Our Wedding - Planning & Details

Planning our wedding was probably one of my favorite things that I have ever done.  If you’ve been a reader for a while then you already know that I’m extremely Type A, I’m organized to the max, and I’m a very detailed person so planning a wedding was right up my alley.  Sometimes I think that I should have been a wedding planner for a living.  Since I felt confident in my abilities, I felt that there was no need to hire a wedding planner, and I’m really glad to this day that we didn’t.  My mom and I were a dynamic duo and we had everything under control.

As I stated in my last post, we were married in December 2007 so this was long before the days of Pinterest.  To come up with ideas for the wedding, you actually had to browse wedding magazines or scour the entire internet.  Fortunately for me, I had been keeping a folder of ideas for several years by that point, so a lot of my planning was already done. 

A T T I R E

Our wedding took place right at the end of college football season, and just at the beginning of the Christmas season.  As you all know, we are die-hard University of Georgia fans and our colors are red and black.  Since red is also a Christmas color, we thought it would be perfect to use red, black, and white with touches of silver for our wedding colors.  And you know what?  It was.

All I had ever wanted was a wedding gown that looked like Jessica Simpson’s Vera Wang gown that she wore when she married Nick Lachey.  Do you guys remember that dress?  It.  Was.  Stunning.  Probably the prettiest wedding dress I’ve ever seen to this day.  And I’m still crushed that they divorced. :o(  I was on a mission to find a gown just like hers, minus the sweetheart neckline as that was the only part that I didn’t care for.

We went to a couple of local boutiques where I didn’t find anything that made my heart go pitter patter.  A few weeks later we made a trip to David’s Bridal and guess what I found?  A dress that looked almost identical to hers minus the sweetheart neckline.  I had also found a few other dresses that I liked so I tried on all of the others first, even though I knew that the JS look-alike was going to be the one.  Here are others I tried on:

I tried on my favorite last and my momma and my bridesmaids and I all started crying.  We had definitely found THE ONE and it was at David’s Bridal of all places.  Isn’t it beautiful?  

Some other details for my attire – my scalloped veil adorned with a sprinkle of flowers that were similar to the pattern on my dress, the beautiful beaded clip to hold my veil in, my University of Georgia garters (we had to represent!), and my wedding shoes.  Oh, my wedding shoes!  They were just stunning – white satin with faux diamond encrusted ankle straps that tied in the back with white ribbon.  They made me feel like a princess!

I had a cute Victoria’s Secret hoodie to wear throughout the day before I got into my dress, and I loved that thing, too!  It was perfect because it zipped all the way down in the front, so I was able to get my hair done in it, and not mess up my hair when taking it off to change into my dress.

I am a big fan of tradition, so I knew that I wanted something old, something new, something borrowed, and something blue to wear for the big day.  I was able to consolidate my something old and something borrowed into one item.  Brian is a coin collector, so I borrowed three pennies from his collection – one from the year I was born, one from the year that he was born, and one from 2007, our wedding year.  The pennies were also old so that took care of two requirements.  I tucked them into a satin pouch, and we pinned them to the inside of my dress on the wedding day. 

Brian gave me brand new diamond studs (my birthstone) for a wedding gift a couple of nights before the wedding, so I wore those for my something new, and then I had some Tiffany blue undergarments for my something blue.  I’ll spare you the picture of those.  ;o)

On the wedding day, I wore my favorite Christmas scents, Vanilla Bean Noel lotion from Bath & Body Works with the Warm Vanilla Sugar spray.  It was perfect – warm and Christmasy, but not too heavy.

Finally, a picture of my wedding hair… these pictures are from the practice round a couple of weeks before the wedding.  :o)

For the rehearsal dinner I wanted a red and black dress to match the wedding colors, and I found this one.

The bridesmaids’ dresses were red and strapless with long black sashes.  They were very flattering for all body types, and I loved that about them as well.

F L O W E R S

I carried seven real calla lilies for my bouquet.  I wanted something simple and elegant, and those were just perfect. 

I had seven bridesmaids, so my mom and I decided to make their bouquets to save some money because real flowers are expensive, y’all!  We made small simple white bouquets and they turned out beautiful.  The boys all had red roses and B had a single white calla lily to match my bouquet.

We had a massive real flower arrangement made to go behind the altar in the church, and it was an assortment of different white flowers.

My mom made the pew markers and our cake topper from fake flowers.  Isn’t she talented?

All of the arrangements for the reception were fake as well.  We ended up having 250+ people in attendance (we had invited around 500 if I’m remembering correctly), so we had a LOT of tables to cover and real flowers would have cost a fortune.  We did several different arrangements on the tables – some had tall skinny vases with white flowers, some had tall rectangle vases filled with white and silver Christmas balls with some snowy branches spilling out of the top.  Some had floating candles or white flowers in shorter vases.  And then we sprinkled fake ice on the tables around the centerpieces for an added touch.

G I F T S

For the parents – silver engraved picture frames with a picture of ourselves with our parents when we were little on one side, and an empty slot for them to fill with pictures of us from the wedding day on the other side.  They were all wrapped in white and silver paper.  And please excuse the pictures of the frames... my photography skills were not as great back then.  Haha.

For the bridesmaids – necklaces to wear in the wedding, silver picture holder keychains engraved with their initials, monogrammed koozies in our wedding colors, Shut Up & Kiss Me Mints, and our snowflake wedding Christmas ornament all wrapped up in a pink sequin pouch from Victoria’s Secret.  And I even found gift bags to match the wedding colors.  :o)  In addition to all of those goodies, I also gave my maid of honor a special Maid of Honor Christmas ornament.

For the groomsmen – personalized beer mugs wrapped in our wedding colors.

Favors for the guests – I purchased some personalized ribbon with our names and wedding date and strung them on snowflake ornaments.  The ornaments adorned the two Christmas trees in our reception and we had notes on the tables for the guests to take one before they left.  All of the leftovers now hang on the Christmas tree in our master bedroom each Christmas.  You can see the tree in my home tour from last year here.

P A P E R G O O D S

Everything had a Christmas or winter theme, so we ordered invitations with snowflakes sprinkled around a shimmery pearl border.  All of the place cards and reserved signs reflected the snowflake theme as well, and our thank you notes matched the invitations.

My mom made the programs for the ceremony.  We chose our favorite engagement photo for the cover, and another favorite for the back. 

We made Thank You signs to hold up in some of our pictures so we could include those in our thank you notes… how’s that for Pinteresty before Pinterest was ever even invented?!

F O O D

Since our wedding was at 7:30 in the evening, we decided to do heavy hor d’oeuvres for the reception as many people ate dinner before the wedding.  On the menu was:

Pimento cheese and chicken salad finger sandwiches

Shrimp and cocktail sauce

Chicken tenders

Pigs in a blanket

Cheese and crackers

Spinach and artichoke dip

Chicago style mini pizzas

Meatballs in tomato-red wine sauce

Fresh fruit

Veggies

Beer and wine

Assortment of carbonated beverages and water

Our wedding cake was five tiers – the top, third, and fifth tiers were all vanilla cake, the second tier was lemon, and the fourth tier was strawberry, my personal favorite.  If I close my eyes and concentrate, I can still taste it!

The groom’s cake was chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and it was surrounded by chocolate covered strawberries.

O T H E R D E T A I L S

I won’t go into much detail, but here is a look at some of the other details from the ceremony and reception – champagne flutes, baby pictures of us that sat on the guest book table, the guest book and pen, serving set, card box, and cameras placed on every table at the reception.

And just for fun, this is what our kitchen looked like the week leading up to the wedding.  It was a major explosion of wedding stuff! 

Whew, this may have been my longest post ever.  Are you still here?

I don’t want to burn everyone out by cramming all of the posts together so I’ll be back in a few days with more wedding fun!  ;o)

*Linking up with Home of Malones for Thoughts for Thursday.