Since this blog is dedicated to our sense of style in renovating and decorating our home, we figured we'd fill you in on how we decorated and designed one of the happiest days of our life, in case you didn't get the golden ticket.
Many of our friends and relatives often joke that they didn't get the golden ticket to come to our wedding because it was very small. We only had 45 guests. It wasn't that we wanted to exclude anyone. We just wanted to make our wedding as intimate and personal as possible. The entire wedding was in true DIY fashion - from the flowers to the programs -- and we enlisted the help from many of our friends and family.
Our "Save the Date" announcements were reflective of our love for all things Halloween.
And on the back of the postcard:
We were married on August 18, 2007 at the beautiful Aurora Inn in Aurora, NY.
No, unfortunately that's not our fancy car parked outside!
Since we both have a love for water, it was important to us to be married outside near the lake. Fortunately, we had a beautiful day for it.
We had a friend, Liz, take all of our pictures, which saved a ton of money. We keep telling her to make a website advertising to take wedding pictures, but she isn't listening to us. Isn't she good?
And since our wedding was on the water, Lori and Kelby arrived by boat, so we took the opportunity to run out to their boat for some quick photo shooting opportunities.
While we were sneaking off taking pictures on Lori and Kelby's boat, some of our guests were busy losing all of the Aurora Inn's croquet balls.
We got all of the flowers from a wholesale florist, which we HIGHLY recommend because we saved so much money. Stephenie and her sister put all of the arrangements together the night before the wedding. It was a little challenging because the flowers had to remain cold, so Stephenie's sister had to drive from Brooklyn to upstate New York (about a five hour drive) with her AC cranked to keep the flowers cold. She actually turned her seat warmers on to try to stay warm because she was freezing from the AC blasting the whole way.
Once she arrived, we turned Imani's bedroom into a refrigerator by cranking the AC up and putting all of the flowers in there in buckets of water. Her room smelled like a florist's for several days after the wedding.
The bridesmaids each had a bouquet of roses in a different shade of pink and Stephenie's bouquet was made up of all of the shades of pink from each of the bridesmaid's bouquets.
We placed two sets of flowers at the front of the seating to serve as an "altar."
Of course, there were flowers as centerpieces on all of the tables.
We debated on having a wedding party, since the wedding was so small, but we ended up having our closest friends stand up with us. We seriously could not have pulled this off without these six people.
The programs were designed by Imani.
And of course, she was the flower girl.
And she also joined the string quartet to play the violin.
Stephenie and Lori, one of her bridesmaids, personalized flip flops for all of the guests' tired feet. The flip flops were located in baskets throughout the reception area.
The truth is, Stephenie was afraid she couldn't make it through the whole night wearing the heels she had chosen for her wedding day.
But she did. Instead, the groom's Uncle found himself in a pair of nice, comfortable, pink flip flops.
Guests found their seats by finding their picture that was hanging up on a ribbon outside the reception area.
Jason designed each of the pages with our monogram at the top and the guest's name at the bottom. These pictures were blasts from the past for many of our guests. Guests were asked to fill out their page with a message to the bride and groom, which was then placed in a memory book for Stephenie and Jason to read later.
This was one of our favorite parts of our wedding because people wrote such wonderful messages to us. Some were heartfelt and serious; others made us laugh. This book sits out in our sitting room so we can look at it from time to time.
Here's Kelby's message to Jason:
In case you can't read his chicken scratch, his message reads, "Jason, Let me give you some advice. As long as you keep working on your house, Stephenie will keep you around, so don't use up all of your home improvement projects at once. Good luck. Kelby."
Good advice.
On the back of each guest's page, was an email number. Guests were seated at tables that had Stephenie and Jason's first emails to each other. This encouraged mingling among tables because everyone wanted to read the emails in order to see what exactly Stephenie and Jason said to each other when they first met.
Tucked inside each of the napkins at the tables were bookmarks to honor the groom's best friend.
Prior to the wedding, Stephenie and Jason found out what each of the married couple's wedding songs were and burned CDs with all of the songs on it. Every guest left with a CD featuring all of the wedding songs.
In addition to the bookmark and CDs, Stephenie and Jason had a candy bar set up so guest could fill cellophane bags with candy to take home. This was a big hit!
We did splurge and hire a baker to make the cake, which was actually a waste of money. Stephenie's mom could have made a better tasting cake, but it did look nice. We provided all of the roses for the cake from the wholesale florist.
After cutting the cake, we showed a slide show that we created, which someday might get posted on this page if we can manage to do it without losing the music in the process.
The night came to a close as everyone sent us on our way with a sparkler send off.
We hope you enjoyed our DIY wedding. It was a lot of work to plan, but we wouldn't have done it any other way. We loved having so many personal touches to make the day even more memorable.
Sorry you didn't get the golden ticket. No hard feelings, okay?
Sorry you didn't get the golden ticket. No hard feelings, okay?
