Dressing - You're Doing It Wrong

via Google Image Search

Apparently I've been dressing myself wrong for quite a while. I like colors, so I gravitate towards buying colored shirts a lot. Purple, teal, yellow, oh, right, and green (obviously). I tend to pair them with a neutral or black bottom. But recently I've been seeing people doing the color block thaaaang and I'm obsessed. I've been staring at my "closet" for a couple weeks now, trying to find a way to color block with what I've got.

What is color blocking, you ask? My definition (which I think is pretty accurate, but if not, I don't really care) is basically wearing a couple different non-patterned brightly colored clothing items (be it a shirt, skirt, shoes, purse), all together. Another helpful definition I found is: "...creating an outfit by putting areas or blocks of solid color next to each other. It can include monotone, bright colours, muted colors, contrasting and complimentary colors. Clothes, shoes, handbags and accessories can all feature color block designs or can make up different blocks of color to be put together for a color block outfit." (via this site) Sounds like a lot of color, and some people take it a bit too far, for sure, but sometimes it comes out super cute and successful, and those times make me want to color block.

Like this one, from one of my fave blogs everrr EatLiveRun:

Super bonus points for an awesome $2 thrift store find!

So basically I've decided I can't color block with what I've got because of a couple reasons:
A - My colored (non black, grey, or tan) skirts/pants are all patterned, except for one light yellow pencil skirt.
B - I can't quite think of any of my bright shirts that would go with said light yellow pencil skirt. If it were a real yellow or a mustard, yes, but it's not, so boo.
C - I have a ton of black, grey, and tan skirts/pants. Like, way too many.

I love color, but apparently I've just been doing it wrong! I need color on the bottom as well as the top. And need to stop buying so many patterned skirts. Duhhh.

I ordered a teal pencil skirt because I just couldn't wait to get to a thrift store/Marshall's this weekend. Fingers crossed!! Fingers also crossed for finding others at said thrift store/Marshall's this weekend, because I obviously need more than one option.

Hopefully I won't go too far, like this girl:

via Google Image Search

-C
xxx

Bonnie's Wedding Runway

As I mentioned before, Miss Bonnie Quick (I believe she is keeping her name for clothing design purposes), made all of our bridesmaid dresses for her wedding. The dresses were so fun to wear! We each had a different one, but all in the same fabric.

Oh yeah, and she also made our hair pieces and jewelry for us!

The ball is actually a locket. Feathers and whatever those white plant things are, along with hair clips, all purchased at Michael's.

The balls on the necklace are also lockets!

Something you may not know about me is how much I loooove antique (looking or real) tarnished gold jewelry. Seriously LOVE. I was way too happy when she gave us this jewelry!

I also have been wearing it pretty much every day since she gave it to us.

To complete the outfit, she asked us all to wear yellow shoes. I MAY or may not have begged her to do so. :) We all know how I like colorful shoes!
(Mine are the back right below.)

She also made the flower girl dresses! Aren't they cute?

And since sewing awesome dresses apparently runs in her family, her mom made her wedding dress! Ain't it purdy?

Unfortunately I don't have any pics of all us girls (or Bonnie, for that matter!) walking down the aisle because Tim was on parking lot duty and didn't make it back in time for me to give him my camera, so I can't wait to see the professional pics of that!

The lovely ladies from Wedding Tresses (serving Massachusetts and Rhode Island) who did our hair (Jenn) and makeup (Kayla) kept saying that they could totally see this wedding ending up in a magazine because of the unique dresses, hair pieces, etc. Or on a blog? hehe. They were awesome, btw. The makeup looked amazing, and I loved my hair the first time it was done! Yeah, I had to get mine redone because it got messed up (freakin' wind) when I went back to do a couple more set up tasks. Then the hairdresser told me my hair couldn't be as big as it was before if I wanted it to stay. *tear*

Also, today is Bonnie's birthday!

Happy Birthday Bonnie (not) Quick (anymore)!

Unrelated to this post, but it's also one of my MOH's birthdays!

Happy Birthday Ryann!

-C
xxx

Golden Green-ness

Yeah, I know, I'm a little late to the party here, but just have to share two of my VERY FAVORITE LADIES (Angelina and Mila) and four VERY BEAUTIFUL GREEEEEN DRESSES. Why can't I go to the Golden Globes? I'd totally wear a green dress every time. Obvi.

Via People.com

PS How come Angelina can pull off the long-sleeved look?? Sigh. Also, pretty sure she's just as obsessed with green as I am, which clearly means we're meant to be BFFs. Remember the green earrings she wore to the Academy Awards in 2009? No? Oh.

Via Google Images

Well I do. Not like they were the inspiration for my wedding jewelry or anything...

-C
xxx

Shower/Bachelorette Party Weekend!

Sorry I've been MIA. This whole "moving" thing is cramping my style. I couldn't even go near any wedding projects until a huge chunk of the boxes were unpacked. Mainly because I A- couldn't find them and B- wouldn't have room to work on them anyway! Who wants to make pretty corsages with boxes towering all around them? Not this girl. So, since no wedding projects/planning have been going on, and lots of other stuff going on in my brain, that equals no blog posts. But guess what! My bridal shower/bachelorette party are this weekend!! I honestly cannot believe it's here already. August 7th seemed soooo far away not too long ago. And I don't feel like I've been engaged for almost a year either! Boy, time sure does fly.

As promised, here is a pic of the dress I'll be wearing to my shower this weekend.


And Bonnie came by on Saturday to finish off my hat box! This box used to be a floral hat box my Meamaw had. I really wanted a hat box to carry my hats to my shower in, and decided to use hers, then decided to cover it in green fabric (it was a bit of a "dated" floral pattern, plus I'm not too big into floral patterns... which I'm realizing is funny because my shower dress is floral, lol), then had Bonnie do it for me. :) I promise it's not as neon and stupid looking as my camera makes it out to be. (Yes, I tried with both flash and no flash. Seriously, my camera hates me.)



Here are all the hats I'm bringing to the shower! There are 4 hats in this box - a yellow one in case someone needs one, the black one MOB called dibs on, and the two hats I'm wearing.



My first hat was one of Meamaw's hats. BRIDESMAID AMANDA had the bright idea to add a peacock feather to it. I think Meamaw would approve.



And here's the green one that matches my dress!

Next up - bachelorette party dresses! I know absolutely no details about my bach. party. All I know it's in DC somewhere. I asked that people wear dresses, pretty much just so I could wear one. :) However, I have TWO dress possibilities, and I need your help! Check out the pics below - which one do you like best? Sorry I'm not wearing them. It was another moving-related errands/unpacking/organizing/setting things up sweaty gross day, and I was not about to put any of these dresses on and post pictures of myself looking like that. Oh, yeah, and I didn't want to get them dirty either. So use your imagination for the shape (first is flowy), but I'll tell you that they both look good on me. I'm not one of those "everything looks good on me" type of people, whatsoever, but would I really post two dress options if they didn't both look good on me? Nope. I'd probably just wear the one that does!

Two very different looks - both green (well, the second one is black with different greens in the middle). Come on, would I really not wear a dress without green in it??! :)

So what's your vote?

-C
xxx

My Hat!

My hat is here! If you saw one of my asides on my last post you saw that I wasn't sure if I was getting my hat! I received a paypal shipping confirmation email, but then got another email saying the seller had cancelled it with the reason "Changed Mind". I emailed the seller through ebay (where I "won" it) and asked if she'd changed her mind on selling the product (I'm not even sure that's allowed!) or just the shipping method. Well, I never received a response, but I did receive another shipping confirmation email - and now it's here! I don't know whether my mentioning in my email to her that I would be wearing it for my bridal shower held any weight, but I now have it in my hands and that's all that matters! So this is hat #2 I will be wearing for my shower. The other one is an off-white fedora-ish hat with a feather in the side that was my Meamaw's. I'm taking advantage of this whole being able to wear fancy hats for a day thing! So excited!



The only problem with the hat is the veil doesn't exactly come down, if that makes sense. It's kind of all over the top, not so much in the face. I'm wondering if a certain friend of mine who sews could remedy that for me... while she's working on my hat box :)

I'll post pics of my shower/bachelorette outfits as soon as... well, as soon as I find them. Moving seems to make things disappear. Or at least hide from me pretty darn well. I can't find a damn thing right now.

-C
xxx

Brit Fads

Fads from London that I don't think I could get into. And I mean these were EVERYWHERE. I don't even know what to call them, but not a fan...



These I could get into though :) Too bad they weren't peep toe. In the pic they look perfect but in person they're not really wedding shoe material.

Not too many new fads to note this trip. Purple was still prevolent. Small, romantic floral prints were big, but that's the case here, too. Everyone had a tight leather jacket, but I was already rocking one so I must've started that trend or something :) The only thing I was really hunting for was a fedora/boater/trilby hat. Those were all over the place, and I really liked them, but A - couldn't find one I absolutely loved (not for lack of trying!) B - couldn't justify spending as much as they cost for something I didn't absolutely love and C - I'd probably wear it once a month or something.

I was really hoping to find my green shoes over there! Imagine being like "yeah, I found my dream shoes in London". Again, not for lack of trying. As FH will tell you, we went in plenty of stores in search of green shoes...

-C
xxx

Londy Londy Londy

Headed to London town today to visit the FH, and I'm excited to see what the fashion trend that grabs me is going to be this time! I know people think NYC is fashion-forward, but I never see anything that impresses me when I'm there. Everytime I go to London, though, I get snagged by one trend or the other, and bring it back with me. They may sound simple, but the trends I've fallen in love with in the past are:

The color purple

The saggy hat

Chinese fans (looks like these are a hot trend again this summer, they're still on my favorite UK store's website!!)

Clearly these are all very technical terms for the trends ("saggy hat"). I'm telling you, though, it's not like I see it in one place. Each of these trends I saw EVERYWHERE in London, from the store windows to every other girl on the tube. Apparently Brits take a trend and really run with it! I love it, though. It's pretty funny, though, that whenever I've pointed these out ("Oooh there's another girl wearing purple!" "Oooh there's another saggy hat, I want one!!"), FH is completely oblivious. I know men tend to not particularly... well, notice things, but come on, how do you not notice every other girl on the tube wearing purple?? I'll let you know what's trending in London this Spring when I get there. Hopefully it'll be something GREEN!! :)

Of course I'm excited to see FH, too, but I can't lie and say I'm not excited to go to Accessorize!! It's the equivalent of our Claire's, but awesome instead of lame. So really the only thing it has in common with Claire's is that there's one every 2 feet.

-C
xxx