Engaging Love

Hello lovelies! I hope you are having a fantastic Thursday! I am busy busy with my internship, school and reporting, but I wanted to take a post and congratulate my big sister Autumn and her fiance Josh on their engagement! We are all very excited in my family and can't wait to start planning the wedding!

In occasion of the engagement, and the fact that I will be their engagement photo photographer, I wanted to make this post about really adorable, yet simple and sweet engagement photos.

I picked a few collections that I loved from different photographers, so here we go!

{ Jessica Claire }

Most recently featured on Ruche, Jessica has taken some beautiful inner city engagement photos, which would be fun to do either in Old Town in Fort Collins, up in Golden on main street, or 16th Street mall in Denver.

What Jessica is known for is being attracted to putting lots of colors in her photos, which is different fom many mainstream, but something that I love. I will definitely try to dress Autumn up in her black peacoat with some bright colors sticking out underneath!

{ Rebekah Westover }

Rebekah is another photographer that has lots of beautiful color on the subjects in her photos and they just shine and look gorgeous. I love the blanket idea, but a big reason that I chose her to feature was because many of her photos include snow, which I would love to have on the ground about the time that I shoot future Mr. and Mrs. Shannon.

I love all of the super cute scarf poses in these, it just is so adorable!

 

{ Miller + Miller }

I love these creative in a laundr-o-mat photos that Ryan and Sarah Miller of Miller + Miller photography did. It is fun, cute and just plain fun! I love ideas like these!

This is another engagement couple that Miller + Miller did in a snowy climate. I love the heart in the snow above and the light shining through the couple below.

Those are some gorgeous engagement photos and I hope to capture Josh and Autumn in the same ways, in love! 

May Autumn and Josh have many happy years to come!

Wedding Favors Galore!

One thing that has been on my mind is the perfect wedding favors. I have been looking at so many fun and creative ideas and I just can't decide quite yet, but I am starting to have a favorite! Here are some that The Knot had as their favorite picks from weddings and I love them!



Jones Sodas have always been my favorite, and they have great personalized bottle options! The Knot



I love these little herb favors! The Knot



On a hot summer day for our outdoor wedding, everyone is going to need water! The Knot

Fans to cool off from the summer sun. The Knot

Cootie catchers are a fun way to make things a little playful at the wedding. The Knot

Pinwheels would be a cute little thing to have around! The Knot

Mark and I love tea, so giving mugs would be a great idea for the guests! The Knot

The cookie cutter idea just looked adorable! The Knot

Hand sewn wedding favor bags make a fantastic homemade gift! The Knot

I just keep finding such cute ideas! Enjoy!

StyleMePretty

In the midst of trying to figure out how to create the perfect ambience at the wedding, I followed a link from 77Inspire's blog that led me to StyleMePretty (I found 77Inspire thanks to the Happy Nester). Here are some beautiful ideas of weddings that I am just falling in love with!

How gorgeous is the lace table cloth? Found here.

I love the idea of the little wooden signs for directions! here.

Notice the beautiful Ball jar idea at the top right. here.

Here is an example of the jars and the woodens signs used together in a theme! Gorgeous! here.

I thought this was a fun idea! here

These are just some great ideas that I have been seeing! I look forward to our wedding so much! Enjoy!

Ready to register!

Coming from a small town, Mark and I both know not to expect people to make a trip to Denver for wedding gifts. That said, we registered at the two biggest stores in Montrose: Target and JC Penny's.

Going around the store Mark and I were so excited to talk about the wedding and be thinking about all of the guests that will be attending! Mark had a blast running around scanning all of the items in the store, and we just laughed and had a day of fun in the store.

At Target, we found the most beautiful set of ceramic dishes, that we both had our eyes on. Mark does pottery in his spare time, so this style is something we both really are drawn to.


The Jade Moon dinnerware set is gorgeous and would give a beautiful look to the table. It can be bought in the store or online here.

When it came to the bedroom, Mark actually found the perfect bedspread at JC Penny's online, and it will go great with our tan or white wicker full bed set.



The Athena Comforter set is beautiful and definitely brightens up a room! I would love for our room to look like this one! The set is only available online at JC Penny.

 Along with that beautiful bed set, we found gorgeous, soft sheets that will accent the blue just right.


500 Thread count Damask sheets by Chris Madden in hazel are just right to match the light blue of the comforter set. These sheets are available in the store as well as online.

 All of our kitchen choices are at Target and all of our bedding and bathroom choices are at JC Penny's. We are both so very excited to see our first place come together with our creativity!

Bridesmaid Dresses on a budget

I was hoping that going shopping with three of my closest friends should be a wonderful experience, everyone should get along, but I was wrong. Well, shopping with my maid of honor, my lovely sister Autumn is always a joy, when we are alone or with our lovely mother, but neither of us have ever been much for bargain shopping in a mall.

Our budget was to stay under $100 for each dress, which doesn't sound too ridiculous, but we couldn't find a single dress we wanted within our budget in the entire Park Meadows Mall in Denver. Well, except this beautiful strapless Oleg Cassini dress in Dillards for $130.

And after an exhausting day shopping and not finding the dress of our dreams in our budget, we decided to make them. My mother has made my prom dresses and homecoming dresses in high school in the past, so she wanted to give a shot at the bridesmaids dresses.

The maid of honor, my beautiful sister Autumn will be wearing simplicity pattern 3878, with beautiful pink tulle and satin from Hobby Lobby.

The pattern is fun and beautiful, without the not so fun price that the perfect dress comes with. The pattern can be found in just about any fabric section of any store, or online at Simplicity.

My lovely roommate, Christie, will be wearing another Simplicity pattern with the same pink satin that will accent Autumn's dress.

The strapless version of this dress is what we are going for, which has a striking resemblance to the dress we found in Dillards that we loved, but without that price tag, once again. This dress pattern is also available at Simplicity.

I am truly looking forward to the wedding and all the shopping we have to do for apparel at this point is shoes, and I know everyone loves shoe shopping! At least my family and friends.

I am looking forward to seeing how these dresses come together, and if you are a guest, be sure to steer clear of these dresses please! Wedding procession only :)

Enjoy!

To Cake or to Cupcake

While a traditional big white wedding cake seems to be the center piece for every wedding, I decided it just might not be for us. So, after thinking it over, we decided that cupcakes would be a fun and cute way to have our cake and eat it too.

I found to most beautiful cupcake liners that remind me of a theme that might be developing, pink and flowers.



I thought the pink liners would be adorable to include, to make each cupcake into a blooming flower. To see more great cupcake liners check them out here. I also found similar ones at Hobby Lobby and Michael's.

 I then began looking through ideas for how to decorate the wedding procession cake that Mark and I will be cutting and how I could incorporate the cupcakes with that. Instead of the over-used flower decorations for wedding cakes, I found a fun butterfly idea instead.

The butterflies are so fun and playful, I think it would add a very neat dimension to the cake and cupcakes. I found the butterflies here. A great idea to get these is the floral section in Hobby Lobby!

When I first started looking into the cupcake idea, I looked through pictures to get ideas and there have been so many great ways to create that look of a cake with the tiers, just by adding a stand.

This is a great idea to have the procession's cake at the top, which Mark and I would cut, while still having the cupcakes to match! This beautiful design can be found here.



Found here.



This one is fantastic, showing the possibilities of the butterflies!



The cake will be beautiful, I can't wait to see how these ideas turn into a masterpiece!