Hide and Seek Day, the Paperie Way
I am REALLY, really excited about my final idea for giving our ballroom a makeover!
The inspiration came a few weeks ago during a trip to visit my parents in Florida. I always buy a magazine for a flight, and ever since the engagement, the bridal magazines always win my dollar. I opted for the latest Martha Stewart Weddings. It wasn’t until I arrived at my parents’ house that I flipped to stationer-extraordinaire Cheree Berry‘s pretty, paper-inspired wedding. And what did I see?
Pretty, punchy wall decor!
Above, we can see one of the 16-by-12 foot vinyl banners printed with the bride’s designs. The couple hung these around the reception room, and it completely personalized the space! The ceremony signs, below, turned around to reveal the letters XOXO in time for their kiss.
Simple ceremony signs
So here is my idea: We will print similar signs and use them to cover the picture frames in our ballroom! Each wall at our (most likely) venue has several large framed photos of celebrities in the 1920′s and 30′s, and they could only be partially hidden by fabric and lighting. These signs would completely mask the framed photos! They would be smaller than the banners used at Cheree Berry’s reception but with a similar look—graceful designs in fun, popping colors!
Writing these past few posts has made me feel more comfortable about choosing our venue. We haven’t signed a contract with them yet, mostly because I felt like the dark room wouldn’t match my wedding vision. And now I have so many ideas for brightening and personalizing the room!
Hide and Seek Day, the Bubbly Way
From what I’ve seen on the wedding blogs, paper lanterns are oh-so-trendalicious. I can see the appeal. They’re relatively cheap; they don’t take much effort to set up and break down; and they’re like giant, colorful bubbles floating around an otherwise formal setting!
This week, I’m brainstorming ways to brighten up our dark ballroom. I’m leaning toward the fabric and uplighting ideas mentioned earlier, because they would actually mask parts of the room. However, paper lanterns do serve the purpose of drawing attention away from dark areas. The picture below has dark tables and chairs, but the globes bring color and cheer into the space!
Bright and cheery paper lanterns
Lights can be inserted in the paper spheres, as shown by several online tutorials. I love how the lanterns below surround the dance floor. I could see this in our ballroom, even though it’s indoors, with all-white or warm golden lights. And wouldn’t the first dance pictures be magical with these shining lanterns surrounding us? Mmmm, globe-y, glowy goodness…
Lanterns for the dance floor
Pink and orange paper lanterns
For lanterns that would last a lifetime, view the example below. I would purchase these and reuse them around the deck or patio of our future home. Add a few lounge chairs, colorful throws, and beaded pillows for a sweet space to relax outdoors! Okay, I’m getting carried away, but just look at these gorgeous things and try not to get inspired:
Colorful lanterns
Picture 1: Details Details
Picture 2: Unknown
Picture 3: Here Comes the Blog
Picture 4: Love and Splendor
Hide and Seek Day, the Uplighting Way
Adam and I are fans of the uplight. We’re such big fans that we’re thinking about buying, not renting, them for the wedding and reusing them in our future home! We’re gonna need a pretty classy home for these babies. 
I tried to find examples of uplighting without fabric draping, so we can see how it looks against bare walls. These examples highlight beautiful architecture, but they also do the job we need them for: drawing attention away from the dark areas of the room.
Soft pink uplighting
Yellow and bright pink lights
Purplish pink
Since our colors are pink, yellow, and orange, I tried to find examples in these shades. My least favorite, as I anticipated, is orange. No matter how pretty the place and decor, it still reminds me of Halloween.
Orange lights--I love the flowers on the napkins
The above pictures are from Details Details. The picture below is from Love and Splendor. We never planned to incorporate the following color, but we both agree that it looks amazing in every example we’ve seen so far:
Purplish blue
The blue room looks slick, but my favorite is the top picture. The soft pink isn’t overwhelming, and it looks the most romantic. I’ll have to ask Adam to choose his favorite. What’s yours?
Hide and Seek Day, the Fabric Way
I have a slight issue with the walls of our most-likely venue. Their ballroom is handsome, but it’s much too dark for the bright, cheery wedding I’ve always imagined. Happy citrus colors against all-white walls, tables, and chairs? Not gonna happen here. As a quick reminder, here’s what the space looks like:
Handsome, but not entirely our style
Because of the deep, dark walls and decor of Signature Events, I’ve been doing a ton of brainstorming on how to brighten up the place! I don’t want to hide everything in the room, but I do think it would look worlds better with our colors if we did a little covering up. I’m really excited to share my ideas here, because when I talk about them in person, it ends up being a lot of words and hand motions but no real communication of ideas. 
First up: Fabric draping! Not the frilly or window-curtain-y kind. Something classy, perhaps made modern with some uplighting. Here are some pictures that inspired me:
Light fabric all around
Draping accented with soft pink uplights
The above pictures are from Details Details. The walls are heavy on fabric, but they’re broken up by the gorgeous lighting. I do want to reveal some of the details of the room. One way to do it is with smaller panels, like below:
A simple way to incorporate color
I would space out the panels to show off the dark wood on the walls. Adam’s not a fan of the colored fabric, so we’d probably use white with colored lighting.
And just 'cause they're cute, a close-up of the hanging globes
The two pictures above are from a guest blogger on Weddingbee. What do you think of my first idea for hiding, while still revealing, parts of our ballroom? Any suggestions of things you’ve seen and liked at special event spaces?
Sunday Bunday!
I never even knew this existed:
Something adorable
The soft serve hat! The heart-shaped ears! The removable bunny slippers! It’s all so cute…but what is it?
Hmm?
Soooo…it makes ice cream? Or holds ice cream?
Icy Bunny
I’m not entirely sure what it does, but it sure is cute!
A Stay-In-and-Read Sort of Day
One of the most delightful things to do in this world is to read. I don’t just tell this to my students to motivate them to get through the middle chapters of a book, but I truly believe it! And one of the saddest things is to finish an amazing book and wonder what to do with your time now that you’re not glued to it anymore.
A quick study of Anthropologie store windows helped me discover what to do with that time and those books! Of course, I’d never do this with my most beloved copies…but don’t these bookish crafts look like a ton of fun?
Book mobiles
Book mobiles would be perfect to hang over your future scholar’s crib. Actually, these would have looked cute in my old house. It had a little nook upstairs with an octangular window, and we never knew what to put up there. These mobiles, a few shelves of books, and some big pillows would have created a perfect little book nook!
Hanging book art
Book flowers
Swirls of beautiful books!
I have this last picture in my wedding planning binder. I’m not sure how I’d use this idea, but I do love the colorful layers of books.
Picture 1: Apartment Therapy Chicago
Pictures 2 and 3: Apartment Therapy San Francisco
Picture 4: Unknown
A Treasure a Day
Have you seen *The Perfect* wedding flowers? Not yet? Well then, allow me to share them with you!
Soft roses, playful billy balls, bright anemones--perfection!
I saw these flowers on The Treasured Petal blog a few months ago. Ever since then, they’ve remained in my mind as *The Perfect* wedding florals…at least for my wedding. I love the fun combination of flowers used here (hello, pink anemones), and they’re in our wedding colors! I’ll share the beautiful cake table she put together, and you can check out her blog for the rest of the wedding flowers.
The colors, the books, the petals
Our plan is to have a simple white cake and ask our florist to add some flowers to it. The above picture is definitely coming with me to our cake-designing and floral-planning meetings.
Inspiration for my first wedding DIY project
Being a total readaholic and write-aholic, I would love to incorporate the literary elements like the makeshift cake stand and the above candle holders. The candle holders are going to be my first DIY project. So far, I’ve purchased cylinder vases, vellum paper, and double stick tape. I’ve bookmarked pages from my favorite books to wrap around the vases, but I’m still on the search for many more!
The lovely cake table
I highly encourage everyone to check out the rest of the Treasured Petal blog. Wedding florals are just fun to admire, and hers are always beyond beauty and perfection!
Sunday Bunday!
Remove the eggs from the picture below, and we’ll have some pretty sweet inspiration for our reception tables:
Pink tulips
The citrus-y colors seem even cheerier against the all-white table. The flowers are beautiful, but I don’t think we’ll be using tulips. I’d be too worried, having seen one too many droopy tulips in my lifetime. Of course, you never know how plans may change–spring is the perfect time for tulips! I love how the bunny blends in with everything and isn’t overly cutesy. It’s a great example of how to incorporate a theme (bunnies, in our case) in a quiet, understated way. The best part is, all the pieces here could be used over and over again for dinner parties and Easter celebrations!
Picture source: Epicurious
Heritage Day
I went to my first Serbian wedding last May. Adam’s cousin and her now-husband incorporated some beautiful traditions, which led me to wonder what Korean and Serbian traditions we will have in our wedding.
They held their ceremony in a Serbian church. I have only seen two in person (and dozens online), and they have all been works of art. The walls of this church were gold and blue, patterned and painted. Candles glimmered from perches on the wall, aided by sunlight streaming through stained glass windows. Stories from the Bible illustrated the walls, arches, and even the ceiling.
The beautiful church
The highest point of the ceiling
In the picture below, the bride and groom are wearing crowns and doing the ceremonial walk. Since I am new to Serbian traditions, I will quote their wedding program:
“The crowning is the climax of the wedding service. The crowns are symbols of the glory and honor with which God crowns the bride and groom during the sacrament. They are crowned as the king and queen of their own kingdom, the home, which they will rule with wisdom and integrity. The crowns are exchanged back and forth during the rite to show that they become one flesh and spirit.”
“The priest leads the bride and groom around the altar table three times for the ceremonial walk. This circular walk represents eternity, and signifies the couple’s oath to preserve their marriage bond forever.”
The bride and groom surrounded by their entourage
Weeks before the wedding, Adam’s mom suggested that I learn how to do a Serbian dance called kolo. Adam insisted that I’d be fine, because all I’d need to do was hold hands with people in a circle and follow wherever they go. When the bride and bridesmaids started the first kolo, I just watched to see how to do it. The first one was really simple–in a circle, everyone took a few steps to the right, then a few steps to the left, and so on. When I finally joined, the steps got more intricate, and I had to do a lot of feet-watching to figure out what to do! I couldn’t get a good picture of this, so here’s picture from kolo.org. Imagine this, minus the outfits, plus a lot of laughter and drinks spilling on the dance floor!
They're dancing a kolo
Adam and I have only talked a little about what traditions we want at our Serbian/Korean/United States-ian wedding. For example, I know he wants an old Serbian song to play as we enter the reception, but I had my heart set on entering to Michael Buble’s song “Everything.” With our cultural mash-up, there’s bound to be plenty of compromising going on (and maybe a little bribing) as we decide how to honor our heritage on that special day!
Happy Birthday, Teeka!
Today is my nephew’s 2nd birthday! He calls himself Teeka, so that’s what I’ll call him here. My parents and I just flew in from Florida yesterday to be here for this momentous occasion. I’m ready for a fun, frosting-topped end to a crazy week!
Happy 2nd birthday, sweet prince. Your komo loves you with all her heart.
Teeka the warrior with his halmuni (flying a kite), daddy, uncle Adam, and mommy.
