Well I went through the whole day, how can I possibly drag this out any longer? Don't doubt me my friends, it would be easy to add another week. I've mentioned again, and again, and again, and again that this really was a DIY wedding. And if weren't for my mom, sisters, friends, and family it would not have been possible (Editor's Note: I would just like to point out that in all of Rylee's blog posts about the wedding, and an entire week devoted to the day, Rylee's thanked everyone BUT me. That's all). And y'all are like 'Rylee, how long does it take to tie a few bows?' More than that my friends, and I'll show you just how much more.
Details. I was in love with my dress. Even though my seamstress almost killed it, twice, and it weighed a huge amount and almost knocked me over when bustled, I love every detail. And I mentioned before but I love my veil that Tim's mom made me, it was perfect in every way.
Rings. What more can I babble about that?
God, Country Notre Dame.
The details of Notre Dame's campus I can't really claim as my DIY details. I didn't do it at all let alone myself. But I'm going to brag via pictures anyway.
Here's a detail I absolutely love. This lace handkerchief is my grandmothers. As each of her grand-daughters gets married she adds them and their date in their color to carry down the aisle. So with me, in my pocket (!!!) I carried my family and my role models in newlywed life. So thanks Gram for contributing my something old, my dress was new and you'll see below that their is a Rosary on my bouquet, borrowed from my mother. In the mix of DIY chaos we forgot to add the blue buttons to the garter as we had intended. Completely forgot. Got to the church and panic. Thank God for dress pockets and bridesmaids because I am proud to say that I was married with Shannon Ballou's library card in my pocket. Shout out to MLK Library and to quick thinking.
Flowers as mentioned.
I'm sure I've mentioned once or twice that Tim was a member of the Notre Dame Glee Club? Well, because of that, we were able to draft a choir of clubbers out of our guest list and have all the best at the price of our open bar. ;)
Saint Joseph's Farm was the location of our reception and the cause for all of the DIY maddness. It is the former farm and novitiate of the Holy Cross Order. It used to single-handedly feed the University of Notre Dame.
Skip to reception. Here's how all of Shannon and Torey's $13 project turned out. We are obsessed with the tissue paper pom-pom background.
The cupcakes were perfect. We had a smaller cake and filled in the rest with unique flavored cupcakes decorated most beautifully.
Our cake topper was from etsy.
And our beautiful cake from Macri's. Our dessert table was big and had a lot going on so I really wanted to draw to the cake with it's simplicity. I was asked over and over if I wanted flowers on it or more of a display, I like it plenty fine thanks.
Each of the flowers from the reception and from the guys boutineeres were from my grandpas garden (with a little help from my Aunt and Uncle's garden). They were all brought to South Bend from Ludington by family members and arranged by even more family members, honing in on the natural/rustic family affair. We were originally planning to glitter the jars but to save a bit here and there we ended up just borrowing my grandpas canning jars and embellishing them with a bit of twine.
The stairs were already in the barn, we just moved them by the dessert table to make it a bit more fun. We took some ideas from pinterest and added our own letters. Torey did this craft project with some scrapbook paper, modge podge, and card board letters from Hobby Lobby. Hobby Lobby was our life in our DIYs for this wedding. Did you know that they have a discount on one item per purchase per day. All you have to do is google 'Hobby Lobby Discount' on your phone and you'll get it. So it was ridiculous. I think my mom was in there every day for 3 months straight buying one item at a time. Once her daughters were home for the summer all five of us would go into the store, each buy one thing separately. Ridiculous. But efficient.
My sister Maddie designed each and every chalk board sign. And there were many. Each of them thrifted or garage saled, my love language. And aren't they spectacular? The mason jars were for each person. They had chalkboard labels handwritten by Torey and Meghan. And number labels cricketed by Maddie and tied by Liz. Gracias all.
As I said, amazing signage. These are from the bathrooms.
And this one was from cocktail hour.
Torey designed our guest book sometime in the winter. She was on the lookout for Snapfish having their free photobook deals and killed. We only paid shipping and it was a major task that was knocked off the list before Feburary.
Judy provided this beautiful wreath display for our cards, multi purposed. It was used at the rehearsal dinner the night before and transitioned perfectly.
I designed one chalkboard for the whole event at about 5pm the day before. Can you tell?
This was my vision that I am really proud of. I mentioned that I thrifted for the chalkboards. Well, first I wasn't thinking clearly and picked up a few empty frames. After spray painting them gold I knew exactly what role they would fill. I grabbed a few more and made them the backdrop of our dessert table. As they were being hung people kept poking fun or wondering what was going inside them acting with concern when I replied nothing. But I love the way it turned out. And the barn people loved it too, we left them there.
Our other large chalkboard was on the wall of the barn opposite the dessert table. Maddie successfully did this while sit/leaning on her scooter. My Aunt Kelly powered through our table numbers, she is a saint. Each was uniquely crafted with help of the cricket, Hobby Lobby scrapbook paper and an incredible eye for design. They are attached to our assorted gold bottles (thanks to everyones drinking efforts!) with mini gold clothespins.
Here are the table settings. Simple and affordable. I've already talked of the flowers. We got all of our dishware from an Amish Wedding Wagon, kid you not. Hello Indiana. Tim's mom provided the burlap for our squares from her quilting shop. All of our linens were purchased online cheaper than we could rent and ironed by my Aunt Becky. I designed many of the printed things (with exception of the welcome bags which Torey did) including our menu/ thank you that you see here. The napkins were folded and tied by Maddie and Meghan. DIY really is a group effort, can you tell?
But when you see everyone in the barn, having fun, everything you imagined it would be, it was worth it.
The outdoor space was perhaps the best feature of the whole reception. Cocktail hour happened and lawn games and star gazing and kids running around. We had one set of cornhole made for the occasion that I don't have a picture of but we stained them ourselves and added Tim and my monograms with the help of Cricket and STB.
Our beloved tent. Five years ago my parents bought this tent. They figured that they had enough kids and functions that it would make a return on investment. Five years, nine graduation open houses, one wedding reception, and one wedding cocktail hour and I'd say they're right. Only problem? You have to set it up yourself. Thanks to the Thursday morning crew for the help with that.
The cookie table idea is borrowed from my sister-in-law Rosemary and her family with my moms little twist. Thanks to Aunt Barb for seeing it through and making sure that everything was as beautifully as it looks here. After the cake and cupcakes were gone, cookies baked by Tim's and my aunts, cousins, mothers, and grandmothers replaced them. They came and went with rave reviews. We had set out some bags for people to take home some if there were any leftover. I don't think that there were any leftover.
The most important DIY detail went mainly undocumented. We had a twofold late night snack. Around 10:30, once people had danced up an appetite, we brought out my all-time favorite food; hot dogs. There were 150 hot dogs in a cart with umbrella and (part dos) there was a cart with my mom most proud purchase, a popcorn machine. Popcorn and hot dogs, the best wedding food ever if I do say so myself. We made these inexpensive popcorn bags with the help of the Everett women. They transformed lunch sacks with fun scissors and a stamp from... you guessed it! Hobby Lobby!
With it being a farm, and the dry summer, and a big barn we could not have any open flame. So I tasked Tim with coming up with a fun alternative and look what he came up with! This is our take on a sparkler send-off. Look at the previous posts and you'll see they were a pretty big hit. We were even able to find them in our wedding color. The walk from the barn to our car was so cool with everybody waving these around in the air.
No comments:
Post a Comment