Creative wedding band shots

Love these shots of wedding bands I found on Style Me Pretty, and my new favourite e-magazine Utterly Engaged. The latter is a new web magazine focusing on eco weddings, but beware - you could easily get addicted.

DIY ideas for outdoor weddings

These centerpieces would work very well for an outdoor wedding and you can easily make them yourself.

Ingredients: empty wine bottles, mason jars, perfume bottles, gold wrapping paper (this one is from IKEA), pearls strands (grandma's, from the flea market or made by you), butterfly and dragonfly clipart, lace table spread (grandma's, or from the flea market), lavender, glue. As the wrapping paper covers the wine labels completely, it is not necessary to take them off.

Variations:
- I chose the gold-lavender-white combination, but it is up to you what colour you would like to go with: red-white, black and white, white and blue, blue and pink, blue-pink-red and the list goes on.
- instead of lavender we can use other flowers: ranunculus, sunflowers, daisies, etc. it depends of course on our colour palette as well.
- or, instead of flowers, we could put candles in the wine bottles. If we choose to do this, however, we need to take the wine labels off, because the light will cause the original label to become visible underneath the wrapping paper.

It is a creative and pretty alternative to the usual centerpieces and easy to make, especially if you like wine and always have a couple of empty bottles around the house - just like the auther of this blog. :)

Procession with a twist?

Jill and Kevin (hence the abbreviation JK) did not wait too long to start the party. They kicked off at the ceremony already. This couple's wedding entrance have been watched by over 18 million (!) people over the course of short two weeks on youtube. No wonder, there is so much love radiating from these people, I just enjoy watching them over and over again.

New wife's dress from IKEA

The cutest new wife's dress I have ever seen. What is a new wife's dress you might ask. In Hungary the custom is that the bride, actually the new wife by then, at midnight changes into the new wife's dress which is usually red. And this one was tailored from fabric purchased in IKEA. A nice example of the creativity of Hungarian brides. And love the matching tie too.

Rustic beauty in Lillafüred

I would like to dedicate a separate post to the floral arrangements of the wedding already showcased below.

The venue was the Palace Hotel in Lillafüred, and if you look at the photos you will understand that there was no need to use tons of flowers as the setting was so beautiful that it just took your breath away. What we did with the help of the wonderful Medinilla Floral Art was elegant yet rustic and all inspired by the surrounding natural beauty.

Lovely details: The bride's bouquet of lilies was wrapped in the same French lace that adorned her dress, kept in place with tiny pearl buttons. The white elegance of the centerpieces was playfully broken by some tiny rose leaves covered in gold paint. The cake topper was also created using the white hyndrageas, roses and gold rose leaves.

Obsessed with shoes

From top to bottom: Rainbow Color Studio, Vágó Réka, Style Me Pretty, Marie Labbancz Photography

We live in times when nearly anything goes. Colour is the new white as I've heard. Even for wedding gowns, I see splashes of colour emerging, but if you don't want to go that far, why not wear some saucy red shoes on your wedding day underneath that white dress? Let your imagination run wild, anything is possible: polka dots, stripes, even skulls! We can use our favourite colour or the main wedding colour, or the hue of the bridesmaids' dresses.

If we want our shoe to have a unique pattern or or made of a special fabric I recommend the Hungarian shoemaker Fany Moda, they will make nearly anything even from the fabric you bring.

Something different, something new. Something that is more than the polyester table runners, the überkitchy invitation quotes and other wedding clichés that could fill an entire wedding guest book. Why would it be impossible to make our wedding our own? An event that is "us"? A wedding where black lace on the wedding gown is just as much of an option as making centerpieces out of empty wine bottles or flea market finds.

This side of the planning does require some courage, but there are other aspects that can be arranged without risking any raised eyebrows, still many times the result is not what we could label even as acceptable.

It is true that oftentimes tha budget is not exactly the same as other couples have the west of Hungary neither have we the same array of vendors, but I'm convinced that with some inspiration and fortitude Hungarian couples can also get more than the usual, boring, outdated solutions at their wedding.

Example: I was planning a wedding in June and we only had white plastic chairs to seat the guests for the ceremony in the hotel's beautiful park - not exactly chic or elegant. Finally, with the help of a local vendor, we could wrap the chairs in an off-white fabric that lent them a dreamy fairy-tale quality and resulted in beautiful photos of the ceremony with the help of the talented photographer Szabó Zoltán.

It always gives me great pleasure to turn a disadvantage into advantage and it was also rewarding to see that the couple didn't have to compromise on anything.

The flower arrangements were also something out of the ordinary, I will write about those later.

Szabó Zoltán: www.szemtanu.com