The best part of my day is getting the chance to chat it up with brides who are full of inspiration and excitement over their big day. After a fabulous chat with a bride, Ashlynn, she sent over her Pinterest board of inspiration and boy did it inspire me! Her inspiration is an apple orcahard-esque theme filled with fab DIYing and a bit of homemade glory. I thought this would be a fabulous opportunity to inspire those of you who are planning a late-summer wedding filled with homemade love.

I love these dish towel save the dates! In fact, I want to get a few for myself to remember our wedding day. :) Apple butter on vintage pieces are so awesome. Similar to jam, these are great favors that guests will love and will love to eat.

Source: Apple butter, dish towels, barn

Don’t you just wish there were more red barns around? I sure do. I don’t think I have found one in all of my searches, so if you are in a place that has one, I highly envy you! And, yarn letters are definitely becoming a favorite of mine at the moment.

Source: Table Number, Centerpiece, Invite

Source: Love, Lemonade, Cans, Orchard, Cake, Flatware

Source: Flowers, Tablescape, Ceremony

I wasn’t quite sure what type of wedding band I’d like best with my brilliant cut solitaire ring - but I know I love a vintage or antique looking ring.  It’s really hard to find that style of ring in chain jewelry stores though, and  I’m worried about buying a ring online.  What if they don’t fit together quite right in person?  Have any of you purchased wedding bands online, without trying them on first?  I’d really have to check their return policy before taking the plunge.

I also really like an enhancer, or ring guard style – they are really unique, and I liked how a few looked paired with my ring when we checked out a few stores this past weekend.  Here are a few styles I’ve considered.  Which is your favorite?  Any good stores or sites you would recommend?

Or I could always choose a plain dainty band, and just add stones later if I wanted to.  These rings by Blanca Monrós Gomez are so pretty.

Or maybe something totally different like these fingerprint wedding bands from this cute etsy shop?

1, 2, 3, 4, 5 , 6, 7

How did you pick your wedding band?  Did it match your engagement setting?   I know whatever I pick will be great, and we could always upgrade for an anniversary, so I’m not stressing too much about it.  But I need to make a decision pretty soon!  What’s your wedding band look like?

You probably know by now that my fiancé is Austrian but I bet you didn’t know that I am actually half Austrian! Because of this, it’s very important to me to make references to our heritage and incorporate a bit of the culture in to our wedding…without conjuring up too many images of this infamous movie:

(credit)

In one of my early discussions with our wedding coordinator, she excitedly suggested that our favors could be displayed on a table with a sign saying “These are a few of our favorite things” and that the packaging could be brown paper and strings. Get it? Well, I as the American did but the Austrian did not. In fact, he has never seen The Sound of Music and neither have any of his family or friends. We clearly had to scratch that idea but this is what I imagine our packaging could have looked like:

(credit: 1, 2, 3)

With that idea shelved, I thought about using Lebkuchenherzen (gingerbread hearts) as escort cards.  They’re usually displayed in the below fashion and if we personalized them with guests’ names and their assigned table numbers for a seating chart, it could create some very interesting visual impact.

They could also be used as place settings and/or double as favors for the guests to take home:

(credits)

The problem with the hearts is that they are usually rock hard and don’t taste that great so they could really only be used for the looks. Christian isn’t a huge fan of the idea of using them because he said it reminds him too much of the countryside (he’s from the city), so I’ve also put this idea aside.

Another idea we tossed around was asking all of our Austrian guests to wear their Dirndl and Lederhosen to the wedding. Don’t know what drindl or lederhosen are? Check out this picture of Christian’s family and me from a summer party last year. Cute, right?  The hills are alive….

(personal photo)

However, we once again decided not to execute this idea because a) we don’t want the Austrian guests to feel like we’re asking them to wear the clothes just to amuse the other guests (this was Christian’s main concern as they would normally never wear dirndl and lederhosen to a wedding in Vienna) and b) dirndl and lederhosen can be very heavy and I didn’t want to “force” anyone in to packing them with the risk of having to leave other things behind (or not be able to shop as much).

You might be asking yourself what we actually have decided on doing.  I will leave those details as a surprise but I can assure you that we have some very fun things planned.  I can’t wait to share them with you in less than 3 months! :)  Are there any multi-culti brides out there?  How did you incorporate different cultures in to your celebration?