It's All in the Details

When you go to a wedding, you don't always think about all the little details that it takes to make the day great.  From things like flowers, seating charts, the cake, pictures, invitations, centerpieces, there is so much to plan.  Whenever I look at wedding pictures, I love the details pictures.  I like to see what the bride has been working on, the little details that can occasionally get overlooked.  So, here is a look at the details from our wedding!

We got our wedding invitations printed at PDQ Printing, which is no longer in business. We got raised lettering, which I thought really made the invitations stand out.  I loved them.  We also made them so that we could fit them in normal envelopes and wouldn't have to pay extra on postage.  We also used a gmail email address for the RSVPs, which saved on postage and envelopes.  It worked really well and we got a lot of responses, more than we were told to expect.  It was convenient for us and guests.  We've been to other weddings that have done that as well, but as a guest, I really liked a reply email just to let me know they got my RSVP.  We did that for everyone and it didn't take much time but I wanted to make sure everyone knew we got their email because it was a different way of doing it.   On to some of our flowers!
 

flowers at the alter

unity candle

I loved our white flowers, but I hated those black bows on the flowers at the alter.  Kind of looks like funeral flowers, huh?  I liked the flowers, but just should have removed the bows.  I didn't really notice it until I saw the pictures though, so I guess it didn't really matter anyway!

bridesmaid's flowers

my flowers

Love the detail!

I absolutely loved my flowers.  I wouldn't change it if I could.  I got some black lace and white fabric from Joann's Fabric and brought it over to Blossom Basket and they did a beautiful job.  I loved the pins too.  It looked so classic and elegant to me. 

We also wanted to do something to commemorate our family members that had passed.  I wanted people to be able to see a picture of them though because I knew a lot of people hadn't had the chance to meet the grandparents on both side of our families.  So I enlarged a few pictures to 8x10's, framed them in black frames, and put a single long-stemmed white rose for each grandparent in front of the picture.  I also printed In Loving Memory on some place cards that I got at Michael's.

When people got to Memorial Stadium, we had a picture on their flat screens of us to indicate which floor the reception was on.  We had this hilarious picture of us from college when John bought us both Illini jerseys when we went to the Illinois game at Iowa.

John and I decided to have cupcakes instead of regular cake (half the price!).  And we went with funfetti, white, and chocolate.  A-maz-ing.  We definitely made 20-30 extra and definitely only had about 7 left at the end of the night.  I gave my cake lady some more lace that I got from Joann's Fabric for our top tier, which she wrapped around the round cake.  The green on top of the cupcakes was a little too green, I would have preferred it to be a little more pastel, but yummy nonetheless.  We also had a bit of an ordeal figuring out how to construct a cupcake tower.  It was difficult to find one that we liked that would hold 230 cupcakes.  We bought a cardboard one online with the intentions of decorating it.  That was going okay, I wasn't thrilled with it, but it was coming along.  Then my good friend, Emily Isenbarger, got married two months earlier and also had cupcakes.  I believe her now brother in-law made a while tower for their reception and she let us use theirs!  It was great timing and very thoughtful for her to allow us to use it because I was not looking forward to the one we had in progress.

  

Another detail you don't think of until you're planning a wedding is the seating chart (if you choose to have one) and how the guests will know what table they're going to be sitting at.  I played with a bunch of ideas, but went with something that was easy, but I thought looked nice.  I printed an alphabetical list on fancy paper and framed it in the same frames from the pictures of our grandparents.  

After you walked in and saw where you were sitting, you saw a bunch of pictures on easels.  We've been to wedding with pictures up and loved looking at them so thought we'd do the same.

 

University Florists took care of the flowers at our reception.  They did a great job.  We met with them once, showed some pictures, and they looked perfect.  The tables looked exactly how I pictured them.

Our favors were small boxes of homemade chocolates that were at each place setting.  They were made at Black & White Confections in Gibson City, IL.  They were so yummy.  We only had one left of those and had about 10-12 people not show up .. so someone was snagging some!  Our table markers were also picture of us on both sides with card stock in our colors (white & green) and silver number stickers on them.  I used rubber cement to glue them and definitely ruined John's mom's dining room table in the process.  Whoops!  I guess the rubber cement drying dried out the finish on the wood and left white spots.  I felt pretty bad about that one ..