When I’m envisioning a “theme” design for anything — a website, a room, or indeed our wedding — I find it a hundred times easier to get everything out on paper before I start building/purchasing/deciding on anything. That’s why I always, always make a mood/inspiration board, or a color palette, or at the very least a folder of inspiring pictures, for the project I’m about to undertake. This is my inspiration post, and it’s just as much for me as it is for the sake of sharing — I will be referencing the heck out of this post as planning continues.

The vibe we’re going for is modern classic garden party. We want it to feel elegant and chic but relaxed at the same time. Not too stuffy, but not too casual. Juuuuust right.

Our colors are light green, ivory, and champagne with pops of black.

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The girls will be in light green chiffon dresses (more on them coming up) and the guys will be wearing charcoal suits with black bowties and shoes.

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Flowers will be white, cream, and green, possibly with pops of peachy-pink for the girls.

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And of course there will be elements of lace incorporated throughout.

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So that, friends, is what our wedding will “feel like” (Jason makes fun of me for phrasing it that way…what a party pooper). And I gotta say, I’m pretty darn excited about it.

Do you find inspiration boards, folders, or palettes helpful?

Hi blog. I bought my dress today. Wanna see it?

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I don’t know where I first heard about self-uniting marriage ceremonies, but the instant I knew it was a thing, I knew it fit us perfectly.

Jason and I are not religious. Religion plays no part in our lives separately or in our relationship together. We were both raised Christian but no longer follow any sort of religion. Neither of us has ever been to a wedding that was not in a church, but when we got engaged, neither of us wanted to marry in a church, nor did we want any mention of religion in our ceremony at all. We feel very strongly about this. It’s just not who we are.

We first considered having a Justice of the Peace (JOP)/secular wedding “celebrant” perform the ceremony, but it felt strange to us to choose a random person to marry us. That led us to consider the option of having a friend or family member get ordained online, but when we really thought about it, there is no one in our lives who we felt would be right for that. We puzzled and puzzled over this, until one day, I read about self-uniting ceremonies.

Self-uniting marriage ceremonies originate in Pennsylvania Quaker tradition. In the Quaker tradition, they believe that no one person should have the right to preach over others; everyone is equal, and thus everyone has the same authority within the religion. That means that couples can marry themselves, by simply saying, “I take you as my husband” and “I take you as my wife” in front of two adult witnesses. Then, the four people sign the license, and that’s that. It’s absolutely perfect for us because there is no repeating of vows, no pronouncement of marriage, no authority to tell us when we are or are not married. We can say any vows we want to each other, so long as they include the requisite lines above, and then we are married — because of our own words, our own choice to dedicate ourselves to one another. And that is what a marriage is all about.

“Quaker Marriages” are no longer strictly Quaker, however they are strictly a Pennsylvania thing. It is fairly easy to get self-uniting licenses in PA now, though some counties still give couples trouble. Luckily, Allegheny County is no longer one of them, thanks to the court case in the article linked above.

And so, we will have a self-uniting ceremony. We haven’t thought through the details yet, but we plan to write the ceremony from scratch ourselves, including a few readings by those nearest and dearest to us. To me, the ceremony readings are a time to reflect upon what you are about to do, upon the hugeness of this thing called marriage, to hear words of wisdom, of humor, of love from those who know you the best. The readings and the words and the vows of the ceremony are the most important parts of the day to me — they are what makes you married; the rest is just icing on the proverbial cake.

Have you ever been to a self-uniting ceremony?

(Hi! Sorry for the absence and downtime; we moved this past weekend and didn’t get the server up until the other day. I’ve been unpacking boxes and trying to get organized so I haven’t had much time for wedding stuff, let along to blog about it. But I’m back-ish now.)

In wedding-blog-land, STD doesn’t mean what you think it does. (And actually, for that kind of STD, that’s not a PC term anymore anyway…they’re STIs now, didn’t you know?) No, if you’re talking to someone getting married, STD means “Save-the-date”: Those little cards that guests receive long before the wedding so that they know what’s up and can plan accordingly and not be caught unprepared and unaware mere weeks before the wedding when formal invitations go out.

On my side of the family especially, we have a lot of out-of-town guests. In fact I’d say 95% of my side of the guest list is out-of-towners, and if they are caught without enough time to take off work/make travel arrangements/what-have-you and aren’t able to attend, I’ll have about 10 people at the wedding. So STDs are a priority for us.

All of our papergoods will be DIY. I’m a graphic designer and a control freak; would I have it any other way? :) I’ve known that I want to do postcards because they’re cheap, easy, big enough that they won’t get lost in the stack of junk mail in your mailbox, and yet don’t require an envelope (read: cheaper!). I’ve been trolling the internet for STD inspiration and here are some of my favorites:

(The sites these came from are both having problems right now, it seems, but all images and designs are courtesy of Wedding Paper Divas and Minted.)

You’ll notice that none of these have pictures of the couple on them. That’s because we’re (as of now) not doing engagement photos — it’s not really in the budget, and it doesn’t really fit our personalities anyway. Plus, I really love typography and color, and STDs are one of the only places in the wedding where I would get to have extreme creativity with those things (because invites, programs, escort cards, etc. are all pretty much cut-and-dry as to what they say and how they say it).

In the next few weeks I’m going to be working out a design, and then I’ll probably order a sample from Vistaprint. I’ve heard talk of Vistaprint running free promotions all the time, so I may sign up for their emails and wait for one of those to roll around — getting our STDs for the price of shipping would be, um, amazing.

What do you do with Save-the-dates when you receive them? (Or what would you do if you’ve never gotten one before?) Do you find it helpful to have an advance heads-up, or do you glance at them and toss them? You can be honest — I won’t be offended. Promise.

In real-life land, we just paid a deposit on a lovely little duplex in a suburb of Pittsburgh. This place has everything we have been looking for…literally…and it’s officially ours. We sign the lease on Monday or Tuesday and can move in any time after that.

We are just so relieved that the search is over. We have made so many appointments and phone calls and emails and gone to see so many places over the past few months that have turned out to be complete, utter crapholes. It was getting so exhausting, seeing shanty after shanty and wondering, was this the standard we would have to lower to in order to find somewhere to live? Is this really what people in the city call “home”? It’s not like our standards are particularly high, either — we just wanted something clean, fairly new/updated on the inside, and not falling apart. We couldn’t find that anywhere in the city. We came home dejected so many times and spent countless hours searching Craigslist and many other websites to no avail. It was getting downright depressing, exhausting, to come by disappointment after disappointment. It became funny, even — because if we didn’t laugh about it, we would have cried.

And then this happened. We got our credit approved, went and saw other places just for argument’s sake, and went back today to pay the deposit. No hesitation whatsoever, no regrets. Just happiness, and excitement, and relief. We finally have a place to call home, it’s ours for the next year, it’s got lots of big rooms, it’s two stories, it’s in a fairly modern house, it has a place to put a garden, a living room big enough to fit a Christmas tree, a kitchen we can cook big dinners in, an extra bedroom to host guests, a dedicated office, and just everything, everything we have been looking for and thought we’d never find.

We learned our lesson with our current place to look at prospective apartments with both eyes wide open — and we did. We opened every cabinet. We turned on every faucet. We asked inane questions. We checked the washer and dryer, the dishwasher, the oven, the fridge. We were there yesterday in the pouring rain and there wasn’t a leak in sight. We talked to the landlord about the history of the place, how he came about owning it, what the neighborhood is like. We checked the baseboards and the ceiling corners for bug-escape holes — none.

And so this weekend, we pack. And spend a whole lot of money on moving expenses. Next Friday we will get the utilities started, and spend our first night in our new home. I could not be more excited!