The Devil is in the Details

Here are some details from the vintage, bohemian decor that we tried to cultivate, both crafted by professionals and by our own hands. Our goal was to find venues that already had very strong visual elements and atmosphere, and simply play off those. Which we did, and I highly recommend letting your venue steer your decorations. It's much cheaper than starting from scratch trying to create an atmosphere that isn't there at all.

Ring pillow: made by me, based off of a project I saw on OnceWed.com

Flower urns at altar: Che Bella

Flowers above and in fountain: my sister, with a little help from some friends

Drink pitchers*: purchased at Cost Plus and Target. I made the little wooden tags, and my friends helped set them up that morning

Flowers on chairs: Che Bella

Menu: done by Bleu Boheme

Favor cards: designed and printed by Inkfancy. The cards state that in lieu of favors, we gave a donation to Stand Up 2 Cancer. But we did affix some fun little buttons, with design elements from our invitations, to each favor card (ordered from Minepress)

Table scape: Flowers by Che Bella, jars* found by me after scouring Ebay and Craigslist. We found more than 150 jars, but doesn't sound like much, but the whole restaurant was positively overflowing with flowers. The table runners were made by JT's mom with fabric I found on TonicLiving

Images by Aaron Thompson with a couple additions from Spencer Tuck.

*Looking for something similar for your own wedding? I'm selling these!

Basket Case

With some big financial issues springing up this week (man, I wish I didn't own a car!), we've been looking at ways to trim the wedding budget. Not that I think our budget is heavy on splurges, but there are a couple, so anything we can trim, we will.

One thing that came to mind was flower girl baskets. We've got three flower girls, and rather than having the florist do them, it would save us a bit of cash to buy and fill them ourselves.

In case you haven't picked up on it yet from my other blog posts, I seriously think that Etsy is the greatest thing to ever happen to wedding planning. Check out these adorable baskets, all handmade and all at reasonable prices to boot.

I'm loving this birch one from NHWoodscreations. I love how natural it looks. Nothing like those white shellacked ones that are the standard wedding fare.

This one from Yandebridal is adorable too! I'm a complete sucker for cute woodland creatures.

Trendspotting

Once again, my originality has totally been called into question. Here I am thinking I'm so unique for coming up with all these cool details, only to see this awesome wedding as shot by Beulah Anne featured on Once Wed:

The crespedia, the mason jars, the hair accessory by Portobello...apparently I'm totally on trend! Or way behind, considering this wedding already occurred and ours is in November.

Send Me Your Jars!

That's right, it's more than a blog post -- it's a call to action. I need to collect as many mason jars as possible for the floral arrangements. I'll continue to troll Ebay, Craigslist, thrift shops and garage sales, but if you happen to be reading this and thinking "hey, I've got a bunch of old jars that I don't need," I'd be happy to put them to good use.

They don't even need to be mason jars, per se. Any cool, old-looking clear glass vessel will do. And it doesn't matter if it has writing on it either, so long as the writing is either in green, brown or yellow. If you happen to have anything to contribute to the cause, please drop me a line!

Run Into Flowers*

We met with Che Bella again this weekend to go over some more details. I love selecting vendors that have an artistic vision, especially when it comes to areas that I know nothing about, like flowers. Our floral landscape will include:

Crespedia

Ladies Mantle

Chocolate Dahlias (I'm told that these are technically black dahlias, but because of the whole murder connection, most florists don't call them that anymore)

Yellow Yarrow

Scabiosa Pods (I had never seen them before, but I LOVE them!)

*Yes, M83's "Run into Flowers" is indeed on our wedding playlist.

Che Bella Fiori

A lot of wedding blogs that I frequently read have a lot of posts that focus on three areas: 1. invitations 2. flowers and 3. accessories. Clearly, I love posting about accessories as well and love finding fun accessory vendors on other blogs. However, when it came to invites and flowers, I didn't need any inspiration. I already knew which vendors I planned on using.

You already know about our invite vendor, but you're probably wondering exactly who this florist is! JT and I knew pretty much from the start that we really wanted to work with Che Bella in Little Italy.

We chose them based on two main reasons. First, for the last five years, JT has been using them any time that he has bought/sent flowers to me for birthdays, anniversaries, etc. For our 5 year (dating*) anniversary, he had a dozen roses delivered to my office, and they were the most beautiful flowers I had ever seen. Ever. Everyone at work was in total awe. In fact, when he proposed, he kicked off the proposal by sending me another small Che Bella arrangement to my office with a card that read "Here's to the start of a great weekend." Little did I know that he would be proposing less than 2 hours later.

Our second reason for choosing them was the fact that Che Bella regularly supplies the floral arrangements for our reception venue, Bleu Boheme. That means that they already have an intimate knowledge of the restaurant's look and feel, and they understand how to complement it. Here's an example of some floral arrangements at the restaurant recently.

Budget florist they are not, but true artists they definitely are. I love hiring folks that I don't have to give much instruction to -- my ideal vendor will take my general ideas about theme and "feel" and run with it, taking care of all the details so that I don't have to think about them. And that's what we will get with Che Bella, which I why I'm really looking forward to working with them!

*Last December, we celebrated our eight year dating anniversary. It seems so funny that after having been together for so many years, we'll be pushing the reset button in November and will be celebrating a one-year anniversary in 2010!

Mix 'n Match: Yea or Nay?

By now you may have figured out that I'm not a fan of stereotypical wedding decor. Like round tables of 8 or 10 with one big centerpiece in the middle. We'll be going with the more and more popular long, rectangular tables decorated with a table runner and small groupings of flowers running the length of the table. The question on my mind right now is what all those flowers should be resting in. I mentioned earlier that we are following the farm-like quality of the restaurant by using various sized mason jars for the flowers.

Our florist suggested going even further with the "assorted" look, and incorporating these coffee cans** as well, since they match our color scheme:

A totally cute idea, no doubt. But I wonder if we have the potential to end up looking TOO hodgepodge...I'm starting to wonder if we should stick to all clear glass containers.

These images above via Style Me Pretty show great examples of both -- all clear glass and mix 'n match vessels. What do you think will look best?

**Update: We went to Cost Plus where they sell this coffee, and the cans look much more orange in person than they do in this photo. TOO orange. It's overpowering. So I don't think we'll be going with the coffee can idea after all, and we'll stick with a clear glass palette.

Flowers by the Jar

Given the rustic, bohemian vibe of our reception venue, I'm leaning towards doing very casual flower arrangements, like clusters of hand-gathered flowers in canning jars or vintage glass bottles, like the ones seen below (images from L'amour de Vie Weddings via Style Me Pretty).

I'm also hoping that these types of arrangements will keep the costs low, especially if I can provide the jars. We have our first florist consultation on Saturday, so I'll keep you posted with what I discover.

DIY sure, but who sets it up?

My poor blog (and my poor wedding plans!) has been so neglected this past week. Hopefully work will finally calm down next week, and JT and I will be able to buckle down and spend some quality wedding planning time together. Despite the occasional confusions or frustrations, we both are really enjoying this process. Planning a wedding together is really fun.

But on the note of being frustrated and confused...DIY wedding projects. On the on hand, I love the idea of hand crafting decor items so that I can have them exactly they way I want them. Plus, DIY is usually a money saver. I got all jazzed up about DIYing ceremony decorations after seeing this wedding on A Practical Wedding:

How gorgeous are those ribbons? I thought about translating this ribbon tree idea into some kind of branch alter structure, or hanging bunches of these all around the nooks and crannies of the Marston House gardens.

BUT...after I make them all, who hangs them? We can't hang them up the night before - it's a public garden, and we only have it reserved for the morning of ceremony. Who knows how many would fall down or, ahem, "walk off." And obviously I can't put them up that morning because I'll be getting ready. As will my Maid-of-Honor sister and Bridesmaid sister-in-law. Same goes for all the men.

And what about the reception? I love the jars full of flowers that are shown with the table numbers in my previous post, and we could very easily buy jars and loose flowers and fill them, but who sets them up? And who delivers them to the restaurant in the morning? We can't very well ask a small and busy restaurant to hold 200 jars of flowers on a Friday night. Any of you that have DIY'd your wedding and held it somewhere other than your backyard or parents' house but somewhere where you only have a short access window? If so, we'd love your tips!

Recycled Table Numbers

A couple of weekends ago, JT and I were walking around Little Italy and stopped into one of our favorite stores, Architectural Salvage. Their store is a treasure chest of rescued antique decorative items, from old glass bottles to a giant neon "Casino" sign.

Casually strolling through the store, I got distracted by the bins of old house numbers and thought "these would make the coolest table numbers at the reception!" So we snatched up a bunch, all wonderfully mismatched.

Of course, then I got home and started checking all the wedding blogs I usually read to see if I could find some pictures of any similar ideas. Which I did. I think this has been posted on several wedding blogs, and I'm not sure where the original photo came from, but I found it via Once Wed.

I guess it means that my idea wasn't totally original, but hey, great minds think alike!