Wedding Thursday: Flowers, Details + DIY Projects

Drats, late again this week!

You've heard the saying "It's all in the details"? I think that's very true when it comes to weddings. I believe the details really make the whole day personal to the couple. Although, looking back, I don't think J cared much about the details. As long as he didn't have to wear a purple tux, he was okay.

The Flowers + Decor

Ceremony:

I think flowers are gorgeous, but man, can they be expensive. I wanted pretty flowers for our ceremony and reception, but I also didn't want to spend thousands of dollars on flowers for one day! That's the part that got me the most, these flowers were only for one day!

I used a local florist that did the flowers for my friend's wedding. I gave her a budget( $2,000) and told her the general look I was going for. I wanted something light and springy, not too formal. I gave her swatches of my bridesmaids dress colors. I also tore out pictures from magazines of looks that I liked and mailed them to her. I told her to use whatever was in-season to keep costs down. I was so pleased with the result!

For the wedding party, I originally thought I wanted my bridesmaids to carry ivory/neutral bouquets and mine be the only colored one. In the end, I went with all color because we used the bouquets at the reception for decor. For the guys, the groomsmen wore ivory rose boutonnieres with purple accents while J's was a purple flower. Our mom's wore pin on corsages and our dad's matched the groomsmen. We also had small wrist corsages for our readers.




I wanted very little decor for the ceremony for 2 reasons: 1) my church is beautiful, so it didn't really need to me fixed up, and 2) The ceremony was less than 30 minutes long. Why spend a big chunk of my budget to fix up the church when we spent more time at the reception? Our florist marked the pews for our families with a simple baby's breath arrangement. We had an ivory arrangement at the altar; we donated it to the church to use the next morning in memory of our grandparents. There were a couple of candelabras in the choir loft and a memorial candle in the foyer. That's it!




The Reception:

This is where she blew me away. As I said earlier, I really didn't specify what I wanted. I didn't demand certain flowers or anything like that. I told her some things I liked, but what was important was staying in budget and following the color scheme.

I knew one way to save money was with the centerpieces. We had 23 tables in our reception room! This included 15 tables in the main room and 8 in the "covered patio". To cut costs, only 8 of the main room tables had floral centerpieces. The other 7 + the covered patio tables were candle arrangements. We did not decorate the buffet tables or the cake tables. The guestbook/gift table was one of my DIY projects (more in a minute). She also made a small toss bouquet for me. I don't have very many straight-on shots of the arrangements, but I loved all of them.


Isn't it all pretty? And she provided all supplies + labor for....$2,095. That's a damn good deal if you ask me!

Details + DIY

I followed the old tradition of "Something old, something new, something borrowed and something blue". My something old was my Mawmaw(paternal grandmother)'s engagement + wedding band and my Nanny's (maternal grandmother) necklace that I attached to my bouquet. Something new was (clearly) my dress + accessories. For something borrowed, I put my DG Big Sister(and Matron of Honor)'s Delta Gamma pin on my bouquet; she wore mine in her wedding. Something blue? Blue Hanky Panky underwear :) I also had a UGA garter, but didn't actually wear it the whole time. I put it on before the garter toss.


I made our programs using Microsoft publisher. I just designed them as a brochure and printed them out. I tried to match our invitations, using a mix of script and roman font. The cover was just a slightly heavier stock, metallic silver paper. I punched holes in the sides and tied them with a ribbon. The outside cover was stamped with a pretty flourish rubber stamp I found at Hobby Lobby in purple ink. My maids of honor and I worked on these for the two days leading up to the wedding(unfortunately, they didn't photograph well!). I think I spent a total of $60; purchasing programs to match my invites would have cost $250!



I also made the tissue paper pomanders for my flower girls. All I needed was a 5" Styrofoam ball, purple tissue paper, florist's wire and silver ribbon...and a lot of time! They took forever, but I loved how they looked.

I knew from day 1 I would make moss covered letters to hang on the church doors. Our initials (L & J) ended up being the "theme" of our wedding. These were super easy to make with cardboard letters, moss sheets and spray glue.


Our wonderful photographer (who's pictures I've used in all my recaps) put together our guestbook using our engagement photos. He posted a fun animation of it on his blog.

We placed the guestbook on a table that I decorated (well, collected items for and left instructions with my reception coordinator to decorate). I bough zinc letters from anthropologie ( L & J) that were placed on the table along with all the bouquets, the guestbook, buckets of bubbles and my bridal portrait.



I had a great time adding personal touches to our wedding. I really admire all the 100% DIY brides out there...my few projects took it all out of me!

A few more posts in the series...our pre-wedding parties & the Honeymoon, plus some of my favorite pictures!

All photos in this post were done by William Massey Photography.

Wedding Thursday: The Reception

A little late on this series this week!

Even before I was engaged, I knew that one thing I wanted most when I got married was to have a great big party will all my loved ones...and that's exactly what we did!

One of the perks(?) of planning a wedding in a smallish town is that we had limited reception venues to choose from, so there wasn't a lot of time spent trying to make a decision! We looked at a gorgeous renovated barn that overlooked the mountains...I loved every bit about it, aside from the price tag that was 1/3 of our budget just to rent the venue!

We settled on the local country club, where many of my friends had their receptions and my family had been members for year. It was just $500 to reserve the large ballroom/banquet room and that $500 went towards our final bill! They provided tables, chairs, basic white linens, and service along with food + drink. Talk about a good deal!

After a few formal post-ceremony shots, we headed over to the Country Club. My Great Uncle (My Uncle "B" as I've always called him) helped make one of my wishes come true for the wedding. Our car was a 1949 Pontiac and he was our driver! I think he got a kick out of driving us too :)



We did the bridal party presentation to Led Zepplin's "Kashmir"...J is a big LZ fan and I really like the beat of this song. Honestly, I would have liked to have used the Vitamin String Quartet version, but I don't think he would have approved :)

After the entrance came the dances! Jordan and I didn't pick out the song for our first dance until about a week before the wedding. We wanted a song special to us, but not too long...no one ever tells you how awkward it is to be dancing while everyone stares at you! It came down to Jack Johnson's "Better Together" or Jason Mraz & Colbie Calliat's "Lucky". We went with Jack Johnson because "Better Together" has been our song since we started dating :)

I think choosing a song to dance with my Dad to was harder than choosing our first dance! I wanted to steer away from the typical songs you hear--"Butterfly Kisses," "I loved her first" "Stealing Cinderella"--but still do something sentimental. I toyed with the idea of "The House at Pooh Corner" because I love Winnie the Pooh, or even "Georgia on My Mind". In the end, my dad is actually who found the song. He LOVES looking up random videos on YouTube. He found a cover of "Forever Young" done by Johnny Cash. I always loved that song, but felt the Dylan version was too slow and long for a wedding dance. This version was perfect--and we both love Johnny Cash!

Jordan danced with his mom to The Beatles' "In My Life". He gave her a few options and that's the one she picked. It was fitting, as his dad(and both of us) love The Beatles. She also wanted to avoid a song that would make her cry :)


After dancing came food! We did a heavy finger foods buffet with hot and cold options along with a beer and wine bar. A seated dinner just didn't give in to the party feeling I was going for :)



Our cakes actually came from Publix! A DG sister of mine told me that every venue in Atlanta she spoke to about her reception suggested Publix. I got so frustrated trying to schedule meetings with little local bakers back in Georgia that I just decided to use Publix as well. .I found a picture of a cake on TheKnot that I liked and purple ribbon that matched my bridesmaids' dresses. I bought the mirrored monogrammed cake topper off of etsy. The cake was delicious! It was layered vanilla and chocolate cake inside with fresh strawberry filling and buttercream icing. So. freaking. good. Jordan actually designed his groom's cake to look like the front of his Jeep. We were expecting a white sheet cake with the design on it in icing...nope, they went all out! His was a plain vanilla cake.


After cakes, came dancing, garter/bouquet tossing, and toasts. It all went by in a blur, which is the one sentence that I think sums up the entire day. I'm so glad we hired a videographer! We used a DJ instead of a band, which I liked for two reasons--cost & the ability to request songs. We did, however, download a Pitbull song to someone's iPhone because he didn't have it in his library :)


We exited around 9 PM to our guests blowing bubbles. My Great Uncle drove us to the hotel where we(and most of our guests) were staying the night. The hotel bar stayed open for us and we celebrated with our friends until 1 or 2 AM. It was, truly, the best night ever. It all went by so fast...I just love looking at all the pictures!

All photos in the post were done by William Massey Photography.

Next week: The Details + DIY Projects!

PS--Thanks to Ally for cluing me in on making a photo collage!

Wedding Wednesday: Laying the Foundation

Wedding Wednesdays is a series where I recap all parts of planning my April 2011 wedding.

Last week I recapped our proposal. I spent the weeks following in newly-engaged bliss, buying magazines, joining TheKnot and adding wedding blogs to my reader.

One big hurdle I faced planning our wedding is the fact that Memphis is 6 hours away from my hometown, where our wedding would be. I worried about this at first--How could I possibly get it all done??--but looking back, I think this may have been a blessing. It forced me to make a decision and stick with it. It also helped me decide what was important to me in terms of the wedding and what wasn't that big of a deal.

I wasn't the first of my friends to get married. By the time our engagement rolled around, I had a general idea of what I wanted from our wedding. I saw my friends stress over the tiniest things--the exact flowers, bridesmaids gifts, who their future mother-in-law invited--and who made it seem like planning a wedding was one of the worst, most stressful experiences of their lives. I had stressful times--more about that later--but for the most part, I really enjoyed planning our wedding.

Since my friends started getting married, I've told my parents the three things I wanted for my wedding:

1) pretty dress
2)pretty pictures
3) a fantastic party with all my friends

I'm happy to say I managed to have all 3, plus stuff I wasn't expecting. I believe it is because I decided early on what I wanted and didn't waver from my choices.

My parents gave me a budget a month or so after the engagement. In the end, I went slightly over(more on that later), but it gave me boundaries for my planning. With a budget set, J and I took a few days off work before Easter weekend and went home to spend the holiday with my family and start planning our wedding!

I had a date in mind when we went down there. I knew I wanted a Spring wedding because of the color palette I had in mind. I didn't want it to be too early, but I also didn't want it to be smack in the middle of "wedding season". We settled on April 16,2011!

I knew that the ceremony would be at the church I grew up going to. It was renovated a few years ago and looks fantastic:
I snapped these pictures after the Easter service that weekend. My dad handled securing the church for us.

We looked at two potential reception venues. One was a gorgeous farm with a view of the mountains, but it was also 1/3 of our budget. The other was the reception hall at the local country club. My family has been members my whole life and I've been to numerous receptions there. We ultimately decided on the club. While I wouldn't get the outdoor, southern garden wedding I pictured from all the blog posts I'd read, I would get a great reception within my budget! It was $500 to secure the hall and in the end, that $500 went towards our final bill. They provided tables, chairs, basic white table cloths, the food and the staff, plus a coordinator(who was amazing). It was a great deal.

We also met with two photographers I had researched before hand, William Massey Photography and another local pair. I knew I wanted a mix of the popular candid/journalistic style photos and traditional, posed portraits. Both photographers do great work, but in the end we went with William Massey Photography and we are beyond thrilled with our pictures(more on those later). I wanted to book the photographer early because pictures were one of my "Big 3" important items.

We squeezed all of that into one day of planning! It was exhausting, but we did it. We knew our visits to Georgia(especially together) would be few during our engagement. We had to make the most out of each visit. By the end of the weekend, we had decided on a budget, date, church, reception venue and photographer, essentially laying the foundation for our wedding!

Next week: Picking the bridal party and other wedding party roles. Please let me know if there is anything you would like to hear about!