My Wedding- June 1, 2013

How the Little Details Told Our Story and MAde It a DAy We wIll Never Forget

So since I work with so many lovely brides each year I feel like the easiest way for me to share with you about who I am and what I bring to the process when working on a wedding is sharing my own wedding! We put a lot of our hearts into the details of that day and really focused on celebrating our love story up to that point. We also had a lot of help!

Now, a little background- we met in middle school, started dating when we were 15 and 16, and married at 21. Babies, I know. I had been planning our wedding pretty obsessively for a few years before even getting engaged- and somehow I didn’t know Pinterest existed so I had a folder on my computer with a billion blog links saved from GreenWeddingShoes and WeddingGawker and what have you. When I finally caught on to the Pinterest thing it was like angelic choirs started singing in my dorm room and I probably didn’t do homework for a few weeks.

I was an art education major in college and had so many artsy and crafty people in my life so I definitely planned to go the DIY route from the start. I was also an eternal optimist who was way too busy as it was (junior in college taking 21 credit hours and working like 3 jobs because I was ridiculous) so I got us in way over our heads with all the projects (sorry mom) considering we were only engaged for six months. Despite all of that, we had the BEST wedding and I still love everything about it even now that I’m part of the wedding industry and realize how “unpolished” it may have been by today’s crazy standards. Long hair, don’t care. Honestly, other than doing a better job with the hand-lettering projects I wouldn’t change a thing.

I should also add that I was not “into” calligraphy or design at this point- I tried to design our own wedding invitations and gave up. I had no plans to work in the wedding industry and no idea what I would be doing just a few years later. I was just pumped to be planning my wedding, had way too many ideas, and wanted to do it without blowing the budget. I wanted to cram every sentimental detail and blue ball jar and mint colored thing into that day as possible. Pretty sure I did, too.

That brings us to the details. Feel free to check out my old wedding Pinterest board for context but I knew I wanted to use my favorite color combo- minty blue and cherry red (everyone thought I was nuts but I would not be talked out of it, and I still freaking love it), get married outside somewhere, and eat strawberry shortcake and chocolate chip cookies for dessert. Those were my must haves. So my first recommendation if you are planning a wedding- start with your favorite things. We HAD to have Coke because for some reason that was a big thing to us at the time. Red labels and cute glass bottles were definitely a bonus.

My brother and sister-in-law are both artists and designers so they offered to help my with my wedding invitations after I realized I was failing miserably at it. They made the sweetest ever design and I got to go to the print shop my brother worked at to help them screen print all of them. My mom and I hand-addressed all the envelopes at the kitchen table (not calligraphy, just our best cursive!).

We spent the two summers before the wedding collecting old blue Ball jars from antique stores and thrift shops- when you could still actually find them because Pinterest was newish and blue ball jars weren’t the trend yet. I loved the color and wanted to use them as the center vases on our tables, which we did. The rest of our décor was made up of flowers plus pretty things my mom had in storage- and lots of photos and signs that I made. My in-laws made a mint blue door frame for some vintage doors my mom borrowed for us to walk through to the outdoor ceremony. We took all the bridesmaids and my grandmas to a strawberry patch the week of the wedding and picked tons and tons of strawberries to make into shortcake. My best friend’s mom made hundreds of her chocolate chip cookies because she uses way too much vanilla and they’re my favorite cookies ever. And my sister-in-law made us a beautiful little cake to cut during the reception. Our favors were little honey bears that my beekeeper uncle sent us from Minnesota as a wedding gift.

The main things we outsourced were the photography, the flowers, a coffee bar, and live musicians for the ceremony. I knew I couldn’t DIY any of those things- so along with the venue and the dress the majority of our budget went there. Every single thing we chose to spend either our time or our money on were the things that felt worth it. We didn’t do some of the traditional things because we simply didn’t want to and it wasn’t worth spending the extra money on. We had our wedding at 2 in the afternoon and only did desserts, because we personally didn’t care about dinner and dancing. We let our friends and family help because they wanted to (at least they said they did, haha) but whatever we couldn’t do ourselves we found amazing vendors to help and saved money in other areas to make it possible. Each detail was meaningful and had history and people behind it that made everything feel like a giant hug on our wedding day. We could look around and see all the people and all the things that had made up parts of our love story and we just had a sweet afternoon celebrating that story and the story to come.

Maybe no one else is going to care as much about our wedding and the details as my husband and I did and still do, but I wanted to share our day because it is so much of the inspiration and spirit behind what I now bring to my work with brides every day. I know how much thought and love and care you are putting into the details of your wedding day and how much those details can mean to you during this chapter of your love story. It’s a day that you will look back on and think, ‘Man, that was the BEST day.’