New Color Combo: Charcoal & Emerald

I'm going to be a bridesmaid in a September wedding in which one of the wedding colors is charcoal. While the bride is doing a lovely combination of charcoal against soft pastels, I also love when this dark neutral is expressed with bright pops of color, such as canary yellow, featured in the image below.

However, lately I prefer unexpected color combinations. So I came up with an emerald green and charcoal palette, offset by the cool crispness of white.

What are your favorite unexpected color combinations for a wedding?

Engagement Rings With A Conscience

A friend of mine recently became engaged. When I saw her to celebrate this milestone, she showed me her lovely ring. What made it so fabulous was that she chose an eco-friendly, uncut, natural diamond for her stone. Not only is it really unique and fits her personality, but she can feel good knowing that she did not select a "blood diamond."

Her ring inspired the present post on conflict-free engagement rings and wedding bands. All of the rings below were found on Etsy using the search term "conflict free engagement rings." While some are a bit pricey, most are quite affordable, another benefit of going green in your engagement ring selection!

I also chose a wide variety of stones in an array of settings. While not all of them are diamonds, there still are some "classic" engagement ring styles for the more traditional bride (e.g. large center picture).

Now aren't these something you can feel good about?!

A Winter Bouquet

In my search for the perfect winter bouquet to compliment my white and silver color palette (also including touches of navy), I recently stumbled across a couple of examples that I adore.

This first picture is my absolute favorite. Including metallic pine cones in the mix is just brilliant. I've always loved peonies and know I want to include them in my bouquet, and I love how they are mixed here with ivory roses.  I was never sure about mixing ivory and white flowers before, but I have to say, this has assuaged by fears. Lastly, in case you're wondering what those little grey/silver balls are, they are called silver brunia, and I am now obsessed with them as well. Who would of thought that you could actually find silver flowers to include in your bouquet?

Another lovely winter bouquet below also features silver brunia.  I think the green is very pretty as well, and love the little pieces of crystal bling scattered throughout! It's not really my style, but I do think this would go well with a snowflake themed wedding.

For the Love of Peonies

Planning a destination wedding is a lot of work. Given that I live in Chicago and am getting married on Cape Cod, I haven't visited a florist yet to choose my flowers.  I'll be making my only trip home before the wedding to work out all these essentials at the end of the month, and one of my most important appointments will be with my florist.  This is because before getting engaged, I never gave much thought to flowers, other than to think they're pretty and they smell good.  I spoke to my florist over the phone, and she suggested I find pictures of bouquets that I like to bring to our appointment.  I took her advice, and ended up in a totally different direction that I had planned.  In fact, I always knew I liked peonies, but thought they were magnolias until looked them up on the Internet (I know, I'm terrible).  I love how full these flowers are, and my florist said that although they are more expensive than other flowers, that because of their size you do not need as many.  Alas, I'm really hoping a peony bouquet will fit into my budget.  I would like to combine them with hydrangeas, as in the bottom left picture, since hydrangeas are the native flower of the Cape.  I'll just have to find some way to make it work :-)