I DO!...Think it was Fantastic

Did I happen to mention that my lil Sis was getting married?

Original artwork painted by the groom a few weeks before the big day. It was only fitting to display it for all of the wedding events.

"I always used to think that marriages were a simple affair. Boy meets girl. Fall in love. They get married. Have babies. Eventually the babies grow up and meet other babies. They fall in love. Get married. Have babies. And so on and on and on. Looked at that way, it's not only simple, it's downright monotonous. But I was wrong. I figured without the wedding."  Stanley Banks.

Father of the Bride 1950.

They did it! July 23rd 2010.

 

I have come to realize that weddings are a bit like Christmas...

you spend so much time on the planning and preparation and then the big day arrives, and poof the day goes by in a flash.

Hope you had your cameras out.

Let's back up to last July 2009.

Engaged! Now let's plan a nice, simple, small wedding. Tee Hee.

Of course I'll be your Matron of honor!

My vintage Maid of honor pendant. It made me feel official.

Of course I will help you to come up with some ideas to make your wedding day unique.

How can I say "no" to my favorite Sister.

I love to hunt for fantastic finds, create and concept. So sure. How complicated could it be?

I know it has been almost nine years since my own wedding and we got through that one.
What planet was I on...

but we did it.


I, along with my right hand gal (my super fantastic, ultimate organizer, mother) and loads of other amazing friends and family, were able to put together a wedding that was,
"So Katie and Zach".

This special wedding edition blog post combines elements from my weekly blog post, Thursday's Unique Picks (featuring great etsy sellers) with my version of the "Real Weddings" section on The Knot  (because, believe me, we kept it real) and The "DIY" section on Style me Pretty wedding blog (because we DIY-ed the heck out of this wedding).

See what happens when you ask this Garage Sale Girly for a few ideas.

Garage Sale Girly asks question to Bride: "So sister, what colors were you thinking of having at your wedding?"

Bride-to-be answers: "I was thinking yellow and green...and maybe a few other colors too. I want it to be bright and fun. I want it to feel like summer. A little vintage. A little modern. Nothing fussy or fancy. You know what I mean."

O.K.

Color inspiration from vintage pattern mixing.

It's a good thing that I know my sister so well. I was able to pull these beautiful vintage floral fabrics and this was what inspired the colorful summery palette at their wedding.
How did I use these fabrics at the reception? Slow down speedy, the day went fast enough. I want to give you all the juicy details leading up to the main event.

I would like to cordially invite you to check out their wedding invitations...

Amazing etsy find! It was a pleasure to work with Modern Girl Invitation. This was the perfect invitation for the bride and groom. Simple and elegant. They were beautiful!

My design for the rehearsal dinner invitation.

 No, I am not a trained graphic designer, but I play one when I need to. 

Gifts from the New Mr. and Mrs.

Keeping with tradition, the bride and groom presented their wedding party with Thank you gifts at the rehearsal dinner.

For the lovely ladies...

Vintage brooches bought for each bridesmaid to wear on the day of the wedding. They were wrapped beautifully in a reusable vintage fabric gift pouch from The Unique Bird's etsy shop. The bride even drew a special card for each bridesmaid. Creative Katie. Bonus gift from the bride, she even gave us our lovely bridesmaid shoes.

Sister found these beautiful vintage brooches in Firefly Vintage's etsy shop. Stop by their shop and take a peek. You might be able to find something special and unique for your bridesmaids too!

The vintage brooches added a personal touch to each of the bridesmaid's Aria dresses.

And for the boys...

As my sister once said when she was little ,"Jokes are jokes and men are men".

Black converse were the perfect gift for the groomsmen to compliment those sharp looking black suits.

(and shirt tail wieners).

Equally as creative as the Bride, Zach wanted to make a little something special for the groomsmen. Zach made his famous tape wallets, using packing tape, for each groomsman. (money not included...)

Looks like Katie...

In a nut shell, people always tell you that you should "look like yourself" on your wedding day.

Katie tried on quite a few dresses and they all fit her beautifully, but the dress she said "yes" to, not only fit her perfectly, but it fit her personality too.

The ivory colored silk dress was a Simple Silhouettes design.

To top it off...the perfect veil for Katie, was found on etsy from Heknowsmyname.

Simple, classic and beautiful.

Oh wait there is one other little detail...

Tie one on.

Handmade sash by me, your very own Garage Sale Girly,
using vintage lace and antique ribbon.

I think it was a great personality piece.

(but I may also be a little partial to the design)

I even added a little "something blue".

Taking inspiration from my own blog post last week, I sewed some blue antique lace on one of the seams on the interior of the sash.

Endless blooms...

Summer was definitely in the air that day (not only because the heat index was over 100 degrees), but because there were beautiful fresh summery flowers all around us.

Fantastic floral designs by Sue Kelzer and Lynn DeClark.

The bride's bouquet had all of the bold and vibrant colors that she wanted!

Each bridesmaid carried a bouquet featuring a different color of alstroemeria, that was accented with bright yellow mums.

This was my Bouquet.

 What is that back there hiding behind the coral bouquet?

What's the Program?
I was hoping to try something a little different...

I was completely inspired by a program that I had seen on the Style Me Pretty blog and since my sister was pretty open to new ideas she gave me the green light to proceed....

Once again, I am not a graphic designer (I know. No crap right. I can just picture all of you real graphic designers out there cringing)
...but I really enjoyed giving it a go!

  I have to say, I thought it turned out pretty well!

The minister announced the couple as Mr. and Mrs...
So hi ho,hi ho, it's off to the reception we go...

We didn't all get to zoom off in a little red corvette. Oh well, I guess it is their day right?

Location, location, location...
Dayton, Bemus Point, Cloverdale?
Each table was named for a city that the couple had visited together. No city was too small for me to find an image of a vintage postcard to frame and name the tables.

Katie and Zach even wrote a few lines about each city and what they did there. We displayed these little location description cards on these great coiled heart shaped place card holders.

No glitz and rhinestones here, just a fantastic, simple design from etsy seller Paper Leaves. It was great working with this seller, they did a custom order for me with just the amount I needed. I was thrilled when I got them in the mail and the place card holders were even cuter than they were in the photos. They were exactly what we wanted.

Take your places everyone.

 For the guest's place cards, I was able to make them twofold, if you will. Each name card had a little thumbnail photo of the city where they would be sitting...

We attached the name cards with photo corners to the front of legal sized envelopes.
Envelopes you say?

Sure! The flaps acted as a built in stand for the place card and we needed the envelopes for the guests wedding favors.

There was a little note on the flap to let the guests know that they could fill the envelope with photos from the photo booth that the happy couple had at their wedding reception.

I love a dual purpose piece.

We did have to fold and glue the bottoms of the envelopes to the correct size but hey, you can't win them all. The photo booth from Candid Keepsakes, a local Dayton company, was a huge hit! The hubby is still grumbling that he was so busy running around the reception in his new Cons that he never made it into the photo booth.

Centerpieces of attention

Now this is the part where I tell you how I used all of that lovely vintage fabric.

What do you do with a bunch (75 ish) of empty wine bottles (despite what you are assuming, I didn't empty all the bottles myself) and lots of pretty vintage fabric?

Since I make and sell vintage fabric wraps as reusable gift wrap for wine bottles in my etsy shop, The Unique Bird, I thought, why not sew a few (Maybe more like 75. Not that I was counting.). Each wrap used one of the floral fabrics that my little sis loved and I combined the florals with either vintage lace, or vintage fabric ties using levels of white and cream.

Decorating the empty wine bottles with the fabric wraps created a unique and colorful vase for the summer blooms.

I am not going to lie, I may have been a little distracted myself, at the reception. This was the only photo I snapped of the centerpieces. So fingers crossed a few more photos pop up.

Let them eat cake...or cupcakes...

or cookies...

I am not neurotic at all, right?

If I can't change the wall paper at the reception hall, I really needed to do something about the fronts of those plain white table cloths on the cake table, gift table, cookie tables etc...

What can I do with the rest of that vintage fabric?

Rosettes are kind of hot right now. BINGO!

I have seen them used in so many ways. I thought, why not use the rosettes to create colorful garland to jazz up those plain white table cloths. I got the sister to sign off and got started on my next sewing adventure.125 hand sewn rosettes later, I was really starting to question what was so bad about plain white table cloths anyway. I know, it was my idea...so no moaning.

During set up I started to see it all come together...

Just add a little cake and a few brightly colored cupcakes from one of our family's favorite bakery, Schuler's, in Springfield, OH, and voila!
This is the big picture.

Katie and Zach wanted to keep the cake simple and they weren't really hot on the idea of having a traditional cake topper. I needed to come up with "Plan B". I just did a little hunting around on some of my favorite wedding websites to find the winning cake topper concept. I just made a little banner and the floral designer added some color to the cake with fresh flowers. Kind of cute.

The finishing touch to decorate the cake table was adding a few flowers.

Just a little bit of garage sailing around, and I was able to assemble a collection of vintage green glass vases that we added to the cake table, that the bridesmaids could place their bouquets in while at the reception.

So maybe you aren't a cake person...the Bride and Groom wanted to make sure that the guests had options.

Getting by with a little help from our friends...

Not only one sweet table...

but two!!

So many amazing friends and family members wanted to help out with the wedding.

The solution was to have them contribute a few cookies for the dessert table. I think the result was mighty tasty.

Another little touch...that my Mother suggested, was to have customized cocktail napkins for the dessert tables.

I knew they just couldn't be any old napkins with Katie and Zach printed on them.
Another etsy hunt lead me to the paper hat's shop.

It was great working with this etsy seller. They didn't hesitate to send me samples for the bride to approve colors, before purchasing the napkins! Stop by their shop if you are looking for some custom cool designs for your next party.

Perfect for holding pastries...or a cold one!

Dancing the night away...

to the smooth sounds of one of Katie and Zach's favorite Cincinnati bands, The Connection.
Old school R&B and funk at it's finest.

Sister and our Dad.

Gettin' down with the get down...

Slow it down! It all went so fast!

I can't wait to see the photo's from the real photographer!!

Top to bottom: New Brother, favorite Sister, Hubby and me!

The party's over...

I can't believe we pulled it off!

It was so great that we were able to combine so many local and small businesses to create an event that was big on creativity, heavy on the elbow grease and had the styling and unique details that the Bride and Groom hoped for!