When planning our wedding, the only way Tony and I knew what type of decor, cakes, food, flowers, colors ect. we wanted is because I took the time to look at Pinterest photos and read a ton of blogs. In turn, I thought I would share some pictures from our wedding as well as tips to hopefully help out any frantic Brides out there.
Just the other day I was talking with a Bride-to-Be who said she and her Fiance were trying to decide if they wanted to have a wedding or elope. From experience, the first few weeks of wedding planning can be extremely stressful and overwhelming. Honestly, you will go crazy trying to do everything at once. Since Tony and I had a hometown wedding, I was not sure as to how I should answer her question. I think the decision to either have a wedding or elope all boils to how you want to remember your day. If you do things right, most people will only get married once.
While weddings are expensive, so is eloping. Depending upon where you go, the time of year, travel expenses, and tourism you want to part take in, it can all add up. Weddings do not have to be extravagant or expensive. I think that when trying to decide what type of wedding to have it is important to remember that there will be positives and negatives for each option. Ultimately, it is important to do want you and your Groom want.
When Tony and I began planning our wedding we started with a small budget. We did go over budget by a good bit, but it was all for the right reasons. We were fortunate enough to have wonderful family members helping us out with a few things, while friends in the community allowed us to borrow other items of interest.
When we first became engaged we actually were not planning to get married until I graduated from LSU, which would have been December 2013. Eventually, three months passed and we had a June 2012 wedding date set! Regardless, we had 8 months to plan a wedding. We first were looking to get married in Birmingham at either the Sonnet House in Leeds or a Plantation home in Mountain Brooke. We were thinking of having a very small, intimate wedding. After about two months of planning, things did not feel right. We realized that we were not including the community of friends, teachers, and family at Patrician and First Baptist who helped to make us the very people we are today. Needless to say, we regrouped and changed plans A LOT.
Traditionally, when having a big wedding it is crucial to book venues and vendors a year or more in advance. No matter the type of wedding, size, location. We were very lucky in finding our vendors on such short notice. Our wedding date filled the last spots available for our florist, caterer, videographer, and photographer.
For now, there will be four posts in this series:
1) Decor (Reception and Ceremony)
2) Flowers
2) Flowers
3) Reception Food and Cakes
4) Photographer/Make-up/Hair
First, the beauty in planning a wedding is that in today's culture you can do just about anything that you want. Tony and I made a few decisions based on tradition. However, the majority of our wedding was based on our personal desires. We were very happy with the way our ceremony turned out and we loved the personal touches added throughout the day.
Like I mentioned earlier, I would search Pinterest looking for things that caught my eye. Once I picked out multiple photo ideas of each category (flowers, cakes, food, dress, colors, decor), Tony and I would sit down and decide which was our favorite. This was how we determined the look, display, and theme we wanted for each category of planning. Then, that item's idea and photo was emailed to our director, caterer, and photographer. I did change a few things to make it unique and personal.
A Few Tips:
It is extremely important and helpful to have a binder!! Let this be the first thing you buy!
1) The Binder: Early on in wedding planning I realized that I had to prioritize the DIY projects, vendors, decor, shower schedules, and determine what needed to be finalized first. I would definitely suggest reading magazines, looking at photos on Pinterest, and follow the website "The Knot" to figuring out exactly what you want. Buy/Make a wedding binder with all the photos you collect. It makes planning much easier. You can actually show vendors, family, and friends what you want. While decorating, it helps translate your ideas clearly. I took my binder with me to every meeting. People thought I was hardcore, but I was prepared to all ends. I made sure my vision was clear before writing any checks.
The binder I was given helped me in more ways than one. It gave approximate prices for certain things, detailed formats for schedules, calendars, websites, phones numbers, shops in my area, tips for keeping up with thank you notes, coupons, and much more. I was able to keep track of just about anything that I wanted. In the end, I had a binder full of information, pictures of ideas, and then actual pictures of our wedding that I will be able to keep for years. (Sold at Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Walmart)
2) Create Relationships: The director, caterer, florist, preacher, and photographer are a few of the biggest people making your day possible and/or capturing the precious moments of the day. I cannot stress enough on how important it is to establish a relationship with these people first and foremost.
3) Be Realistic: I was not the Bride-zilla type of Bride. Honestly, I only wanted to be married, which was a huge reason why I did not make a big deal about many things when planning. First, if I knew something was out of our budget I no longer dreamed of it. Depending on your budget, your dream "Pinterest" wedding must be realistic (Unless you are a Kardashian!). If I knew that an idea or plan was not going to unfold, I regrouped and did the best I could to make the second best idea similar.
This is where many DIY projects evolved. I quickly learned to watch websites for coupons and deals when buying wedding party gifts, favors, and decor. Also, I learned early on that just about anything that can be ordered, can become a DIY project for a much prettier price.
4) Make The Most Of Everything: If I can give any advice to a Bride-To-Bride I would say, "Embrace Everything." It is so easy to get caught up in the planning that you completely lose focus of what you are truly planning and why you are planning it. In the end, the color of the flowers, the cake, and the food honestly do not matter.
People will judge everything and be critical, but in the end you are the only one who will remember the little details or what did not go as planned. The one thing that is most important is the memory of the day you leave with-- the photos, the video, friends, and family who share each moment with you. Ultimately, you will be married. That is the best part of the entire day.
Decor:
With the help of my in-laws, faithful church staff, and a handful of friends, we did all of the decorating the week of the wedding. I completed all of the DIY projects prior to the month of the wedding. My florist was also my caterer, therefore she only did the flowers for the ceremony and reception, and food for the reception.
My ideas for the ceremony were fairly simple since our church sanctuary is large. I wanted the focus on the cross and wedding party. I did not want to go over the top with floral or decor because the church is already beautiful. I wanted to keep things simple, yet elegant.
I had two large floral arrangements on each side of the stage. We were given about 15 ferns from friends in the community for the outdoor area. In turn, I used a few extra ferns inside the foyer, reception, and sanctuary. There were 3 candles in large gold globes (From Kirkland's) between each set of ferns and along the baptismal ledge. In the windows, I added a clear vase with a floating rose bud, beta fish beads, and greenery (All from the Dollar Tree!!). The family pews were marked with kissing balls that were ordered on Etsy. Burlap bows marked additional pews for those helping with the wedding or involved in the wedding ceremony. These awesome bows were made with a hot gun by two of my creative friends.
The ivory draping beneath the candles was rented, as well as the unity candle and stand. I used an idea from Pinterest when hanging the gold cross on the middle candle. This cross was actually a gift from my mother during Christmas 2011. It turns out that I used it for our wedding instead of on our tree.
My mother-in-law, father-in law, and directors spent a great deal of time working on the ceremony/foyer areas with me because I was not sure how I wanted the decor to look. I never found the exact ideas I wanted when planning. Needless to say, we did a lot of playing and moving things around to get it perfect. Excuse the sick fern on the right. We did not notice that it looks as terrible as it does until after everything was said and done!
My ideas for the reception required a lot of work, time, money, and shopping! While the ceremony is the one thing most people remember, it is the area where the least amount of time was spent for me. I put most of our budget towards the reception decor and food.
Without the help of my in-laws, friends and church staff, this reception would have not been as beautiful as it is! I knew what had to be done in the reception early into planning. It was much easier for me to show my friends what everything was supposed to look like. Once they understood my ideas, they accomplished absolutely everything in this room! Praise the Lord for patient, dedicated friends! Y'all know who you are- I have said it before but I will say it again: I am forever grateful and cant wait to repay you in some way another day! :)
We were having more of a fellowship type reception, no formal seating or dinner. Tony and I wanted it to be very laid back and intimate. We actually had 10 tables set up for seating. In the middle of the room was a round table heightened on risers with a serpentine attachment. The drink station, candy table, groom cake, and bride cake were in alternating corners of the room. Since our reception area was small we had to spread out each station in order to keep the flow of people moving freely throughout.
When walking into the reception, there were tables to each side of the wall. One table was for gifts and the other table was for favors. Also, I had an additional table set up for people to look through photo albums of our proposal, engagement, and bridal session while waiting in line for food. Basically all of the ideas below are things that I saw on Pinterest, but manipulated to make unique and fit our style. I wanted to make sure that I personalized everything in order to make it special and memorable.
The shutters in the photo above were purchased at a good will store I think. I added the fleur de lis to the bottom, punched holes in old photos and tied the photos to the shutters with twine. There were many candles of different sizes and lanterns throughout the reception area. Many of the candles and tea light containers were borrowed. All of the picture frames were bought at Hobby Lobby 50% off after Christmas. All of the lanterns came from TJ Maxx. (If you are currently planning a wedding, jump on the after Christmas sales!!)
If you have not noticed yet, I am in love with photos. There were many frames throughout the reception showing bridal and engagement shots. I liked the chalk board idea for displaying messages, which is also an idea I got from Pinterest. Using chalk boards was cheaper and easier than most other ideas. I bought about 6 chalk boards of different sizes from Hobby Lobby, painted the frames, and had a friend with cute handwriting doll them up with certain sayings. Many of the chalk boards were on certain tables designating who it hosted seats for, giving thanks, and welcoming guests.
Our favors are also an idea from Pinterest, go figure. Using Pinterest made things so easy! I bought all of the sunglasses from Oriental Trading over Christmas while they were having a sale.
The bride/groom dress boxes were also for guests to grab as they walked out of the door. Inside each box was flower petals, which were thrown as we left. The bride/groom boxes and flower petals came from Dollar Tree. If you travel to a large city, the Dollar Tree stores are like mini Walmarts! Just saying! :)
We set up a "Kids Corner" in one section of the reception with color books. This was very helpful for those parents who wanted to socialize and not have to worry about where their children were. Also, the color books keep the children busy instead of running around, possibly breaking decor.
I bought the coloring books and crayons on the Orientation Trading website. They were a huge hit once the children made their candy bags at the "Sweet Treats" table!
HUGE TIP: Depending upon what type of reception you have, it is extremely helpful to have a bride/groom table. That way, you can finally sit (we attempted to sit as least) and have people come to you. We reserved two tables on each side of our table for family. This was helpful when people wanted to visit, congratulate us, or take photos with us because Tony and I were together with our families in voice range should we need to grab them for a moment.
We actually put our cake tables to the opposite sides of our table which made it easy for people to grab a piece of cake, then come over to say hello. These were ideas from my director. Luckily, she was married before we were and did the same thing. I was glad to have had this as an option. It helped tremendously! (I will discuss cakes more in the next post!)
We had plates fixed for us before we arrived at the reception. Our caterer did a fantastic job of making sure that we had food to nibble on and water to drink, even though we did not really get to sample the food. Instead, we packed a picnic basket to take as we hit the road which was really helpful. Inside, we were given a little bit of everything from the food that was served. (I plan to discuss food more in the next post!)
The table centerpieces were very simple, yet elegant. We rented the circle mirrors and jewels. The candles were borrowed, rented or bought at TJ Max. The gold and silver globes were also bought at TJ Maxx. There were 10 tables, 5 with centerpieces similar to this fish bowl globe and 5 with centerpieces that had the bridesmaid bouquets. The five tables with their bouquets had silver and gold vases.
The reception was my main task during planning. It was the one part of the wedding that I wanted to make sure things went perfect and looked perfect. We had jazz music playing in the background, which made things all the more classy.
Although it was extremely difficult for me to decorate the entire reception based on things I bought or could borrow, I was very pleased with the way everything turned out. It was very hard to image what everything would look like. However, once things started being unpacked in the fellowship hall I slowly became less stressed. I could tell that my vision was coming together. Having someone else decorate for the reception may have been easier, but I believe it would have been more expensive. Looking back, I actually enjoyed going shopping and putting in the time for each project. Even though I had to search like a crazy person to find multiples of certain things, many of the decorations are being used in our little home now. Huge thank you, yet again to everyone who was running around the to every TJ Maxx in the southeast looking for the gold and silver globes! :)
Where's It From:
All of the clear vases are from Dollar Tree or were borrowed. All of the golden globes are from TJ Maxx. All of the table cloths were rented. (TIP: If you can rent tablecloths and toppers, you will save a TON of money.) We rented the chairs and ribbons for tie backs. The "Happily Ever After" sign is from Walmart. I bought the "&" sign on Etsy and added glitter. I bought the "Just Married" sign from Michael's. The "Mr. and Mrs." pillows were a gift that I unknowingly designed, ordered, and received from Etsy. The "R" runner on the sound box was bought at Hobby Lobby. This piece of decor was actually a table runner. Creative Touch in Baton Rouge cut the runner half, sewed the edges, added the tassel, and monogrammed our initial.
Whew, I was planning to talk about flowers in this post, but decor has worn me out! I am going to be sure to post on flowers next week! This series will be very fun for me! I am thrilled to share our big day! I am sure that I could go on for days. My biggest advice is to discover your style, implement your ideas, personalize things, and do not let others put out your fire. If you want something bad enough, do not settle just rearrange your budget. Figure out how to make it work. Go with the flow.
Last, remember the reason you are getting married. Our wedding was very "us" and I loved how it turned out. In the end you will only have pictures and memories from that day, you have to be sure to do the best with what you have and enjoy yourself. If everything does not go as planned, know that you will still be married at the end of the day! :)
If you have any questions about something that I did not cover, please feel free to email me!
Side Note:
If you like our decor and flowers, click this LINK. You will be taken directly to my Pinterest "Wedding Planning" board where I saved all the found inspirations. Etsy stores, blogs, magazines, ect. Happy pinning! :)
This post has been linked to a link up party with Mary from A Happy Wife in New Orleans. If you follow the link to her blog you will be able to see all kinds of wonderful ideas, tricks and tips from former Brides! :)
Until next time- Happy Blogging!
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