Design Strategy

We've been spending the past week or so looking at several websites that offer inspiration and help for invitations, save the dates and other wedding collateral.


There are so many wonderful and cost effective options for printing some fabulous wedding invitations.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Paper Chez



Ceci New York



Double Happiness


We have a lot to figure out before we get to the actual design of our invitations:
- How formal do we want our invitations to be?
- Do we want the heavier, more expensive letter-press invite?
- How many inserts do we need, especially if we have a website with a lot of the extra information for our guests?
- What is our "color" going to be?
- What is the ultimate "theme" of the wedding?

We have the next 2-3 months to figure this out. I love looking at invitation designs, but deciding what's right for us and our wedding is another story.

I see you in J.Crew

My sister and MOH was in town visiting this weekend and we made a stop by J.Crew to look through their wedding gowns and bridesmaid dresses.




I was VERY impressed with what they had to offer in both categories.

Bridesmaid dresses come in several fabric types and styles so that you can select a color or two and let the girls pick what fits them best.

Bridal gowns had clean, simple lines, carried a great weight and are priced very reasonably. I'm excited to see what new styles the designers come out with in the next few months.

They are opening a J.Crew Wedding Shop on Madison Avenue here in New York at the end of the month. I plan to visit the new shop with my mom and bridesmaids later in the summer to explore their Spring 2011 colors.

Room Block Block

With so many out of town guests and first time New York visitors a comfortable bed in a convenient location is key.

We've been spending the past few weeks doing some research and negotiating with a few hotels:

The Marriott Downtown Brooklyn

Nu Hotel Brooklyn

Holiday Day Inn Express Brooklyn

Best Western Seaport Inn Downtown

The Roosevelt Hotel

The Standard Hotel

The big questions we are asking each hotel are their rates, proximity to public transportation, availability of airport transportation and amenities.

Our ultimate plan is to set up room blocks at 2 hotels and offer transportation to our guests from there. Anyone who wants to book in Manhattan or anywhere else will be on their own for transportation to and from the wedding.

Will all the ladies please stand up?

I've been thinking about what my bridal party would look like since college, maybe even before that.

Friends that have come into my life and left an influential mark, friends that have stayed with me for years and years, new friends who I'm excited to grow with and sisters who know me better than I know myself.

This week I asked my closest friends and sisters to stand up for me in my wedding either as a bridesmaid or an honorary bridesmaid. They've all accepted.

Now comes the fun part of dressing them up, taking them somewhere fun to celebrate my bachelorette status and following them down the aisle!

Say "yes" to the dress!

Seeing myself in a white dress today made this whole process very real.



The styles and details that I've mooned over in magazines these past few months suddenly became tangible. I was shocked by how heavy some of these dresses were, what worked for me and what didn't.



I'm a fairly decisive person so the appointments flowed well and were a ton of fun!



They recommend finalizing your dress 8 months out to save time for production, fittings and adjustments. I plan to make a few more exploratory appointments, but I think I've narrowed on a few looks that I like.

Not quite ready to say "yes" to any dress.