Our Wedding Day: The Stuff

After a few comments from people asking about my job as a wedding planner and my own wedding, I decided to dedicate a post to it. Then when I started writing it and organizing the pictures, I realized it would take more than one post. One day I'll do a post with pictures of the day, our "first look", first dance, the ceremony and dancing, but today I will show ya'll the "stuff" that made up our wedding decor. I accumulated craft project after project and my lovely fiance at the time let me pile it all up in our house. I am so proud of how it all came together and I wouldn't do anything differently, except maybe hire a wedding planner (that wasn't me of course).

Our wedding had a rustic/vintage/travel/Louisiana theme. Oh yeah, hot mess written all over that. Somehow though, it all came together. We did travel theme engagement portraits too, and I LOOOOVED them. I will show you those in another post as well. We chose a travel theme because my husband and I started off long distance. He was stationed in Italy and I lived in Louisiana. He came home on leave, we met, and the rest is history. I visited him for a month in Italy and we've traveled many places together ever since.

 

 

We incorporated that theme in our invitations too. My brother designed them and I printed them on Kraft paper at Office depot. I spent $7 total on all 90 something invitations! (Not factoring in postage of course.)

 

Guest book table set up:

 

 

Instead of a traditional guest book, we had guests write messages on vintage postcards featuring some of the places important to us (Louisiana, Venice, Florence, Rome, Croatia, etc.)

 

All our reception flowers were silk. Great way to save money and add sentimental decor to your home. I still have some of these in our living room! We used wild flowers, garden roses and magnolias. Magnolias were important to me because my grandparents had a huge magnolia tree with a swing in it for me when I was growing up. A friend of the family put the arrangements together in different garage sale finds I discovered (antique vases, a sifter, tea kettles) I also had several centerpieces in mason jars filled with coffee beans as filler.

 

 

Our baby pictures were on the "boys" and "girls" restroom doors.

 

I found this window frame at a flea market and my husband attached wire to it so our engagement pictures and my bridals could be displayed.

 

Our little "white" chapel!

 

 

This was set up in the chapel. The Magnolia arrangement is real, from the tree I talked about above. It was arranged in an old water can my grandpa had. The flowers inside the vases were silk because real ones floated to the top (trust me, there were tests! lol)

 

 

I attached a charm to each of our mom's corsages with our baby pictures in them. They were able to detach and keep. Our moms loooved them and I was able to keep it a surprise till the wedding day.

 

S didn't want a traditional "groom's cake". His favorite dessert is banana pudding, so I was able to get our caterer to make a ton of individual ones in wine, champagne and sundae glasses. Some had cherries on top, some had vanilla wafer crumbs and some had chocolate. They were set up on Italian wine boxes and I had wrapped the S & K with twine.

 

One of my favorite personal touches. Our wedding cake was made by S's aunt and it was absolutely delicious. We used my grandparent's wedding cake topper from their wedding 51 years before ours. I placed a picture of them on their wedding day to show guests the comparison so they'd "get" that that's what the topper was about. My husband also built our backdrop! I saw the rusty tin look on Pinterest and he recreated it. Seems strange but it was exactly what I was going for.

 

 

For those of you who sucked it up and read through this whole thing, You made it! I know it was picture heavy but a lot of you have been asking and I will take any chance to show off our gorgeous wedding photos. Our photographer truly was a magician. Check her out here. She was the first decision we made regarding the wedding. I can't wait to show you our engagements and a couple of my bridals (if you all wanna see em of course!)

 

Keep an eye out for a Day in the Life of a Wedding Planner Post and more wedding pictures. Next time, the People, since we already covered the Stuff:)