Our Wedding: Event & Floral Design
I've been looking forward to this post because there's much to share/ much I can say... I'll attempt to keep this short. When it came to our event design we wanted it to be sophisticated, but not stuffy. (I may have already stated this somewhere else... ha!) We still wanted it to say Aaron and Dorothy. And so the main colors for our wedding were black and white- with accents of green, plum, burgundy. Below is the vision board I put together:
the FLOWERS.
A year before my wedding I had photographed my friend Hannah's wedding (featured on 100 Layer Cake!) and at the time her and her sister were starting a wedding design and event planning business. I had been dating Aaron for about a year at that point and I didn't know quite when we would be getting be married but I knew it was going to happen... haha, so we decided to do a trade! This was a huge deal for us as florals can get very expensive. But out of all the Pinterest ideas and DIY projects you could do for decor and table settings, my number one priority was flowers. All the trends you see out there will go in and out of style, but flowers never will... so this is where we invested the majority of our money when it came to decor. I am so so grateful to Hannah and Elsa of Juliet & Lou. They did a beautiful job on our limited budget. We had them create so much for us:
a bridal bouquet,
a bridal floral crown,
5 bridesmaid bouquets,
9 boutonnieres (groom, groomsmen, dads)
2 wrist corsages (moms)
4 flower girl floral crowns
2 large floral arrangements for the ceremony
the altar
18-25 table arrangements
the PLACE SETTINGS.
Originally we were just going to have a menu and a napkin at each spot, but the closer we got to the wedding, the more I realized that it was going to look pretty empty at each table so last minute, we decided to do plates and utensils. Hannah found some sweet black plastic cups to fill in at each seat too! Of course they were all the plastic plates that looked real and faux gold utensils we bought off of Amazon. I'm really glad we decided to do this even though it was another $300 or so... but for 225 people? Not bad.
At each setting we had mini-taco flags handmade and screenprinted by my friend Megan Spurgeon. (These were also peoples' favors!) Megan is a wizard and bought all the felt we needed for 250 mini-flags sand 2 large donut/cupcake flags for like $80, handcut and glued these together. Here are some photos she sent me during her process:
I quickly designed a small menu to put at each setting as well, using the same font we had used in our invitations to make it all look cohesive. I used this to make table numbers as well.
We had our friend Ellen Mauro, who also addressed our invitations, handletter marble tiles we purchased from Lowes' for placecards. Guests were also welcomed and encouraged to take these home as well!
other ELEMENTS.
Some other things we added on each table were black taper candles- I loved these so much! Megan also made some triangular placecard holders for us with black modeling clay. I made the table numbers with floral elements illustrated by Eleni Hannula.
Instead of doing communion during our ceremony, we decided to do it at together with everyone prior to commencing dinner. This was how it was done when Jesus did it and we loved the family dinner feeling of all being in the same room, breaking bread and drinking together. We bought bread loaves from QFC and wrapped them up with some floral paper.
We cut up the same floral paper into square sheets for the kiddos to color and also bought some small packs of crayons for them. During cocktail hour, we also had a small temporary tattoo station set up with tattoos purchased from Tattly and some handmade with our logo by one of my bridesmaids, Yvonne.
the SIGNAGE.
We had purchased this letterboard from threepotatofour with the intention of using it for Save the Date, decor for the wedding and later for our home. They're pricey but we liked the white border that we hadn't seen anywhere else. At the wedding we used it as a bar menu. J+L had a few as well and they used it for the ceremony site, which we didn't even see until we got our photos back! Ha. Just for fun (and because this blog post doesn't have enough photos already...) here was the gif of our Save the Date we sent to everyone:
I hired my friend Libby Tipton to do our seating chart. Ellen had just had a baby! and I wanted to be able to use as many of my friends' talents as possible. She did an amazing job for having 225 names! Aaron bought some plywood and stained it black for us to place the chart on.
the DESSERT TABLE.
Hannah and Elsa rented the black dresser from Vintage Ambiance. We borrowed cake stands from them and friends. Our donut pegboard was made and stained by Aaron himself. Our flags of course, by Megan.
There you have it! It all turned out so beautifully and better than I could have imagined. I cannot thank Hannah and Elsa enough for seeing our vision come through and making it even better! It was so fun to walk in the room and see how it came together. Thank you to my SPU friends for coming out early and helping set up- you guys know who you are!
My advice? I already mentioned it above to be honest... pick elements that will stand the test of time, if possible. Clearly the geometric aspect of our design is super trendy right now but it's definitely very me... I mean, I've got a permanent triangle tattoo on my body ha! But seriously, invest in flowers! They will always be beautiful. And if your budget doesn't allow too much wiggle room for decor, that's okay! Invest it in things that will serve your community because a wedding is not only a celebration of two people coming together but a celebration and a thank-you to the friends and family that have brought them to that point in their lives.
And I'll leave you with some more of my favorite photos because Kristen nailed it.
Read our past wedding blog posts:
*all photos posted by Kristen Marie Parker