my "vision"

I have a vision, several motifs, and no theme. Our wedding is going to be a bit of a rag-tag collection of different ideas, and none of them fit together. I am aware of this, and it is fine with me.

You may remember our venue, the Metropolitan Building has a very Parisian, shabby-chic feel to it.
You may think that "Parisian, shabby-chic" would lead a girl expertly to a cohesive vision worthy of Style Me Pretty. You can just imagine it, right? Lots of elegant, slightly distressed detailing, maybe some lace or linen. Sigh. It practically designs itself, this space. Online I read a description of the Met Building that called it an "Anthropologie photo shoot waiting to happen."

The thing is, none of my disparate elements really fit so neatly with what the Met Building has already given us, and I'm fine with that. Essentially, we just wanted to stick with things we like, and not worry about whether they all fit together. Themes and matching make me feel nervous and confined. I would prefer to have the elements of this wedding a little strange and disparate, but also be able to have the things we like, even if they don't match.

One of the early motifs that emerged began with our STD stamps: the only postcard stamps available on USPS.com were the polar bears. We liked them, and had no other choice!

I did notice, however, that some of the pale green tones in the polar bear stamp match the pale green walls at the Met Building.

Oh, ho ho! Maybe I do like a little matchy-matchy! From there, we used "sno-cone" colored paper from Frenchpaper.com for our STDs.
See what I mean? There is a vision and a method, but I wouldn't say I could name it, or that it's as easily identifiable and consistent as Miss Cowboy Boot's perfectly gorgeous peach and dusty rose Santa Fe wedding. Miss Cowboy Boot's vision is so palpable that I see things all the time where think "Oh, that would be perfect for Miss CB!"

I on the other hand, don't really understand inspiration boards and am not focused enough to use one or make one. (Do you use them or make them? Or both?)

This leads me to our invitations, which feature two polar bears, one of whom is wearing a tophat!

So we have polar bears on the stamps, polar bears on the invitations ... but will you see polar bears anywhere else? No!

...But you will see Sherlock Holmes. One of the things about our wedding that causes my mother's lips to press together are our escort cards, which will be Sherlock Holmes-themed. We're going to have each table named after a Sherlock Holmes story (The Adventure of the Speckled Band, anyone?). We'll have plain, tented escort cards with each guest's name, and the name of one of the cases inside. On the table, we'll have a Holmes silhouette:

Followed by the name of the case. Who wants to be at The Adventure of the Six Napoleons? Surely everyone will!

However, aside from the table names and escort cards, there's not going to be any other Holmes stuff at the wedding. My mom is not into the Holmes idea, I can tell, but is kindly indulging me. We picked this because G. has loved Sherlock Holmes since he was a kid, and knows all of the stories. More importantly, we spent the spring of '08 renting the Jeremy Brett version from Netflix. This was a difficult period for us, plagued by work and graduate school trauma, and Sherlock Holmes was one thing we always looked forward to, and I daresay got us through.

As far as my mom is concerned -- which is pretty far, considering she is creative director of all the flowers and the rest of the decor -- the wedding will have a strong "winter wonderland/Christmas" vibe. We're going to have cut paper snowflakes sprinkled on the tables, red Amaryllis placed on tabletops, and mini Christmas trees. And a lot of wreaths.

As you can see, a lot of these projects have yet to be completed, but they are swimming in my head. I've decided that even though my polar bear-detective-Christmas-snowflake-Parisian-shabby chic wedding doesn't all fit together, I don't care. It has all the stuff that we like, and that is the most important thing.

Do you have a vision? Do you have a theme? Are you all over the place, like me? Do tell!