We decided early on that a formal wedding wasn't really our style. We wanted to be out in nature and we wanted it to be relaxed and fun for our friends and family. We also wanted it to be simple and, since we are after all planning a wedding during a recession, we wanted to do as much ourselves as we could.
We were lucky. Friends of ours, Nate and Steph, had just gotten married. They contributed the three tiered wedding cake cardholder and the two baskets pictured above. Of course, all of these items were in the autumn colors of their wedding theme. All it took was a trip to Pat Catan's for some flowers and ribbon, as well as my new favorite tool: my glue gun, and PRESTO. Also very helpful was some old seam tape I found - I used it to transform the basket handle into shimmery purple.
The candlesticks on either side were donated from a friend of my mother's - she had planned to get rid of these. I pulled out the ribbon and once I put the candles on, they'll be ready to go:
We LOVE the sales racks. We've been haunting them for well over a year now. One day at Michael's, we found our invitations. They were DIY kits on sale for $40 total. It was quite a bit of work, but we both pitched in and finished them assembly-line style.
The best part? We could customize. We made our own wedding symbol - we took the chakra symbol from India that represents the heart:
We photoshopped it from green to our blue and purple wedding colors, and added a flower blossom in the center to symbolize the blossoming and growing of our relationship:
Since we printed our own invitations and are printing our own programs, we have been able to customize everything with our wedding symbol while still saving money.
We also made the decision to cut out the florist. Our Plan A was to grow our own flowers. This is working out quite well for the centerpieces of forget-me-nots, but the lavender for the bouquets just never took off. The tins for the forget-me-nots were just a buck each at Target:
And as of today, the forget-me-nots are flourishing. I'm so anxious for the little blue flowers to show - I just bought fertilizer to help them along.
Plan B is working wonderfully for the other flowers (to the great relief of my Matron of Honor). We went to Roxanne's Flowers in the strip and found some beautiful dried lavender. Last night, I made the boutonnieres:
and the corsages:
Finally, a major element of the wedding is a handfasting. Many don't know about this tradition which is Celtic in origin. Wil and I were handfasted at our engagement - bound for a year and a day. At the wedding, we will be handfasted with 6 cords binding 6 promises "for as long as love shall last". The bindings are made with ribbon. The colored ribbons and dangling charms were personalized with symbols that are important to us: dragonflies, turtles, Asian coins, abalone, amethyst...
After the wedding, the cords will stay bound and kept as a reminder of the promises they seal.
Things are coming together. I still have the bouquets to wrap, but my tasklist finally seems to be getting smaller. Hopefully you'll see more of me again in another month or so.
