Today's featured bride is Jamie. Jamie is a current SPW bride who is getting married on September 10th (9.10.11 - what a fun wedding date!) at her parent's lakefront property in Northern PA. I am just itching with excitement for Jamie's wedding day - she's got incredible design taste, and I am so so so excited to see her vision come to life!
Check out Jamie's advice for brides-to-be:
Practice Makes Perfect…and it's Fun!
"I am honestly enjoying the wedding planning process, and some of the things that I have found to be the most fun and most important part of wedding planning is practice! There are many things that you can practice for the big day like make-up and hair trial runs, cake and food tasting, and pictures. While these things may seem like things to cross off your “to-do” list…don’t forget to have fun doing them!
I am sure that every bride-to-be has heard and understands the importance of having hair and make-up trial runs done, but the one thing that I would recommend doing when you have your trial run done is to have pictures taken. Your wedding pictures are going to be one of the only things you have to remember your big day, and your hair and make-up may look different in pictures than they do in person. I had a make-up trial run and then asked my make-up artist back to do my make-up for our engagement photos. I am so glad that I did because I learned two things from having photos taken 1. My make-up artist recommended false eyelashes to glam my look up and I love the way they looked in pictures and 2. I want to add some more color to my face for the actual wedding. My skin looked very porcelain-like in our engagement pictures and I liked the black and white photos better than the color photos because I think that I didn’t have enough blush on. I am so glad that I was able to see this before our wedding day.
While I am on the subject of seeing things before the big day – I would highly recommend getting engagement photos taken by your photographer. I feel like a hypocrite for saying this because I think that I said “I would never do engagement photos” about 100 times before I changed my mind. I couldn’t think of one reason why I wanted (or anyone else would want to see) pictures of Jon and I sharing ‘posed’ intimate moments until I started remembering my senior portrait photo shoot and how awkward I felt posing in front of a professional photographer. I am a sorority girl at heart and have posed for many of pictures before, but working with a professional photographer just feels different. I started getting nervous about how I would feel on my wedding day when a photographer whom I had only met once was going to show up and try and capture all these special moments that my fiancé and I would be sharing. The last thing I wanted to feel on my wedding day was awkward in front of the camera. I am so glad that we did them because it was a great chance for us to work with our photographer, for us to get a little more comfortable kissing and sharing special moments on camera and I was able to see my make-up done in pictures.
Some other things that you get to practice before the big day is eating! Most brides, myself included, put themselves on a pretty strict diet leading up to the big day, so the day that Jon and I got to do cake tasting was an extra special treat for me! When else is it acceptable to share 6 cupcakes and not feel guilty about it?
When I tell people that I am enjoying the wedding planning process a lot of people give me funny looks and don’t believe me. Yes, my to-do list seems to be never ending, yes, it will get stressful no matter how organized you are or how much help you have, and yes, there are things that are not fun – like managing the guest list that seems to be ever-changing, but there are a lot of fun things that you get to do during the wedding planning process that are truly unique to being a bride-to-be, and my best advice is to enjoy every second of it!"
Thank you, Jamie for sharing this great advice with fellow brides! We couldn't agree more! : )
{Vendor Credits}
Photography by :: Michael Will Photography
Makeup by :: Simply Beautiful Makeup Artistry
