being a bride before being engaged and my inspiration

I was watching my usual Friday afternoon/evening show Say Yes to the Dress today. The episode I watched was an older episode...this was probably my 3rd time watching it. But let's not tell anyone that, ok? In this episode the "bride" was shopping for a dress before she even had an engagement ring! Even I think that is a little weird. However, I do have a confession to make...before Sean and I were engaged we (my mom, Ashley, and I) went to multiple bridal shows, of course watched Say Yes to the Dress (what girl doesn't?), purchased bridal magazines, and I had started looking at blogs. That's not as bad as buying a dress before the ring right?

LOVE Randy from the original Say Yes to the Dress season

The "new" season from Atlanta. They are sassy!

We started going to bridal shows/forums maybe 2 years ago. It was a good reason to eat really good cake, look at pretty dresses, and see gorgeous floral arrangements. When we went in the past Ashley would always pretend to be the bride. She would wear one of my mom's overly-large fake diamond rings and she would be the bride for the day. Everyone would come up to her and she would have to make up a groom's name, a wedding date, and such. It was really fun!

Other than the bridal shows that we went to my mom also bought a subscription to Bride's magazine about a year before anyone in our family was engaged. It has been quite fun going back and looking though all the magazines to get ideas. My mom has a large stash of all the old magazines with numerous tags, folded corners, and stuff ripped out.

Right when Sean and I started getting pretty serious and talked about being together long term (there wasn't an actual conversation about this. It was mutually amused. At least I thought so) I discovered the world of blogging. Mostly thank you to my then roommate, Jenni. She introduced me. I was instantly hooked, hence this blog :) I have gotten sooooo many ideas from blogs from dresses, invitation inspiration, flowers, and the list goes on....

By far MOST favorite wedding blog to follow is Style Me Pretty. They have pictures upon pictures that are categorized by color, or category, or tags. It's awesome!

Others I follow are The Bride Suite and Forget Me Knot Weddings.

Of course lately most of my wedding planning inspiration comes from Pinterest :) check out our link in the tabs above!

On another note. It doesn't have anything to do with our wedding, but I wanted to mention it because I love it. My other favorite blog is Young House Love. It is a young couple that is re-doing/DIYing/decorating their house. I want to be them! She also has Pinterest and I follow her :)