Real Wedding Saturday: Katie & Ben

After a week of budget-friendly inspiration boards, I thought it would be great to feature a wedding done on a budget. Katie and Ben managed to plan a fun-filled wedding, with plenty of beautiful and thoughtful details, in only a few months, and for under $5000. One of the ways they saved was by asking a friend to take photos, rather than hire a professional photographer. Since Katie is a big fan of Polaroids, we used Poladroid to create that vintage, Polaroid look...


Ben is a website designer and Katie creates custom stationery, so designing and creating paper elements, from the save-the-date to all of the signs for the wedding, was really important to both of them - and it was a fun collaborative project that kept them busy for weeks! They were married on October 18 - "Sweetest Day" (similar to Valentine's Day, but mostly celebrated in the Midwest where Ben is from) - hence the tagline for the wedding: How sweet it is.


The wedding took place at Katie's parents' home in Churchtown, Pennsylvania. Katie talks about the benefits of having the wedding there: It was all about family and fun, and having it at home meant we were not stressing about decorating, since we had lots of people on hand to help and lots of time to do it. And the weekend of our wedding, it meant that we could spend time with everyone who came in to town to celebrate with us. We had a simple Friday night dinner and drinks at a local brewery, then the wedding on Saturday, and then a really nice open house brunch on Sunday, so we saw everyone and had time to visit with each and every guest.


Katie wore a Jenny Yoo bridesmaid dress that came from Garnish Boutique. Her dear friend owns the shop, and the two worked out a trade - Katie got the dress in return for designing and creating the invitations for her friend's upcoming wedding. Ben's Joseph Aboud suit was purchased from Nordstrom Rack two weeks before the wedding. He also wore cufflinks that Katie made for him, each with one of their silhouettes on it. They chose not to have any attendants, but the ceremony was officiated by both Ben's step father (a priest) and a close friend (a minister). Katie walked down the aisle as the song Hooray, Hooray, Hooray by Do Make Say Think.


In lieu of real flowers, Katie made her bouquet, hair piece, and Ben's boutonniere from flannel, felt and cotton fabric - one of her favorite DIY projects.


Katie and Ben designed custom wine labels, which they used to re-label bottles of both red and white wine. There were also lots of fun signs all over the reception, including a drink list, dessert and dinner menus, and restroom signs.




At each place setting there was a bag that Katie had printed with pictures of the states that were important to her and Ben, filled with utensils and tied with baker's twine. Katie and Ben collected mason jars during their entire engagement, and used them to serve drinks, as place cards, and as candle-holder centerpieces.


Katie covered the tables with muslin and linen that she bought by the bolt.


Croquet and bocce ball were set up for guests (and the bride and groom!) to enjoy.




Instead of formal portraits, they set up a "photo booth" with fabric purchased at Jo-Ann Fabric for guests to take pictures of themselves. With small chalkboards for guests to write messages, it doubled as a guest book.


All of the music for the wedding was played on an iPod. Katie's brother and a friend wired huge speakers out to the yard, and the couple along with their 75 guests danced late into the night. A fire pit that Katie's parents already owned was set up for guests to relax when they weren't dancing.

Congratulations Katie and Ben - thank you so much for sharing your creative (and budget-friendly!) wedding with us! And for those of you who would like to see these photos pre-Poladroid, you can check them out on Katie and Ben's flickr set, as well as more photos of their incredible invitations.