I was obsessed with thinking about designing a future home. While young girls (apparently) dream all about their future weddings, I dreamed about my future home. I drew floor plans and clipped pictures from magazines of kitchens and living rooms.

I think, if I were to win the lotto, all I would want to do (after buying a house) is decorate that house. And I don't mean buy the newest and shiniest everything. I mean do it myself-paint the walls, find perfect kitschy decorations at thrift stores and garage sales, complete diy renovations of old wardrobes and bookcases.

Basically, what Design*Sponge does. Just look at these stunning pictures.

The gorgeous bedroom with the tree reminds me of what I had when I was younger (except this looks so much more professional!) and is in the same house as the adorable kitchen nook with the chalkboard-paint walls. I love the brilliant idea of using the table base as book storage, because holy moly do I need help storing books.

Which brings us to this gorgeous library. I know it's really only one wall, but a girl can dream.

Real Wedding

Take a look at 100 Layer Cake's most recent post. I'm in love with everything about it. The bride wears a stunning blue dress, because white gowns aren't traditional in her family, and the couple wrote their own ceremony that was intensely personal.

Personal ceremonies and vows has recently become something that I've been thinking about a lot. Since Zach and I basically want to write our own ceremony which leaves out religion and focuses on the love that we share, I'm particularly touched by this detail from their wedding.

"Their ceremony was super personal and focused on well written words and a reworking of tradition.

Listen to this one: 'We put a bottle of wine, two glasses, and a set of love letters (written in secret and unshared) into a wooden crate and then sealed it with nails (each nail was hammered by a family member to show their commitment to supporting our marriage and then finally by us). The crate is meant as an act of reassurance, a romantic gesture–if ever our relationship is in peril, we are to open the crate, drink the wine, and read the letters before we make any decisions about our future.'

Um, shouldn’t we ALL do that for our weddings?? At the very least you end up with a lovely aged bottle of wine."

Westbury Manor

I've found several pictures of Westbury Manor online that I enjoy, but I was a little surprised by the lack of current pictures. For example, I found pictures of the bigger reception room, but they are outdated, since the Manor was renovated 2-3 years ago. I couldn't find any pictures of the smaller room, which Zach and I will be using on our special day.

I'm hoping that it will be a gorgeous spring day when we get married, and they say that in April the entire property is covered with millions of tulips. I'm okay with that. :) I plan on re-visiting the site at the end of April to get a good idea of what it looks like in the Spring, since for some reason we've only ever visited in the fall and winter. Luckily, I have TONS of time to plan, so I'm not worried.

We're also hoping that we'll be able to have the ceremony outdoors, but since it will be the end of April, we're going to have to hope to get lucky. However, I found a gorgeous shot of an outdoor ceremony at the Westbury Manor from a photographer's blog.

(Click to see the larger image.)

And then here are two pictures of rooms that are not ours, and a gorgeous shot of the gardens in what looks like late Summer.

This bride posted a review of Westbury Manor and has dozens of beautiful pictures from her wedding. Go look!

Wall-Art

I've written before about how cool it would be to have a kind of 3-D photobooth picture wall, and I've recently (with the help of my wonderful, bored best friend Nicole) found another cool example. I thought that I had first seen this on 100 Layer Cake, but since my own link goes to The Knot, I'm going to have to believe myself.


This new example is from a pretty awesome blog called Bride Pop, and is super perty. What I like about both is the room for creativity and the advice that they have.

I'd love to do something like this, but I'm not sure if we'll be able to or if there will be room. I'm sure we can figure something out though, I'm not too worried.

Sad Day

Because David's Bridal is having their $99 sale right now, I decided to check out which dresses they're offering for such a scandalously low price.

And they have their one dress that I've always been in love with. It's an all-lace V-neck trumpet gown, which (I just found out) is normally between $799 and $849. I've included it before when I posted about more dresses that I love.

However, I've found a flaw. And it's a pretty big one. A deal-breaking one.

Somehow, David's Bridal has never show the dress's back. I've seen several pictures of it in catalogs and magazines, from different photo shoots, and the view is always from the front.

Apparently, though, I've never looked at the dress on the actual David's Bridal website. Because that's the only place they show the back of the dress.

And it plunges. Deep.




Crap. Well, back to the drawing boards.

Timeline Save-the-Dates

Since Zach and I are getting married on a holiday weekend, we're supposed to send out save-the-dates earlier than we otherwise would (dates range from 8-12 months in advance). Since the big date is in 15 months, and I have absolutely no idea what we want to do for our save-the-dates, I figure that it's maybe a good time to start thinking about them.

First, our budget for save-the-dates is quite low, so my goal is to actually make them myself. We also don't want it to be simply a letter with the vital information, and we don't want a magnet either, since that has been so popular lately.

In the course of reading dozens of wedding blogs and magazines, I came across one idea that seemed particularly cute, and another, similar one resurfaced today via twitter.

Relationship Timeline Save-the-Dates.

This is the first one I found, on the wedding blog EVER, 100 Layer Cake (Brides magazine agrees with me, and I'll prove it to you someday), and I thought everything about it was adorable.

The second one is equally cute, and was posted by The Knot on Twitter.