Sorry for the lack of posts as of late, but my life has been reminiscent of a tv movie lately. I am awaiting car repairs after pulling over while smoke engulfed the front end of my car, I got a tow, talked to a lot of people and tried to make them my best friends along the way, and now I just wait until they fix it. The rest of my life is pretty up in the air as well. I was working at a sign shop and that is no longer but Garrett and I found an awesome letterpress shop yesterday that might need help or at the least show me how things work (more on them in a future post, I'm planning to take pictures when I go back). Just so I don't leave you completely without my wedding related interests in the past week or so, here are some photos and links...

vintage cake topper... I would need to be blonde though

(from ebay, idea from weddingbee)

french anemones:

from a bride in the making

Good day

Hello! I had been stressed out since friday night when my check engine light came on...but no more! I took it to the shop Saturday and they took until MONDAY to do a diagnostic even though they are open saturday and sunday only to tell me that the computer readings were transmission related and they don't fix transmissions. So I pick it up and take it to a dealer today, fearing the necessity of a new transmission and thus goodbye car. But, it's under $200 to fix and I can drive it till they get the parts in! I spent the rest of the day painting at Camille's house (a Birmingham photographer I met a few weeks ago) and now I think I will go for a run and move some things into my new apartment that I will soon be able to sleep at!

love, kelly!

wedding photo pet peeve

It might be because I've shot a few weddings, or because I'm an aesthetic snob, or because I hate plastic hangers... but why, oh why do people always seem to have their dresses that cost thousands of dollars on plastic coat hangers? I'll be pretty angry with myself if I don't remember to get a better hanger and use it. I might just buy one now to save myself the trouble.

Proof that people do this to follow...I'm collecting.

ridiculous reception room

photo fromanna kuperberg

Pretty pretty weddings

This wedding (see snippet and ink for the whole thing) makes me want to have a million amazing details at the reception.

I'm going to start blogging more

I've been lazy and tumbling a lot but not blogging so I'm going to try and pick up on it. Here's an inspiration board from weddingbee that I liked a few pieces from:


the second pic in row 2: i like the fabric background and the bridesmaid dresses.
third one over in the bottom row, the navy envelopes with gold writing. hmmm.

I want to have banners at our wedding...I don't know what they should say... I might add a drawing of one to our Save the Dates. They'll probably have Tin Tin on them (we wanted 10-10 as our date and tintin is belgian and Garrett has Belgian great-grands so we're holding on to it anyway...it tells a story about the trials of wedding planning)

from Once Wed:





From Darling Dexter:

ADD inspired

I don't know how anyone survives wedding planning without feeling like their heads are exploding. I've been working a lot of part time job things (sign shop, assisting Amelia, home improvement for Camille) and thinking about color schemes and marketing schemes in my spare time. I really want to be at a point by this time next year that I feel comfortable lead shooting weddings and making a decent salary that way. So all these things zoom around in my head and I'm a little haggard at this point. So forgive me when my blog posts seem out of the blue or unrelated to anything. Here goes a random glimpse into my nest (my sister will appreciate that reference and I will pretend that it also references my head, adorned with a nest-like lump of bobby-pinned hair at the moment).

I really want a birdcage veil

I want to wear my fiance's mom's belgian veil (he has belgian great grandparents and his mom bought the veil recently on a trip to visit family) for the ceremony with a blusher in front and then a birdcage veil to the reception to give it a nice vintage feel. And I am really loving the idea of red lipstick. dark red.

Also, I'm struggling about the open bar...how much will it really cost?

We're moving into our new apartment tomorrow, and it is gorgeous! More on that soon.
Oh, and if you are in the B'ham and need signs, I'm your girl.

my first inspiration board!

I have been working on this forever, the collecting images part, but here are some color schemed things I really like/might incorporate in the wedding:



ring photo is mine with a necklace from anthropologie; wedding dress from allure bridals style 8518; teacup via flickr user sue.h
kid with sucker via once wed, art deco earrings via kay cullen; ranunculus via evflorist.com; invitation: Cartoccio by Bella Figura; yellow shoes from etsy; bridesmaid dress from Watters & Watters

Lottery Ticket engagement?

This would probably actually be really cool for a couple who likes to do scratch off lottery tickets, you could even hide it amongst real ones. Or maybe it's really lame. I think the thing for the people proposing is that hopefully you know what kind of humor they have and what is important to them, and you do something that reflects the two of you. If your sig fig (my term for significant other) hates crowds don't propose in a busy restaurant or on new years eve in NYC. If they are super close to their family and share everything and you've become a part of their family or they have become a huge part of yours then maybe you can propose in front of them. If they aren't crazy about the beach don't propose at the beach.

As for me, we got engaged as soon as I pulled up the driveway at his parents house the day I moved from NC to AL. (I stopped halfway so it was after a 4 hour drive). He urged me to hurry and get out (it'd been about 2 weeks since we'd seen each other and that seemed like forever so that in itself wasn't indicative of what was to come, just normal), and I didn't even turn the car off, just got out and he said "I can't wait any longer, will you marry me?" as he got down on one knee and opened the box and of course I said yes and we were mushy and I was jittery from the excitement of moving and seeing him and getting engaged! So I turned the car off, he put the ring on my finger and we tried to get his family to notice the ring. It was great, and we had a very nice dinner with ridiculously great lobster tails (at Ocean, if you're from Bham you might know it), and some port his dad had been saving since Garrett was born (we celebrated his grandparent's 50th anniversary, his graduation, and our engagement all at once). And I got to see how sparkly diamond rings are in restaurants. I feel so mushy now.

But anyway, it [the proposal] was perfect and the ring is exactly what I wanted and I am tres excited to be starting our life here in Birmingham!

Life update

I am sorry for failing at posting more frequently... but I've been tumbling pretty faithfully! It's just as cool and even more useful than the amazon universal wishlist, but it makes me pretty lazy about posting. Basically I can link to a site with the simple press of a button on my bookmarks bar to show my mom and friends bridesmaid dresses I like, floral arrangements, how I want to leave the reception (I want to keep it a secret so no one else does it first and my mom disapproves of it so we'll see), etc. I recommend it for the unorganized blogger--you can use it to keep track of where you got your images and ideas too!

Oh, and just to change again, My wedding is going to be October 3rd, set in stone, not moving, October 3rd. That can be a blog post for later.

Anyway, I've been practicing making bouquets. The first was mini, just four pink roses. The second was 10 purple tulips and I loveeee it. In real life I'll be using yellow ranunculus though. Here are how they turned out:


everything you need: floral shears, ribbon, pins (I used quilting pins), and florist tape (it's a lot like the wraps they use to bandage you after you give blood).



for more of the second bouquet check out my photography blog!