It’s been two months since we said I do and I now have to figure out what my next project will be. But until I settle into a new hobby I still get to think about the details from my wedding, especially now that I have all the pictures. If I had to do it all over again my wedding would be completely different; not because I didn’t like the wedding I had but there’s enough out there I like that I could plan five completely different weddings and love each one just as much. I can’t decide if Pinterest is the best or worst thing to happen to wedding planning – on one hand it’s a great source of idea and inspiration but on the other it’s complete information overload. Not to mention pins tend to not have prices so it’s a really great way to feel like crap when your wedding (or anything really) doesn’t live up to the $100,000 things you’ve pinned. So while pinterest is not the end all be all of wedding planning it is a nice starting point.
When I first heard people talk about wedding themes I thought the whole thing was nonsense – our theme is we’re getting married. But as I started to pin things I noticed a certain style emerge and decided that our theme was Southern Glam. When I did a survey of what people thought our theme might be I got southern romance, industrial glam, and pink and gold glam as some of the responses so overall I’d say the theme on my mind to what people saw was pretty decent. Here’s how I used Pinterest to inspire our wedding:
THE COLORS
Swap white for ivory and this is basically the color palette I stuck with for the wedding. The brick wall of the venue complemented the rose gold , using blush was my attempt to make the wedding more sophisticated and fall than using a straight up pink, the green brought in a bit of masculinity but was still soft and bringing in gold kept everything from being rose gold overload.
How we used the color palette:
Rose Gold – bridesmaid dresses, head table , cake table
Gold – table overlay, Chargers , napkin rings
Blush – flowers, table cloths
Green – groomsmen ties, flowers
Ivory – wedding dress, guys shirts, table overlay, flowers, cake
This crest has all of our colors and was used on our printables
THE RING
For years I always wanted a diamond with a halo but not matter how many version of this right I showed Shaun he hated it. Meanwhile Shaun liked the look of a solitaire diamond, which I think long great on long lean fingers but not so much on me, so with two of the most popular styles eliminated we knew we would be looking for something unique
My wedding band and engagement ring in my Mrs. Box (this box is all over pinterest and instagram)
THE DRESS
My dress is completely different from what I ever expected to wear. Once I accepted the idea of wearing a traditional wedding gown I envisioned myself in this A-line with lace detailing dress and instead I wound up with a simple ball gown.
My dress
BRIDAL PARTY
I love the dresses the bridesmaids wore, I loved them so much in fact I would have been happy to just get the same dress in silver and wear it for the wedding but no one else was a fan of that plan. I also considered getting it as a second dress but a wedding dress is so special and only worn once anyway I figured I’ll have plenty of opportunities in life to wear a sequin dress some other time. But, the girls look great in their dresses and I think this bridal party shot is totally pinterest worthy
Team Bride
The entire bridal party
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THE FLOWERS
This is probably the idea where my pinterest dreams from reality differs the most – not that I don’t think my florist did a wonderful job, I nearly cried when I saw the beautiful arch she had created but the floral set-ups of pinterest would cost A LOT – like $10,000 or more for flowers and while it would have be beautiful that’s just insane. Heck, in some of the wedding chats there’s people who think what I spent on flowers is insane. I really did adore our flowers thought and felt they were appropriate for our wedding.
Since we had the same ceremony and reception venue we had the centerpieces chill along the back wall for the ceremony
My bouquet, swoon
CEREMONY SETUP
Obviously it’s impossible to replicate the look of one venue at another but I think pinterest had an nice variety of similar venues and I’m actually more pleased with our ceremony set-up than the ones on pinterest. I don’t really have a photo of it but we had our chars set up in an arc of both sides, which I loved! I feel like this brought everyone in closer and made the ceremony more intimate, hopefully our guests liked this set up too.
Ceremony Arch
The ceremony
TABLESCAPE
In addition to flowers this is the other big area in which my wedding differs from pinterest dreams and flowers do play into that. Sure, I would have loved elaborate centerpieces but not only was putting a $400 arrangement on each table not in my budget but since our meal was family style we needed to leave room on the table for dishes. Don’t get me wrong, there are some really, really beautiful set-ups out there but with do dinner seated we still wanted out guests to feel at ease and setting up a museum quality tablescape just didn’t really lend itself to that fun meal with friends vibe we were going for.
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RECEPTION
Although not overly inventive our reception layout was something I came up with on my own and apparently we were the first couple at our venue to have the reception set up this way. Our venue was basically a big rectangle and the electrical set-up dictates that the dj be the right forward corner so most people just clear an area around there for the dance floor. We had the middle of the room as out dance floor with a head table along the back wall and the guest tables set up surrounding the dance floor. The goal with this was to give each guest a good view of the big moments – the toasts, cake cutting and dances. I also wanted people who aren’t dances to feel like they were still involved in the party rather than being at their table while everyone else was across the room dancing – my grandmother really enjoyed watching everyone dance and have fun, so much so that she now insists that she left the wedding too early (she left at 9pm which is when she was scheduled to leave and honestly she hasn’t stayed out past 7pm in YEARS so I was honestly worried she wouldn’t make it)
we did 1/2 tall and 1/2 short centerpieces, both were designed to not get in the way of table conversation
Guest view of our first dance
party train around the room
THE CAKE
Most cakes on pinterest are rather large but since our wedding was on the smaller side so was our cake. I really loved the idea of lots of flowers cascading down so I asked for our cake to have four tiers which made for a pretty but very lean cake, looking back I wish that I had asked for a dummy layer as the bottom layer so that the cake could be wider.
EXIT
I love sparklers but somehow I was under the impression our venue, which has grass out front, did not allow them. The pom-poms still gave a sparkly effect and allowed me to bring in a football touch. Let’s be real, the wedding for the most part really represents my style so I really trtied to give little nods to Shaun and what he likes. Terrible planning on my part because my shirt doesn’t show up at all in pictures but both of our football style shirts say Bernard and his has the number 10 and mine 22 (10/22 is our wedding date).
Our wedding may not have been pinterest perfect but I do think it was a great place to gain ideas and discover my wedding style. Once we actually got into the planning phase I actually stopped using pinterest and put my own personal touches on the inspiration I saw.
