OUR WEDDING: Wedding Party

I just have to say, I'm super excited to be blogging about our upcoming wedding!  As a planner it's been a little difficult for me balance the joy of planning with Kimili and the "know-how" I already have.  I always tell my couples to collect or e-mail me pictures of any inspiration they find online.  Once they have amassed a collection, and they go back through it most often their "wedding style" pops out at them.  What kind of professional would I be if I didn't follow my own advice?!?!  The look on Kimili's face was priceless as I literally dropped this stack of inspiration on him one night ...

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After his initial shock, one of the first things we did was decide our wedding party.  Wedding parties are a part of a wedding that I very rarely deal with until the rehearsal day, so this was a fun new exciting part of wedding planning for me personally.  After a lot of discussion we settled on 8 members on each side (he still thinks that's way too many!), 3 hosts, 3 ceremony participants, a minister, and escorts for honored guests (parents and grandparents).

Since we LOVE entertaining, it is really important to us that our wedding not only celebrates our marriage  but our guests as well.  They always say invitations set the tone so, I wanted to come up with a unique special way of asking the special members of our bridal party.  Thanks to my inspiration pile, coming up with something for my girls was easy!  Though I opted not to do inspiration boxes since we would be sending them thought the mail, I loved the style of the cards in this brides DIY project on the Wedding Chicks site.

For the guys I had to get a little creative!  Kimili turned down most of the idea's I found through searching and Pinterest, but I think our final idea was a winner.  He is a basketball coach, in fact we met while we were both managers for the women's basketball team in college.  So for his invitation we created a media guide, which is like a booklet, that professional, college and high school teams publish with stats, team bios, schedules and expectations for the season.  His media guide included preliminary information about our wedding, attire, names of the groomsmen and important dates.  Since most of the groomsmen are heavily into sports as well, I think a media guide was meaningful and recognizable to everyone involved.

For the remaining members of the bridal party we opted to do hand written notes using a save the date template found here on Wedding Chicks site again.  Everyone was super excited to get their personal mail and LOVED the sentiment and thought put behind the invitation.  We are just as thrilled that these amazing people will be apart of our ceremony!

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Personal Photo from Bridesmaid

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