Ok….so after hours of deliberation (I mean seriously, it shouldn’t be that hard) I have chosen our colors! I took into account all the great advice I got from all of you.  Unfortunately, Dogwood Dude’s only advice was “Whatever makes you happy, makes me happy”… I resisted the urge to tell him that he wasn’t making me happy at that moment!  I decided to do some research into local flowers to see what we could get for a good price and what colors I had to choose from for those flowers.

So, here were the three choices I was looking at….and click through to see what we picked!

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I’ve always wondered what it would be like to get married during the holiday season.  There is something so magical about the time of year, and I think it would be a lot of fun to host a winter wedding in NYC.  Want to see the details that inspire my imaginary winter wedding?

This gown would be BEAUTIFUL for the bridesmaids…

Source: Nordstrom

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I’ve done a lot of posting about my October 31st “western” wedding, but not a lot about my November 7th Sikh wedding. I guess this is mainly due to the fact that many of the details for our Sikh wedding are being taken care of by Orchid Dude’s family – all I basically have to do is show up on the day of.

Our Sikh wedding and reception will be much less detailed than our western wedding. It is based more around celebrating the traditions of the religion where as our first wedding is based on a reflection of Orchid Dude and I as a couple – our tastes, our likes, our vision.

The colours for our ceremony are very traditional: I will be wearing a red and gold Lahenga and Chunni and Orchid Dude will be wearing a matching Sherwani and red turban. For our reception, I will be wearing a hot pink Sari and Orchid Dude will be changing into a suit.

Orchid Dude’s dad went to India to buy all of our clothing and jewelry so it was a complete surprise to me what everything would look like, but his choices were gorgeous. The rich colours and the beautiful detailing of the garments and jewelry is what inspired me for my latest board.

Photo credits: Project Wedding, Melissa McKinnon Photography & Kelly Vasami Photography

How do you put all of your ideas out into one visual place where you can see it all come together?? The coveted “Inspiration Board”.

Making an inspiration board was one of my favorite activities, so far (I’m eagerly awaiting cake tastings). There are several ways to create the boards—until I figured it out, I thought that everyone around me was so creative and I had no skills in the world of design. You can use a fun site like Polyvore and create a “fashion” board and put some looks together. I loved using this site to see what dresses and tuxes would look like together.  I’ve also enjoyed using the boards at the fabulous Wedding Wire (along with the guest tracker, budgeting, other inspiration).

This is my board courtesy of Polyvore:

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Although I have chosen red and black as my wedding colours, I have always loved the elegance, richness and beauty of the colour purple. It has become one of the trendy wedding colours this year and I love it because it can be so versatile – from a soft lilac to a deep eggplant, there is a shade of purple to fit your every mood.

Inspired by the lavender being used for my upcoming shower, I had the urge to gratuitously search purple wedding photos and create this board – enjoy!

Photo Credits: Project Wedding & The Knot

I know our colors are navy and white.  But after I finished creating Rebecca and Akshay’s monograms, I had to create an inspiration board based on their colors.  I can’t help it, I think the colors are so romantic!  This is what I fear… we still have a year away and I keep finding myself craving other color motifs.  Have you changed your wedding colors more than once during planning?

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I’ve been seeing inspiration boards everywhere and think they are such a beautiful way to portray a theme or mood for an event. So, I thought I would try and make my first inspiration board based on my October 31st wedding.

Instead of going with obvious Halloween decor, we are using the colours red and black along with patterns such as damask and decor elements like candelabras and loads of candles to achieve a feeling of Halloween darkness but with an elegant, vintage twist.

Photo Credits: Taite Boudoir, Project Wedding, Martha Stewart, Style Me Pretty & Megan Harde Photography

Continuing my search for a color to complement my navy and white theme, here’s a color palette of navy and fuchsia.

We estimate that there will be about 20 kids at our wedding under the age of 10.  I ADORE children, I want 1 million of my own, however, I want the parents to be able to get wasted have fun at our wedding without chasing a 2-year-old around.  So, my solution:

1. 1 Nanny/2 assistants – provided by caterer

2. A kid’s tent to keep them corralled.

3. Kids tables inside the tent with all sort of goodies, games, DVD player, crayons, etc.

This is what I have in mind from the lovely Kate Parker:

From kateparkerweddings.com

But sorry Kate, I am doing this one on my own.  I am gaining FOUR sisters when I get married and 2 mothers – they are going to be my Kate! And I can’t wait to see what they come up with.

When we started planning the wedding, Lotus Dude and I had decided that our colors would be red, gold and grey.  We liked the combination of these colors, and it would be easy to incorporate them both in the traditional Hindu wedding ceremony and the more modern decor we had in mind for our reception.  Of course, things did not work out exactly as planned.

When I went shopping in India for a reception outfit, I wasn’t able to find anything in either red or gold that wasn’t too loud for my tastes.  However, I ended up finding the perfect outfit in green and gold. So we rolled with it and talked to our wedding coordinator, florist, venue and linen rental company about the change of colors to green, gold and grey for the reception.  Thankfully, everyone was accommodating and there were no problems!

I also saw that WeddingWire has a wonderful new tool to help in creating inspiration boards.  The inspiration board I made several months ago incorporates the red, gold and grey we’re using for the ceremony.  I just used the new tool to make another inspiration board for the reception, and here it is.

I have to say that this tool made it really easy to create the inspiration board!