When it came time to choose the theme/colours for our wedding, inspiration came from an unlikely item - a sheet of looseleaf. Our wedding would be school-themed, as an homage to where we met, and our colours would be aqua and red.
As someone whose craftiest pre-wedding endeavour involved cutting a heart out of construction paper, slapping on some glitter, and calling it a day, I'm not quite sure what I was thinking when I decided to take on so many diy projects for our wedding. In the end, though, I'm glad I decided to test out my craftiness, as our wedding was filled with many diy touches.
First up, our save-the-dates. The very first thing I diy'ed was our monogram so I went a little buck wild incorporating it into our save-the-dates. The outside of the boxes were hand-stamped and the contents included two 1.5" monogrammed fridge magnets and some personalized pencils.
Since I included a link to our wedding website in our save-the-dates, web design was up next on my list. To tie in with the school theme, I designed it to look like a cork bulletin board with notes held on with push pins. Partially hidden in the bottom left corner is a scribbled tribute to my husband's favourite band.
The main part of our invitation suite was made to look like a pad of paper, with the pages beneath containing a map/directions and the rsvp. The invite was held together with some good old staples and book binding tape and the whole lot was then tossed into a mini-folder I cut from a standard size file folder.
For our petal toss I ran some small white paper bags through our inkjet before filling them with freeze-dried petals and sealing them with a monogram sticker. Our card box was assembled from three mini-suitcases bought from Paper Source.
Our menu cards were also made to look like sheets of looseleaf, and we included some pop quiz questions on there for fun.
Tables were named after our favourite subjects (biology, chemistry, math, compsci, physics), so for the guest place cards, I attached corresponding 1" buttons declaring the guest's love for that particular subject. The groom and I had special pins declaring our love for one another.
Okay, enough of my bad, unfocused amateur pics. On to our wedding day pros... including a few more diy crafts along the way.
All professional photos by the wonderful Melia Sorenson of Lucida Photography.
After getting ready, we met up for our first look. I was a bawling mess and this trend was to continue for the rest of the day.
We took all of our portraits before the ceremony so that we'd be able to enjoy cocktail hour with our guests.
I was really happy with all of our flowers. Almost all the pieces were primarily comprised of carnations, save for my bouquet and the groom's bout, which were of dahlias.
After our portraits, we headed over to our venue, the Brock House Restaurant, for our outdoor ceremony and indoor reception. At the entrance to our ceremony site stood a sign I had made to look like an old school letter board. Our all-carnation centerpieces served double duty as aisle markers and I made our altar decor using manzanita branches and pomanders of red cupcake liners.
After the ceremony and cocktail hour, we headed inside for the reception. To serve as escort cards, we used test tubes containing the guests' names and tables which were then placed at the entrance to our reception room.
We scoured the local thrift stores for red hardcover books to decorate our tables. Not only were they in keeping with our theme, but they helped to cut down on our floral costs.
Our wedding cake was actually a fake one I made from styrofoam and fondant. Guests were served from a sheet cake hidden away in the kitchen. I'm not quite sure why I'm making that face, but I think it had something to do with our confusion on how to fake our cake cutting.
In the right-most photo above you can see the very last diy project we finished (the night before!), which involved around 30 paper lanterns ranging in size from 6" in diameter to 18" and lit from within with LED throwies. We couldn't be bothered to figure out the logistics of hanging them, so we just scattered them on the ground around the dance floor.
Lastly, one of our favourite aspects from our wedding reception was our photographer-directed photobooth, which was a huge hit. We ended up with over 200 photobooth pics, which is a crazy lot considering we only had 45 people at our wedding. I made up a box of props which included geek glasses, red flowers, mustaches, and some chalkboard speech bubbles my hubby and I made. The pro pics we received were hilarious and much much better than if we'd had an unmanned booth.
Wedding coordination: Fairy Godmother Weddings
Photography: Lucida Photography
Videography: Vivid Motion Wedding Films
Hair/makeup: Wedded Bliss
Flowers: Rosalba Buffat
Venue: Brock House Restaurant
Officiant: Brent Sheppard
Linens & chair sashes: Coveted Covers
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