I’m convinced that even if I’d had no decorations, both the church and the venue would have still been beautiful. But since I really wanted to make our wedding memorable, I made sure to add carefully placed details throughout the day.
The Centerpieces
When I first started planning the wedding I thought deciding on and finding invitations was going to be the most difficult task – until it came time to plan the centerpieces. I literally did not know the first thing about flowers. Actually, I wouldn’t be exaggerating if I said that I have somewhat of a black thumb. And once again, I had the same problem as the invitations — while I know what I like, simplicity and elegance, I didn’t have the slightest idea how to translate that into flowers. Thankfully, Doreen of Amazonas Exotic Floral Designs, helped me turn that into a reality. Before I could really articulate what I wanted, I had stumbled across and decided on the “submerged orchid” idea which while perfectly nice, didn’t really capture the look we were going for – and Doreen definitely picked up on my reluctance. At her insistence, we ditched the idea and she helped me to come up with something a bit more neutral and symmetrical. We simply did groups of 3 4×4 square vases at each table with 9 white roses each, flanked by 2×2 square votives. It was absolutely perfect and since the centerpieces were short, our guests were able to talk across the table to each other without something in the way. I could have gone with something more grand but I loved that they were just simple and unassuming.
The Table Numbers
I loved the idea of personalizing the table numbers. I know couples who have named their tables after places they’ve visited together, their favorite sports teams, but for the life of me I couldn’t think of anything cutesy like that to use as a table number theme. I briefly entertained the idea of doing TV shows, but since I have about 13 favorite TV shows and Mike has 2, I thought that would have been terribly one sided. So instead I went the self-indulgent route and used the photos from our engagement shoot as table numbers. I used Photoshop to do it but actually, Picasa has a nifty, easy to use function that does the same thing. I then had two of each photo printed on glossy paper and mounted them on either side of some thick poster board. Our guests loved them and I was glad we got to use our engagement photos!
The Luminaries
Originally I had considered doing luminaries as the table numbers but since there was an outside area I wanted to decorate that as well and the luminaries were perfect. I was originally going to order them from etsy but making them turned out to be SUPER simple and inexpensive. In fact, this DIY wins the award for least stressful wedding project. I simply printed our logo and wedding date on vellum paper (right from my inkjet), and taped them around some dollar store cylinder vases. I put a votive in the vase and voila! It actually cost me around $1.50 per luminary!
The Gobo
You’re probably asking — what is a gobo? Well, I didn’t know what one was either, until I saw one, and then I had to have one. Basically is a light projected through a filter onto a surface. Thankfully this was part of Ambient DJs services so we were able to use it — they even let me design my own! So this,
became this.
The Ribbon Wands
Our church has a strict ‘no throwing anything’ policy for weddings — no rice, no flower petals, no bird seed – nothing. So I was stumped as to what the send off would be. Thankfully, I stumbled on this blog post over at Ruffled Blog which not only had the wonderful idea of making ribbon wands but also had a tutorial on how to make them. With my mom and dad’s help, I made approximately 100 ribbon wands and though it was painstaking and I hot glued my fingers to each other quite a few times, it was worth it.
If only for this one photo.
I had so much fun doing these projects and because I spent so much time on them, they’ll always be a part of the memory of our wedding. So my advice to brides-to-be out there is, make at least one detail of your wedding. Don’t overwhelm yourself with a dozen DIY projects but definitely get hands on. It’s fulfilling.
Tomorrow (the last day of wedding week, sad face) I’ll finally tell you all about the attire – my dress, shoes, jewelry, bouquets and the bridesmaids dresses as well. I’ll also chat about our hair and makeup crew, who were out of this world incredible.
Til then.
Double the pleasure, double the fun!
