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A Handmade & Simple Wedding: Genevieve & Andy

January 5, 2012 in Wedding by Kat | 13 comments

Genevieve & Andy were married at Smokey Glen Farm, Washington. A simply styled day, the couple put a lot of importance on their friends and family being involved and having a good time. ”Early on, we decided which things were most important to us. We wanted it to be a fun party, to be simple, and to be uniquely us – everything else we tried not to sweat too much. As a result, we simplified our approach and only spent a lot of time and attention on a few key things. The venue supplied great BBQ, beautiful scenery, and a lot of fun games for our guests. And we rented a ping pong table. That was key.”

“Andy’s Mom made the strings of hearts, table runners, and the ties for the silverware and my mom and aunts arranged the flowers on the tables,” the bride told me.

“A friend was the officiant, another the DJ, another the videographer, and another did the hand-carved linograph invitations and thank you notes. Each bridesmaid doubled as a quasi event coordinator, especially the maid of honor who kept us on point all day.”

“The program and menu were chalkboards,” Genevieve continued. ”We just got some chalk paint and plywood; the fanciest portion was buying some cheap floor molding and nailing it to the boarders of the chalkboards to make them look like picture frames. We bought a few hundred feet of white lights and stapled them to the rafters. We collected a lot of candles and mason jars and we crafted up a yarn wreath.”

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A Party-Hard Utah Mountain Wedding with the Bride in a Romper Suit!: Elizabeth & Brendan

January 4, 2012 in Wedding by Kat | 12 comments

When newlywed Elizabeth emailed me to share her wedding and told me she wore the Princess Lasertron VuVu romper for the evening reception, well I just knew I had to feature them. A bride in a romper suit? hell yes!

“Our theme was supposed to be ‘Farm Fancy’,” Elizabeth explained. “People wore their interpretation of farm fancy attire, and some people really went all out – boots, denim, sparkly fire engine red onsie with white fringe! The theme quickly became ‘Wind-Blown Princess Lasertronerific Farm Fancy Booze Fueled Costume Pop Dance Extravaganza’. Awesome.”

“Brendan and I love the southern Utah high desert, our ‘people’, and theme parties. A wedding is the biggest costume party of all! Considering that Brendan’s proposal involved wing suit skydiving, a Los Angeles mariachi band, and a costume shop, our friends and family thought we would be skydiving, base jumping, or rock climbing. We decided to keep the risk of death to a minimum, and just stuck with having fun.”

The couple were legally married in March (they eloped!) but they wanted a big party to celebrate with their friends and family. They chose their hometown, Boulder, Utah, as the location. “As most of our guests had traveled really far to come to our wedding we had a welcome reception the Friday night before. Boulder, has a population of 189 people. For real – 189. There were literally only beds for 60 guests in town, so we kept the celebration intimate.”

The wedding was held at Boulder Mountain Lodge with the after party outside in a marquee. They put together all the decor themselves, the groom DJed and they even drank wine made by the bride’s brother. “Our ‘napkins’ were from a wholesale online bandana store…way cheaper than renting linens! Instead of doing a guest book, we put vintage postcards at each place setting. Our guests wrote their well wishes to us, and we’ve been getting them in the mail. We plan to read them on each anniversary.”

“Brendan made letterpress posters at a workshop that read, ‘I carry your heart with me (I carry it in my heart)’, from the EE Cummings. We recited these lines to each other when exchanging our rings, and it is engraved in our rings. The backdrop for the photo booth was a wedding quilt made just for us by a dear friend’s Mother. I think it is really special to have such a comforting reminder of such a momentous day. I can literally wrap myself in the love of the moment. *sigh* I’m a sap. I know. I’m OK with it.”

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A Louisiana Swamp Trash the Dress: Nikki & Marc

January 3, 2012 in Bridal Shoot/Trash The Dress by Kat | 19 comments

Nikki & Marc wanted to do an unusual ’trash the dress’ photo shoot to celebrate their marriage. Something totally unique was on the cards when they braved the nearby Honey Island Swamp with photographer Chelsea Patricia, who explained the idea to me,

“Nikki & Marc are a pretty adventurous and unique couple (Marc is a tattoo artist and lord-of-the-bike—he even bike jousts on his tall bike. Nikki allows him to tattoo her ankle poke and stick style), but I still was nervous as to how they would respond to ‘Hey, let’s venture into the gator, snake, and mosquito infested waters of the Louisiana bayou! It’ll be fun!’ Thankfully for me, they were all on board. Nikki already had plans to hem her dress short and figured, ‘What the hell, it’s only swamp water!’”

“Nikki + Marc both appreciate art—Nikki is a writer, Marc makes chainmail jewelry and carves custom wooden wax seals. The fact that they both grew up in an around New Orleans only added to the fact that this shoot would be very personal to them. Personally, I didn’t really think twice about going into the water until, well, we got to the water. The stillness, the wild vegetation covering the surface, the vastness of the swamp beyond—it all sank in and I got…nervous. We got in, did our thing…my poor husband had to wade out the furthest to position the lights!”

Nikki’s dress was from David’s Bridal. “I am a very nontraditional bride in a lot of ways, and so it shocks a lot of people to hear that I got my dress at David’s Bridal. Trust me, it shocked me too,” she told me. “I wasn’t expecting to find THE dress there at all, and was mostly going for the sentimental mother/daughter dress shopping trip, figuring I’d end up buying my actual dress online from Etsy or something. Imagine my surprise when I tried on an empire waisted floor-length chiffon gown and fell absolutely in love. It didn’t look like anything you’d expect to find at David’s Bridal, and it was just vintage-inspired enough to fit with our theme. I was sold.”

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A Bohemian Garden Party Fairytale: Mark & Jolina

December 19, 2011 in Wedding by Kat | 9 comments

 After seeing Mark & Jolina’s incredible engagement shoot, there was no doubt in my mind that their wedding would be AMAZING. However in my wildest wedding dreams even I didn’t imagine this. The theme for the day was similar to their engagement shoot - a bohemian/hippy chic, garden party fairytale.

“Mark & I have been active in the Philippines entertainment industry for quite some time now,” Jolina told me. “He plays drums and guitar for his band Rivermaya and they’ve been around for over 17 years. I’ve been a full-time actress, singer and recording artist for the past 22 years. Most of our lives have been spent on stage or in front of cameras, with the whole country watching and listening. Therefore we wanted our special day to be as relaxed as possible, no press, no TV cameras, no interviews, and all the ‘formalities’ were made as simple and meaningful as possible. We wanted to ignore tradition as much as possible to the day was 100% for us.”

“Only our official photographers, videographer, wedding suppliers, and our closest family and friends were there. It was simple, happy and fun. At the reception, we had our younger guests sitting on picnic blankets and throw pillows. There was a live drum circle performance before the program started and some of the guests joined in. Aside from the free-flow iced tea and lemonade, large steel vats we’re on also on the ground, filled with bottles of beer and ice. After the short program and fireworks, it was open-mic for everyone.”

The couple also added a few extra special touches to again, keep the day personal. “For our wedding invitations, we had scrapbooks made for all our guests” the bride continued. “We reproduced all our old pictures, movie and concert tickets, even airline boarding passes for each scrapbook. There’s a page where we showed what the ‘proper’ wedding attire would be. Mark and I used craft wire to create 300 miniature coat hangers and attached swatches of real fabric. Everyone said they really loved the idea.”

“Mark & I also attached lace to my shoes so they would match my dress better. They turned out much nicer than anything I saw in the stores… they’re one-of-a-kind because we made them ourselves.”

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A Farm & Festival Wedding: Roisin & Paul

December 12, 2011 in British Brides, Wedding by Kat | 10 comments

Roisin & Paul’s Somerset wedding makes me ache for those long Summer days again. The Apple Orchard at Brook Farm played host to their August nuptials – a celebration of love, life and all things good. The couple opted for a humanist ceremony led by Alison Orchard, “She was so crucial to the success of the ceremony, which was such an emotional and wonderful experience,” the bride told me. “I think lots of people thought it might have a been a hippy-dippy, tree-hugging, fingers down-your-throat service, but instead found it was a lovely and romantic experience. We wrote our vows and kept them quite similar to the traditional ones. We sang, ‘A little Help from My Freinds’ by the Beatles and I cried all the way through it.”

After the moving ceremony, came cocktails and games on the lawn and in the marquees hired from Abbas Marquees, “This was very much a DIY wedding,” Roisin continued. “All of my friends and family got involved which made it a lovely and personal wedding, along with being quite a lot cheaper. We picked stones from the beach for name places and brought ‘Brighton rock’ as favours. I also made lots of little clay hearts.”

“Our theme was, ‘Festival’ which was fitting as the site of the farm is less than a mile from the Glastonbury Festival site. My bridesmaids and the Best Man were incredible. It was quite an organizational feat and they took it totally on board. In fact we had a ‘hand-over’ on the Thursday evening. They then became in-charge and only came to me if they really needed to. This made me be able to really enjoy the day and not worry about all the details that had been prepared.”

“My sister organsied games in the field of ‘Welly Wanging’ and ‘scissors, paper stone’. It was one of the highlights of the wedding! It was a really relaxed affair, full of love, romance and fun. People dressed how they wanted to and children were very much allowed to run around and have loads of fun. At my hen-do, the girls hired a hoola hooping instructor and we learnt a routine that we performed at the wedding. Everyone loved playing with the hoola hoops and it added to the festival feel.”

“My favourite ‘home-made’ bits were the clay hearts that we made and put in the orchard. We just bought heart shaped biscuit cutters, rolled out the clay and hung them from the trees using ribbon. It made the ceremony feel so magical.”

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