a toast to wedding details

every wedding, and especially reception, has so much time and money and effort and blood sweat and tears put into it that honestly. i tell my clients "if you can get through planning a wedding/reception with this man, then you two can get through almost anything."

my wedding was no exception. but... because it was my wedding, i loved every aspect of it. the good and the bad.

garrison and i tried our hardest to make our wedding day OURS. meaning: when it came down to even the tiniest of details, we wanted it to be undoubtedly "us" not typical and beautiful, but maybe instead a little quirky, and maybe it didn't fit with the "theme" but it was ours. garrison was amazing, and helped me and gave input with every question i asked him. and it was always a genuine answer not just the typical guy answer of "whatever you want baby, it's your day, i love you" he would really give his opinion and i will always love our day because it was us, not just me. our favorite colors, foods, decorations, music, etc not mine.

i have quite a few clients at work who are getting married soon. i absolutely love when my clients get married. those excited conversations in my chair, while im doing their hair, talking about the proposal and wedding dress, and themes for the reception. it's like i get a recap of the happiest moments in their life all under an hour. but, selfishly, another reason i love when my clients get married is because it lets me relive my own wedding day and remember all those littlle details.

i never wrote a post about my wedding day on this blog. i'm going to soon. but first... the fun part of planning my wedding day: the details.

 something old something new something borrowed and something blue.
(the blue ring was the actual ring that he proposed to me with since he proposed impromptu.)

 all of my bridesmaids had different patterned tights. we didn't want our bridal party to be matchy-matchy so this helped separate each of them.

 my shoes, his socks. (tip: we ended up getting the socks on amazon because argyle socks are hard to find! especially if your getting them for the entire bridal party)

 this picture was the exact image i had in mind the entire time while trying to figure out what i wanted m bridesmaids to look like. the sashes were made out of ribbon from tai pan.

the grooms men weren't matching either. we just told them to wear gray or black slacks. it worked out great.

 my bouquet was actually out of the dried flowers he gave me from when we first started dating. at the reception we put them on a display table with a printed and framed story of how we met and our first date (read more about that later) putting the bouquet on a table was a smart decision so that the flowers wouldn't get smashed by being hugged and so that they wouldn't be on the floor.

our rings. mine is delicate and feminine, his is manly and looks kinda like something you would find in a garage.

the kissing bell, i don't know who started this but that person is a genius! you pass around a basket during the luncheon with money and a bell in it. each time the bell is rung the bride and groom have to kiss for as long as the bell is ringing. you can only ring the bell if you put some money in the basket. it's awesome for the guests because they get to interrupt us from eating, and try to make us kiss in the most awkward times, and it's awesome for us because... extra honeymoon money!!!

 for our sign in table we had a photo booth with dress up items, and we had two strips printed out. one for them to keep, and the other for them to use for our sign in book. we provided paper, and scrapbook supplies, and just let them be creative. it has been one of our favorite parts of the wedding. it's such a great way to remember who came, and in the future when we are telling our kids about our wedding day, we will be able to show them what aunt sue and uncle joe looked like back in the day. plus, some of our friends did some pretty hilarious story telling with their pictures and stickers.

 we made our backdrop... we chose oragami birds because on our first date we attempted failed to make a huge orgami crane out of poster board paper on the floor at barnes and noble. instead, we made these oragami birds with all of our friends and roommates. i think we had a total of 600 or so... i definitely know how to make them now... i could make them in my sleep. but, this little task actually was perfect for us because as we were engaged, all we wanted to do was make-out. -BIG shocker- but, this gave us something to do with our hands instead while watching movies, talking, etc so it helped us stay clean until our wedding day.

in this image you can see that i gave all my bridesmaids these bracelets instead of a corsage or bouquet.

 in this picture you can kinda see the flower clips my sisters and i made to give to my nieces on both sides of the family. that way they felt included in the bridal party as well.

 i don't like live flowers, they are expensive and only last for a few days, and honestly just hard to work with. plus, since i didn't have the time on my wedding day to do the arrangements myself i would have had to hire someone to do it for me. so instead, i just made these "kissing balls" out of styrofoam balls and fake flowers and hung them with ribbon on sticks. all supplies were from joanns. for the vases and frames i think i had to go to a total of 20 or so DI's and antique stores to get all different frames and vases. but, it ended up being cheaper than i thought and the trips to the stores were way fun dates for us to have throughout the engagement when we needed a break. plus, i've been able to let friends borrow them for their weddings, and use them in my home. the "kissing balls" are now ornaments on my christmas tree. our only objectives for centerpieces was to make sure they were skinny and tall so people could still see and talk with people across from them and tall because the room had very high ceilings.

 through the generations picture display, both of our grandparents and parents picture, paired with one of our own.

 my mom made allllll of the dessert bars that were served. we had lemon bars (to match the grey and yellow color scheme of course) raspberry bars, and chocolate oatmeal bars served on antique platters. we also served candy in little spots along the line. that way the people had something to munch on while they were waiting in line. we've been told that was SO much better than a candy table at the end of the reception.

our wedding video was made by my best friend chelsey, and set to this song. basically... it's just a video of us kissing. because we did it with my friend instead of a professional videographer we had NO clue what to do or activities to do while filming so... it ended up being a "kissing-in-the-library film". these kids knew what was up. :)

when the time came for us to cut the cake, there were still a bunch of people in line, instead of letting them come slowly to us, we decided to leave our parents, and walk down the line to say "thanks for coming" that way, if they wanted to talk to our parents, they could stay in line. but, we were able to keep the reception rolling and get out of there in time. seriously, this is the best thing we ever did. if not, we easily would have left an hour or two later than planned.

 the cake. oh the cake. i knew i wanted to share the story of our proposal somewhere in the reception so... i asked my cake decorater melina if she would make a cake that resembled a tree. next to the cake we typed up a story of our proposal and printed a picture of us when we got engaged standing next to "the tree" we used two birds as cake toppers instead of the traditional bride and groom. and i also had a batman grooms cake made for garrison. it's a loooong story but, in short. he drove a literal bat-mobile in high school and so he's just batman.

 how epic is this picture... right! oh clark, you are an amazing photographer.

 "cutting the cake" pictures are awkward no matter what... but no, we did not shove it into each others faces due to our parents threatening request.

 the garter... no words. just look at the pictures. :)

 and the bouquet toss (we had a different bouquet made by my cousin spur of the moment for this, tossing my dried flowers probably would not have gone over very well)

 your supposed to have the boy who caught the garter, and the girl who caught the bouquet dance together but... they wouldn't have it since they were next door neighbors so.... we just took a picture with them instead.

 our first dance was to this song. we chose teenage dream because we wanted a song that would continue to come on the radio later on in life. but, we went with boyce avenue's arrangement because they changed the words a bit to be more like "us" and because it was a slower tempo that we could dance to.

 and of course... the father daughter/mother son dance. i've looked forward to this my whole life and yes, i totally cried. we chose butterfly kisses by bob carlile to dance to.

 after those two dances, the real party began. we were so glad that so many of our friends could make it. usually at weddings the dances are hard to pull off, but because so many of our young friends stayed for the entire reception we were able to have a really awesome party that i hear even continued after we left. :)

 it's not a wedding unless the car gets decorated:

here's a shout out to my good friend and photographer clark goldsberry. seriously, he was THE BEST. we went to school together and i've always loved his work. he is all big time and professional now but i'm so glad that we were able to have him as our photographer for our wedding. he captured everything, including all these little details perfectly. it's due to him that we have so much proof of all the fun we had that day. thanks again.

the luncheon was held at the joseph smith memorial building
the reception was held in the provo library ballroom
my dress is from Frenzy in Midvale, UT