WEDDING BLOG

The couple: Kristina and Nathaniel

The Wedding: 8.27.10 – Rock Hill Plantation House, Stafford, VA

What three adjectives that best describe your wedding? Fun, casual and personal

What inspired your personal wedding style, and how did you incorporate your style and personalities into your big day? We spent a lot of time looking at DIY wedding blogs and adding our own spin to things. We definitely werent going for traditional. We really wanted to capture the essence of us while making sure our guests had a great time. Since our wedding was very homegrown we were able to do things just the way we wanted.

Looking back, what are the moments, decisions or memories that you love the most about your wedding? We love that we have such amazing friends and family that helped us throughout the whole process, especially with the day-of arrangements, decor, set-up etc. Our best man and his wife surprised us with a photo booth, which was an amazing gift that the guests had a blast with. We loved all of our vendors, especially Rebekah Murray! She was amazing to work with and had creative ideas for unique photos. All in all were glad we could pick and chose what we really wanted, not necessarily what was expected. We made all the decisions for us, and the best decision was getting married!

Wedding color palette: Lemon, chocolate, burlap with a touch of white and leafy green.

The Wedding Team:

Photographer: Rebekah J. Murray Photography
Ceremony and Reception Venue: Rock Hill Plantation House
Officiant: Rev. Will Cannon
Invitation Designer: Our friend Chris Brindley
Catering: R&R Catering
Florist: Our friend Afton Mormann
Cupcakes: Sweet Ladies Bakery
Wedding dress: Watters and Watters
Bridal accessories: Shoes from Nine West
Bridesmaids apparel and accessories: J. Crew
Groom and groomsmen apparel and accessories: Perry Ellis
Hairstylist : Studio G Salon
DJ: Matt Shew – Shewstical Entertainment
Transportation: Fredricksburg Trolley
Rings: Family heirlooms (bride), Shaws Jewelers (groom)

Thank you so much Kristina and Nathaniel!

To find inspiration for your our personal wedding style, don’t miss our wedding image gallery!

p> All images above by Rebekah J. Murray Photography

The couple: Courtney and Jamie

The Wedding: 9.25.10 – Avon Old Farms Hotel, Avon, CT

What three adjectives that best describe your wedding? Lighthearted, vibrant, personal

What inspired your personal wedding style, and how did you incorporate your style and personalities into your big day? Jamie is a graphic designer, so from the start we knew we wanted to have him design our save-the-dates, invitations, place cards, table numbers, and favor packaging. Jamie even designed custom wine labels for bottles given out to our guests at check-in (we honeymooned in Napa, CA). Immediately that made things more personal for us. We had such a great time collaborating on every detail and I couldnt imagine being a bride who didnt have my fiance so heavily involved. It was such a help and made the day more fun because we had worked on everything together.

Our families are from different states (Jamies from upstate New York and mine from the Boston area), so we decided to have our wedding in Connecticut (a midpoint of sorts) at the Catholic church where mys paternal great-grandparents were married in 1900. Legend has it that my great-grandfather rode his bike to the service!

The theme then became life is a journey; and love is what makes that journey worthwhile, both because of our 6 year journey to the alter and because our guests would be travelling to be with us. Our save-the-dates were vintage postcards and our invites had the themes quote along with illustrations by Jamie of all different modes of transportation for two (convertibles, bicycles, jetskis, etc.). Each table then had a number and a one of the transportation illustrations.

In terms of personalities, we are always laughing together and truly consider the other our best friend. We wanted that warmth and friendly feeling to be relayed to our guests. Our bridal party really helped us set that tone with great entrances, constant smiles, and beautiful toasts. Were so thrilled we had a live band because it encouraged dancing and having a great time.

Looking back, what are the moments, decisions or memories that you love the most about your wedding? Looking back, we are thrilled that Jamies design played such a large part of the visual message for the wedding.

My grandmother (who was ill on the wedding day) lent me a pair of vintage clip-on earrings to add to my shoes and I cherish having been able to include her in that way.

I also love remembering that the morning of the wedding, when I had a quiet moment with my Dad, a huge baseball fan. When I asked him how he felt he said, It was hard to sleep last night – I felt like it was the night before I was pitching the World Series.

At the rehearsal, the priest sprung on us that we had to memorize our vows. While we stumbled over the words a bit at the ceremony, it made the vows ours! The priest also introduced us for the first time using my last name, which immediately made the church erupt in laughter and our walk out of the church much more fun. We also loved our introduction and first dance. Jamie really enjoyed dancing will all of our guests!

Probably our two best decisions were hiring a live band and Megan Lange as our photographer. We received so many compliments and our engaged friends immediately asked for both of their contact information!

Wedding color palette: Orange, fuchsia and gray

The Wedding Team:

Photographer: Lime Green Photography
Ceremony Venue: St. Patrick’s Church, Collinsville, CT
Reception Venue: Avon Old Farms Hotel
Officiant: Fr. John McHugh
Invitation Designer: Jamie Teska (Groom)
Catering: Avon Old Farms Hotel
Florist: A Victorian Garden
Cake: Creative Cakes by Donna
Wedding dress: Kleinfeld
Bridal accessories: Shoes – Kenneth Cole with vintage rhinestone clips from the brides Grandmother
Bridesmaids apparel and accessories: Dresses – J. Crew, Earrings by one of the bridesmaids (Lauren)
Groom and groomsmen apparel and accessories: Calvin Klein
Hair and make-up: Hair: Samantha Boone – Regis Signature Salon, Makeup – MAC
Live music: Bock and Blu Music
Favors: Set of 4 cookies made by mother and grandmother of both the bride and groom
Rings: M. Lemp Jewelers

Thank you Courtney and Jamie!

To find inspiration for your our personal wedding style, don’t miss our wedding image gallery!

All images above by Lime Green Photography

The couple: Erin and Jeff

The Wedding: 10.9.10 – Marvimon House, Los Angeles, CA

What three adjectives that best describe your wedding? Quirky, multi-cultural, intimate

What inspired your personal wedding style, and how did you incorporate your style and personalities into your big day? Were a very unconventional couple and wanted the venue and feel of the event to be anything but mainstream. Marvimon is a really unique and intimate venue that is stylish but understated, so we thought it would be perfect for us. Its artsy, urban-hip and slightly rustic feel was just perfect for the feel of the event and the colors we chose. Our florist did an amazing job creating some beautiful, colorful arrangements with an organic feel. Our DJ also did a great job setting the hip and loungy ambiance we were after.

I would also say two of our best decisions were to hire The Youngrens as our photographers and Amber Gustafson of Amber Events as our wedding planner. Amber really made our day worry-free, and we couldnt be happier with how The Youngrens captured everything so beautifully. Everyone else Amber recommended also did a fabulous job. We were really impressed with all of our vendors and would highly recommend them!

Looking back, what are the moments, decisions or memories that you love the most about your wedding? The ceremony was one of the most important elements for us and we spent quite a bit of time writing it together. We wanted the ceremony to be non-traditional and religion-free, which was a challenge because that meant we had no guidelines or set traditions to follow. We did want to incorporate elements from both cultures, and so we included a slightly modified tea ceremony and poems in Vietnamese and in English, and received a lot of help from friends and family with the translations. It turned out to be worth the work to have such a personalized ceremony and was much more meaningful to us and our families. Although we wrote the ceremony together, we wrote our own vows separately and kept them secret from each other until the wedding day. Hearing each others vows on the day was one of the most memorable and special moments!

Our save-the-date video started out as a fun small project, and turned into a massive undertaking as we came up with more and more ideas and became more excited about learning how to use our new camera. We had lots of laughs creating it but certainly never imagined it would attract global attention! The reaction from friends, family, and perfect strangers across multiple continents was touching, surprising and at times overwhelming! It ended up being a really fun part of the wedding to show the video again to our guests along with some clips from all the media coverage. One of the reasons we chose the Marvimon venue was because of its awesome big screen and HD projection system, as we knew we wanted to show a photo slide show during the wedding. It ended up being perfect to show the video! (Check out their save-the-date video below – originally posted on Junebug back in February)

In general, I have only one word to describe the day: magic. Weve spent ten years together, lived together for five, and were engaged for a whole four years due to our move to Australia. Some people would ask do you think anything will feel different? I was a little bit surprised to feel that it did; going through the process of planning a wedding and formalizing our commitment to each other was really special and I feel like my feelings for Jeff only deepened throughout the process. It was an amazing feeling to celebrate our love and time together surrounded by everyone we care about. It was also such a special day with family: walking down the aisle with my dad and the father-daughter dance were really emotional moments. We both felt so humbled and grateful for all the love we were shown by our family and friends. It was a simply magical day!

Wedding color palette: Reds and golds in honor of Jeffs Vietnamese and Chinese heritage, and fall colors of reds, oranges, golds and browns in honor of the season. I knew I wanted to get married in the autumn because thats the season that we fell in love! 

The Wedding Team:

Photographer: The Youngrens
Event Planner: Amber Gustafson of Amber Events
Ceremony and Reception Venue: Marvimon
Officiant: friend of groom
Invitation Designer: Graphic design done by ourselves; watercolor artwork done by Louisa
Martin (the brides mother), paper products ordered from www.cardsandpockets.com
Catering: Thank Goodness It’s Sofia Gourmet Catering
Florist: Peony & Plum Floral Design
Cake: A Sweet Design
Wedding dress: Madame Butterfly Sp 2010 collection by Claire Pettibone
Bridal accessories: Christian Louboutin, hair accessory from Design Visage
Bridesmaids apparel and accessories: dress by ABS from Neiman Marcus
Groom and groomsmen apparel and accessories: design and tailoring by Wilson Mui (the Best Man)
Hair and make-up: Design Visage
DJ: Dash Entertainment
Transportation: Tact Event Management
Dance instruction: Arthur Murray
Favors: Koufeta (A Greek tradition, sugar-coated almonds, made by mother of the bride)

Thank you so much Erin and Jeff!What a perfect wedding day!

To find inspiration for your our personal wedding style, don’t miss our wedding image gallery!

All images above by The Youngrens