Mission: Mood Board

I've known girls who have imagined every little detail of their wedding before they even had anyone to marry. I am NOT one of those girls. So, ever since I got this ring I've been playing extreme catch-up. I'm a very quick study and my current obsession with wedding magazines and wedding blogs has provided me with excellent clift notes on the subject.

My favorite tool: The Mood Board. A mood board (aka inspiration board or storyboard) is a conglomerate of images a bride has been collecting to help her narrow down her vision for her wedding day. They proliferate on wonderful wedding blogs like weddingbee.com and stylemepretty.com (yes, to have a weddingblog you MUST name it something very silly).

Here are some other brides' mood boards that I plan on stealing (I mean borrowing) ideas from to create a fun, summer mood for our little shindig. There are other styles and colors that I've fallen in love with, too, but I think these work best with our location and time of year. And if I do make my own board, I'll definitely post it here.

I don't remember where I found all of these from, but the top was from stylemepretty.com, the second and fourth were from weddingbee.com, and the last was from ohjoy! (click any of them to see larger versions)

green acres is the place for me....

While talking to two friends several months ago about our reception site search in Lancaster County, I actually said the words, "...we're looking everywhere as long as it's not a barn". Nothing against barns, I'm just not a very rustic sorta girl. So, what does my haughtiness get me? You guessed it, our most likely suspect is The Barn at Overlook in Manheim Township (about a 10 min. drive from our ceremony spot in Lititz). Its bathrooms are the two bottom baby blue ones in Jesse's post below.

We really like the high ceilings and exposed lighting and one side is almost completely filled with windows, so it feels very clean and open. And it's not an actual barn, just shaped like one. I just have to get passed the fact that it's right next door to an...eeek....mini golf course. yeah. I just keep telling myself that it'll give kids (and kids at heart) a fun activity to do after the wedding (since it'll end around 4:00) and could provide some fun wedding photos. We'll see.

The barn only had two Saturdays still available for Summer 2008, so we're in middle of reserving July 12th (my grandparents' anniversary!) as our new potential date. As long as our catering tasting goes smoothly and we get all of the logistics worked out, this will probably be our future reception site. Ignore the centerpieces in the photo, I'm already starting to think of decorating ideas that are more fun/summery/contemporary and less rustic/country. But, that's a whole different post.

Finally Getting Some Stuff Done?

Well, Deanna and I have had a pretty crazy month or so. Things are starting to approach normalcy pretty soon, and we may have some wedding plans set by the time things are settled. I scouted out a couple of leads on reception sites last time I was in Lancaster. Deanna checked them out this past week when we were back and liked what she saw. It looks like we will be shifting our date up a month and a half or so due to availability of everything. We will keep everyone updated when things get more finalized. We are excited that things seem like they are finally falling into place.


Pictures of restrooms from different reception sites we have looked at...

Jesse