wedding: the outfits

This is the first time I have shown us above the neck on this blog... gulp... I'm scared... please be kind.

The Flower Girls:

The flower girls each designed their own dress, hair, accessories, jewellery... And both looked adorable.






Mr You:

We both opted for the classic style, but Mr You personalised his look with a "wood theme". Our friend made his button flower with stuff from the garden! Isn't it amazing?



He asked me to sew his tie to look like wood... the single item I believe to be my true masterpiece of last year ;) He also has a rosewood wedding ring (rosewood is used to make guitar necks, something he is passionate about).



He bought two pairs of cufflinks from Etsy. Lucky, because as he was putting them on, one broke, so he wore one from each set. So cute...



And he wore vans skate shoes, as he always does.



He looked cool and so handsome ;)




Me:



My dress was an off the shelf formal dress. I liked it because to me it had a classic antique 1930's style, like my engagement ring. I was later justified when I found a very similar dress from a "1939 Vogue" in a historical dress exhibition.



My caplet turned out gorgeously. Everyone loved it. Some of you may remember I bought the wool from Etsy, recycled from an old angora jumper, and I got a lady from the local markets to knit it up for me. She charged me $40. I paid her more.



I also commissioned a feather hair thingy from YJ Design on Etsy, she was fantastic, and it turned out gorgeously too.



A special friend loaned me a lace handkerchief that her, her mum, and her grandmother all used at their weddings. I kept it safe inside a little silver purse that my mum was given for her 21st birthday.



And my shoes. Ooo my shoes... All I can say is that we were fated to be together.






So, that's it. Wedding done! Marriage begins :D

Our ceremony began with the line "...while this is their wedding day, what we are about to witness is yet another bond in an already lasting love". That, to me, pretty much sums up the rest.

Thanks for coming on the ride with me, for your patience and your excitement. I will endeavour to answer each of your questions personally. Hope you liked it.

wedding: reception

The Reception:

(Whoah, is anyone getting wedding fatigue? I sure am. I'll let the pictures do the talking this time.)























(One more post to come... the outfits! I was going to try and finish it all today, but I'm not sure I have the stamina. Tomorrow might have to do. In the meantime, that last pic shows me in my "party outfit")

wedding: decorations

The Decorations:

(I'm eager to wrap all this up by Wednesday, so these wedding posts will be coming thick and fast till then)

When thinking about the decorations for our wedding, there were a couple of things we kept in mind:
1) we didn't have to do too much because the location spoke for itself
2) we wanted to enhance the location rather than distract from, or compete with it
3) we wanted to respect the environment (both immediate and overall), keeping away from the notion of luxury and excess.

Our aim? "Vintage, Rustic, Recycled." (And of course a good dash of handmade added into the equation too). We wanted an overall style, rather than a "theme" consisting of matching things.

The river, the trees and the flowers were the focus. But, as we all know, it's all about the details...

Mum and I made the table runners for each table from fabric either from my existing stash, or from second hand fabric I found at op-shops. They were all un-matching, some linen, some candy stripes, some satin. They looked great, and helped to break up the whiteness of the tablecloths.

We used lots of wood throughout the whole wedding. On the tables we had little chunks of wood. (Earlier in the year when the flood hit, it destroyed a few trees, so the timber came from those). We used large stumps of wood in the garden, and also one as a cake stand.



At the end of the night people took them as a memento. We had handed out sandalwood fans to the pregnant and elderly ladies before the ceremony, but other than that we had no "favours". So these little chunks filled in, and people loved them. Now everyone has a little wood chunk in their home to remind them of the wedding and their holiday. One friend insists hers is shaped like a heart!




On the wood chunks, on the tables, we had jars. Lots and lots of jars, all different sizes and shapes. Plus lots of vintage cut glass cups, sugar bowls, bottles, etc. Some held flowers, the rest had tealight candles in them. (The jars were from our own collection, or donated by friends, and cut glass was all from op-shops and the tip shop).










We also had jars with candles in them throughout the garden too, so at night it all twinkled.




Mr You and I spent the wedding night on the boat, so my sister and her husband made us a beautiful "just married sign". They stencilled each letter onto fabric, hung with little wooden pegs.






The lovely old wooden box, that belonged to Mr You's Grandfather, was a postbox for guests to put their cards in.






We hung vintage lampshades in the tress. I collected them all from op-shops and reconditioned them all. We also had some lamps inside the marquee too, so later in the evening we turned off the big lights, and just had the candles and lamps light the marquee. Outside we had fairy lights and had spotlights shining up all the trees.










There were some things that we originally wanted to have at the wedding, but didn't make it in the end. One of these was a photobooth (a spot set up with a backdrop and props, for your guests to take silly staged photo's of themselves in).

It turned out that, completely un-intentionally, we ended up having one, as friends took turns at having their photo's taken on the day bed under the lampshades. This is something we didn't even realise until after the wedding, as people started sending us their photo's. Almost everyone had a photo of themselves posed under the lampshade tree; some nicely posed, others funny and staged. Just another example of the nice surprises of the day!

wedding: the flowers

The Flowers:

One week until the wedding, and the florist rang me letting me know that dahlia's (that I was hoping to have as my bouquet) were still a few more weeks from blooming. Three days until the wedding, the florist rang me again with the news that the David Austin roses she was going to use for me instead, had all died in the strong winds that I mentioned earlier. I wasn't panicked, I was too distracted, instead I just left it up to her to come up with something she thought I may like. She kept in contact with her ideas... but the lilly of the valley stems all arrived to her rotted, and there weren't enough flannel flowers... So she made me a very plain, very standard looking bouquet of white rose buds (which I didn't really like, but didn't tell her because she was more worried about it than I was)...

THEN at 7:30pm the night before the wedding she rang me all excited, "Can you come and see these new flowers I've found for your bouquet? I think you may love them, but I'm not sure. I don't mind if you don't use the rose bouquet, just come and see these if you can!"

So I did, and together we jumped for joy!



They are called andromeda, and were very hardy and long lasting. Everyone commented on them. (The striped ribbons I used were from Etsy).


The day after the wedding I went to visit the florist again, this time to give her the biggest hug I could. And this is why...

In the last post I mentioned all the unexpected surprises of the day, the flowers were one of them. I literally "eeeped" out loud, and lost a breath or two when I walked into the marquee after the ceremony. THIS is what I saw...

















It was dreamlike, actually it was beyond my dreams. I will never forget it.
(I only wish I had photo's of all of the tables)