Happy Friday, friends! I wanted to share an inspiration board I recently put together for one of my dear engaged friends, Jackie. She is getting married to George this September, and John and I are so excited for them!

Jackie sent over a few details, and here’s what I put together…

Honey jar photo by KT Merry via Style Me Pretty, wood crate arrangement photo by Lisa Lefkowitz via Style Me Pretty, portrait by Clary Photo via Style Me Pretty, bistro lighting photo by Jenna Walker via Style Me Pretty, pink bridesmaid dress photo by Morgan Trinker via Southern Weddings, soft cake photo by Jose Villa, mason jar centerpiece from Martha Stewart Weddings, floral tablecloth photo by Lisa Lefkowitz via Style Me Pretty

Jackie and George are holding their reception in his family’s backyard in upstate New York. For the “feel,” she’s picturing a pretty backyard summery wedding, somewhere between preppy and shabby chic. They’re having a Sperry tent (whoo!) and will fill it with soft flowers in mason jars and George’s mom collection of vintage flowery table cloths (loved that detail!).

The guys are wearing light khakis, navy blue blazers, and likely a patterned shirt (striped/checked/gingham) and a solid colored tie. Jackie was having the most trouble deciding what the bridesmaids should wear — mix and match pale pink dresses, mix and match yellow dresses, or a combination — and picturing the overall color scheme coming together.

To tell the truth, I was having a hard time reconciling the dark blue of the blazers with the light colors happening everywhere else at first, too. But then I found this wedding, and everything crystallized for me! I made Jackie a version of this board with pink dresses, and a version with yellow dresses, and she ended up going with the pink dresses, which is what you see here.

I also suggested a few photographers for J&G to look at, and I’m so happy to say that they chose Bryce Covey! I’ve never met him in person, but he seems wonderful and his work is beautiful. Can’t wait for September! :)

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

Hello, friends! Thank you SO much for your feedback on my first Marvelous Money post! I’ve noted all of your questions and thoughts and look forward to discussing them together over the next few weeks. For our first nuts and bolts post, I wanted to begin with a topic many of you brought up: the emergency fund.

Let me be clear: I am NOT an expert on personal finance, and so there are very few things that I will ever say with absolute certainty on the subject. Here’s one: If you don’t have an emergency fund, you need one. Several of you commented that you fell back on credit card debt when unexpected expenses came up. We can’t change the past, but we CAN change the future, so let’s just agree that from this point forward, that is not going to be an option for any of us, ever. Okay?

Wonderful! Now let’s talk emergency fund.

An emergency fund is for:
— paying for something you had no way of knowing was coming and that would have a major impact on your family if you don’t cover it. Examples include paying the deductible on insurance (health/homeowner’s/car), medical bills from an accident or unforeseen medical problem, or a major problem with a necessary car.

An emergency fund is not for:
— buying a piece of clothing that’s on sale, a couch (or even a washer/dryer), a car, or a vacation.
— building wealth (more about this below).

What does an emergency fund look like? Almost every source suggests a fully funded emergency fund should cover three to six months of expenses. If you have a steady, secure job (think honestly about this) that you’ve held for a while and everyone in your family is healthy, then three months might be sufficient. If you are self-employed, work in a sales or commission-based job, and/or have chronic health issues, I’d lean toward the six month mark. For young people in this economy, I’d lean toward the six month mark.

Your emergency fund should cover expenses, not income. If, say, you lost your job, you’d obviously try to cut back in as many areas as possible, but you’d still have to have somewhere to live, have something to eat, and continue to make any recurring payments like a car or student loan. For most families, an emergency fund ranges from between $10,000 to $30,000. Right now, John and I consider our emergency fund fully funded with about five months of bare bones expenses.

How did we do it?
— We established an emergency fund savings account in January 2010, and each contributed an initial lump sum (I believe about $2,000 each, from our high school and college savings). If having that type of money to use seems so far from your reality, it’s okay! It will just take you a little longer to get to the fully funded mark.
— Next, we started saving. In 2010, we each contributed $75 a month into the fund. In 2011, we actually decreased our monthly contribution to $50 each and put the difference (and then some) into our wedding savings account.
— In December 2011 I received a very generous Christmas gift from my grandmother that allowed us to complete our fund. We were very fortunate to receive this gift, and gratefully recognize it made the process easier for us. However, if you’re tempted to shrug off our efforts, I’d humbly remind you that we made the decision to put that money into our emergency fund instead of, say, going on a vacation, or buying a new couch. (And trust me, when we first graduated from college and our entire living room of furniture consisted of ONE three-year-old loveseat from Ikea, we really wanted a new couch.) There were other virtuous things we could have done with the money, like pay down our debt, but given the experience we had gone through with John’s unemployment, we wanted to make sure we were secure should we ever face that situation again.

In order to make the process as painless as possible, we set up an automatic monthly transfer from the checking account where our paychecks are deposited into our emergency fund savings account. If you’re able to set up a transfer directly from your paycheck, even better! I think you’ll be surprised to find that you don’t much miss it if it’s not there to spend. Even if it’s only $50, transfer it from EVERY paycheck, and resolve not to touch it. Just pretend it’s not there!

Over time, increase the amount that you’re saving. It might take years, but eventually you’ll have a very comfy cushion to fall back on, should you ever need it. And really, it’s okay if it takes years! Just the mere existence of a cushion allows you to focus on other things (and keep building a bigger cushion), because you’re not constantly being sent back to square one/back into debt the minute something unexpected happens.

Saving for an emergency fund is NOT fun — or at least, it wasn’t for me, and I am someone who really loves saving :) A good emergency fund is B-O-R-I-N-G. It has to be an account with easy access and basically zero risk, which typically means a standard savings account. With our current low interest rates (0.75% on mine right now), your returns are going to be tiny even on a large chunk of money.

Worse, there’s no anticipation of saving up for something fun, like a vacation or a wedding. At the end, you won’t have anything to show for your work, like a house, since most of us don’t go around flashing our bank statements. The motivator here is lifelong financial security, which, while AMAZING when you step back and think about, is not as gratifying in the short term.

BUT, the AWESOME thing about an emergency fund, is that once you fund it, you can check it off and move on, unlike, say, retirement savings. Even if you are forced to dip into your fund, it’s unlikely you’d need to wipe it out in one go. And if, at the end of your life, you still have a fully funded emergency fund? Well, you’ll just have more to give away — not such a bad problem to have :)

Here are my three best reasons why YOU (yes, you!) should get started with an emergency fund today:
1) It takes no time. You just need a savings account and an automatic transfer, and you can set it and forget it. There’s no need to monitor the account closely.
2) It takes no experience. Again, the investment tool is very simple and stable, so there’s almost no way to do it “wrong” — unless you don’t do it at all.
3) It takes not very much money. Unlike, say, paying off debt, it’s okay if you go slower on this one. I would suggest making an initial contribution of $250 or $500, or $1000 if you can swing it, but from there, start with whatever monthly contribution is comfortable for your budget and try to increase the amount every year.

YOU can do this friends! And you will feel so good when you do, I promise!!

So tell me: Have I convinced you? Do you already have a separate emergency fund, fully funded or not? If fully funded, how long did it take you to get there? If not, are you going to start one today? :) Any questions I didn’t answer?

As a reminder, my advice is meant for someone in a generally stable financial position. If you are facing serious financial problems or significant debt, I would suggest seeking professional help, as there are likely other steps you should prioritize.

Y’all, I feel so very lucky to be sharing Marget and Seth’s wedding today. Lucky because it’s gorgeous and so thoughtfully planned, yes, but also because I was so happy to play a small part in it! Marget is a few years older than John, and ever since he and I started dating in high school, I’ve looked up to both of his sisters with a little bit in awe. Marget is stylish, sophisticated, kind, and witty; she has a magnetic personality to which people are irresistibly drawn. I was (and am) no different, and therefore was so happy to stand next to her on her wedding not only as a sister-in-law, but as a friend.

She graciously agreed to let me share a few thoughts on their day. I’ve incorporated some of Marget’s own words, as well.

Marget and Seth chose a beautiful Rifle Paper Co. design for their invitation suite, and Marget worked closely with the designers to choose just the right shades of leaf green, blush, and peach to set the day’s palette.

That’s me on the left! Isn’t Marget’s bouquet just gorgeous? It smelled delightful, too, because of the mint tucked in. The striped wrap is from Anne M. Cramer. Hana Floral Design took care of all the blooms.

All of the bridesmaids chose their own black dress. Mine was actually having its encore wedding performance, as I wore it as a bridesmaid in my friend Katharine’s wedding in 2010!

To complement the black and white, Marget and all of her bridesmaids wore a “pop of color” on the lips. To prepare, we each made a trip to Sephora with the bride, where we had fun finding the perfect bold, matte lipstick to complement our complexions. Mine turned out to be a hot pink called Schiap, and though I never would have bought it myself (I’m a major scaredy cat when it comes to color!), it was SO fun to wear it, and I loved how it looked! Marget herself wore YSL No. 1 Le Rouge.

Gorgeous girl!

Marget and Seth choose to have both their ceremony and reception at Eolia, an oceanside mansion in Connecticut. Marget dreamed of doing just that when she was little, and I love that her dream came true! Their ceremony included a thoughtful mix of Jewish and Christian traditions, including a beautiful branch huppah.

The garden at Harkness is quite long. The plan was for Marget to enter at the halfway point for her walk down the “aisle,” like the bridesmaids, but she decided to enter from the furthest point to make for a longer walk as a surprise for Seth. I think it worked :)

From Marget: Among my favorite moments were taking a long walk across a field through the rain with my father so that we could surprise Seth by appearing at the very end of the garden for a long walk down the aisle. Seth loves to surprise me and was heavily invested in first laying eyes on me on our wedding day, so I wanted to turn the tables and give him a moment to remember. Indeed, seeing me in my dress for the first time is one of his favorite moments from the day.

Ahhh yes, the rain. It started sprinkling very lightly as we rode over to Harkness, and kept it up intermittently until the end of the (outdoor) ceremony, when it started to legitimately rain. It poured later in the evening, but thankfully the reception was largely indoors. I thought Marget handled the less-than-desirable weather beautifully, so I wanted to get her thoughts on it:

The day before the wedding I started getting calls from vendors asking us what our rain plan was, and my response was that if rained, we’d do whatever they thought best. But of course, I still believed it would turn out to be a beautiful day, because summer is made of beautiful days.

On the day of, as the grey skies gave way to mist, I was aware that rain was imminent, and just hoped that it would hold off until after our ceremony. Surprisingly, there was no sadness, just acceptance and a bit of optimistic hope. Like water running downhill, I knew that if it were to rain, it would indeed rain, and there was nothing we could do to change it. That was our wedding day no matter what, and I loved that day so very much. We recognize it would have been different if it hadn’t rained — our guests would have gotten the chance to stroll the grounds during cocktail hour, our mothers’ hair would not have been flattened, and we would have had the photographs I had imagined. But our wedding wasn’t a photo shoot, and everyone we loved was there, whether their blowout held or not. The question is, would our emotional experience have been different if it hadn’t rained? In some ways, yes. Seth and I were both distracted by thoughts of concern for guests who were being rained on during our ceremony, and we weren’t able to take the walk we had planned at sunset, which left us with no time alone together on our wedding day. My point is, it was different. If it had been sunny, I imagine I may have spread my arms wide, kicked my head back and soaked in the fresh air. Instead, Seth and I huddled up together under his blazer and made a run for it with my bouquet held overhead as an umbrella. We were still giddy and together, but our wedding day was one of the rainy ones. And I spent no time worrying about what was lost, or what might have been–even when my mud-soaked wedding gown was ripped on the dance floor. Because a wedding day is just like the rest of life – you can only plan in advance and be flexible on the day-of. Plus, the day was still overflowing with blessings and absolutely more fun than I’d ever had! Since our wedding, we haven’t given it much thought. But countless guests have told us that the rain only added to the day’s romance… and warned us that it’s a sign we’ll have a big family!

After Marget and Seth recited their personal vows and exchanged rings, their ceremony concluded with a variation on the Jewish tradition of “seven blessings.” Instead of having the traditional blessings read, Marget and Seth assigned seven family members or friends, or pairs of family members or friends, a virtue or element they hoped to have as part of their life together. Each person or pair was asked to share a thought, wish, hope, prayer, quote, or blessing that corresponded to their blessing. It was really interesting to see how everyone interpreted the assignment! John and I were asked to wish them “joyful faith.”

Because of the weather we did portraits with Katie Stoops inside the mansion.

I’m not the only mini food lover in the family! Marget and Seth had a “bubbles and bites” cocktail hour, small bites paired with petite glasses of bubbles. I would say the crowd favorite was the mini corn dogs and craft beer! Of course, there were a few drink stirrers at the bar :)

Marget has gorgeous handwriting, and lettered all of the escort cards herself.

They chose to sprinkle lovely and meaningful decor throughout the (already gorgeous) space, including family photos, antique books, and books by authors Seth, a literary agent, represents.

The Hora! I had never been to a Jewish wedding before, and the Hora was awesome :)

A few other sites had the pleasure of featuring Marget and Seth’s wedding, including Style Me Pretty, One Fab Day, and Katie Stoops’ own blog. If you’d like, you can also watch their wedding day film by McKenzie Miller here.

Marget and Seth, I love you. Thank you for letting me be a part of your magical day.

Happy Monday, friends! Marvelous Mondays is back, and this week I’m sharing five of my favorite bedrooms with wood plank walls. I love the warmth and texture this detail can bring to a serene room like a bedroom.

Top to bottom: Country Living, HGTV, Coastal Living, At Home in Arkansas, Lonny Mag

Interested in trying something like this yourself? Melissa from The Inspired Room wrote about installing wood planks in her house here, and The Lettered Cottage wrote about it here and here.

P.S. Bachelor tonight! In case you’re wondering, our team members are AshLee F., Desiree, Amanda, Teryn, and Sarah, and our bench player is Robyn. Wish us luck! :)