Romantic, Eclectic Wedding

Last February, my husband and I tied the knot. When dreaming about weddings, I never saw myself being a winter bride but my husband is a football coach and we were engaged in May … so winter it was!

My biggest desire was that I wasn’t tied to one pattern, color but rather it was an eclectic blend of things my husband and I loved that all together just worked. I wanted to see our personalities reflected on a budget and that each guest left full, known and sweaty!

Bridal Party

For my husband, I wanted his tie to fit the overall color scheme and I purchased a dried flower boutonniere for him so we would have a forever keepsake and helped reduce floral costs by quite a bit. For my bouquet, I requested it look like perhaps I’d just picked them in the fields, or something to that effect. I also supplied my own ribbon, going with a velvet pink that I found on sale at Joanne’s.

Each of our groomsmen had dried baby’s breath boutonnieres, which were incredibly more affordable than going through the florist. And I asked that each bridesmaids bouquet be made of the same flower, but each bouquet be a different flower. Then all those flowers were what was in my bouquet … sounds like a hard math problem. I’ve always been a fan of vases filled with one type and color of flower, and I wanted that for my bridesmaids.

I didn’t have one dress or one color for my bridesmaids, but I did love the floral pattern on two of the dresses and asked each lady to find outfits that matched and asked two of my bridesmaids to pick whichever dress type they wanted in that pattern. Almost everyone ended up purchasing from Revelry, which allows you to try on dresses and get swatches to choose what works for you for the wedding, and maybe another event afterward! I love that we ended with different shades, fabrics and even outfits with one of my matrons of honor opting for a sequined top and satin skirt. I also purchased pashminas for the ladies in case it ended up being a cold day … which it really really was.

For special touches, I wanted to carry my grandparents with me since they weren’t with us any longer, so I found some small bouquet frames so that they were still represented on our special day. Since our ladies weren’t matching, we didn’t want the groomsmen to match so we went with a pink, mauve pallet for the ties for men.

I found some adorable white, lace dresses on Amazon that were around $30 and got pink/mauve crowns from etsy for our flower girls.

I used a cricut to add a special touch to my shoes, which has stayed on even after wearing them out in the wild after the wedding. And since we were going with a floral pattern as our inspiration, I got my husband some special floral socks to wear.

Special Touches

For our parents, I wanted to get them something special to wear the day of as well as something to give my bridesmaids. For my mom and matrons of honor, I got them necklaces with their birth flower and a second disc with “mom” and “sister” and for each of my bridesmaids I got them a birth flower necklace.

For my mother-in-law, I found this beautiful necklace that included the sweetest note of thanks to the woman who raised the guy I would be spending the rest of my life with. Maybe one of my favorites, though, was for our dads. I took photos of us as babies and made iron-ons with short, stitched on messages that we added to the ties we gifted them for the ceremony.

Ceremony

Does anyone know the fantastic band, The Weepies? Well, I’ve long been a fan and one image of the band inspired something in me years ago that I tucked away for the day I got married. The idea of cute, cut-out stars always seemed like the perfect way to make a wedding a little extra special and unique. Now my vision involved a tent and hanging stars from the roof of the entire thing, but this was a handmade wedding and we did not have time for that.

Instead, we cut out funky stars and hung then by fishing wire with weights at the end and added it behind where our ceremony would take place. I have to tell you, I think I nailed it with this one. I loved every photo where you saw the stars.

We also knew there would be a lot of children at the wedding. I know some folks prefer a childfree night, but some of my favorite people were under the age of 5 so we wanted all the children to come, but knowing they’d be there I wanted to create some easy distractions for them during the ceremony so we bought some small clipboards , prepackaged crayons and printed wedding photos from a free online site. I added a little string to make it look more put together and loved the final result.

For the decorations, we cut tree trunks down to fit candles and fresh greens, bought from Sam’s – great way to get fresh florals for less! I also bought black foam board and used the cricut to cut out what we needed for signs and found some old picture frames to put them in. It had the look of chalkboards for the fraction of the price.

Reception

For our reception, we chose to have it inside a barn that was repurposed for events. I wanted the reception to fill like a big family gathering, so we went with long tables that gave me some great options for decorating. I started collecting small frames when we began planning the wedding and added a few of my husband’s football plays, lyrics to some songs that were special to us and maps of places we had lived and placed those up and down the tables.

I didn’t want anything to match, that way it all matched, so we had gold and silver chargers, different colored frames and a mixture of flowers from Sam’s, Publix and even my parents backyard. We also used eucalyptus to fill in any empty spots. For the runner, I purchased large amounts of cheesecloth and died it mauve to go with the rest of our decorations.

Our cake was from Publix and was delicious! Our topper was inspired by Etsy, but hand painted by my very talented sister and my dad built our cake stands out of wood. We used the cricut to cut out “you and me” and “forever more” as a nod to our first dance song, “New Years Day” by Taylor Swift.

For our exit, I purchased dried flowers off of Etsy so that they could be thrown without harming the environment or the animals and we bought a few large sparklers to give the exit photos a little extra pizzazz.

The rest of the night was dancing, eating and laughing. I know I am biased, but I think this wedding was one for the books. It was everything I had dreamed of and so incredibly fun – which was all I wanted, a good time!