I’m happy to say we found the ‘where’ and the ‘when’ for our wedding! We took an extended weekend trip up to Oregon last weekend and fell in love with one venue in particular…it had all the checks on my list and then some. Not only that, but we got to spend an afternoon in Hood River, where our guests will be staying, and had so much fun! As a bonus, our friends and their sweet ten-month-old baby girl were passing through town too, so we got to go to lunch and walk around town with them (with a little wine tasting room pit-stop). I can only hope for the 80-degree weather from last weekend when our wedding comes around!

I hadn’t been to Hood River since I was a teenager, and I can say that it definitely lived up to the memories. I know our friends and family will enjoy this town as much as we did. As I mentioned last week, it’s really important to us that our guests are staying in a place that they can explore and hang out with each other. As we walked around town, we kept our eyes out for places we could be in the days before the wedding. There were so many great spots and things about the town that fit our style…breweries, fresh and local food, outdoor decks, nice people, etc.

The downtown area is full of quaint buildings with home and clothing boutiques, windsurfing stores and restaurants. In the background is the Columbia River and the State of Washington.

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Hood River is also the windsurfing capital of the world!

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 About a 30-minute drive south of the town of Hood River, past wineries, lavender farms, and pear orchards lies the spot we will be saying ‘I do’ in July of 2013 – Mt. Hood B&B.

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Here are some pictures of their awesome 47-acre property that sits on the northeast side of Mount Hood.

Mountain backdrop: check.

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Room for lawn games: check.

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Great dance floor: check!

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Spot for the music: check (although now my fiance wants a band and I’m not sure if that fits into our budget :-)

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Another reason we loved the B&B is that the owners were really sweet and helpful. Jackie (the wife/mom) happily answered my million and one questions. The couple raised their four kids on the property and now their daughter is also a day-of event coordinator. We wanted a day-of coordinator and she knew her stuff, so we hired her on the spot. That is sort of becoming a theme with our planning – if we know we like something, we make the decision quickly.

I am so relieved to have the date set and the venue booked. Now I feel like I can make all the other decisions within that framework and the vision can sort of fall into place. My mind is racing with all the other fun details…the colors, the dress, the flowers! Did anyone else feel like this? Or are the hard decisions yet to come?

Operation: Complete Save the Dates, is in full swing around our home right now. I knew that getting those cute little postcards in the mail would be a time crunch on my end. You see, I really had my heart set on using a photo from our engagement pictures on the Save the Dates. Well, due to weather and our busy schedules, we had to push the date of our engagement shoot back about a month. This change therefore caused us to bend that rule of sending your Save the Dates at the six month mark before your wedding. (We are five months away as of Sunday!) In order to make this process go as quickly as possible, my choice of vendors made all the difference in keeping my sanity and expediting the process.

For our Save the Dates, I used a free download from The Wedding Chicks. I loved the design and was really happy that all I had to do was drop my information and photo in and BAM, there was my beautiful Save the Date postcard.

 Source: The Wedding Chicks

With that said though, I did run into a few mine issues. First, the photo that I wanted to use had to be scaled to an exact measurement in order for the template to work correctly. I was very lucky to have a photographer that was so kind to oblige and edit the image for me in less than 24 hours. Once I had my wonderful Save the Date files I started looking into printing online, figuring this would be the fastest and most cost efficient way to get these printed. I started finding that a lot of the online printing sites only allow you to upload files to a sized template; unfortunately my print job wasn’t with those predetermined sizes. I tried to complete a customer order with the size I needed, but the proofs weren’t scaled correctly. With the clock ticking, I started to panic a bit;  at this rate I should just wait and send invitations!

I contacted a local printer in town to check on the pricing for printing and see how fast the turnaround was. Not only was I so happy to work with a real life person, not one of those customer service chat screens that you get online, but the printer actually found a slight formatting error near our names that was causing the letters to have extra spaces in some locations. (YIKES!) They offered to fix the problem for FREE if I went ahead and had them printed there and that the turnaround would be three days. I was so excited that I signed off on the proof ASAP and got my Save the Dates at the end of the week.

In my own experience, having the printing done local was a HUGE life saver. Not only was I able to see the proofs in person, rather than in a digital file that was emailed to me, I completely avoided a potential freak out regarding the spacing in our names. Yes, I am sure I would have been the only one to notice this, but hey they still would have bothered me. That is just who I am, obsessed with the details and perfection. If you can find a printing company in your area my suggestion is to print local, avoid online printing and go with the real life person that can help you if something isn’t right with your final product. With that said here are our wonderful Save the Date cards that I am happy to show off. 

I went through zazzle.com to order some custom postage for our cute postcards. Did you know there was such a thing? Me neither until a friend told me. Forget those American Flags on your wedding invites, you can upload a photo of yourself or choose from a ton of other customer options to add some flare to your invites. I went with a classic “love” stamp in our wedding colors.Source: zazzle.com

Anyone else have a panic attack when it came to the deadline of getting things in the mail? What are your experiences with printing online vs. printing local?

My dress has arrived (yay!!!!!) and scheduling my first fitting is towards to the top of my to-do list. And while I can’t wait to see how it looks fitted just right, knowing the dress is here also gets my fantasizing about (and shopping for) accessories!

The dress is gorgeous on its own, but one of the things I loved about it as that it is simple enough to accessorize and really make it my own.

First, I need some lovely jewelry. I’m thinking simple earrings, a bare neck and stacked bracelets.

Source: Coral, Multicolored, Rose

Source: Diamonds, Peals, Mixed

For the bracelets, this is certainly a fun trend to take advantage of in my bridal look. To make it a bit more special, I’m going to mix my own bracelets with borrowed bracelets from the important women in my life. I love this for my something borrowed and I think it will look really chic.

What would a bridal look be without some fab-u-lous shoes. I’m going bold here. There’s nothing like some fantastic shoes to make a girl feel really special.

Source: Wedge, Heels, Espadrilles, Platforms

Lastly, my dress needs a sash. I want organza flowers in ivory…but these peach flowers really caught my eye as well! What do you think of a little color on the sash?

Source: Peach, Lace, Pink, Ivory

Any favorites? Any good places to shop for bridal accessories? I would love to hear your thoughts!