Decorations and Floral

Pretty much all of our ideas for decorations came from a variety of DIY blogs. Young House Love, 100 Layer Cake, and primarily My DIY Wedding Day were my main resources. The first thing I knew I wanted was to have crudite/cheese plates on every table. One pet peeve I had always experienced with weddings were that people expected you to sit still during the speeches while you're starving your ass off with nothing to munch. I wanted to cure that immediately by providing people with food at their tables and no effort on their part. Next, I knew I wanted mason jars with buttons to be involved with the centerpieces. The night Jake proposed, he brought me an orange and blue bouquet of daisies and hydrangeas and I immediately decided that those would be our colors and flowers.

(gerbera daisies for the larger arrangements)

Sarah, the creative soul that she is, volunteered to make paper hydrangeas for the centerpieces. She somehow read my mind because I had been wanting to have paper flowers but had no idea how I would make them. Life saver that she is, she took to the task and executed it flawlessly. We got our jars between visiting flea markets and Goodwills, and bought big tubs of buttons from Michael's for $6 per tub. 4 tubs were enough to get me through. My bouquet was a combination of paper and cloth flowers wrapped in ribbon and adorned with a sparrow charm. The same sparrow was used in Jake's boutonneire inspired by this design. The sparrows were used to reflect our use of Dallas Green's "As Much As I Ever Could" for the precession.

Knowing that I would not want to be throwing my paper bouquet (as it was also full of pins!) and that I could hardly expect Sarah to create 7 dozen paper hydrangeas, I also decided to get my hands on some gerbera daisies. 1/2 dozen of these would be used in my throwing bouquet, while the others would be used in the larger flower arrangements throughout the reception. The most difficult part of the decorations was that we were not allowed to see the reception hall until Jake and I were let in. I could tell Sarah every detail I wanted (I even created blueprints for how the tables needed to be arranged), but Jake and I were not allowed to see any of the decorating. As for the bouquets that Sarah and I walked down the aisle with, we had a girls night dedicated to a cloth flower frenzy at AC Moore where we gathered a ton of gorgeous orange, purple, and blue faux flowers to go around the paper hydrangeas. I am so happy with how they turned out, and better yet, that I get to keep my bouquet forever.

(memory table)

For our guestbook, I desperately wanted to do something untraditional. Because travel is something that has brought Jake and I through so much as a couple, we went on a mad hunt for vintage postcards. We then provided the guests with these postcards to write their well wishes on and place in an old suitcase. I don't know what we will do with them, but they look so much cooler than just a book. The best part is that most of the postcards are from places we have been together. We placed this setup on our memory table next to some wedding photos of our parents and grandparents.