Happy Sunday, friends! I hope you’re enjoying the long weekend so far. We’ve kept things pretty low key because it’s been so long since we had some down time to relax and get chores done around the house. Today’s been the perfect balance of laziness and productivity!
Today I’m rolling out the first in a series of posts about our wedding day. I’m splitting it all up so the posts don’t get too long. It’s still so hard to believe it’s been three months since we said, “I do”! Please let me know if there are any specific details you’re curious about.
The days leading up to our May 30th wedding were very hectic. Because I decided I wanted to do everything myself instead of hiring a planner, we had a lot of little details to finish, like tying the tags on hundreds of homebrew favors. I enlisted the help of family and friends to get everything together. We spent the day before the wedding at our venue, The Davis Lodge, putting up decorations.
My poor father-in-law had the task of hanging dozens of paper lanterns from the large wooden beams inside. He’d hang a few and then ask me if they needed to be higher or lower and I seemed to always make him change the arrangement slightly. He was so kind and didn’t complain one bit! It looked amazing. We got a good deal on the lanterns by ordering a variety of sizes from Oriental Trading and then using coupons at Michael’s for white pom poms and lanterns.
We had two mantels to decorate and knew they would need some drama because they really are the focal points of the venue. We incorporated a tandem bike theme throughout our wedding because of our love of cycling and my amazing in-laws were able to borrow a blue tandem bike for us to use. We put it on top of one of the mantels and tied lots of balloons to the seats and handlebars, then surrounded it with flowers and candles. It looked better than I ever imagined.
The same bike shop also lent us a yellow Schwinn that we used to decorate near the front entrance of the venue. We found a bike basket at a flea market in town and had the florist fill it with a beautiful array of flowers.
Next to the bike outside, we placed two old doors that we repainted and distressed on easels and ran twine across the front so we could attach escort cards using clothespins. I spent a long time handwriting those escort cards and then arranging them in alphabetical order.
To decorate the other large mantel inside, we used large, metal letters my mom snagged from TJ Maxx. Our florist, The Frilly Lily, came to deliver flowers the night before the wedding and was so helpful in helping us figure out the best way to arrange everything in the space. She filled a large, copper tub that was my grandfather’s with baby’s breath and daises. All of the vases we used came from my grandfather’s antique bottle collection and all held varying arrangements of hydrangeas, daisies, baby’s breath and billy balls. It matched the shabby chic setting perfectly.
We used white tea lights throughout the venue to help give the lodge a romantic ambience. We bought about 200 from the dollar store — so much bang for our buck! You can never have too many candles.
Once we had some of the big decorations out of the way, we got to work on getting the tables put together. They were all decorated with beautiful table runners my mom spent weeks sewing. The tree stump rounds were rented from Old Oak Vintage Rentals, which saved us money and the hassle of cutting down a tree.
I made the table numbers using tags, craft paint and a Martha Stewart stencil. They only took about ten minutes to make but turned out great!
The rest of the venue was decorated with a variety of artwork we either bought specifically for the wedding or were already using in our home. We snagged several wedding-related $10 prints from Hatch Show Print during a trip to see my brother in Nashville last year. We had them dry mounted and incorporated them throughout the venue.
We also tried to incorporate artwork that represented our personalities — a print we bought at our local farmer’s market, locally-made prints of cameras and typewriters. People loved those little details.
Luckily, James is great at graphic design. Not only did he design our Save the Dates and invitations, he happily put together several signs we used throughout our venue to let people know about our wedding hashtag and to direct people to our guestbook.
But perhaps one of my favorite decorations was a collection of family wedding photos we displayed. It featured pictures from our parents’, grandparents’, aunts’, uncles’ and cousins’ weddings. Our family loved being able to see all of those pictures and reminisce. I’m so glad we have all of those photos to treasure and display in our home.
The day before the wedding flew by quickly and before we knew it it was time for the wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner! I’ll tell you more about that later this week. Until then, enjoy your extra day off for the holiday!