April 26th, 2014
Venue: The Clark House, Livingston TN
Photos: Catlyn Brooke Photography & ABN photography
Cake/Cupcakes: Charity's Bake Shop
Dress: The White Room (Lebanon, TN)
Catering: Talk of the Town Catering
Bridesmaids Dresses: DaisyBridalHouse
Hair: Jen Webb
Weddings are wonderful. They are the accumulation of planning, stress, hair pulling, fights, tears, laughs, discussions, brain farts, and much more. But the day passes by in the blink of an eye. Especially mine.
I had an afternoon wedding, I was only at the venue from 11 till 4 pm. And boy did it feel short. From about 11-1:30 we had to get all the pictures done, which looking back on that was slightly chaotic... My photographer did amazing work and got so many lovely pictures in a short amount of time. PROPS!!
Around 4:15 the coordinator was practically pushing us out of the venue. We didn't get to talk with many of our guests, which we continue to regret... but at the time we appreciated the excuse to get on our way. Additionally, all the guests and family had to gather their belongings and be off the premises by 5. So the entire day was under quite the time crunch. According to my mom everything after our exit went just fine.
I wanted to share my weddings pics and a few details, mostly so I could link the pictures up with my Pintrest wedding page. I doubt that many will ever look at my board, but hey if it entertains one person or gives someone an idea that's cool with me! Of course I waited till after the wedding was over so I didn't have to see anyone purposefully using ideas that I wanted to be "mine." (I promise I'm no bridezilla!!!)
The venue was an ecliqetic house that specializes in weddings. They provided the flowers, catering, coordinating, decor, sound-guy, planner, and more! Best bang for our buck.
Probably the most important part of picking a venue was finding one that would relieve the stress of decorating, coordinating, and planning certain things. This venue was organized and punctual and we had a wonderful experience with them. The home is well kept and the first time I saw the venue I knew I wanted to be married there. Dream come true! :)
We had two lovelies taking pictures on our wedding day. Catlyn Brooke Photography did the majority of the pictures and all the main poses and important pictures. She is out of Murfreesboro, TN and has been really busy capturing weddings of Christian couples. She is a really high-quality photographer and her work is great! She traveled for my engagement pictures and was early to the venue on the wedding day! She took a lot of stress out of this process.
Our second photographer was my cousin Autumn (left) she is still in high school but is budding as a young photographer. I have no doubt she is going to make a name for herself wherever she ends up! We had Autumn capture the "small details" that we weren't sure Catlyn would be able to capture with our photo timeline being pretty tight. We also had Autumn do candids with the guests and get their photo holding a heart with their family name on it... I LOVED these pictures and I have plans for using them in a craft idea... Which I can hopefully put up here when I get around to starting it ;)
Cake was done by Charity's Bake Shop. And BOY the cake situation was a whoopin. I had about 3 different cake makers throughout this process... and two months before the wedding we were unsure about the status of #2. Thankfully Charity took over and fulfilled the order that I had with the previous owner. Everything turned out better than I even expected.
I chose a simple cake for my husband's groom's cake, and the design was a surprise for him. It represents the many travels he made between Huntsville,AL (where he lived) and Cookeville, TN (where I lived) during the 2.5 years of dating. The car was cool too. It was a time in life for him when he wanted to have something fun and sporty... So for about a year he had a Subaru BRZ, named BeatRiZ (notice the capital letters??). He traded in the car a little while ago to get something more "practical" and family friendly (AWWWWW), and the trade was NOT imposed by me... he did it on his own. So I wanted him to have a little reminder of the beloved BRZ for a long time to come. The model car now sits on his desk at work.
I decided on cupcakes for the guests to eat instead of cake. Why? Because cupcakes are so sticking cute and in my opinion more yummy. We had four flavors for guests to choose from: chocolate and mint, mango, chocolate coffee, and key lime. Everyone got one that they enjoyed and they turned out so attractive and beautiful.
The cake topper was just for us. We cut a piece at the wedding and saved the rest. And now two pieces sit in our freezer... yum??? My cake lady said she would make us an entire new cake for our anniversary! And we may be taking her up on that, because really you can't beat fresh AND free. :)
I could go on and on about how much I love my dress. It had a lot of work done to it to make it exactly what I was wanting.
I prefer to dress modestly. Weddings can be a big temptation to stray away from this. I didn't want to show cleavage or a lot of my back, that's just not me at all! I wanted to look classy, but be covered.
Originally this dress had a completely open back. The wonderful ladies at the White Room worked with the seamstress to create a lace panel for the back of the dress to cover my back. It turned out so beautiful.
No beads, no glitter, just lace. I love it!! It was very me, my groom loved it too :)
The Clark House had their own catering, Talk of the Town Catering, so we used their services at the wedding. Originally we were just going to have a dessert reception. A 2:00 wedding rends itself to not having to provide too much food, because *hopefully* most people won't show up starving. But with all the different cupcakes we thought the addition of some salty horderves would hit the spot. Believe it or not, it was cheaper to have the mix of sweet and salty than just the dessert reception. So score on that one :)
The flavored water was actually a pleasant surprise to us, everyone loved the cucumber water... even our burly men guests ;)
They are known for their strawberry lemonade... I wish I had tried some!!
My lovely girls were in custom dresses I found on Etsy (a wedding planner lifesaver by the way) from DaisyBridalHouse. It was a good/bad experience. The bad: overseas dress maker who spoke broken english (this made communication a little hard), the dresses although custom made, fit all of my bridesmaids too tightly (they did not allow for seam allowances, so we should have gotten each dress bigger than they normally wear). The good: CUSTOM made dresses!! (I had them raise the neckline, again for modesty and not showing cleavage, and two of my bridesmaids had dresses made with custom measurements for a better fit). PRICE, the dresses were only $80. COLOR, they had so many colors and the mint was perfect. Customer service was also good and the dresses were made and shipped in a timely manner. I overall loved working with this dress maker.
I do love flowers, but eh I don't really love spending a lot on flowers. So we had very minimal flowers compared to most weddings. Daisies, hydrangeas, coral and white roses were the extent of our flowers... but I think they looked beautiful all put together.
My bouquet was ridiculously heavy! It was a workout holding that thing! By my isn't it pretty??
Now to wedding details. The above picture has my something old in it... a picture from my parents wedding was attached to the bouquet. I loved how it looked in pictures. Very simple little craft from Hobby Lobby, it's just a cheap charm and a printed picture on regular paper that I glued to the charm and pinned on the bouquet on the wedding day!
Favors were fun and went with our "Mint to Bee" punny wedding theme. You just have to know my husband, he is one constant pun after another... so the theme was perfect for us. Anyway, I made 200 or so matchbooks out of scrapbook paper, the stickers are from Vistaprint, inside is a mint candy. We also did honey in jars with cute little labels. Shout out to my guy for filling up all those jars!!
The send off was awesome too. I bought little jingle bells at Hobby Lobby (ladies this is another lifesaver for wedding planning) and attached ribbon to match the theme. My mom came up with a rhyme and set it beside the bells.
It was SO fun to be sent off with all the guests ringing our wedding bells!!! I LOVED it.
My mint shoes came from Rack Room, and they were only $18!!! I bought the shoe clips to make them a little more fancy for the occasion.
Remember I said we had minimal flowers? I made ALL the guys boutineers. It was honestly a labor of love and took forever, but I loved how it turned out... It's something different. My flowers are since wilted and dead, but my hubby's pinwheel boutineer is still in good condition and able to go through whatever craft idea I can come up with.
Gel nails guys. Yeah, I sold out on my wedding. But look it's worth it.
We think we will recreate this picture for a far off anniversary :)
I was so nervous to see my groom, but doing a "first look" was SO worth it to us, all the nerves... well most of the nerves, melted away.
My cousin caught us from a far off.
We had a the Muppets song "Mahna Mahna" play after we were introduced as husband and wife. It got some laughs ;)
God has given me such a wonderful gift in my husband. I am so blessed to have him in my life, and I love him so much and continue to grow in my fondness for him daily. As he deserves to have someone special, I strive to be the best Christian and wife I can be and make him happy to have said "I do."
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As you nail lovers noticed this is not a nail post. I am currently deciding to broaden this blog and include other subjects that pertain to my life. Likely, I will still have many nail art related posts, I just desire to share other parts of my life. Thanks for reading and have a blessed day!
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