I've wanted a fall wedding for a very long time so we definitely played up the fall elements by using pumpkins, bittersweet we harvested from around my parent's home and burlap that we added some elegance to with black velvet and just a touch of shine. We chose October because we started dating October 12. We decided on 10.20.12 for our wedding date. I love this being our anniversary!
We held the ceremony at Mildale Farm. An absolutely beautiful location! The weather was perfect so we were able to hold the ceremony outside and the reception inside just as we planned. Such a blessing as we prayed over this for months!
Mildale
Dresses
It wasn't my original plan, but I ended up with two wedding dresses. The white one was a steal for $50 at Salvation Army (never worn with the original price tag that read $1359). It fit beautifully and the beading was gorgeous but had spaghetti straps. My aunt added the sleeves to make it a dress like Belle's which was exactly what I was looking for when I began dress shopping. I wore my mom's veil.
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| And the train! |
Mom and I had an appointment set up to visit a bridal shop so we went and found a dress on the rack for half off. It's my "Pride and Prejudice" dress. Light, airy and perfect for a second dress. I was going to wear one and sell the other, but after some "It's your wedding!" pep talks from family and friends, I went for it! And I'm so glad I did.
For the Bridesmaid dresses, I had them help me choose the style by making them contributors to my wedding Pinterest board. Made it much easier to choose a style and I think they were gorgeous! I'll admit it, not very "re-wearable" but I would do the same for them! (Hint: find a dress you like and then search online. I found a site that would give a discount if you found a licensed seller of a dress that had a lower price on the dress.)
Flowers
Pretty sure I changed my mind at least three times (partially due to not knowing which dress I was going to wear) and really gave the florist very little to go off of, especially for the chairs at the ceremony, but the arrangements were stunning. My bouquet was the only one that I really knew what I wanted and it was better than I could have imagined.
On my bouquet, I put a blue broach that held a ring from my maternal grandmother given to her by my grandpa, a ring from my paternal grandmother that I inherited and my great-grandmother's wedding band.
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The Bridesmaids bouquets alternated red and orange. There's not a picture, but I got each girl a small charm with her first initial so they could keep track of which was theirs. In this picture you can also see the necklace from the jewelry set I got them as a thank you gift - it came with earrings and a bracelet.
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| I didn't want the flower girl to worry about dropping flower petals and she did wonderful carrying this pomander. |
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| These served double duty - they were on the chairs and then moved to the reception hall to be hung off of the lanterns in the hallways |
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| Toss Bouquet |
The Guys
Eric wanted tuxes with bow ties. I think it looked great. He didn't want to wear flowers so we bought silk in white, red and orange and my aunt made pocket squares for the guys. White for Eric, his dad, the ushers and our ring bearer and red and orange alternating for the guys to match the girls. Our ushers wore all black.
Make your wedding your own
Paper Goods
- We worked with an awesome printer who custom designed everything for our invitations and programs. My wonderful bridesmaids figured out how to tie the programs together in such a way that they would still lay flat when open and some equally wonderful family friends stayed up and worked on them the night before the wedding.
- We worked with another awesome designer who created our Thank you notes for everything from showers to the wedding. She custom made each one based on designs we came up with. It was awesome to be able to give Thank yous that were made just for us.
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| You can't tell in a picture, but our invitations were matte with raised print. They were awesome! |
- We switched which sides our guests sat on. I think it's silly that the bride and groom's family end up looking at the back of their family member so we switched sides so that our families could see our faces and we could see them. It was such a good choice!! It meant so much to be over to glance over at my family and get a smile or wink.
- A basket of activities was put out near the programs so anyone who had a little one that needed a distraction could take something for them to do. Unfortunately, we didn't end up with pictures of this but people told me they used it.
- One Thing Remains by Jesus Culture for our bridal party to walk into. It's a beautiful song that actually came on the radio first thing that morning when Eric and I went to breakfast. Yep, our wedding was at 2 so we went and had breakfast just the two of us. It was definitely a good choice.
- My dad prayed for us when he gave me away and Eric's dad prayed toward the end of the ceremony.
- We sang and Eric played Yours Forever by Dara MacLean
- We didn't use traditional vows, but we didn't write our own. We found some we liked and then tweaked them just a bit.
- We had friends do a reading for a scripture based definition of husband and wife and my grandmother read scripture.
Reception
- We sang another song - Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol
- My dad and I did a mash-up dance - at his request. We started off with the third verse of Butterfly Kisses and then it led into a couple fun songs. It was a blast and gave my dad and I a way to connect during the busy season of life.
- At our DJ's suggestion, we let everyone participate in the bouquet and garter (actually a Nerf) toss and the person who caught it won a gift card. This led to awesome participation!
- We served cupcakes - I know it's a fad, but we have a favorite cupcake place and they went so much better than cake does. For our cake, we had a six inch peanut butter and jelly cake - delicious! You can see more about our cupcake display here.
- We had a candy bar with all red and orange candies. Turns out, the third Saturday in October is sweetest day so we tied that in.
- I put up two doors that had pictures of my husband and I at the same age or doing some of our favorite things.
- We put up a heritage table with pictures of our family.
- Things for our guests to do - we let them eat as soon as the reception started (we had three sliders and salads each with a different theme), games inside and out and a homemade photo-booth (we found an art student to take pictures for us and filled it with fun and random stuff).
- For the send-off Eric wanted to do sky lanterns. Everyone had a wonderful time and it was beautiful!
Overall
- The colors were black and white with splashes of orange and red.
- Lots of DIY stuff. I really should blog about some of the things we did because some of them turned out really well.
- We definitely played up the fall/outdoor feel with dried bittersweet from my parent's house, pumpkins in white and orange and burlap with black velvet.
- Hand cut paper details - backs of chairs, cupcake table, candy table and more.
- Lots and lots of rhymes! I made rhymes for everything we did. Seriously. With just a few exceptions, the signs rhymed.
- Wedding Snap - it was still really new so we got an amazing deal and it was worth the money! We put the cards in our invites and out at the wedding and our guests really did use the app. We got some really good pictures and way more pictures of our friends than we would have. We were also able to put pictures from the photo booth and Honeymoon up so people could see/download the photos. A note went into our thank yous so people could access the site.
After party
- We had an afternoon wedding and didn't want it to go too long but we kind of wanted to keep celebrating. Before the wedding we let everyone know we would be heading to one of our favorite places after the wedding. Some people who had to leave the wedding early due to other commitments or weren't able to make the wedding joined us there and it was a great time! Our photographer even came along and we got some great night shots of us outside.
I hope to make some posts about them at some point but I've put some pictures in a slideshow for you to look through if you'd like! If you click on the slideshow, you can see the pictures in Picasa and they will be larger.
Nerf War
I have to admit I'm really proud of this idea since I came up with it on my own. We had a Nerf War during our reception! As most brides do, I wanted my guests to have a good time. At most family gatherings, the younger boys in the family pull out foam weapons of some sort and have a battle/hunt/something. I realized that they would love it if we had a Nerf War (because let's be honest - boys in general don't tend to enjoy weddings). We spread the word it was happening and let's just say I didn't realize how intense Nerf had become. This was a huge hit with our guests (and my husband)!
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| We did set some rules - just to be safe :) |
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| Whenever I see this picture I can't help but smile. |
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| My brother. Man I love him! |
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| I told Eric I wasn't going to participate because of my dress. However, I bought a gun. When my cousin found out she decided it had to be blinged out for the bride! She painted it silver and added crystals! |
Favorites
Like everybody does, I have a hard time picking favorites when it comes to my wedding pictures but here are some I wanted to share here.
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| Love that this is me, my mom and her mom all in one shot completely unposed |
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| My dad |
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| We were getting close to the "kissing part" I got a little excited and the pastor had to tell me to hold on for a second |
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| Eric and his mom |
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| What girl doesn't love a twirly dress |
Photographer: Chris Mullins Photography - Just awesome. Spent the whole day with us and even stuck it out to take pictures of our after-party. Wedding Post & Engagement Pictures
Florist: Good Earth Floral
DJ: Jon with ReMix DJ's - He ran sound for our ceremony where we had live musicians, mixed the song for the Father-Daughter dance and kept the dance floor moving! He did an amazing job.
Invite/Program Printer: Veritas Marketing Solutions
Thank you Printer: LilyCole Designs
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