Our Wedding Day
I should start by saying that I was not one of those little girls that grew up imagining their wedding day, but if I had... it would have looked like this. Also, because I hadn't had the big day planned by age 5, I had A LOT of catching up to do!
I knew that I wanted everything to be personalized to my husband and I. I wanted people to see the ceremony and reception hall, walk in and be amazed by the decorations, but also think to themselves, "this is so them!" We worked together on almost every single project! Everything was so unique, and so worth the extra effort.
Luckily, we had a long engagement of 2 years, so we actually had time to complete all of these projects! Plus, my husband managed to stay healthy and out of the hospital for THIS August. So it was a win-win situation.
I'm so grateful for my husband. He was such a pillar for me throughout the whole planning process. He handled the reservations and business side of things (most of the over-whelming stuff that nobody wants to do), and I got to work on the DIY fun stuff (also over-whelming). We worked like the perfect team to make sure we both got the wedding day of our dreams!
Tissue Paper Flowers
We got married outdoors in a park by the shore of Lake Superior. It was a naturally beautiful location and had a gorgeous stone stage, but it still needed some sprucing up and personalization.
We made gorgeous black signs/white font with clay flowers on them. We used them to welcome guests to the wedding (first thing they saw when they stepped off the train, yes, a TRAIN!) and one that said, "Today is the day that two families become one, so please, pick a seat not a side. Thank you!"
*My husband made the signs/posts and painted them black - I painted the writing and made the clay flowers
(I'm not posting pictures because I'm avoiding last names - sorry)
*I made the tissue paper flowers - hubby made the stakes for them - and my lovely worker-bee bridesmaids and myself opened up all the flowers and attached them to the post... It was kind of hysterical seeing how much space we no longer had in the house for them when they were opened up!! Plus, there were about 80 of them - all different sizes, styles, and colors. They were a huge hit, and provided the exact effect of "fun, colorful, and classy"... just like us :)
examples of variety we used:
Imagine stepping off a train, walking over a small hill, and at the top of the short path you saw THIS... our guests did.
Bouquets and Boutonnieres
I had seen brooch bouquets online, but none were exactly what I wanted. I wanted to add my own touch to it (I made sure to put a small purple and small green pin on the back of my bouquet to symbolize the colors used, and I even added a horseshoe brooch for good luck!) Technically, you could say it's two bouquets in one! I made the base out of fabric roses, that way I could guarantee the pins would stay put! I wrapped the handle in a raspberry color ribbon. For the bridesmaids bouquets, I used a mix of 3 colors and sprinkled them with a few brooches. Each bouquet had different pin colors (some green, some purple, some silver - but they all looked great together, and they didn't have to worry about telling whose belonged to who.
My groom got the one and only white bout, and the groomsmen and dads got the black/white, purple flower ones... and the green berries, I even made those!
Clay Flower Centerpieces
You may recognize these clay flowers of mine from an earlier post. I found the perfect use for them!
I just needed space for them! :) I used HUNDREDS of these flowers. Again, thankfully we had a 2 year engagement! I made purple and green varieties of peonies, carnations, anemones, roses, pansies, calla lilies, buttercups, berries, etc! Each hand-painted with at LEAST 2 colors and at LEAST 2 layers. Woof, kind of glad the big day has come and gone ;)
This is just a smaaalll fraction of the purple roses I made:
(BEFORE)
(AFTER)
Main table centerpieces: Half had the lanterns, the other half had mason jars with burlap roses, purple water beads
Head table centerpieces needed to be smaller (need to see people in pictures!, and we had 14 people in the wedding party... so we needed all the table space we could get)
Maybe the truest example of teamwork was the centerpieces. We both put a lot of work into assembling these amazing things!
Cake Stands
We had a set of homemade cake stands (small, medium, and large!) All of them were black plywood layers with birch branches as the pillars. They were gorgeous
Well we didn't make the cake, but it still is very personalized for US :) I mean, we couldn't do EVERYTHING... we are just mere humans after all.
Some of our favorite photos of the big day:
We made chalkboard signs too - I sketched out the design and the husband cut them out, and together we painted and treated them. Hearts and speech bubbles
Sorry ladies, this one's taken :)
We are so blessed
