love in all the details

there are so many great things you can do with a backyard wedding when you put in a little creative elbow grease.  we saw it as an opportunity to fully portray in every detail who we are as people.  going by the book {tablecloths, specific colors, etc.} was not important to us in the slightest. we prefer to embrace the uniqueness of who we are, so we pretended we had never been to a wedding before and made everything up from scratch.

it's all about the little things that made our wedding cozy & unique:

as we made our promises to each other, our friend wrapped our hands in a long chord made up of scrap fabrics sent to us by all our friends and family.  it was a beautiful symbolism of all of our past experiences and support group binding us together, literally tying a knot.

for the music, we asked our talented musician friend to perform "queen bitch" and "rebel rebel" by david bowie, as covered by seu jorge in "the life aquatic with steve zissou."  yup, david bowie songs sung in portuguese. most people probably had no idea what those songs were!

since our ceremony was so short and unique, we didn't need to have programs.  i wanted something, however, to let people know what to expect that day and to thank those who helped us prepare, so i made up a wedding map.  on one side i had a conceptual map of all the things our guests could enjoy at our wedding, and on the back i had thank you's, our list of vendors, and our families' names.  everything, including the writing and the doodles, were hand drawn.  there's nothing like real handwriting to give it that charming feel.

i had multiple stations around the yard where people could find cute or interactive things like a "living room" setting with books that i made about our love {a comic book about our love story, a flip book i made one valentine's day, and a book of favorite photos and love poems}. another station had cute love cards that people could take and share with a loved one {downloaded for free from kind over matter}.

some of the other things i made myself were: blankets and pillows for the picnic ceremony, cute paper fans to keep our guests cool, labels for all the food and drinks, menus and tags for the picnic baskets {which is how we ate dinner}, signs for all the different stations, hanging paper bird garland, poms strung above the yard, the hanging backdrop for our wedding ceremony, embroidery loops, and other miscellaneous decorations.  dannon made all the desserts {cake pops, mini pies, and cobblers in jars} and the drinks {ginger limeade, passion tea lemonade, and sangria}.  our friends and family made the picnic dinners {grilled veggies, grain salads, and cucumber cream cheese sandwiches}, and my dad chopped down some trees so i could have cute pieces of sliced wood to use as platters and decorations.

we really wanted everyone to have a good time.  it was a celebration after all!  so we planned plenty of fun.  we set up a couple lawn games {badminton and lawn bowling} and had a blast dancing the night away!

instead of a regular ole guest book, we laid out tons of art supplies and blank pages.  our guests made us all sorts of art!  if was funny and sweet and beautiful.  we love to laugh, so in another station, we put out a pretty typewriter with a variety of scrap cards and asked our guests to type us their favorite jokes.  after the wedding, we compiled them all into our first coffee table book!

{"when you are married remember that love is a verb and it can conquer almost everything. except rent. make sure you pay that. oh and it doesn't do anything about STD's but that's why you're getting married. so good thinking."}

i decided to make the wedding favors interactive too.  one of our favorite things to do is mull cider on a crisp autumn evening.  we provided all the supplies for DIY mulling sachets with the idea that we would continue to share in an experience over the fall season, even though we all lived far apart.

most of our friends are big into swing dancing, so we hired a fantastic band {noto d}
to play through the evening.  dannon even jumped in on a song!  

for the whole weekend, i made gift packages for our guests staying at the house complete with granola bars, tea, post-plane ride yoga cards, and a cute hand-drawn map of the neighborhood where they could find coffee shops, restaurants, etc.  i wanted our guests to feel right at home, even if they had just come from across the country.

these beautiful photos were all taken by our friend crystal of crystal chanel photography. check her out!