small wedding planning: the small deets

I won't lie to you, these past two weeks have kicked. my. rear. end.
Deadines + lesson plans + grading papers + saving for Honeymoon ("Big Moon") + teaching Zumba + trying to have a normal life= Jordan in fetal position saying, "No, Life! Not fair! I will NOT!"
I was all, "I'm going to finally blog about my wedding!" ::fist in the air::
then I was like, "Daaaaang, adulthood. Why you no love me?"

Enough of that sob story.  E n o u g h. 

On to what I said I was going to write about in my last post: zee boys. :)

As you can tell by my wedding photos thus far, I am probably the most laid back person in the world. I am all about comfort and being myself. And for my wedding, it was no exception. Since I wanted my ladies to be comfortable, the menfolk were absolutely right there with them. Having been a wedding photographer for almost 7 years, I can honestly say that the most uncomfortable people at weddings are the fellas, especially when tuxes and suits are involved. Heath and I were in sync when it came to wedding plans. We had a small budget we were sticking to because we wanted to have a big honeymoon. We did things together, and any ideas I had, I ran them by him. Once I got my dress and realized our wedding colors were going to be in the "Fall" genre, I felt like it would be best for the guys to have brown tones. One thing Heath stressed was how he didn't want to have a jacket. Honoring his wishes, we opted for the guys to wear brown vests, khakis, white shirts, and brown leather shoes/boots. That was what he said would make him comfortable, and believe me, I wanted him to feel as comfortable as possible on our wedding day. Well, let's be honest...within reason. Heath took care of his guys' vests, and they were responsible for khakis, shoes, and their shirts. This was another big thing for us: we didn't want our best friends to have to pay for anything when it came to being a part of our wedding. We consider ourselves extremely blessed to be in the lives of Roger, Andrew, Jade, and Laura--extra blessed to have them stand beside us on our favorite day. So, after we established the boys' duds, we looked at details. I wanted to have their boutonnieres be something interesting and different--no flowers. This is an area in which Heath and I are so different. Heath thought flowers weren't "manly" enough. Initially, I wanted to have feathers be a major role in our wedding, but I opted out when we went "Fall." After a few things not really working, I decided to do something for the boutonnieres that were "totally Heath." I cannot stress enough the importance of having your wedding be completely about you. It needs to be yours. Own it. Love it. It needs to scream you and your partner. With that mantra, I decided to make the boutonnieres out of the fellas' favorite superheroes. Heath has always been a fan of Batman. Roger likes Wolverine, and Andrew likes Captain America. I went to the toy section of Target and bought the action figures and used fabric, hot glue, and a pin to make their boutonnieres. They were kind of a hit. They were quirky, fun and sooooo Heath. When I surprised Heath with them, he was so relieved and excited to have something that was a personal nod to him and his interests. Usually men don't really care when it comes to wedding things, but I think it is important to make them feel included instead of bossed around on what to do.

The Hunk

Heath and Andrew before the wedding

The dapper menfolk

I know some of you who have planned/are planning large weddings, and let me just say, my hat goes off to you. Heath and I had little over a month to plan and had a small, intimate wedding by most standards, and I still felt like it was hard to breathe sometimes. So seriously, you people who are doing it/have done it: I think you are THE BEST and are some of the greatest magicians of all time. Feel accomplished you all. Add it to a resume, "Planned huge wedding by myself with poise and class...most of the time." Do it and don't feel bad about it.

With the boys being taken care of, I had to figure out what in the world my bridesmaids and I were going to carry as far as bouquets. I didn't really care about having real flowers. Is that bad? Does that make me the worst bride in the history of all brides? I know I sound like I didn't really care about my wedding, but I so did. I was just more concerned with being married to my favorite person that everything else seemed somewhat superfluous. With that being said, my bouquet and my bridesmaids' were made by my mother and myself one evening with some ribbon, wire, and hot glue. Wal-Mart does a whole Fall thing when it comes to home decor and they had bunches of fall flowers for $5. So...3 of those bad boys later, add cutting, tying and gluing--we were in business, and I had zero complaints. I wouldn't recommend planning a wedding in a month to just everyone, but when you have that crunch time, everything seems great. I wanted my bouquet to be a little different, so it was slightly different from the others, larger, and contained a photo of my daddy from when he and my mother were dating in high school (they got married at 17). I honestly don't think, the bouquets could have been prettier if they were real. They were perfect in my book. We used similar flowers to make hangers for the pews and leaves of the same color.

My bouquet

The decorated sanctuary

Please put on your protective eye wear for this photo as my legs are pale some kind of MAJOR...but leaves! Yes...let's just look at the leaves...

A pew adornment

All of our bouquets

We also found these iron window panes shown in the last 2 photos at Decorative Iron in Judsonia. As you can see above, for what we were going for with our wedding, the church served a lot of decoration on its own. The cracked paint, original floors and windows didn't really want for much. It had its own charm and whimsy. We couldn't use candles, as they are forbidden in this church, but we felt like the altar needed just a little bit of something. We got the two frames just to lean on the back wall and used a wreath we were given around the time my father died. The colors were perfect, and as morbid as it may sound to have that as decor in my wedding, it just felt right.

Ok, mah lovelies. This wraps up this segment of my little wedding posts. Tomorrow (yes, please hold me to this), I shall be writing about our ceremony and reception. Then perhaps the next day (or let's be honest, possibly the next), I will be writing about our mini-moon. This is all to be done before our grand European Honeymoon-palooza that is going down in less than 10 days. Not that I am counting...

xoxo,
Lady

*all photos by Heather Canterbury