But first the save the date:

I love the yellow on the railcar and his hat with the yellow background.

The rest of the lovely shots from that engagement session near the tracks can be found on the Wedding By Two Blog (and then there’s Part 2 with a trampoline, and more at Part 3 at a farm with some the props Jen sells at her Etsy store) but here is a variety of favorites from their site:

And then here are some of the items for sale in Jen’s Etsy store: Doing It Herself.

Gorgeousness all around, right?! Hope you enjoyed and we still have 15 (oy!) save the dates ready to be made. Next on deck: Charlie + Heather and (ooooh!) Elizabeth + Darcy.

The vendors I loved the most I thought I’d share with y’all. They happen to be 2 AMAZING hair/hat/headwear vendors and 2 jewelry-perfect-for-the-girl-who-doesn’t-want-what-everyone-else-has.

What was that? Did you all scream- START WITH THE HAIR FIRST? I thought you did.

First up:

Wicked Peacock.

(photo credit: Laura Parent)

I believe that is the owner, Silvana Costa, with some of her AWESOME pieces.

Here is a wedding photo from the site that I love as well:

(photo credit: Meg McGovern Hamilton)

Now there seem to be several examples on the website but I’m sure she has more. Silviana, if you come across this and you want to talk websites just let me know (I hope that doesn’t sound bitchy).

Next in the hair department we have:

GALVIN-ized Headwear

They have every sort of on top of head accessory you can think of. It’s like the Dr. Seuss of top of head accessories. Big hats, little hats, tall hats, short hats, crazy hats, feather hats. For example, I saw these at Art Beat, they are so cool:

It’s called “gossip curl”. Wonderful.

And I can’t believe I’ve lived my life without the following:

I would take up horseback riding for that hat. I’d wear it everywhere except yoga where it would undoubtedly fall off and get quite sweaty.

And on to the jewelry.

First we have:

Twigs and Heather (main site / etsy store)

Their stuff is so fun and cool and organic and different and amazing that I had to make you a little collage dedicated to their awesomeness.

Our second jewelry maker and final vendor spotlight is for:

Da Metals

DA Metals is as slick and precise as Twigs and Heather is organic. And they are SUUUUPER customizable so incorporating your wedding colors into your jewelry looks like a piece of cake.

Here are some examples of the shapes available and the color chart.

In other news, my other site is done and ready if anyone would like to take a look. I know I’ve been mentioning it forever. The Future Mrs. Darcy site is still in line to be updated and upgraded but my dear Brandy, at Modern Toile Photography, is next in line for tinkering. Hers is going to be (hopefully) easy to do but will make her site roughly a ba-jillion times better because I’m adding a bunch of galleries so you’ll be able to feast your eyes on all her fab photos and steal all the wonderful ideas her brides have had.

ALSO, my other dear Ren√©e (of Harry Potter inspired weddings fame, who I’ve mentioned quite a bit) emailed me last week to say she was in Michaels and saw this thing and thought it would be great for favors and other wedding things and thought I should tell everyone. I had to then remind her that SHE was the fabulous writer and quick give her some blog writing privileges and tell her whenever she is ready and/or willing to jump right in, so if you see a post that’s grammatically correct and free of spelling errors and wild tangents and you’ve think I’ve been abducted and replaced by a Linguo* the grammar clone— fear not! It’s probably just Ren√©e.

*In keeping with the Boston-theme of this post and the new “I randomly insert The Simpson’s things into a wedding blog” for some reason theme, I will mention, since I didn’t see it anywhere in my 2 second internet searches that Linguo, the grammar robot, happens to have a strong resemblance to the Harvard Lampoon building WHICH Conan O’Brien used to write for AS WELL AS writing for The Simpsons.**

**Did google images just update how it works while I was writing all of this and image searching? I think it did.

I found them reference on a design site for their totally fun “Keep Calm” spoof calendars. If you don’t know the Keep Calm series please see:here then return. Oh and while you’re there, I’m planning on basing my entire kitchen redesign around the “If you can’t stand the heat get out of the kitchen” poster. Can’t wait!

Anyway Little Brown Pen has spoof calendars for men and women. Here are the women’s:

So yeah, I bought a calendar nearly 4 months into the year– THAT is how great they are. The men’s are as follows:
January: Keep Warm and Get it On
February: Play Guitar and Look Sensitive
March: Remove Shirt and Pretend It’s Warm
April: Drive Fast and Hydroplane
May: Buy Flowers and Sell Hard
June: Pump Fist and Drink Beer
July: Fire Up and Sear Meat
August: Shave Chest and Suck in Gut
September: Watch Replay and Curse Interception
October: Carve Pumpkins and Scare Children
November: Eat Turkey and Fall Asleep
December: Say Thanks and Exchange for Porn

BUT what I liked best about it is it’s proof of concept for an idea I’ve been playing around with for The Future Mrs. Darcy. Basically, when you order the calendar, after you pay they send you a pdf of the calendar which you then print yourself. So it keeps the costs down as much as you want them. I’ve already talked with several brides about commercially printing the invitations/RSVP and everything included in the mail and then printing everything else (programs, table cards, table numbers, menus, etc) at local copy stores but if you haven’t noticed (because I certainly have) commercial printing is expensive! I feel horrible when I have to tell brides who want 25 invitations that it’s going to cost nearly as much as the 100 invitations I quote on etsy. Especially since a lot of times I bet people are only having 50ish guests (if you think most invitations are mailed out to two people) because they are trying to have a wedding that fits their budget. Anyway, I’m planning on posting some listings on etsy for print your own soon and I was very glad to see someone else already showing it works, even if it is on a smaller scale

I also came across something fabulous on Big Cartel (which is an etsy-like site).

A lot of the prints are very macabre but I love it. Love love love it. All the photos below are of the image then a detail so you can read the text.

And lastly, because this is such a wonderful combination of my husbands love for zombies* and me, I have to share:

*Exhibit A: these were our Halloween costumes this past year.

AND these:

And it gets better. Here is the description that goes along with the Talladega Nights
duo:

SALE! I was watching Talladega Nights the other night and was inspired to paint these. Shake and Bake!! If you love Ricky Bobby and Cal Naughton Jr. as much as I do you hafta have these! They are 2.5″ and proud! They are each handpainted with non-toxic paints and finished with a non-toxic gloss varnish. Not intended for those under 3 years old and those who will still eat the occasional raisin off the floor.

She seems like a real person, right? In case you haven’t already figure it’s out– I love conversational writing. When people starting writing dissertations and waxing lyrical I can’t help but wonder why they’re trying so hard. Also I think I watched Talladega Nights the same night she did. It was the weekend of Taco Bell, Talladega Nights, Old School, and box wine. Klassy weekend, huh?

AND better (-er)… she’s from Boston. Which means if I’m a lucky girl I can go to Grand or SOWA** and hopefully see these darlings in person.***
So, again, Naked Peggies is the name of the store which carries many cool peggies so check it out!

*Sorry, I totally nerded out there.
**AH! If you wait long enough on the SOWA home page there’s a rotating series of pictures and one is of John Malkovich (or John Malkovich’s evil twin) at SOWA. Why do I never see famous people?
***Also I have no idea if Naked Peggies are sold anywhere but on Etsy but both Grand and SOWA are cool place where if she DOES sell them elsewhere those are places I’ll check first.

My “ideabanks” are various folders on my desktop, mostly for design inspiration but then to wedding inspiration and home inspiration. Whenever I came across an image on a blog or a website (even if it wasn’t specifically “wedding”), I control-clicked (I’m on a mac) and “saved image as…” into the correct folder. Then when I had a decision to make I opened all my pictures and looked for little lightbulb to go off over my head.

If there was a whole website that I liked then it went in my delicious feed. I had a catch-all “wedding” tag but also a “flowers” tag, “bridesmaid” tag, “gifts” tag, “centerpieces” tag, “guestbook” tag, and even a mysterious “penmanship” tag. Again, when there were decisions I felt comforted by having my resources at hand. I remember why it’s so important when a friend of mine who is planning her wedding asked me about birdcage veils (which I didn’t have in my wedding) and I only have vague recollections of seeing beautiful pictures in blogs I’ve read but couldn’t remember a name or a website if I tried.*

{My wedding binder is currently hiding but I’ll look for it more tomorrow}

And the last of my planning trifecta was my binder. I’m a magazine junkie and once I got engaged it was open season. Then I found Martha Stewart Weddings. . Over a year after my wedding and I’m proud everytime I’m able to leave the check out line at the grocery store and I don’t succumb to its gorgeous layouts. Has anyone seen the rannuculus spread from last year? AHHHH!! AMAZING! The problem was despite grabbing all my flags from my domino magazines and then reinforcing with post it flags– it was too much to search through. Thus was born the binders. I have 1/2 inch binders with clear inserts for everything. In this case it started with wedding then lead to “WOW that box is heavy. I need to go through all these magazines before I move” I wish it was more discipline than that but have you ever tried to lift a box full of magazines!!??

But after all of this my question is this: brides, bridesmaids, planners- what do you do to keep you information overflow from taking over? And is there anyway The Future Mrs Darcy can help?

Let me know! Also I was running through some custom ideas for a lovely local bride and I stumbled on something I looooooooooves. But this is one of those cases where I’ve got a design and now I need a couple. What’s a blogger to do? Do I smell … contest?!

*Check out Brooklyn Bride for bird cage veils as well as http://myrakim.etsy.com. Or if you’re feeling reeeeallly crafty- I … um… made some extravagant hair pieces with feathers and fake pearls and veils for my friend’s 30th on a whim last week. Cone party hats were totes overrated for her fabulessness.