Hand-Crafted Awesome

One word: ETSY.

I'm obsessed. You can find anything and everything on that site, and it is guaranteed to be a million times more charming than you would have imagined. I am constantly on Etsy searching for wedding related items, one of which was a guest book/photo album.

I got the idea for a Guest book album from our photographer, Noa, who showed us the ones she designs and that are available for purchase. Her's are beautiful flush mount albums, but were out of our price range, so I went on the hunt, which brought me to Etsy...which brought me to Etsy store Lacuna.

Lacuna is run by an adorable woman named Hana who lives with her family in Portugal. She makes personalized photo albums, journals, or any other books from recycled wood, and hand carves beautiful pictures onto the covers.

Here's the link to her Etsy store and her Flickr page.

Aren't they amazing?? I had to have one! I thought it would be perfect for our outdoor/vintage inspired wedding.

Hana just emailed me 2 days ago with the finished product that only took about 10 days for her to complete!

And here it is:





It's absolutely perfect, and exactly how I imagined it to look! The best part, is that is cost less than $100 including the shipping from Portugal! It doesn't get much better than that!!


-L.Bean

Thee wedding

I am beyond overwhelmed by wedding planning, and I really have yet to start. Just thinking about all the details that go into this one day is intimidating. So I'm putting all my thoughts down on paper (or blog), so they aren't taking up every inch of space in my brain.


We've set a date: May 07, 2011. I think it's perfect. An outdoor, garden set wedding in May sounds like heaven, right?

We've picked our venue: Ivanhoe Estate in Rancho San Diego, CA. This place is gorgeous, but I've been having issues with getting in contact with someone over there. I've decided to let the holiday season go by, and try again.

We've picked our photographer: the lovely and adorable Noa Azoulay-Sclater of Featherlove Photography. We just did our engagement photo session with her back in October, and it came out beautifully. I fell in love with her work the moment I clicked the link to her blog earlier this year. Beside her photography, her personality and style are just as charming. I am beyond excited to have her be the one to capture one of the most important days of my life on film.

We've picked colors: coral and turquoise blue, with touches of gold. Not turquoise like blue/green tropical, but turquoise like the stone, much more blue.
This had to be the hardest part so far. First I wanted purple and green, then purple and yellow, then pink, purple, blue and yellow. I couldn't narrow it down, and scrolling endlessly through wedding blogs doesn't help.
We've also got this Mad Hatter Tea Party influence running through everything, so the colors had to be bright and fun. Note the word influence, and NOT "Theme". I'm not a huge fan of theme weddings, unless they are executed to perfection, which isn't easy on a limited budget. Many try, and many fail.

I'll leave it at that for today. Soon I'll be posting pictures of influence for the decor and style of the wedding, so be on the look out!

-The bride-to-be L-Bean.