Whew!

This has been a busy wedding season! Fall is an awesome time to get married in the Texas Hill Country. The weather is beautiful - sunny during the day, just barely cool at night. The rain has left everything lush, green and blooming. We've had a wonderful variety of weddings the past few months. From Hill Country elegant at the family ranch to down home casual for the Canadians at Luckenbach. It's been so much fun! But, it's also meant that the blog has suffered. That's what happens when you launch a site before one of the craziest times of the year. Have I said already how fabulous fall in the Hill Country is? In fact, the calendar for next fall is already filling up.

I've had the opportunity to work with some amazing photographers and really lovely brides so I promise to post pictures as soon as I get my hands on them!

A Hill Country Vineyard Wedding

The first part of June stays just nice enough in the Hill Country that outside weddings are enjoyable and not too hot once the sun begins to set. These are pictures from Alice and Taylor's wedding at a local vineyard. They were so fun to work with because they were both all about the details as well as the big picture. I loved overhearing guests from the big city say that Martha Stewart had nothing on this wedding.

Andrea Polito Photographers of Dallas had a team there to photograph the event and they did an amazing job. My favorite part of the proofing was that they had a whole section called "wedding details". Each special "little something" the couple had put so much thought into was documented for the bride and groom to remember along with the overall story of their day. Love that.

Again, many thanks to Polito Photography for taking the time to send the beautiful images, Maggie Gillespie for doing beautiful flowers for them to photograph and to Alice and Taylor for letting me be a part of their day!

DIY Labels

Recently I sent out these invitations for a bride - problem was these rich brown envelopes only lend to writing on them with a gold or silver pen. This wasn't really the type of invitation that wanted gold or silver writing - not to mention that my handwriting, while tidy and neat, isn't nice enough for wedding invitations. The invitations were beautiful, yet casual and fun enough to be able to handle something besides a calligrapher addressing the envelope so we started looking into the idea of labels. Nooo, not those white labels...surely you know me better than that. We wanted color. We wanted different.

We tried to order labels from Paper Source in strawberry or papaya to match the paper colors inside but the big ovals been discontinued! Oh the tragedy! What to do now? These invitations MUST go in the mail soon.

And so....

We ordered some of the text weight papaya paper, printed our labels on the computer and then cut them into 1" strips (the same width as the 3M permanent double stick tape) by that wrapped around the invitation to reveal the return address on the back. It worked out perfectly, if I do say so myself.

Pioneer Museum Showcase - Hill Country Vintage Wedding Inspiration

Last Thursday The Pioneer Museum here in Fredericksburg opened it's gates to showcase it's newly renovated grounds. It's a charming place for an outdoor wedding, particularly if you have more than 200 people...the number that maxes out a lot of venues around here. Vendors from around the area set up tables in a huge tent to showcase their wares. Except us...

My friend Michelle over at Sprout joined forces with me to have a "booth" that would stand apart...and stand apart we did - a whole 400 yards apart since we weren't with the other vendors. Instead of doing a typical booth we did a vignette of sorts. More of an inspiration board come to life complete with a killer 1955 turquoise Chevy step-side pickup and farm table full of goodies.

We had been working on a wedding that we were hoping would take kind of a 1950's retro-vintage look to it. The wedding headed in another direction but we were still in that frame of mind and pulled together some fun red and turquoise pieces - cherry print paper cones filled with popcorn displayed in an antique milk basket, a panel made of vintage tart molds, red daliahs, carmel apples, stainless canisters, turquoise enamelware filled with white hydrangeas, and even the red phone. The entire setup really did have "fun" written all over it.

What you can't see is all the huge red tissue paper pom poms hanging in the trees above the table and the truck, it really brought it all together....even though the wind was so strong they "hung" horizontally all day! Ahhh, the best laid plans...

Hello, 2009? Is that you calling?

Aaaaaaaat Laaaaaaaaaaaaaaast (cue Etta James here).

Here I am, standing with one toe precariously dipped into 2009 and the vast pool of technology. Social networking. The BLOGOSPHERE...or is it blogasphere? Whatever. The INTERNET. A blog. I'm a blog-ger. I'm still learning the terminology here so forgive me while I test how it rolls of the ole fingers. Seriously, I have no idea why this has taken so long other than I'm slightly afraid of technology. And I have to little kids, two businesses and my computer hard drive has crashed twice in the past two years forcing me to start from scratch. Yes, back up the hard drive, I hear you, I get it. Point is, I'm starting now and I'm excited. Behind the curve but excited none-the-less.

Annnnnd we're off....

Hello internet, my friend. I'm told that you will let me gush as much as I should so choose. Purrfect. Just what I'm looking for...due to the fact that I live in a small town and however Norman Rockwell-esq it might be, I can only blather so much to the 10 people that live here about all the lovely things in my head. Ok, so maybe there are more than 10 people that live here. But you get my point. The WORLD is now my oyster. Or would you say the INTERNET is now my oyster? Perhaps you'd say neither because I have texture issues with oysters.

See that phone above? It is a photograph. I took it. I don't know how to photoshop it so bear with me. I mean to post professional photographs - by real photographers. But sometimes one isn't available so you have to take what I've got.

Next up is a sneak peak of Alice and Taylor's June wedding at Becker Vineyards. I just got my hands on the photographs so I'll be posting them soon.