April 27, 2011 Comments Off
What, you mean 2.5 billion people weren’t interested in my wedding?
That and other minor differences between the Royals and us.

from BostInnovation (and probably elsewhere as well) and brought to my attention by my own Prince Charming.
Tags: funny
April 27, 2011 Comments Off

…I’ve joined Pinterest!* And THAT plus several brides and other various spring goings on are why I haven’t posted as much lately. But I, of course, have an “All Thing I Do” board on Pinterest so if you ever need a quick hit of bridal– check it out!
I’m sure after awhile I’ll have to break it down to “All Things Vintage I Do” or “All Things Seaside I Do” but for now, I’m still amassing images!
*I don’t know why that one image isn’t coming up on the main screen but if you click on it– it’s there!
Tags: centerpieces, decorations, dresses, inspiration, links, photography, table numbers
April 15, 2011 Comments Off

Happy Friday everyone!
I’ve been posting a lot of links and photos (like Leann and Michael’s striking typographic Lois + Clark invitations in black and persimmon above) to The Future Mrs. Darcy facebook page lately so I thought I’d do a little round up for those of you who don’t use facebook a lot (or can’t because of work– boo!)
Crafty Cake Toppers via 100 Layer Cake
How to Make Scratch Off Lottery Tickets — would be great for favors or figuring out who gets centerpieces. Who am I kidding? This is great for EVERYTHING.
Gold Heart Mini Sparklers via Mighty Goods
Have a great weekend!
Tags: links, modern, orange, samples, wedding invitations

As luck would have it Mandy and I were both planning on traveling back to our parents houses on the same weekend so I got to go wedding shopping with her! I am also pleased to announce that she bought a dress! So it can be done: 1 day, 2 stores, 7 opinions, 16 dresses, several pulled pork sandwiches* later she had a dress. A dress that was under her budget! I know! Exclamation points everywhere!!!!
For any upstate NY / Capital District / Albany / Saratoga brides we had a LOVELY experience at Something Bleu bridal salon in Saratoga. They are located in an old Victorian house, their dresses are gorgeous and staff so very friendly. The owner is adamant about not putting brides in dresses that are out of their budget so you’ll never have to worry about falling in love with a dress that is twice was you are expecting. I love that. And considering that at least 75% of their dresses (just guessing from what we looked at and the layout of the store) are under $2,000 you’ll find something you’ll love in your budget. OH MY GOD- one more quick tangent about the store. The first two dresses that Mandy tried on were these really simple but striking dresses (very J. Crew classic looking) and we were like “Great we’re off to a good start– how much are they?” Wait for it. $270. No there are no missing zeros or commas from that. They were each roughly two hundred and seventy dollars. I think everyone in the room briefly considering buying them. Mandy’s sister in law even considered divorcing her husband so she could get married again (to him) in one of those dresses.
I went to that salon myself while I was looking for dresses (back when it was called Immortal Beloved) but I was a tad hungover that day and that’s not so conducive to finding a wedding dress. But some things that ARE conducive to finding a wedding dress:
- Eating food beforehand! Personal studies show that you are much less likely to snap at family members, get in a funk, or get annoyed if you’ve eaten properly beforehand.
- Wear a strapless bra and bring some heels (just in case).
- Make sure you wear pretty underwear. Chances are it will be seen.
- And right on the heels of the last one– shave like it’s summer. Because especially in the winter months and spring… chances are you’ve been a little lax.
- Bring a camera. Most places won’t let you take photos of the dresses but some will so have one on hand.
- Bring pen and paper! What I remember from MY dress shopping is that all dresses kind of blur together after awhile so for Mandy’s foray I made some little note taking slips for myself and her 4 year old ADORABLE niece (because it’s totally criminal to bring art supplies for only yourself when you are around 4 year olds who want to help out too!). My sketching skills are not gallery quality but try to get the neckline, detailing, and proportions somewhat correct with written bits to back it up– you’ll really thank yourself on dress #16 when “that ruched one with the beading and lace” describes at least 6 other gowns. I suggest 1 or 2 people be scribes and that at least one person in the group is ballsy enough to chime in “And what designer was that dress? And how much did it cost?” for each one.
And since I already had some whipped up:

Now you don’t get personalized ones like Miss Sofia and I did but I hope you’ll make do with “Notes from the peanut gallery” and “my 2 cents”.
Just print them out and cut them in half (or just fold over) and you’re ready to go!
I also included the little mood faces that we had on ours because I wasn’t sure if 4 year olds could write so I figured checking one of those 3 off would be best!
Happy shopping!
*We went out to Dinosaur BBQ after shopping to discuss.
Tags: wedding dresses
April 6, 2011 Comments Off
Hello all! Hopefully Spring is creeping into where ever you live– it’s finally started to come to the Northeast!
Chez Darcy it’s been a whole bunch of trimming/getting samples out and not a lot of computer so no new pretty pictures to show today buuuuuuut:
Not sure if this is just for Boston (but since it’s for a website I’m hoping it’s nationwide) but the Living Social deal today is for Groomsday.com. For $35 you get $75 in credits for groomsmen gifts. Not bad! It’s a lot of generic groomsmen gift stuff like flasks and knives/tools but if you were planning on getting them anyway- why not pay less? Here’s the link I got hopefully it’ll work for you too!
Also EVERYONE PAY ATTENTION TO THIS!!!! The postage rate is going up on April 17th. Letters under an ounce are staying at $0.44 BUT postcards (like the ever popular RSVP postcards!) are going up from $0.28 to $0.29. Now you may think, “Oh I’ll just make sure to get my RSVP postcard stamps before the rate goes up” but what you need to be thinking is “Will the postage I’m putting on these postcards be good still when my guests finally get around to sending them back?” Chances are if you haven’t sent them out yet, the reply by date is probably later than April 17 so MAKE SURE TO GET THE $0.29 STAMPS.
April 1, 2011 Comments Off
In an effort to post something useful with enough time for someone to complete it– as opposed to a recap several days after a major holiday– I thought I’d share my idea for a Spring/Easter centerpiece!

Photo by James Wojcik
After seeing this blurb about using an eggshell as a seedling plant in Real Simple’s New Uses For Old Things. I’ve started carefully cracking my eggs (towards the top) and saving all the shells to make a hopefully cute and pretty centerpiece for Easter.
I’m not sure if I posted any of my copious garden photos last year but in the three years we’ve had our house with it’s little garden patch I’ve made, I’ve found I really like gardening! Specifically vegetable gardening because I feel like it’s very rewarding to eat something you grow. SO, what I’m getting at, is that this is a win-win centerpiece because I get to start my garden even earlier! I guess if you were a really nice person you could give away the little seedlings to your guests but my guests are all traveling an hour or more to get here so I can hoard all my seedlings guilt-free.
The windows in my living room (as seen in the bar set up photo from St. Patrick’s Day) are like having a little greenhouse so I’ve always been lucky with my seedlings but a good friend of Michael’s is quite the accomplished gardener and swears by the Veggie Tales seeds. As silly as it may seem, I’m sure seeds marketing to children are going to have the best shot being fool-proof!
I’m currently unsure whether those cardboard like egg shell cartons (as opposed to the new clear plastic ones) is going to be the best way to showcase or if I should get some moss or something from a craft store and do it up is better but we’ll see when we get closer!
Good luck to anyone else taking this on and let me know how your centerpieces come out!
Tags: centerpieces, DIY, spring
April 1, 2011 Comments Off
Now that we’ve seen the Save the Date, let’s take a quick look at their Napoleon + Josephine invitations!

Yes, I’ve crazied out their names and locations so no one can crash. But I REALLY love their colors. Also another first with them was a classed-up google map. Right before we were ready to print Nicole sent me a screenshot of google maps and asked if we could print that up and list accommodations info. A quick lesson about printing for the world at large: do not expect things printed from the internet to look good. Screen resolution is 72 dpi (dots per inch) and printing resolution is 300 dpi so you need a lot more dots to get good print quality. A way around this though is if you take a really large screen shot then proportionally shrink it in Photoshop (please don’t try this in Word or anything, just writing that makes my heart hurt and it won’t work!) so you’ll have enough dots to print well. But then we still had a very obvious google map in a sea of gorgeous purples and sea blue/greens so I changed the colors around so it fit a little nicer in the whole package.
It’s kind of like a happy medium between custom maps and no maps at all.
Tags: aqua, blue, classic, green, maps, purple, wedding invitations
Today we have something a little different courtesy of the lovely Nicole. Nicole and Clay came to me back in January and needed some wedding invitations STAT… for their wedding in SOUTH AFRICA! How frickin’ cool is that? Wait, you’ll see! For their lovely seaside wedding they went with the Ariel + Eric (always a favorite!) invitation (and I have samples around, I still need to photograph them though).
Since not all of their friends and family could make it to their ceremony in South Africa they plan on having a swanky reception back home in Florida. When she got back Nicole wanted a save the date but since the invitation would be on its heels she asked if I could make her an image to attach to an email. I said “Yes… BUT wouldn’t an email newsletter be better instead of just an attachment?” and she agreed. We knew she wanted to go with the Napoleon + Josephine invitations so we can up with this:

Pretty cool, non? And let’s talk about how much I love the photo and the colors in it? I’ll post the corresponding invitations on the blog tomorrow but for those who just CANNOT wait, I’ll post them to The Future Mrs. Darcy fan page this afternoon.
Tags: aqua, purple, save the date
March 28, 2011 Comments Off
But, honestly, someone needs to tear me away! This morning I got a Daily Candy email about wedding blogs and I opened it expecting to already read all the blogs in question and feel all superior and in the know and WOULDN’T YOU FRIGGIN’ KNOW IT but the very first one I hadn’t heard of!

Bash, Please has lovely real weddings, florals, inspiration boards, EVERYTHING! And they’ve been featured on all the other blogs I read so I’ve definitely seen their work but how did I never go to the site before this?! Insanity.
But SURELY that was it, right? Brooklyn Bride? Check. Once Wed? Check. Project Wedding? Check. Grey Likes Weddings? WHAT?

Grey Likes Weddings is beautiful weddings everything as well but by a kick ass stylist extraordinaire, Summer Watkins.
So go forth and get lost in a sea of gorgeous wedding inspiration my dears!
Tags: inspiration, links
You know how sometimes you’re extremely busy then all of a sudden everything hit a lull (which you know is temporary) and you now have time to do all those “way down on the to-do list” things? And all of a sudden you’re desperate to do ANYTHING ELSE?! That is where I am. But thankfully for you I’ll probably be adding a slew of things to the site that I’ve been meaning to for awhile now. Although I did just realize that I did post all the Thank You cards but I feel like since they’re not apart of the specific suites they should go in “other stationary”. Or should I add them to “wedding” too? If you have an opinion, let me know.
Anyway, in my continuing efforts to be craftier I have some photos from my St. Patrick’s Day party from this past weekend. This was for my in-laws so it’s more “having flowers” than “having keg”.

Food in the dining room.

Booze and snack in the living room.
It was a lot cuter in person but, though it was nice to set each up in front of windows in real life, it didn’t lend itself well to photographing. Also I’m a terrible photographer with a point and shoot that I really think is a little off ever since I may have mistakenly dropped it in the snow this winter.
But I was proud of my thriftiness in decorations. Let me tell you, the day after a major holiday is a great time to get party supplies! (St. Pat’s was on a Thursday, our party 2 days later on Saturday) The table cloth and plates were cheap all the time (at the Christmas Tree Store which is theoretically a half step better than a dollar store or a Party City type store) but I got a nice cotton green striped valence which I used as a table runner on the main table for less than a dollar and those green little foam shamrocks which I strung together to make a little garland.
The flowers were Bells of Ireland and some purple thing which vaguely resembled heather. Since my flower arranging skills are novice as well I like to try and stick to only 1 or 2 varieties in an arrangement and concentrate on having different heights. I think it turned out a little wild but acceptable.
Things I’ve been digging around the web this past week (or two):
Tags: crafts, links