A Good Book

Previously, on Miss Potion's Blog:

-I bought an old dress [MR. POTION DON'T YOU DARE CLICK THAT LINK]
-We established a theme of "geeky-ness" and "adventure-ish"
-We decided to express "geeky" with books

I've been reading wedding blogs for...longer than I care to admit.  As such, I have become extremely...uh...inspired by a few trends featured in bloggy weddings.  ["Inspired" sounds so much nicer than "obsessed".]  In becoming obsessed with inspired by weddings I've seen on blogs, I've discovered two key words pop up again and again:

"Rustic"

and

"Vintage"

[And "intimate" but I've touched on that already.]

Now, Hive, let's be honest- as nasty as the WIC is, the WBC is pretty bad as well- the Wedding Blog Complex.  You know- the idea that you have to create every element in your wedding yourself and you have to hold mustaches on sticks and hang bunting everywhere because, in the end, the reason you're having this wedding is to get featured on a hip, cool blog?

Wait, this post isn't a rant.  Other people have ranted about this before.  So I'll just say this- in the beginning, I fell victim to the WBC as well when I found myself inspired by Rustic and Vintage weddings.  (Remember how I wanted our theme to be A Good Old-Fashioned Love Story?  It's because I wanted our decor elements to be books and vintage-y things.)

I'm pleased to say that, through talking with Mr. Potion about our wedding and, more importantly, our MARRIAGE, I've come to terms with the fact that it's more important for our wedding to be a fun party for our guests than to look perfect and pretty and trendy.  You would think this would be an obvious conclusion for me- I've never exactly been in with the "in crowd", why would I want our wedding to be?

Still, vintage decor elements aren't a bad thing!  You saw how going vintage has worked for us already- remember how affordable my definitely vintage wedding gown is?  It was with this success already under my belt that I convinced Mr. Potion to join me for an afternoon of antique stores in Leesburg, even though he had spent many similar- and painful- afternoons with his mom growing up.

Unfortunately, I was a bad blogger bride and didn't take any pictures on our antiquing adventure!  But trust me when I say it was a blast.  We went to several quaint little stores and found, in addition to elements for our wedding, a ton of beautiful pieces of furniture we wanted to buy for the house that we probably won't own for another 5-7 years.

Want to know what we got?

Weeeeeeeeeeell I'm not going to show you all of it in this post, but I will show you what we're going to do as centerpieces!

*all images in this post are personal photos*

 Old books!

Pretty old books!

Which old books, exactly?  Perfect ones.  Want to know why they are so perfect?

That first stack consists of:

 Did you know: Mr. Potion is a chemical engineer, and is of German descent.

 MAGIC, you guys.  Also, SCIENCE.  Need I say more?

And the second stack:

 Okay so...neither Mr. Potion nor I are actually fans of Dickens, per se...the perfection of this choice is much, much geekier than that.  Anyone here a fan of LOST?  If you're not...I'm not going to take the time to explain it fully here (because that would be impossible) but Desmond, one of our favorite characters, carried a copy of Our Mutual Friend on him everywhere, though he'd never read it.  He'd planned for it to be the last book he read before he died.

Okay confession: I wanted this one because it was pretty.  I mean yes, I've read the story and I really like it, but most importantly- it's really pretty.

 ...yeah okay this one's pretty too.  I actually kind of hate Dante.  Buuuut I love Les Mis!  And also Ben Franklin!

These are the only books we picked up on this trip, and, to be honest, they are probably the only vintage books we'll be buying.

Notice there are only two stacks...

You'll have to wait until a later post to find out why, but it has to do with our placement on the formal-casual spectrum.

So!

What will your centerpieces look like?  Did you fall victim to the WBC?  Don't you just love the smell of old books?  (And new books, for that matter.  Any books, really.)