Wedding Blogs...friend or foe?

Wedding blogs, as much as I love and am addicted to them, they can be really hazardous to your self esteem. I think we’ve all been victim to the inspiration-turned-guilt factor of wedding porn overload. But how can one help it? After staring at gown after beautiful gown, ingenious and crazy creative ideas, killer photography and imagery, you can’t help but compare your own choices and plans to what you see. You start to wonder…Is my wedding good enough?


The important thing is…don’t. Don’t second guess yourself…unless you know for sure you’ve made a mistake (flashback to my gown episode!). As long as you make decisions that feel right to you and not what other people think, you're doing just fine. There are times when I feel completely clueless and I’m sure if David Tutera were to see my attempt at wedding styling, he’d haul in his My Fair Wedding crew in an instant. I suck at building inspiration boards, and have still yet to start one for myself. We never had a clear concept or theme, and just kind of put in elements and ideas that we loved together, hoping that they’d just work. Brilliant, huh?

For example, the wedding colors. We decided on purple because it’s my fav color. We added in gold as an accent color because of my fiance’s near-fanatic worship of the Lakers. Since the actual Lakers shades of purple and gold leave much to be desired as wedding colors, we turned our purple to a more deeper plum with accents of light gold. Next, we knew we wanted to honor our cultural backgrounds because we see our marriage as a union of us and everything that encompasses us -- our heritage, our families, our histories. The thing is, we’re attempting to combine three cultures into one day—Filipino, Chinese and Samoan. We picked a venue in downtown Pasadena for its affordability, fantastic food and charming banquet room. But I didn’t really think about how its Mediterranean cuisine and rustic vibe would fit into our Asian/Polynesian theme. Not only that, but my gown and accessories are becoming decidedly vintage. I can see David Tutera’s face twitching now.

So how is this coming together without looking like a hodge podge of random stuff? I don’t know. We’re just doing things that just seem fun, feasible and affordable. Because, in the end, we’re just doing things that reflect us, the things that seem natural and fun, and of course, fit our budget. If people are following my wedding journey and are scratching their heads and pitying my choices, oh well. If Style Me Pretty or Snippet and Ink never call asking for my wedding pics, that’s ok. The point is, there is no such thing as the right or wrong way to do things.

I don’t think there are specific guidelines for what makes a wedding “blog worthy,” or "blog chic."I’ve read that all you need is a good photographer (i.e. someone who understands composition, shutter speed and exposure) and a great dress. Well, as much as I agree with a good photographer, who am I to say what makes a great dress? An uber-expensive designer gown? Cool! A vintage find at a thrift store? Awesome! A David’s Bridal gown you absolutely love and didn’t have to pay a designer price tag for? Great! The point of this blog isn’t to make anyone feel bad or insecure about their own wedding or their choices – it’s all musings and inspiration that reflect my own tastes and budget.

As I said, I’m no Martha Stewart. I’m not one of those crazy-talented graphic designers-turned-inspiration-board-extraordinaires. Like so many brides out there, I pull inspiration from what I see and read out there in the blogosphere (sorry, too poor for a wedding magazine subscription). I post things that, yeah, probably have already been posted somewhere else (I credit the info as best I can). While this blog was always supposed to be a place where I can gather all of my wedding thoughts and inspirations, I hope other people might gain something from my journey, as I do reading other about people’s experiences. I think it’s a great thing to spread awesome, useful and affordable information out there, whether they're my own ideas or someone else's. My wedding journey might not reflect yours in the exact same way, but hopefully it can help. If not, well, maybe it’ll just make for fun reading!