When Calvin and I got engaged and the wedding planning started, the first things we did were book a venue and photographer. You can read about booking a venue here. These two things are definitely booked the furthest out. There was a venue that I called that was literally booked solid 2 years out! Plus, if you’re looking at Saturdays in the Spring and Fall, it’s likely that photographers are already booking as well! Planning my wedding 14 months in advance, and I still ran into vendors telling me they were already booked!
Luckily, I still had plenty of options and was able to get the big things booked pretty quickly. Within the first couple of months, we had my dress, the church, reception venue, photographer, caterer, musician, DJ, and photobooth all booked. I kind of felt like all the planning was done and couldn’t imagine waiting an entire year for the wedding to happen!! But the reality is, all the work is in the details!
When it came time to select a color scheme, bridesmaids dresses, invitations, centerpieces, etc….I was at a complete loss. There were so many factors to consider. I’ll admit, I’m totally a typical girl and love pink. So that was a given, but I worried about making our wedding too feminine without keeping Calvin’s tastes in mind too. Plus, with every color scheme idea, I kept trying to envision what kind of flowers we’d use, how the centerpieces would look, how could we tie this in with our save the dates, would it photograph well, will it make me cringe in 20 years, etc. etc. Looking back, I realized that I never made any decisions without considering the impact on the entire wedding. It’s like I had to know what every detail was going to be before I ever made a decision on a single detail. Let me tell you, if I could go back and change that, I would!
I now realize that I should have just made decisions as they came. I should have been able to pick a color scheme and then worry about how we’d carry that through our invitations later! The mentality I had put me behind on a lot of things, and left me with a lot of last minute projects before the wedding.
So in short, what I’m trying to say is: trying to approach it all as a whole will just make you go crazy and it’s not worth it! Take your wedding in pieces. Make your decisions one at a time and trust that it will all come together in the end, because it will! Also, choose details that are meaningful to you…the perfect color, style, or high end designer detail won’t hold a candle to the details that hold a special place in your heart.
My grandmother has worn this gold lady bug necklace ever since I can remember. I knew I wanted to wear it on my wedding day as my ‘borrowed’ piece, so we pinned it in my hair! Plus, last year my grandmother sent Calvin and I home with half of her garden (she lives in Ohio, and when we were returning from a visit, she sent us home with three different bushes of peonies!) My hope was that these bushes would bloom just in time for our wedding. Luckily, I had a back up plan because they didn’t bloom this year. But even better, my grandma’s bloomed just in time! So she surprised me and brought a vase full of them when she came for the wedding! Our florist took them and incorporated them in my bouquet and on our sweetheart table. And as you may have guessed, these are my favorite details of the day.
I love watercolors, as you may have guessed from my branding. 🙂 Plus, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on the programs and name cards. So I went out and bought a pack of cardstock, a paper cutter for rounded corners, and a few sets of crayola watercolors! Then I bought a ton of chinese food, invited my bridesmaids over, and put paintbrushes in their hands! They all looked at me like I was crazy when I said just blob the paint on there. At first they were making them all perfectly painted, but eventually they started having fun with it, and as you can see….they all look a bit different, which is exactly what I wanted! 🙂
As you can tell, I decided on blush pink for the bridesmaids dresses. The last thing on Calvin’s mind was how our wedding was decorated, and blush was the obvious choice for me! To me, it’s a classic…I’ll never look back and wonder, what was I thinking with that color!? I’ve always loved pink, so whether or not it’s in fashion….it’s me. Above is also my garters and birdcage veil. DIY projects too! I bought the prettiest gold pins from Ulta, broke off the main jewels and hot glued them where ever I wanted. In this case, my veil and garter. Oh, and the garters are just lace headbands from Claire’s! 🙂
I don’t know if this is a detail necessarily. But when we decided to do a photobooth, I knew I wanted to use this in lieu of a typical guest book! This is something we can actually look at from time to time and really enjoy. We get to see all our friends and family being their goofy selves and read the sweet notes that they left us.
Finally, the decor. I think this was a thorn in Calvin’s side as we got closer to our wedding! 🙂 I decided early on that I loved vintage perfume trays and wanted to incorporate them somehow. Thanks to all of our family and friends keeping an eye out for us, we were able to collect enough for each table. Plus, I asked everyone to donate their leftover bottles to us….and boy did we get plenty! I think Calvin cringed everytime I walked in the house with another bag of bottles, which were conveniently stored in the garage (his mancave.) 🙂 Then we got to remove all the labels, cut some of them, and paint them. After all the time and labor, and costs of spray paint, I’m sure we could have bought some clear vases….but I absolutely love how these turned out! And I know Calvin was happy…when I sold them all after the wedding! 🙂
While it was a lot of work, I’m really glad I took the DIY approach. Although, it would have been a lot easier if I hadn’t been working full time on top of running my photography business…(DIY probably not the best decision time-wise!!) But each detail has a story now. I didn’t work on anything alone, thanks to my amazing friends and family…so with each project came memories!
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