Did you know...

...that you can access glyphs on your Mac without the use of Adobe Illustrator?  I didn't until last night!  I was just playing around with wording and fonts for our invites in Text Edit, when I stumbled across a function I'd never tried before!  (There may also be a way to do this on a PC, I'm just not aware of one).

So here's how it works:  Open up Text Edit and enter some text.  If you have a font on your computer that you know has glyphs included, use it.  For my example, I'm using Corsiva Hebrew.

Adventures In Solitude

Or "Ode to the Long-Distance Couple"
 

Sudlow Jewelry via Wedzu

 
Honesty time:  I'm sick of this whole long-distance thing.  Like...pulling my hair out sick of it.

What's the cool jams?

Who wants a humpday treat?

So...B and I have a problem: we can't for the life of us agree on music for the reception.

It's not so much that we have different tastes in music, just that I tend to be more tolerant of mainstream tunes than he is.  I can jam out to pretty much anything I can sing to, while his standards are a wee bit higher.  I guess that's what comes with the territory of being a friggin Master of Music and all...psh.  Anyway, the music conversation usually goes something like this:

But we both hate Katy Perry!  Let's just put all of her songs on the "Do Not Play" list and be done with it!
I know...but some of her songs are fun to dance to, and I'm sure a lot of our guests like her music.  Don't we kind of need to think about their music tastes and not just ours?
But she can't sing and her music is terrible!

At which point I ask whether hearing "California Gurls" at our wedding reception would really be the end of the world and he gives me a pointed look.

Serendipity

Whenever I'm at Barnes and Noble I take a few minutes to leaf through their selection of wedding magazines.  I rarely let myself buy one, since I have stacks and stacks of them at home, but I just love the feel of the glossy pages and can't help but savor the gorgeous photographs of the featured fairytale weddings.  Tonight, on such an occasion, I stumbled across a beautiful spread in Real Weddings, an Australian magazine I'd never seen before.

My mouth fell open as I saw my vision for our wedding actualized and in print in front of me.  It was like a dream sequence.  For the longest time I've been trying to explain to friends and family that I want to incorporate a vintage, musical theme into our decor and invitations, but whenever I described it to people it ended up sounding kitschy and juvenile.  This magazine spread, however, was anything but:

  

Planning Our Honeymoon Adventure

I realize I haven't talked much about what B and I are doing after the wedding.  The truth is, until recently it had been virtually impossible for us to plan anything.  We had no idea where we would be living and how much time we would have for our honeymoon.  But now that our post-wedding life is finally definitive, we've been able to start seriously discussing our options!  

So where should we go?

We're not really beach people...the mountains are much more our style, and our dream honeymoon destinations center around rugged landscapes with rich histories and cultures.  Although our time constraints and limited budget won't allow us to take the trip to Ireland or New Zealand like we've always dreamed, our actual honeymoon excites me just as much as the idea of those trips did.  

Can you guess where we're going?  Let me give you a hint or two...

Photo by CircumerroStock via Huffington Post

Today is a good day.

That is all.

Technology & Me: It's a Love-Hate Relationship

Okay, so here's the sitch...

Before I left for Michigan to go see B's graduate voice recital, I thought I scheduled a few posts to publish while I was away.  Evidently I didn't execute it properly, because no such posts appeared on the blog in my absence, and so it sat quiet for over a week.  My sincerest apologies.  I decided to just publish them all at once, so please pardon the little blip on the blog today...

Anyway, as it turned out, in our haste to leave Ann Arbor Monday morning (at five freaking a.m.!) my laptop bag was overlooked, and I didn't realize it until we were several hours down the road. 

Dun Dun DUNNN...

Get With the Program!

Some people think wedding programs are boring.  That they all say the same thing, look the same way, and are thrown away immediately after the ceremony.  As such, a lot of brides wind up whipping them together as an afterthought and don't stress too much about them.

I'm not one of those brides.

I don't know what it is about wedding programs, but I think they're awesome!  I started playing around with a program mock-up about a week into our engagement, and probably have five or six versions on my computer right now.  There's just something fun about trying out different fonts and layouts that really appeals to me, and it's a project I'm definitely excited to start putting together.

So what kind of style are we going for, you ask?  Well, I'm thinking something with lots of romantic quotes and flowers printed on the cover.  Maybe a darling photo of two children, to symbolize our young relationship growing into a beautiful marriage.

{Source}

My Guide to Dress Shopping

Catch up on my dress shopping experiences here, here and here!

Let me just start out by saying that I am by no means a dress expert.  I've never worked in a bridal salon, I don't have any professional experience in the wedding industry, and my knowledge of wedding trends is minimal at best.  All I can really go off of is my own dress shopping experience (and a few hundred episodes of SYTTD).

Feel free to take my suggestions with a grain of salt.

Anne Shirley is My Bosom Friend

A lot of people have celebrity inspirations.  Maybe they're the celebrities they look like, maybe it's celebrities whose style they want to emulate, or maybe it's just someone they look up to as an icon.  Often when a bride gets married, she looks to those celebrities she admires to help her decide on the style she wants for her big day. Unfortunately, I don't really have one of those.

I've been told I look like a cross between Kate Winslet and Cate Blanchett, but I don't really see it...

Sources: Kate & Cate

I do, however have literary inspirations.

Fyi...

Just a quick update - I'm experiencing some computer-related issues at the moment. They should be resolved within the next few days. Sorry for the break in posting...this is so frustrating!

But I'll be back in action soon, I promise!!

Whose Wedding Is It Anyway?

There's something about weddings that bring out the inner "expert" of everyone around you.  Friends, family members, the old lady who sits in front of you at church - even strangers on the street: everyone has an opinion that they're more than willing to share.

Ever since B and I got engaged over sixteen months ago, I've gotten more unsolicited advice than I have during the previous 23 years of my life combined.  These well-intentioned words of wisdom have ranged from helpful to humorous to downright hurtful.  Here are a few gems for your viewing pleasure:

"If I were you, I'd start your wedding 30 minutes after the time printed on your invites. You'd be surprised how many people will show up late."

"You're wasting your time with this.  No one who will even notice those details but you." 

"You're going to tell people where to sit at your wedding?  Nobody's going to like that..."

And my personal favorite:

"You can't have your ceremony start on the hour, it's bad luck!  The minute hand of the clock needs to be moving up when your ceremony starts, not down, so you should make sure to start during the second half of the hour."  

Um..what?