Tired of the traditional engagement rings and looking for something unique? Here’s some Thursday bling, for your viewing pleasure!
– Shine On!
Native and Posh
Tag: bridal
These $99 Wedding Dresses Will BLOW YOUR MIND!
David’s Bridal is running their annual $99 wedding dress sale and OMG!! These dresses (which totally look like they’re worth thousands) are actually usually priced at the very affordable, very David’s Bridal range of $300-$800…but for a limited time, they’re selling them for only $99. And, I know what you’re thinking…they’re probably the icky, ugly, tacky ones on sale. Nope! They’re STUNNING! Check out these beauties below!!
They’re enough to make me want to renew my vows 🙂
– Wow!
Native and Posh
Wedding Dress Shopping Tips for the Busty Bride
We women usually have an interesting relationship with our boobs. For me, I used to go to bed almost every night of high school, praying to be better endowed by morning. My two best friends were the opposites, walking through life with two sports bras on at all times, to tame the gals. Whatever side you’re on, it doesn’t necessarily get any better when you start wedding dress shopping. If you’re on the itty titty side, thought, its as simple as adding a bra insert or getting your dress taken in. If you’re on the opposite end, it may be a little more complicated. So, to help out the well endowed among you, I reached out to my panel of experts for their tips on wedding and bridesmaid dress shopping for the busty bride. Love love love their candid tips!
Feel free to add any additional tips to the comments section!
Beautifully Busty,
Native and Posh
Splurge on the Bra
“Get a great Bra for the day. Shopping at Nordstrom or a place where they have people who make careers out of fitting women. Victoria’s Secret doesn’t cut it and they don’t carry my size. I refuse to shop somewhere that I cannot try on their product.”
“Purchase the right bra. Period. It’s not the right bra if you’re tugging at it all day. This is the real hunt!”
Chicago’s Finest Bakeries: CAKE Sweet Food Chicago
For Mary Winslow, the passion for wedding cake creation actually began as a passion for art and later evolved into a love of baking. As a young ad agency account executive, she started dreaming of stepping into work that allowed her to bring together those two loves and a way to make art delicious.
So, this mother, entrepreneur, and self-taught pastry chef decided to take a leap of faith and start her own cake business. Winslow first began experimenting with cakes at home and had her family and friends vote on their favorites. After honing her talents, she decided to venture into the world of professional kitchens and began subletting part of a catering kitchen to fulfill orders for her first business – Take the Cake. Not long after, with her pastry and wedding cake business really taking off, Winslow found she needed a bigger kitchen with an even bigger oven.
Today, her thriving bakery and sweet shop CAKE Sweet Food in Chicago’s United Center neighborhood as well as her eStore have allowed her to share her passion for high quality, delicious sweets with the world, not matter how close or far they may be from Chicago they were! Her beautiful creations are as gorgeous as they are delicious and are truly a remarkable sight to behold!
I’m so excited that CAKE Sweet Food Chicago will be one of our esteemed vendors at next Thursday’s Love is Sweet Valentines dessert event. If you want to sample some of their seriously delicious deserts, you can get your tickets at Eventbrite. Hope to see you there!
– Love is Sweet, Native and Posh
Beach Holiday: Autumn and James’s Real Wedding (Jamaica)
When Autumn and James finally said, “I do” on their wedding day, their kiss sealed a love story almost 15 years in the making. The couple first met during their freshman year and stayed close, throughout high school. Eventually, they went to different colleges and began to lose touch over the years. As they neared the end off college, thought, fate reconnected them and they decided not to let love slip from their hands a second time.
They wanted to use their wedding to celebrate their shared love for travel and invited a handful of their closest friends to join them in the beautiful Sandals Whitehouse Resort in Jamaica.
Autumn had this to say abut their wedding:
“The entire holiday was planned to make sure people felt relaxed and wrapped in love and celebration. The theme of my wedding was “Our Wedding Holiday” and I captured this theme in a number of ways,
(1) Holiday derived from the notion of a holy day, a celebration, a vacation (UK friends)
(2) We were married on Sunday, June 8, which is a holy day, the Sabbath; it is also the date we got engaged in 2012
(3) Our holiday was a celebration of our love and a vacation to Jamaica!
(4) Guests used the hashtag #AxJHoliday – check it out on Instagram”
Planning a destination wedding isn’t without it’s challenges, but Autumn and James were able to keep their sanity. Their biggest word of advice to couples? Get a good wedding planner!
I’m so happy to see this beautiful couple find love at last! Blessing on their marriage!
– Native and Posh
Custom Wedding Dresses Within Reach: Avail & Company
Rachel Alvia, Avail & Co Owner and Lead Designer // Ozzie Ramsay Photography
As little girls, when we imagine our weddings, it usually begins with the dress. In some ways, the wedding dress is the wedding. It is usually the first big wedding planning decision, the first major purchase, one of the most magical parts of weddingness, and one of the most angst ridden. There are always too many options, with too few of them really fitting the bill. Hours and hours are spent trying to find that one, prefect dress. If only there was a bridal boutique that could read our minds and produce the exact dress of our dreams…Wait…there is. Chicago’s Avail & Co, a leading custom bridal design shop.
A Winter Wonderland: Stephanie and Kevin’s Real Wedding (Cincinnati)
Stephanie and Kevin weren’t expecting much when they signed up for match.com, but when they were “matched” and went on their first date, they both had a feeling they had met “the one.” These two Ohio natives quickly found out that they had even more in common than hobbies and personalities. Their grandmothers, who both grew up in the same neighborhood in northern Ohio, were also childhood friends!
It was fate that brought this beautiful couple together, but it was Stephanie’s creativity and background in graphic design that really brought their breathtaking wedding to life. Their Art Deco-inspired winter wedding was beautifully captured by 1326 Studios. These pictures are literally a dream come true for anyone looking for some amazing winter wedding inspiration. And Stephanie’s tips on staying sane while planning a wedding are the best!
enjoy
-native and posh
Stephanie’s Wedding Planning Tips
1. Keep the bridal party small
I love that I kept the bridal party small (two people on each side, plus a ring bearer). It just made it feel like a more intimate experience, and it made it much more manageable in terms of planning.
2. Use the Same Venue for Ceremony and Reception
If your religious beliefs allow it, having one location for the whole thing worked out really well. Our ceremony and reception were in one place, and better yet, it was a hotel, so at the end of the night, we (along with many of our guests) simply walked up to our rooms. No transportation budget required! Speaking of budget, having an off-season wedding saves money, too. Continue reading
Love at First Sight: Foye and Orseer’s Real Wedding (Atlanta)
Sometimes life is incredible. Sometimes love sweeps you off of your feet so swiftly and so completely that it takes weeks, months to come down from that high. That is the story of Foye and Orseer. Full disclosure, Foye is one of my best friends in the whole entire world. I’ve known her since I was in 4th grade and through all of life’s twists and turns, hers has been one of my most enduring friendships. Though we hadn’t lived in the same city in years, we always kept each other updated about boys, jobs and everything in between. So, when the time came to pack up and make the journey to Nigeria for my wedding, she was one of the cherished few who agreed, without hesitation, to be part of our special day. Her presence at my wedding was such a memorable time for me, but I never could have imagined how memorable it was going to be for her.
On our group’s first night out in Abuja, before my wedding, hubby and I went out to dinner with our international guest and some of his closest friends. It was that night that Foye met Orseer, one of my husband’s closest friends, and they were both swept off their feet. I know it’s cliche to say that, but it was the start of a love story that ended in the most beautiful way…with their breathtaking wedding in Atlanta this summer. It was such a blessing to see my best friend find love, at last, and an even greater joy to have been a small part of that story.
Since Foye is Yoruba and Orseer is Tiv, they were able to weave both tribes into their traditional wedding day. I’ll share pics from the church wedding soon, but in the mean time, enjoy these gorgeous pictures by Once Like a Spark.
– love is real, native and posh
College Friends to Lovers: Lucia and Luke’s Real Wedding (Columbus)
Lucia and Luke’s amazing love story proves that the slow flame can burn as brightly as a quick, blaze. Maybe, even more so. When Lucia first met the saucy Luke, as California transplant and former Air Force man, she was not impressed. In January, he kept talking about how amazing California weather was, which would be off putting for anyone stranded in the frozen arctic of the Midwest. But they eventually grew to be acquaintances and later casual friends. Four years later, in 2010, a single email would change their lives forever.
“Luke emailed me because he had heard I moved to Chicago and he had a friend in Chicago he thought I would be friends with. This started many 100s of emails about life and relationships. Throughout 4 years of emails and phone calls and many moves, Luke and I became the best of friends…kinda like “When Harry met Sally”. We talked about everything…even about boyfriends and girlfriends! A year ago,I went to Austin to visit Luke and while I was there, we realized we were more than just friends…and that we actually had fallen in love with each other. 4 months later, he proposed and here we are, husband and wife. Life is wild sometimes.” -Lucia
What began as a small acquaintance grew into a love that is such a joy to see! Their wedding this May was full to the brim with sweet moments, sunflowers as big and bright as the California sunshine and a cloud of loving family. Blessings on their marriage!!
And…OMG!! Those photos! Thanks to Ashlee Layne Photography for beautifully capturing the day!!
5 Ways to Stay Stylish and Warm on Your Wedding Day
This weekend in Chicago, there was hail, snow, winds of up to 50 mph and 23-foot waves off of Lake Michigan. The time for denial is over. Winter is truly here.
Everyone tried to warn me about the horrible weather here, but I just wouldn’t listen. I fell for the skycrapers and delicious food…but enough about me.
If you had a wedding last weekend, I’m so so sorry. You were, undoubtedly, caught unaware, since it was nearly 75 degrees only three days before. If you have a wedding coming up soon, now is the time to prepare. I’m usually not a fan of any sort of coverup (though the church I got married in, made me wear one), but desperate times, ladies…
Here are my top 5 bridal cover up for fall/ winter/ snowmageddon. Some are a more style than function. Some are even a little over the top, but if you can’t be over the top on your wedding day, when can you be?
– stay posh
Organza Bridal Cape, David’s Bridal, 129.00
Marabou Feather Shrug, Ann Taylor, $298 Now $224.99
Vintage Ostrich Feather Jacket, BelovedVintageBridal, $475.00
Gold Sequin Cropped Bridal Bolero, Kulayan, $105.00
Native and Posh Weddings 
