L&S Wedding

About this Project

A labor of love for our 2014 wedding.

Luis and I were married at my parents' house on Hamlin Lake in Northern Michigan. From the get-go, we knew we wanted to create as much as we could for the wedding -- because:

1. Fun!
2. So the wedding would be as authentic to us as possible.
3. To keep within our modest budget.

The goal: colorful and optimistic; nature-inspired/organic; romantic, mix-n-match. Clean-cut bohemian, if such a thing exists?

A traditional wedding color palette felt a bit stiff and limiting to me (but we must have ALL the colors!), so to keep things cohesive we chose floral motifs and gold as themes and let things build however we pleased from there.

First up, here's the LS monogram I created. (Full disclosure: the initial sketches for this were done months or even years before we were engaged in a moment of girlish doodling.) I loved this little symbol of he + me + love. We made a rubber stamp of it and used it all over.

All photos below from the big day were shot by the incomparible Karyn May.

Centerpieces

The centerpieces contained:

• Vintage books (some spray painted gold, some wrapped in floral paper, others in their natural state)
• Bud vases and tea cups with mixes of bright, garden-style flowers
• Customized match boxes -- side 1: "Sparks be flying", side 2: LS monogram
• Citronella candles (dinner was in a wooded area) with vintage glass cups repurposed for votives
• Birch round table number stands made by my big brother. The base was made from a stump found on the property. The stem is from a wire picture holder I got at Goodwill, spray painted gold, and clipped the branches off of. (Initally the picture holder looked something like this, but with hearts, not swirls, and contained enough branches to cover all ten tables.) On the reverse of the table number was the menu.

Keepsake Postcard included in the invitation

Strung Flowers

We wanted to create a magical forest feel in the dining area at the edge of the woods. We strung lanterns from the trees, wrapped logs and tree trunks in twinkle lights and hung floating flower strings.

The flower strings were an improvised DIY project. We bought a bunch of dusty old fake flower bouquets from Goodwill, Salvation Army, and the like. I popped the head off each of the flowers, strung them through 10-20 feet of fishline and locked them in place with a ball of hot glue above and below each flower. I spaced them out a few inches because I liked how it created the illusion they were floating. The bottom of each string was weighted with a heavy turqouise bead so they wouldn't get tangled in the breeze off the lake.

Escort cards