Re-wearing Your Wedding Dress

For our anniversary Date this year I decided I wanted to try to wear my wedding dress again. Now that I've lost all my baby weight it seemed like a good time to break it back out and get at least one more use out of it. I am seriously so in love with this dress, It makes me feel beautiful and comfortable and elegant all at once (which is how all brides should feel in my opinion!).

When I got engaged 4 years ago finding the perfect dress was of course on the top of my to do list. I knew I didn't want a "wedding dress" per se and I absolutely cringed at the thought of going to a bridal salon. I looked in to a number of short options that in the end just didn't feel special enough to me and then I came across my dress at a Nordstroms in the mall. It was perfect, in my price range, beautiful, comfy and fit me like a glove. I snapped it up that day and never looked back. It was also a great shopping experience with no pushy sales people hovering around me, no standing on a pedestal in the middle of the showroom and only my most trusted fashion advisor (my Mom!) was in attendance.

Your wedding dress is probably the most expensive item of clothing you own. For me it certainly is and mine even came in at the bargain price of $360, which is expensive for a dress but a steal for a wedding dress. I always thought it was such a shame to spend so much money on this beautiful, perfect dress that you love and then never get to wear it again. While my dress is definitely formal, found in the evening gown department, I felt like it was simple enough that I could style it in such a way that it would be appropriate for a date night.

For our date we were headed to The Family Dog , a bar in Virginia Highlands for drinks and appetizers, afterward we headed across the street to Rosebud, a more formal restaurant owned by the same people. The whole experience was fairly casual since we aren't really good at being fancy people but it was a nice step up from the kind of places we would normally go out to eat and a nice break from cooking at home which we do 99% of the time. To dress down my wedding gown I paired it with brown leather boots and belt, a denim jacket an owl necklace and a brown feathered headband. You can see how I styled the dress for my actual wedding day in my previous post.

The whole outfit came across as a nice kind of bohemian ensemble and I actually got quite a few compliments on it. It felt great to get to wear the dress again a relive a few of my warm and fuzzy wedding memories as well. I feel inspired now to try to find other ways to re-wear my dress. Have you found a way to wear your wedding dress again? I've had this idea for ages to host a wedding dress party for all my married girl friends where we would all get to wear our dress again. Who wants to do this with me? Come on, it'll be awesome! :-)

Joanna's Bridal Shower

I haven't ever had the opportunity to be in a wedding before so when Joanna (one of my besties) asked me to be in her wedding this Fall I was thrilled! Of course things were complicated shortly thereafter by my getting pregnant (and due right around her wedding date). Nevertheless I am happy to have the opportunity to be there for a good friend and while I still plan to be in the wedding (assuming I'm not actually in labor that day) I wanted to do something special for Joanna just in case it doesn't work out. As one of the only local bridesmaids I offered to host the shower at my house. This is a relatively new thing for me, I have helped throw a lingerie shower/bachelorette party for an out of town friend before but hosting it at your own house is a little different. Hosting a shower is lot more pressure than having a regular party for some reason, you want it to be just perfect! I enlisted the help of the only other local bridesmaid and we decided to throw Joanna a kitchen themed shower since she is such a foodie. All in all I think it was a big hit! It was fun getting everyone together and I love that our house is such an easy place to entertain in. Congratulations Joanna, can't wait for your big day in September!

Decorations made from photos I've taken of Adam and Joanna and crepe paper

Gorgeous flowers from the Marietta farmers market

The spread of food

Handmade favors, honey butter glazed popcorn

Pretty presents and paper lanterns made by Sarah, the other in town bridesmaid

People starting to arrive

The fabulous veil and hat made from the ribbons off of the presents.

Group shot!

Westley stole a cupcake after everyone left.

Wedding Style

It's Spring time and oh my goodness love is in there air! It seems like everyone I know is getting married or engaged lately. I guess we are just getting to that age where people are starting to want to "settle down". In honor of all you engaged girls out there and light of the fact that mine and Eric's 5 month anniversary was this week (love you baby!) I wanted to do a  wedding post and talk a bit about how wedding's reflect your personal style as a couple. I spent about a year planning our wedding (with a lot of help from my mom and a little from Eric) and it turned out so beautifully and just the way I wanted it to be. Now that my wedding is over (and believe me I wouldn't want to go through all that stress and planning again) I have really enjoyed talking to friends about their weddings, I love to see the whole thing develop over time and eventually come to fruition.


I really love weddings, I loved mine and I love going to other people's. It makes me happy to see people in love and I love to see how the couple's style and creativity comes through in their choices of decor, food and clothing for their wedding day. There are so many different ways you can approach a wedding that it can be overwhelming but we knew that we wanted ours to be warm, rustic, simple and inviting. Let me tell you it's amazing how quickly a "simple" wedding can get complicated but in the end it's about prioritizing and deciding what is really important to you. I think we succeeded in keeping things fairly low key (as far as weddings go) and we definitely reflected our rustic modern style in our wedding. Here are some pictures form our big day, I feel like it really shows bit about who we are as a couple.

** All photographs by the fabulous Raven Shutley

*love*

The dress, I searched long and hard for this one. Well, not that long and hard, it was probably the third one I tried on. I went with something simple from the department store. My main criteria was that it had to be something I could dance in easily.

My fabulously mismatched bridal party. Everyone had different clothes but all in the same color scheme and the matching yellow accent pieces really tied everything together.

our wedding sign (which can still be seen in our front yard) was purchased on etsy

Delicious cupcakes from the Atlanta Cupcake Factory featuring seasonal Fall flavors.

We decorated our venue with Christmas lights and hundreds of handmade paper butterflies (made by me, my mom and bridesmaids). The bright white decorations helped add some magic to the natural wood in the venue.

Our flowers were a mixture of Sunflowers, Viking Pom Flowers, Wheat stalks and berries. We kept it rustic and Fall-ish

We left the venue with the pathway lit up by luminaries and sparklers