So how did we come up with that?

The first thing we did once we got engaged was to hire a wedding planner. It was imperative that 1) I not drive myself crazy during the planning process, 2) I not drive my fiance crazy during the planning process, and 3) we not drive ourselves, family or wedding party crazy the day of the wedding. I started my search probably where most newly engaged clueless bride to be's go which is The Knot. And ding-ding-ding I hit jackpot in finding Kathy Bado of The Wedding Factor. My fiance and I both LOVE Kathy and I don't think it would have been half as nice without her assistance along the way.

From our first meeting Kathy immediately started to put structure to our wedding and one of our first projects with her was in devising a theme for our wedding. Now at first I just poo-poo'd the whole idea of a theme, we didn't need no stinking theme. I already knew I wanted my wedding to be a small yet elegant intimate affair and that was enough. (Oh how naive I was!) But Kathy insisted we come up with something that would help establish a guidepost in making decisions about the look, feel, and decor of our wedding. She followed the rule that if you have common design threads that run through the wedding it makes for a more cohesive and put together affair. Looking back it's so obvious now but at the time I was inwardly saying "Huh?".

She had us list out things we like and words we would used to describe the look and feel of our wedding. From this list she came up with a theme and also pulled out 4-5 elements that we could use as design elements for the overall look of the weddings.

Here is what our original brainstorm list was:

Casual-Elegance Black & White Films/Photographs

Calm Rain

Intimate Jazz Music

Serenity Laughter

Romantic Ballet (Giselle) Apples

Animals Fragrance/Cologne

Tea Brown Sugar

The South Simple Art

Clothes Baking

Mirrors Candles

Warmth Books/Reading

Clouds Peonies

Inviting Flowers/Garden Clay

Silver Metal Chocolate

Architecture Cookies

Roses Diamonds

Leaves (Autumn) Impressionist Art

Watches Italian

Spring Fun

And from this Kathy came up with Old City Elegance with Soft Romance. She also pulled out Diamonds/Crystals, Silver, Wrought Iron (Inspired by Architecture), Romantic Flowers (Roses, Peonies, etc), Candlelight as our thematic elements.

Looking back on this its surprising what elements stayed and what elements changed, but through it all we kept the same theme. We also incorporated more elements that played on our both being native Philadelphians (also playing on the fact that historical Philadelphia is known as Old City).

I leave you with some of the inspiration pics that I collected after this exercise and that I kept in my wedding binder as reference for all my vendor meetings to keep me focused and on track.

(Sorry at the time I didn't know proper blog etiquette so I don't really have any of the sources. The most I remember is a lot are from Style Me Pretty.)