on Beginning Steps of Planning a Unique Wedding

I'm finding it incredibly hard to plan a "unique" wedding when there are so many wedding that have been done already, and most inspiration ultimately comes from things people have done already...

However, I have had a color scheme set in my mind for several years already (pink, orange, and green) and have within the past month since the engagement come up with the idea that I would like it to be more or less a blend of modern & classic with both Asian and Western feels... since that's ultimately what my hubby-to-be and I are: totally contradictory and confusing people (well, okay not exactly, but... more to the point...). I've decided that I want bamboo to be a central decor motif in the wedding and the source of natural, Asian-y green with bright pinks and oranges (flowers, ribbons, and other possible accents) to fill the modern, Western part. 

So the second problem here is that inspiration for my vision is coming from tidbits of art and my life Honestly, my first inkling to use bamboo was when I was freaking out about wedding planning while in the shower and noticed my bamboo shower curtain went really well with the leftover caps of Herbal Essences shampoo/conditioner bottles that have piled up in my bottle-graveyard.

Looking up "Bamboo Weddings" or wedding with my desired color scheme doesn't give me a really good sense of how to blend the two together, especially because I already have something in mind, but I still couldn't really solidify what I want as the look-and-feel of this. And yes, I may be going about this backwards, as I haven't chosen a venue yet, and I realize the venue may play a big part in affecting the look-and-feel of the wedding... which is perhaps why I want to have a solid sense of the aesthetics I want myself, before I start trying to explain it to someone else... But it would be easier to show others, rather than explain it, certainly, but that's where my dilemma lies, because no such pictures of what I'm looking for exist...

This is where my genius, brilliant art skills come in... or not. As I haven't lifted my paintbrush for 6 or so years (the last picture I painted was actually a present for my Hubby-to-Be on his birthday, about 6 years ago). So I'm not very confident in my drawing skills as of late, but I still got the Photoshop & "other design" skills, so I started messing around with fonts... And I created this header (I suppose you could call it our "wedding logo" though I don't really like that name) that will be appearing on our stationery items!  Using 5 different fonts*, I was finally happy enough with the general mix of simplicity, fanciness, modernism, and classiness (as a designer, I hate telling others to make contradicting designs, but I have no problems subjecting myself to this torture). Now that I had something in mind, I pressed my watercolor paper up against the screen and began to trace!

*Van den Velde Script for the capital C, Respective for the capital K, Montez for the Asian-feel lowercase letters, Precious for the ampersand, Respective Swashes for the extra flourishes off of each letter which had to be carefully planned and placed.

This is a bad/amazing trick I've been using for years to save paper and fake scripting/handwriting skills.)  Though I wasn't 100% satisfied with some of the curves, and thickness of the design (I will have to re-vector the logo when I need it for print use), so I only did a general tracing to get the sizing of the letters and curves as I had designed them. After working out the letters as I really wanted them with pencil, I painted the bamboo in, and then the ampersand, and finally the lettering (of course, lighter background items before darker foreground items).

This is now the cover of my wedding planning binder I will cart with me to any planning activity (venue visits, florist trips, etc.) so that I can easily present what has been in my head without using the contradictory terms that have been fighting with each other inside my mind.

For the inside of my binder, I'm using this guide I found on Pinterest for content.  She has some really great links to print-outs and an outline on how to stay organized, and what kinds of things you will need to consider - super useful.

Unlike her, however, I bought all my materials at K-Mart, and am using my on means of fancy-ing and personalizing the binder (I'm not too into the glitzy shimmery binder she's got there).  The binder, as you can see, is one with the clear plastic so you can put in your own paper/image into the front. 

The separator-tabs I bought came as a set of 5 (I had to buy two sets), and then I proceeded to cut each tab in half so that all 10 would be readily visible at first glance (using a nail-clipper is really handy to round out edges).  I made a mistake in lettering my tabs, however. I did have the foresight to understand that it would be impossible to write on nail polish (well, not impossible, but much harder, and definitely not erasable), but I didn't realize that $2 nail polish will make Sharpie on smooth surface run.  So I started by using pencil to get the letters to fit on the label right before using anything permanent (I also wanted the capital letters to be as fancy as the cover's) and went over them with a Sharpie for the dark black and for the permanence. Then I proceeded to erase the underlying pencil (lightly), and go over the tabs with nail polish in the accent colors I want. I got through the first two tabs before I realized the running/smudging was out of hand, so I decided to put scotch tape over the lettering before I proceeded with the rest of the nail polish.