Blog of the week(ish): My Imaginary Well-Dressed Toddler Daughter

Okay, so the blog is this Pinterest board.

BUT COME ON

Loeffler Randall + ESB!!

Remember what I said about Loeffler Randall being the official shoe of East Side Bride?

BOOM.


They've asked me to co-curate + co-judge this Pinterest contest (running May 21-May 28).

Here are the rules:

Step one: Follow @LoefflerRandall on Pinterest.

Step two: Repin the "Pin to Win" entry photo [pictured above] and at least one Loeffler Randall product photo from our lr // hitched board.

Step three: Add a comment to your product photo telling us how you would wear your pick at a wedding. (Your upcoming wedding, your imaginary wedding, your best friend's wedding... Any wedding!) Make sure each photo is tagged #HitchedInLR & #LoefflerRandall.

**UPDATE: The winners have been announced here and here. **

p.s. Just so you know, I'm not willy-nilly recommending Loeffler Randall without sampling the wares. I bought these furry gladiators last month and they are KICK ASS.

shooz.

I'm pinning my favorite reader suggestions over here.

Just fyiz.

pin-o-RAMA

Every once in a while when I'm procrastinating, I do a little "market research" on pinterest.

If you type: http://pinterest.com/source/eastsidebride.com (but insert your own url at the end, obvs) you'll get a quick overview of what people are pinning.

There are two images from this here blog that keep coming up over and over: This adorbz pair of budget-ish sandals, and this seeeelammin turquoise ring.

Weird, right? 

I mean, not weird. But I guess I'm always hoping ppl will pin images like this. (They don't.)

Anyhoo.

Thought you should know the Jeffrey Campbell sandals are avail at Nordstrom in red and black.

(And they're on sale over at UO in white.)

You're on your own with the vintage turquoise. KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED. 

Or: Here are a few lovely modern options....

(Four Square Turquoise Ring from Mociun)

(Aili Tulum Ring from Catbird)

(Rad Turquoise Ring from Scosha)

______________________________

*All credit goes to Bri for the tip.

The elusive lace dress.

Bonjour ESB,

My humble request is for any insight in regards to this dress. 

I have attempted your suggestion of Reverse Googling the image and have come up with nothing but Pinterest boards and tumbles all without reference. 

Something similar would be appreciated but I am hunting down this dress in particular. There is no date, invite list or budget set yet, it all hinges on the dress and this is only dress I've seen that I feel like committing to. 

Merci for any help and kisses from Paris

love Moi. 

*****

Bonjour Chérie,

S'il te plait don't waste any more time pining over a dress you haven't seen from the front.

Mayyyyyyyybe it is awesome. Maybe it's an old curtain that has been artfully photographed.

xoxo,
ESB

p.s. Is there a groom??

nerd alert

Did you know you can do a REVERSE Google Image search?

Ever since I read this post, I've tried to be extra diligent about crediting every photo I publish on the blog. (A link back to Pinterest is not an acceptable photo credit, ladies.)

But. It's much easier to find great images on the internet than it is to figure out who shot them.

Say you come upon an photo on Pinterest and the photographer isn't credited....

And when you click through you just hit the home page of a blog or (worse) a Tumblr page where THE PHOTOGRAPHER ISN'T CREDITED.

Drag the image straight off Pinterest or Tumblr or wherever you found it and drop it into Google Images.

This takes a little jiggering, but once you get the hang of it, it's very satisfying. Check out the results:

Not only did I find the name of the photographer and the original source, I found a bunch more images from the same shoot.

Woohoo!

Note: The above instructions are for Mac users. On a PC, I suspect you would need to first download the image, then upload it to Google Images by clicking the tiny camera icon

and choosing the "Upload an image" feature.

Will someone test this out for me?

Photo at top: Imogen Morris Clarke by Max Doyle for Vogue Australia March 2012 via Ginny Branch Stelling via Luisa Norbis via Zimbio

Kelly's Koreatown wedding gown

I was intrigued by Kelly's mention of her "amazing dressmaker in Koreatown," so I pressed her to give us more details:

Dress maker is Ho Seok Seo (goes by Seo) at Shin Bu Bridal...

Here is my spiel for the dress...

Finding a dress for an "untraditional" girl sucks. Everything is poofy, beaded, ruffley, and looks like a cupcake. I wanted something more "boho" meets "architectural-modern" and you can imagine how hard that combo is to find! I went to every bridal boutique in Los Angeles and did not see a thing I liked. Thank goodness for Pinterest! I pulled so many photos of current and vintage gowns that had different silhouettes and fabrics I loved. We were able to pull bits and pieces of various gowns together to make the dress of my dreams. I would advise any girl to go this way. It wasn't that much more expensive and I was able to have a dress that I designed made for me to fit my body perfectly. Who loses?

Wedding Fashion brought to you by Pinterest

Hi,

Can you help?

Proposed to in December...head in the sand til now...getting married 23rd June!

So far my plan is to wear Margaret Howell painter jeans, a shirt from Paul Smith either the Palm Tree print or the Broderie Anglaise shirt or this Heart Pocket Stripe shirt from Chinti & Parker.

Anyway, the problem I'm having is finding a pair of shoes that I've spotted on Pinterest.

Can you find them?

Much wishing from Leeds, UK

*****

Um. You rule.

And the shoes are Dieppa Restrepos from Totokaelo.

Here's hoping you're a 9 1/2.

A Wedding in Polaroids

And the most thorough, thoughtful, helpful write-up I have yet had the pleasure of publishing.

Take it away April:

Sitting down to write about our wedding seems an awful lot like an Academy Award acceptance speech -- there were so many incredible people and friends involved. I'm about to start blurting out a list of names before the orchestra starts playing the STOP TALKING music.

About our wedding: it happened over labor day weekend in a small town 2 hours north of San Francisco. Monte Rio is beautiful, remote and very California without having the expense of nearby wine country. The ceremony was on a meadow by the Russian River with the reception at the community center. We treated it like it like a destination wedding.

Besides our own marriage, here's what we wanted for our guests:

- to have a relaxing long weekend on the river.
- to enjoy themselves so much that they were really sad when the weekend was over.
- to leave feeling like they really got to know other people and made new friends.
(To that end we created a Facebook group to organize lodging, communicated on our save the dates that guests needed to book lodging pronto and gave people the resources to find rental houses together. We also created a custom google map with important location and people's rentals.) As far as we know, success!

Long term, WE owe the photographers, big time. We didn't have a pile of cash to burn, so we decided early on to spend on what was important to us. Pictures last forever, right? We wanted the photographs to represent the time we had that weekend and Chloe Aftel did just that. Bonus: she is hilarious and a joy to work with (she did our engagement shots too). She does magical things with Polaroids and captured the romantic, ephemeral parts of marrying someone you love. Waking up the day after the weddings and flipping through the prints was immediate gratification! We had another photographer manning the photo booth during cocktails -- Meg Messina took fantastic wedding guest portraits.

Finally, a shot of gratitude to Jennifer Tipton. She came on as the wedding day coordinator but she was indispensable long before that. She was wonderful to work with and  was on top of everything during the weekend.

The dress: it was St. Lucia sample by Jenny Packham, purchased at San Francisco's Glamour Closet. This is the place to go if you want an expensive dress for half-price. Ideal for people who a) are motived bargain shoppers or b) don't mind if their dress has a few fix-it blemishes.
The headpiece: bought a couple but settled on the Mignonne Handmade - Nature Girl Halo in ivory.
The bridesmaids: almost all wore long, pale pink Rachel Pally. She designs with modal jersey, aka feels like pajamas.

The cake(s): we didn't want a wedding cake per se. We bought basically one of every cake from Miette. Beautiful/delicious/not $1000.

And finally, here's the rest of the Rad people/places/things near California's Sonoma valley....

Artistry by Alan: Oh my, those lashes! He comes from a Hollywood background and sat me down, did his magic and I looked like myself but flawless. What cinched it for me is he did make-up on the movie Clueless. HELLO 90's girl fantasy!
Brian Ho of Dreams in Audio: the best damn unwedding DJ we could've found (sf-based)
Fork Catering: food truck extraordinaire, tasty, local, fresh food.
Pinterest: I had an Inspiration and Final Wedding board to manage the look since our wedding decor didn't really have a strong theme besides what we liked.
Virb: hosted our wedding website! Easy and (more importantly) stylish.

The last note: we ended up with 12 kids/babies on the attending guest list(!). Besides reserving the playground adjacent to the reception site we also introduced the parents beforehand via email. We had a kid activities, made programs with a colorable illustration. One of my favorite parts of the reception was the kids smashing a Confetti System-style piñata we filled with toys and candy. It was joyful having them around!

OH, I cannot believe I almost forgot to mention my favorite wedding stress coping mechanism. No, not stress eating (close second!) — my favorite way to let of irrational impulses and wedding industry wackness out was by creating the Twitter account @BRIDEHULK. In the same vein as internet meme @DrunkHulk, you tweet the rage away. I did not man @BRIDEHULK myself, I enlisted the help of about 10 other brides who were also wedding planning last year. Most of us graduated out but there are still a couple friends who are getting married in 2012. I hope the tradition will live on and would be happy to share login information with others who find themselves fed-up with one too many staged wedding blog posts, difficult potential vendors and crazy-pants family drama.

Cheers!
April

(Chloe Aftel also took super gorg digital photos. A few of em are up over here.)

dragon scale-y wedding bands

How gorg are these??

By Satomi Kawakita via n &n via Melinda Josie

I basically never look at my Google Reader anymore. Everything is coming from Pinterest.

STRIPES FTW!

I started a stripey pinterest board.

Someone had to.

You should probably get married in this

Totokaelo via cevd

Also: if you don't follow cevd over here, you should really get on it.

Earlier this month a reader emailed me to ask what to buy as a kick-ass graduation gift for a friend who favors "chunky fashion jewelry, chandelier earrings and Coach purses." She waited 12 days for a response from my sorry ass and then wrote back: "Update: Found something via cevd's Pinterest"

do you pinterest?

It's kind of like tumblr meets twitter meets del.icio.us. I am WAY INTO IT. (As if I needed another time suck.)

I realize I don't post much in the way of wedding decor on the blog anymore -- maybe I ought to change that? -- but I've been pinning some wedding-y decor, as well as rings rings rings (obv), antlers, and the occasional photo of David Bowie.

You can check out my pins here.

p.s. Thanks to Alyson for for inspiring this post.