Wedding inspiration board

Inspiration boards are a good way of organizing your thoughts during the planning of your wedding. There are so many things out there to inspire you and one can imagine having the wedding in many ways. It's hard to actually narrow it all down and stick to a certain style. In fact in the beginning of my wedding planning my ideas were all over the place! In the end, I started realizing that there were certain elements that I had really fallen for and a specific style started to emerge.
The first thing we chose for the wedding was the wedding location, and after that we could start thinking of a specific vision that we wanted. The location for our civil wedding was the lovely Scaliger Castle in Malcesine on Lake Garda. Absolutely stunning, right on the lake, with a 180* view of the water and mountains.
I wanted a eco-friendly look, with many DIY elements. I hand-drew the invitation card together with one of Marco's best men, made all the table decorations myself, sew the flower girl dress(tutorial and result), made the ring pillow, made wedding program fans, a road sign with distances to where our guests had travelled to be there,  rice and lavender cones, designed my own wedding dress and had it made, had a song written for us by a good friend. So it was very personal!
To have a look at the final results of the decorations click here.  And for the wedding pictures as a whole (although not the official photos) check them out here.

This is the newer inspiration board that was made about 3-4 months before the wedding. Several things were still changed from this board but it is pretty similar to the final result.

This was the first inspiration board that I made before Marco even officially proposed! We had started talking about the wedding and this is what I envisioned. Not many of these details were actually used though. The skirt of the dress and the flowers remained the same, a location on the water (the country is different though), are the same.

The bridesmaids inspiration board can be seen here.

Bridesmaids inspiration board

This is the inspiration board I made for our wedding last August (2012). I had 3 lovely bridesmaids who traveled from afar to be there for my special day. Each one represented a special part of my life. Rosalie, my childhood friend from Australia, Michelle, my teenage friend from Sweden, and Aleksandra my adult friend from Italy.
I wanted them to chose their dresses themselves, as I wanted them to wear something they were comfortable wearing. Also, I've never liked the idea of everyone wearing matching clothes. It just feels so stale.
My 3 bridesmaids all chose lovely dresses and we all looked amazing on the day. We went to the hairdresser in the morning where we got our hair done in similar up-dos: Side chignon. Mine was a bit more elaborated but otherwise quite similar.
I had also made silk flowers for each of us to have in our hair, in order to make us all look similar despite the different dresses. In fact it all turned out very well.
(Official photos still to come). For general photos from the wedding check them out here to see the result!

Wedding inspiration _ Eco Chic _ Vintage

Hi everybody!

Here is a long list of pictures that come from my infinitely large wedding inspiration folder that grows every day as if it had a mind of its own! I don't own the rights to these pictures so if these pics belong to you please tell me and I will remove them straight away!

These are inspirational photos with the theme "eco chic", "vintage", "country" "worldy" etc. The main colours that I have been inspired by are creams, champagne, apricot, grey, olive green, antique gold, pink, etc.

ENJOY!

Swedish inspiration by Ikea.

By now everybody knows what Ikea is and most of us have spent hours assembling a piece of Ikea furniture. For me going to Ikea is like going home! Every Ikea store all around the world is identical and seeing the swedish names everywhere and walking into rooms looking like the average swedes living room gives me a sense of "home". Also having the food section when you are abroad has helped me get through some serious cravings: salt licorice, cider, pepparkakor, salmon, räkost (prawn soft cheese), daim cake, lingonberry jam and cordial, chocolate balls, damsugare (chocolate rapped with marzipan), etc. The list could go on.
Ikea is great because they have everything! They have wide ranges of furniture with various levels of quality and price. Now there are even companies that will assemble the furniture for you if you don't have the patience. And those of you looking for even cheaper Ikea furniture can find them on the various second-hand Ikea furniture homepages.
Anyway, here are some of the inspirational photos from Ikeas 2011 catalouge.