Thanks to our wonderful Richmond friends, Meghan Ely of OFD Consulting and Jennifer McBride of McBride Events the Charlottesville Wedding Blog, amongst many other fabulous (and some famous) wedding and wedding-related blogs has been mentioned in the Richmond Times Dispatch!  Can I just say WOW!?!?!

Please be sure to make a point of visiting all of the fabulous blogs that Meghan and Jennifer consider noteworthy… and believe me, being on any of their lists is a great honor!!

Style Me Pretty
The Wedding Chicks
Ruffled
United With Love
Ritzy Bee
Hill City Bride
Pretty Tasty Things

So happy to let you know that there’s a new blog in town! The Fête blog by Stephanie Marie officially launched this week and is a wonderful addition to the Charlottesville lifestyle blogging scene.   I took my first peek at Fête and loved it right away… here are a few words direct from the blog:

Stephanie Marie, editor of The Hook Weddings, a quarterly wedding publication based in Charlottesville, Virginia, and a wedding planner for Shindig Events, looks to combine vintage romance and whimsical glamour into the everyday and operates by the philosophy that true beauty is indeed in the details.

You can expect to see lots of lovely weddings at Fête but it looks like Stephanie will be exploring and sharing many of her other creative interests as well in the months to come! And to kick off her new endeavor she has teamed up with photographer Jen Fariello and makeup artist Jeanne Cusick to offer a Love Shoot Giveaway!  You won’t want to miss entering to win so please hop on over to Fête right away and read the rules.  Deadline for entries is Tuesday, October 18th.

Congratulations, Stephanie… it’s gorgeous!

Today’s the day! … the new blog design I’ve been hinting at is finally live today! So now I can tell you  how it all came together … it started with Eric Kelley (of Eric Kelley Photography) who said, “Claire, what do you think about having my amazingly talented friend, Brandon, do a re-design of your blog?” That was many months ago. Well let me tell you… Eric’s amazingly talented friend, Brandon of Creed Design, is just that… he and I have been working on this project: discussing and tweaking the design details for awhile now (the red bird was my idea but absolutely everything else is Brandon’s talent) and today’s the day I get to share it with you!

But wait, there’s more!  To go along with the re-launch I decided it was time that the blog have it’s very own Facebook page.  So, please check out the new page today…. And, if that weren’t enough… The Hook’s Weddings supplement is out today and the Charlottesville Wedding Blog, along with 3 other lovely local (mostly) blogs are featured.  Check out pages 20 – 22.

Huge thanks to:

• Brandon Wooten of Creed Design for his mad talent and brilliant design.
• Eric Kelley for getting the whole thing started and for the fun photo shoot so I’d have a new photo to go along with the new blog!
• Lora Kelley (of Lora Elaine) for my first-ever on-site (their living room hair & makeup session pre-shoot.
• Joel Williams of Blog Tech Guy who did all the behind-the-scenes technical side of getting the new design up and running
• Stephanie Garcia for the fun interview for The Hook article.I’d love to know what you think of all the changes here on the blog… please leave a comment or hop on over to the new FB page and let me know.

On August 15th (more or less) the Charlottesville Wedding Blog will be a big 2 Years Old!!! …wow, I can hardly believe it!

If you’ve been following along over the months you’ve seen me try lots of different things here…

• “best of” series (which I plan to do again later in the year);
• “Bride Online” sharing various finds around the web;
• Ceremony readings;
• Green wedding tips;
• lots of Real Weddings;
• engagement shoots;
• local products and services;
• interviews;
• announcements;
• videos;
• guest posts
• featured vendors.

and lots more… so, as we head into year 3 here on the blog it would be truly fantastic to hear what you’d like to see more of (or less of) and what other types of features you’d find useful and would like me to include.

One of my own wishes for this blog is to find ways to get more people involved: brides, grooms and wedding professionals in the area, so I’d love to hear any ideas you might have about that.

I’d also love for more of the wonderfully talented wedding professionals in our area to share their work with my readers: yes, I’m talking to you… photographers, caterers, bakers, florists, planners, audio, video and all the rest… my readers want to know about what you offer and I’d love to feature you here… so get in touch!

Please post your thoughts and ideas as a comment or, if you’d prefer, please e-mail me directly: revclaire@sacredgroundceremonies.com

Thank you to everyone who has made the past 2 years of blogging so much fun for me!

~ Claire

If you’re planning a wedding (or not) and love wedding blogs, like I do, you’ve probably seen a few out there in the Blogosphere… I haven’t shared my favorites in a while so today I’m happy to send you links to a few of the blogs that I read (or at least scan) every day. These blogs are not local to Charlottesville but are filled with stories, ideas, inspiration, instructions for various projects and tons more.

Most wedding blogs are, naturally, focused on the interests of brides in particular… which is understandable since statistically it’s the bride who undertakes a great majority of the planning.  However, today I discovered something quite unique (I think) a blog written by a groom, telling about his experience preparing for his own wedding which, apparently, is more than a year away.  It’s a relatively new blog written by “Dave” in Los Angeles… he calls it “Temple of Groom”.  Cute, huh?

So, I know that this post about wedding blogs isn’t specific to Charlottesville but since so many of the brides I work with are blog readers, I wanted to share a bit about my own wedding blog habit… and also to ask you if you’d let me know what your favorite blogs are. Very soon I’ll be sharing my favorite local Charlottesville wedding blogs… so stay tuned!

Style me Pretty ~ Weddings Unveiled WeddingbeeSnippet & InkEcochic WeddingsTemple of Groom ~ Brooklyn BrideBride’s CafeOffbeat Bride ~ Kiss the Groom Ritzy Bee

Send me a comment and let me know which wedding blogs are your favorites!

The Bride’s Cafe is a colorful and beautifully done wedding blog created by Janie Medley of Janie Medley Flora Designs right in our very own Richmond, VA. Janie is an incredibly talented floral designer and The Bride’s Cafe blog is full of her love of beauty and of weddings. Tons of photos and great ideas for your own wedding… but mostly it’s a feast for the eyes… enjoy!

I just learned that our very own amazing and talented Jennifer Carroll of Jennifer Carroll Events was featured on 2 wonderful blogs today… so I decided I’d jump right in there and feature her here too… maybe 3 in one day will be some kind of record

First, let me link you up to the 2 other blog posts that came out today, they are both wonderful, please check them out:

• Weddings Unveiled features Jennifer’s wonderful favors invites and papers.
• Teardrop Weddings has Jennifer in their Vendor Spotlight.

Jennifer is an extraordinarily talented planner, designer and artist and is a joy to work with. Her work is a true expression of her many gifts and talents and it is so much fun to watch her multitude of amazing ideas and inspirations come to life.

Earlier this year Jennifer’s friend and colleague, the talented Jen Fariello, sent me this selection of her photographs of some of Jennifer’s incredible design work from a wedding that we all did together at King Family Vineyard in May of this year… and today seems like a great time to share them with you… enjoy!

Jennifer knows how to keep the kids busy!

Contact Information for Jennifer Carroll Events:
~ website: www.jennifercarrollevents.com
~ e-mail: jennifer@jennifercarrollevents.com
~ phone: 434-823-7607
~ blog: http://jennifercarrollevents.typepad.com

Contact Information for Jen Fariello Photography:
~ website: www.jenfariello.com
~ e-mail: jen@jenfariello.com
~ phone: 434-963-7976
~ blog: http://jenfariello.bigfolioblog.com

If you’ve been planning your wedding for awhile now you very well may have already encountered the Style Me Pretty blog written by the amazing and prolific Abby Larson. Abby writes about every imaginable aspect of the wonderful world of weddings and each post is full of colorful photos and links to great resources. To give you a tiny taste of the broad range of Style Me Pretty’s content here’s a tiny sampling of what has been on the blog in the last couple of weeks: wedding cakes; cinematography; little black dresses; wedding sweets; invitations; breast cancer awareness; and this week she is devoting solely to do-it-yourself projects for weddings. This little list doesn’t even scratch the surface!

Among many other features, Style Me Pretty has it’s very own, exclusive, directory of wedding vendors around the country called the Little Black Book. As I understand it, Abby only accepts 3 in each category per locality and each vendor listed is screened and recommended by colleagues as one of the very best in their category.

Ok, that’s enough from me… now hop on over there and check out Style Me Pretty… but please be sure to come back!

Just for fun… take a break from planning your wedding and check out Weddingbee. Weddingbee is many things: a blog, a forum, a source of great information and inspiration… but mostly it’s a fun diversion for a few minutes each day and an opportunity to network with other brides.

Weddingbee has several dozen brides and newlyweds (and even a few grooms) who blog about their before, during and after wedding experiences with you. Each blogger has a funny, unique blogging id such as “Miss Pinot Noir”, “Miss Hot Cocoa”, “Mrs. Milkshake” and “Mr. Mango”.

Using these aliases, Weddingbee bloggers share on a huge variety of topics… everything from finding and buying great shoes, honeymoon planning and reception menus to personal relationship stories and do-it-yourself wedding creations. Some days there are more than a dozen posts on a wide variety of topics.

So check out Weddingbee and enjoy!

By the way… if anyone out there is a Weddingbee blogger or has been following Weddingbee, I’d love to hear your experiences!

As you probably already figured out I am a big fan of blogs and blogging… I especially love to follow the blogs of the various photographers that I have worked along side of at weddings. Because the nature of blogging is a more relaxed and personal format photographers often post their favorite photos of the day on their blogs… and not necessarily the most perfect ones. Also, because I only see my photographer friends at weddings their blogs give me the chance to see the other kinds of work they love to do.

So, given that this is a wedding blog you can correctly assume that the 8 photographers whose blogs I’m linking to here are amazing and talented wedding photographers but a peek at their blogs will reveal that they all have much broader interests and expertise… You will discover Rob Garland’s amazing photos of famous performers and performances and that Jen Fariello, Meg Runion and Bill and Anne Holland all have a special love for photographing babies and children … others you’ll see enjoy shooting portraits of people and pets, engagement and pregnancy shoots and there are even some amazing food photographs that will make you hungry

I hope that you enjoy these blogs as much as I do. I think if I were getting married and had to pick a wedding photographer in the Charlottesville area it would be an awfully difficult choice!

The Blogs of Eight Talented Charlottesville Area Photographers:

Allegra’s Studio

Billy Hunt

Holland Photo Arts

Jen Fariello

Meg Runion

Meredith Montague: Making Use

Rob Garland

Sanderson Images: Life in the Light

Photo Credit: Meg Runion of Rob Garland Photographers