photography by Karenscape.

I got married in October of 2004, a full year before I started KenzieKate and a year and a half before I started Something Old, Something New. Unlike most wedding bloggers, I didn’t start the blog to keep people abreast of my wedding plans. I started it to attract traffic to KenzieKate and to keep in touch with wedding trends and the wedding community. So (as you can imagine) after two years and nearly six hundred posts there are a few things I know now about weddings that I wish I knew back when I was planning my own. I thought I’d share a few of those things.

Jamali Home and Garden has the most amazing selection of decor items. I once bought six huge outdoor lanterns there for about $120. I love their grass covered globes, and their metal vases. You can get huge candles for a fraction of what you would spend retail. They also have beautiful and affordable glass vases and a piles and piles of stones and marble to use how ever you please. Don’t miss their sea urchin collection, they’d be so adorable at a beach wedding.

This next idea has been circling the blogosphere for a while now via Oh Joy! and Decor 8, but still… The tea tins at Pearl River Mart make wonderful, inexpensive containers for flowers. The set-up above is a la Marta Stewart, but I think I would mix in some delicate little tea cups and saucers from eBay to complete the display. Perfect for a shower or a wedding, and it has a ton of impact with all the patterns and colors in the tins.

That brings me to my next idea. I love these big jars that Crate and Barrel and Pottery Barn are selling this season, but they are way more expensive than these jars, which come in all sorts of sizes and shapes. Iced tea, lemonade, margaritas, you name it, they can pour it. Well, that’s not true. Don’t do sangria. The fruit clogs the spigot. That’s first hand experience talking. If I had it all to do over again, I’d get a bunch of these and skip the bartender.

Marie from Beyond Skin.

I’d also skip the bridal shoe department. Skip it altogether. I found that the really spectacular shoes do not live there. Shimmering silver and gold, bright pops of color, gorgeous sandals, they all live over in the regular shoe department. Don’t worry, they have something that will look stunning with your dress, I promise. Release yourself from the confines of white and ivory satin.

All dresses above from Nordstrom’s.

Hold off on the bridal boutiques. Next time you’re at Saks, or Nordstrom’s or any other high-end department store, go to the evening wear section. Not only will they most likely have gorgeous dresses by the same designers as at the designer bridal salon, but the dresses will be HALF the price. While they might not ALL be white, there will be some. AND, there will be champagne, ivory, pale grey, pale blue and all the other colors that are totally in style right now for wedding dresses. You’ll find that you will pay the same for a high quality designer gown at a department store as you would pay for a low end dress at a bridal boutique. One catch- go in the spring or summer. The formal wear in the winter will be too dark.

And last, but certainly not least: Mistakes are great. I worried endlessly that something would go wrong on my wedding day, and it did! But that was ok! These things all just ended up being part of our story in the end. And the story was so much better, funnier and more interesting for them.