The Wedding Planner, Part 4

Be sure you have read The Wedding Planner, Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3!

My favorite part of any wedding is, no surprise, the food!

The parents of the bride, Andrea and Mark, really wanted the wedding to reflect Nathan & Emily’s tastes so they let them totally choose the menu.

From the start they knew they wanted to have Key Lime pie instead of cake.  After searching around for a place to order pies from, they ended up enlisting some friends and baking 200 individual pies.  It took them about 3 1/2 hours to make them all and they had to raid quite a few stores for all the crusts that they needed.  They were delicious and a fun treat.

For the lunch menu, they wanted Mexican.  They chose a local favorite in the Lansing area called EL AZTECO.  They also decided to let the guest eat upon arrival at the reception rather than have them wait for the wedding party to arrive.  This made for very happy guests with tummies filled with delicious Mexican food when the photos were done.

The food was served buffet style with clear plastic plates from Sam’s Club and plastic silverware that they rolled up into white napkins and tied with twine.  The wedding invitations that Andrea’s daughter,Lauren designed consisted of 5 3×5 cards that were tied together with twine also.

Andrea affectionately calls their wedding style SHABBY CHIC.

They also had a fun candy bar at the reception.

They chose candy that they liked!  They made it the favor for everyone to take home.  Andrea learned that the tricky part of doing a candy bar is that you need 2-3 times the amount of candy that will actually be taken home or consumed in order to make it look FULL.  A great tip they had was to put small bowls overturned inside some of the big punch bowls that they used to take up space and make it look fuller.

Again, Andrea enlisted help and gave one of her friends the list of all the candy and she bought it all at Sam’s Club and Gordon Food Service in bulk.  They bought little plastic gusseted bags that had white lace printed on them and came with silver twist ties.  They were a little bigger than they wanted people to have so they trimmed them down.  I was surprised how many people loved it!  Even the older people still loved the candy!

This was definitely a wedding full of love and attention to what really matters!  Andrea was able to put together an amazing, not to be forgotten, wedding of her dreams for her daughter while staying within their families budget and not going totally crazy!

Thanks Andrea for sharing your photos and all the great information!!

The Wedding Planner, Part 3

Be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 of The Wedding Planner.

The flowers are an important part of a wedding but they can also be an expensive part!  One of the best ways to save money on flowers is to do it yourself.  It’s easier than you think!

Andrea said they had never done flower arranging before except to help with her sister’s wedding last year, but they decided to give it a try.  She searched the Internet for sites to order flowers from and chose fiftyflowers.com because they had wonderful reviews from their customers.  Andrea was a little scared to order because she really wasn’t sure how many to get, but she just ordered what they could afford and figured if they didn’t have enough, they’d buy local at the last minute.

The flowers arrived on Thursday morning via FedEx.  They trimmed them all and placed them into large buckets from home depot for the next 24 hrs.

Some of them were still not opened and fiftyflowers told them to mix a solution of 1 tsp of vinegar, 1 tsp salt and 1 tsp of sugar  with a 1/2 gallon of water and that would force the blooms to open.  Nathan, the groom, is an IT major at Michigan State University, so they decided to break up some computer parts (ram, floppy drive, etc) and mingle it in with the boutonnieres for him and all his groomsmen.  They were cute!

The bouquet for all the women were made next and then the rest of the corsages.

All the flowers that were left were arranged at the reception site on Friday afternoon.

They used White Ranunculus, Color me Purple Garden Centerpiece (which gave them a great variety) and then Purple Lisianthus.  They borrowed clear vases of all different shapes and sizes for the tables.  Some tables had one, some had more if the vases were small.

I loved how they used all different vases and Mason jars!

Jars of flowers were hung from the pews in the church too – lovely!

Next Up:  The Wedding Food!

The Wedding Planner, Part 2

Of course one of the first steps in planning a wedding is deciding on a color scheme for the event.

Emily chose the colors for the wedding after she went dress shopping which I think was a brilliant idea.  Instead of deciding on a color scheme and then trying to find dresses that matched she first found the dresses she loved and the colors they were available in and then used that to establish her color scheme!

She really liked the combination of green & purple (actually LAPIS and CLOVER) that were available in the dresses she chose.  With 7 bridesmaids she thought it would be good to break it up with more than one color.

Even though those were the COLORS for the wedding, they decided not to go too crazy with everything in purple & green all over the place.  This is Andrea and Mark’s second 2nd daughter to get married and they told both of them that the wedding is a special day, but it is just A DAY, not A MARRIAGE.  They wanted it to be pretty, fun, original & special, but they did it on reasonable budget.  So wise!

The main thing they did in the color scheme was the paper lanterns.  They saw some fun ideas for using them at receptions online and  ordered them all, on sale, from asianideas.com. They ordered green too, but in the end, they sent the green back and went for purple, light purple and white.

They even used them at the front of the church to bring the theme of the reception into the beginning of the event.

They hung them all with fishing line.  It took a long time to hang them all and a few got ruined in the TORRENTIAL RAIN they had for 2 days prior to the wedding, but it really made the tents look magical.  They strung inexpensive tulle around the whole tent wrapped with white Christmas lights.  They borrowed the lights from all their friends and just had them tape their names onto each so they could return in the end.

About a week before the wedding they decided they wanted to have assigned seating at the tables and thought of the idea of Names for table titles instead of numbers.  The Names consisted of of things that were important to the couple and told the story about them to the people sitting there.

They picked up sticks in the woods and attached the table signs with twine to them and stuck them into the centerpieces.  We hung the individual names or family cards from twine clothes line that was attached to cedar posts and cemented into buckets.  Her friend Chantelle came up with this idea.  As people walked up to the location, they just removed their name from the clothes pin and searched for their table.

Next Up:  The Wedding Flowers!

The Wedding Planner, Part 1

Over the next week or so I am excited to share with you some photographs and details from the wedding of a friend’s daughter.  This is Andrea’s second daughter to get married so she’s getting to be a wedding expert!

I read a lot of wedding blogs and I am always blown away by the amazingly beautiful things I see.  Most of them are put together by professional wedding planners and designers.  So beautiful but for the majority of us just not in our budget.

When I saw the photos of Andrea’s daughters wedding that she posted on Facebook I was so excited.  You could feel the love that went into putting this wedding together.  It wasn’t a high price, Hollywood style wedding but it was a beautiful wedding that fit into their families budget that was put together by family and friends that loved the bride and groom.  It was a beautiful day that accomplished their primary goals:

#1 that God would be glorified in the event

#2 Nathan & Emily’s love would shine for all the world to see

#3 that not only would Nathan & Emily have FUN, but it would be a joyous occasion for all! Andrea says they met all our goals and then some!

Aren’t Nathan & Emily darling!

The reception was held at their friend’s beautiful farm, Stepping Stones Farm in Michigan. Originally they were going to place the tents on the lawn, but when they considered that Michigan usually gets their April Showers in May, they started worrying about squishy lawns. So, they decided to use the tennis courts.

Two large tents were place on the court after the net was removed. One tent was a 30×40 rectangle and the other was a 30×40 hexagon. They rented the tents, tables, chairs, and dance floor.

At the last minute they borrowed another small square tent with 3 sides from friends.  They butted that right up to the side of the other two for the gift table and the Candy Bar. Their hope was to NOT use the walls for the tents, but they  kept them on until just hours before the reception when the rain stopped and the sun came out!

Idea Board}Safari Wedding Brunch

Ellen recently contacted me about helping her put together some ideas for her son’s wedding brunch.  The brunch would be held at a hotel the morning after the wedding for all the out of town guests and as a final send off before the bride and groom left on their African Safari honeymoon.

Ellen’s main concern was not letting it look too much like a child’s party.  She wanted a sophisticated look but one that celebrated the adventure the bride and groom were going to be enjoying!

Here is the idea board I put together for Ellen’s party.  She also received a list of links to the ideas shown.

If you  have an upcoming event or party you would like some help with please visit my Shop to see the various packages I offer.