Real Wedding: Clelia & Blake

Today, a gorgeous wedding sent to me by photographer Raquel Reis. One of the things I love to hear from a bride is what inspired them while thinking about their wedding. Clelia and Blake pulled from a number of sources for inspiration, from A Midsummer Night's Dream, to early 20th-century Orientalist paintings, to Blake's love of nature and botany. But above all of that, says Clelia:

"We wanted our wedding to be a celebration with the many people who we love and who have loved and cared for us. It was really important to us that every one of our guests felt comfortable and appreciated and that they had an amazing time. We tried in all of our decisions to be honest - to make decisions that reflected who we are, what our values are and how we live. We wanted to avoid a wedding that felt canned in favor of something that was personal and real."

In addition to several incredibly talented vendors, friends and family helped to pull this event together by helping to set everything up the day before the wedding. And what an amazing job they did!




Clelia's bridesmaids wore the same Butter by Nadia dresses, just wrapped in a different way, and each chose her own whimsical headpiece to wear, like this one by Which Goose.




Clelia wore this amazing heirloom veil, made in Belgium for her great-great grandmother's wedding. Her great-grandmother, grandmother, and many cousins have also worn it.


I love this idea - Wilma curtains from IKEA hung on the sides of the tent.


Each table was set with vintage lace tablecloths, as well as a number of old candelabras, coffee sets, and other decorative silver plate items purchased on eBay, for $10 (or less) apiece.


Oh that bouquet! Ariella Chezar gets me every time!


With over 30 guests under the age of 10, it was important to Clelia and Blake that they provide lots of fun for the kids. A petting zoo and bubbles station kept the littlest guests entertained, and several baby-sitters supervised dinner, sleeping and movie-watching so that parents could enjoy the wedding, too.


Some guests, aware of the "enchanted" inspiration behind the wedding, wore wonderfully whimsical ensembles. A few of Clelia's parents' friends even dressed as frogs and princesses (with suits and dresses to change into later) - if the couple and their parents have a sense of humor, what a hilarious surprise this would be!


With 300 guests, Clelia and Blake were worried that the wedding would feel impersonal. In order to counter this, the couple wrote a personal note to each guest, which doubled as seating cards. Blake and Clelia "switched" families, so she wrote to each member of his family, and he wrote to hers. Says Clelia, "Even though this was a massive undertaking and took a lot of time in the days leading up to the wedding, I feel it was well worth it. I think it really did achieve its goal of making every guest feel welcomed and cherished."




Clelia's father is, as she puts it, "baking-obsessed." So it was only fitting that he make the wedding cake: chocolate with caramel frosting and raspberry filling, a favorite of the bride. He also decorated it himself with sugared flowers.


How amazing is this cookie spread?! I think the word I'm looking for is smörgåsbord.







Venue: bride's parents' home, Connecticut

Bride's dress: Carolina Herrera from Mark Ingram's Bridal Atelier

Bridesmaid dresses: Butter by Nadia

Groom's suit: J.Crew

Petting zoo / pony rides: Pied Piper Pony Rides

Flowers (bouquets, boutonnieres, floral crowns, head table): Ariella Chezar

Flowers (guest table centerpieces): Kamilla's Floral Boutique

Catering: family friend, Joan Embree

Cake: bride's father

Best wishes and happiest regards to Clelia and Blake! Thank you so much for letting me share your beautiful wedding here on Snippet & Ink. And thank you to Raquel Reis for sending over these lovely photos - such a treat for our last real wedding feature of 2009!

Real Wedding Saturday: Amanda & Matt

When Amanda emailed me with the slideshow from her recent wedding, the photos, taken by Jessica Johnston, were so gorgeous that I knew it had to be featured for a Real Wedding Saturday. Then when Amanda told me that she and Matt had put this wedding together for under $15,000, I had to know more (once you see these photos, you'll barely believe it). Here's what Amanda had to say about staying within their budget:

We skipped some things in order to upgrade others. We wanted a unique venue and an amazing photographer. By having an ornate venue, we didn't need to decorate much and still gave guests a great impression.

Our venue does not allow hard liquor, so we served beer and wine and nobody seemed to complain. We also skipped the champagne, which saved on champagne, champagne flutes for the two of us and rental flutes for the guests.

Matt and I hated the idea of having a DJ - we think it's cheesy and we always hear horror stories about bad DJs. So once our musician left after dinner, our iPod came into action. Our venue had the audio setup, so all we needed was to bring the iPod.

Our cake and flowers were made by people who work out of their homes, so we didn't pay storefront prices. The cake was insanely delicious and only $2.50 a slice. Word of mouth is the best advertisement one can have!

If that's not inspiration enough, then take a look at these photos!


Amanda found some vintage clip-on earrings on eBay for $8, and clipped them onto her custom-dyed shoes.














Amanda's bouquet, by Michele Nonis (586-776-1201), consisted of orange and peach roses, white sweet peas and orange ranunculus.


Amanda's dress is by Casablanca - and she ordered it off the internet without ever trying it on!


The wedding took place at The Guardian Building in downtown Detroit. Most of the inspiration for the wedding came from its Art Deco style, and the color palette came from the colors of the elaborate ceiling: gold and orange.


Amanda made the pomanders herself out of tissue paper.




She also made these fabulous programs, modeled after Western Union telegrams - such a fabulous detail!












Day-of coordinator, Two Foot Creative.


The centerpieces were lots and lots of candles, to create a "path" of light down the banquet tables. I love that such a simple thing creates such a dramatic effect, and by not using floral centerpieces, Amanda and Matt kept their budget down.


There were only 75 guests at the wedding, which made for an intimate and emotional event, as well as helped to keep costs down.




The cake was based on Amanda's own design (a subtle Art Deco pattern) and topped off with a cake topper from the 1930s. Covered with white buttercream, each layer was a different flavor: red velvet with French vanilla filling, white cake with chocolate mousse, and chocolate with chocolate mousse. Made by Cakes by Lisa (313-881-2888).


Matt is a photographer, so he already had most of the equipment to set up a photobooth for guests - such a fun element, that didn't add a whole lot of cost. You can see more of their photobooth shots here.


Thank you to Amanda, Matt and the talented Jessica Johnston for sharing these stunning photos with us! What a truly beautiful wedding, made all the more unique by do-it-yourself
elements and creative budgeting.

For a closer look at the planning process, check out Amanda's Knottie Bio where she shares her story, her inspiration, and her do-it-yourself projects.

{to submit a real wedding, email me at kathryn@snippetandink.com}

Real Wedding Saturday: Ashley & Dusty

I originally saw a little teaser from this October wedding on the Southern Wedding Style magazine blog, and could not wait to know more! The combination of a super-stylish couple (the bride owns a custom letterpress and design company, Dolci Odille), fabulous photographers (Jesse and Whitney of Our Labor of Love Photography), a really cool space (Studio 900 in Atlanta), and a reasonable budget (under $13,000 for 150 guests) was too good to pass up. I'm so glad to be able to share it with you here!


Ashley purchased her red suede Chie Mihara Mary Janes off eBay.


Ashley's Suzanne Ermann dress (purchased at Kelly's Closet) combined modern and vintage styles, which was a look she and Dusty wanted to carry throughout the wedding. The dress was a light cream color, with a variety of fabrics (tulle, lace, satin) and textures, and a hoop at the bottom.




This huge letter "A" light sculpture was left at the studio after an Akon photo shoot the week before.


Ashley and Dusty's gifts to their attendants were their suits and dresses. The bridesmaids wore Betsy Johnson dresses and red Mary Jane's from Anthropologie. The groomsmen wore chocolate brown suits by Zara, red and white striped shirts by Ralph Lauren Polo, brown and cream Converse shoes, and brown wool ties by Nautica. How nice to not only receive these fun outfits as a gift, but also to have them be cool enough to actually wear again!




The ceremony took place in an all-white room with concrete floors and two garage doors on one wall. On every other row of seats were flower arrangements. Ashley purchased small plastic containers and spray mounted blue and cream fabric on them to create flower holders (they used this same fabric for tying bouquets and boutonnieres). She also made Reserved signs in the first row for parents and grandparents, and hung them up with baker's twine. Floral designer Little Sparrow added red carnations before the ceremony.


The ceremony programs were consistent with the wedding stationery, letterpressed by Ashley's company, Dolci Odille, on Crane's Lettra in Pearl White, with chocolate, red and pool blue ink. In addition to the ceremony information, they stapled a ticket to the bottom of the program for the Smilebooth. It also had a link to the wedding website where guests could see wedding, honeymoon and Smilebooth photos.


Ashley and Dusty made glassine confetti packets themselves for each seat at the ceremony. Dusty spent hours punching circles out of colored paper, and Ashley sewed on the label that said, Throw at Ashley and Dusty as they walk back down the aisle as husband and wife for the first time.


Ashley bought white vases at IKEA, and Little Sparrow filled them with red flowers: celosia, carnations, dahlias, Vanda orchids, and viburnum berry.






Ashley and Dusty said their vows in the style of Dr. Seuss!


Ashley bought round paper lanterns in bulk, covered them with cupcake liners (remember a similar decor item at Anthropologie awhile ago?), and hung them up with baker's twine. Do-it-yourself elements like this helped the couple to stay within a budget. Here's what Ashley had to say about that:

We started off with a budget of $5,000... but it broke :)
We did the wedding for around $13,000.
The main expenses were the photographers, my dress, the attire for the wedding party, and all the wedding stationery... although I was able to do the stationery for a lot less since I did it myself. The only decor that we had were the cupcake-liner lanterns and the floral arrangements. We bought the vases at IKEA which saved a lot. I was able to find the cupcake liners and lanterns online in bulk, so that was very cheap and helped out a lot. So... If we had gone cheaper on the attire, we probably could have done the wedding for about $8,000.






Ashley decided not to wear any jewelry, because she liked the idea of only wearing her wedding ring.




One wall of the reception room was a prison line-up wall where Ashley and Dusty ended up taking family portraits. For entertainment, they had a Smilebooth by Our Labor of Love, and put photos from it into their guest book. They used an iPod for music at both the ceremony and reception.


The reception room also had a graffiti wall done by Atlanta artists.


Ashley and Dusty opted for a cake and ice cream reception, because when they go to other weddings, they really just want to eat the cake. They hired a Ben & Jerry's cart offering a variety of flavors to go along with their simple buttercream cake. For favors, they set up a candy bar where guests could fill up glassine bags letterpressed with thank you for coming to our wedding and seal them with round red or blue stickers.


They also served grapefruit Izze and sodas in vintage bottles.


Ashley and Dusty stuck around until after their guests left for some final fun photos.






Congratulations Ashley and Dusty, and thank you for sharing your fun wedding with us! And thank you to Jesse and Whitney and Our Labor of Love for sharing these fabulous photos.

{to submit a real wedding, email me at kathryn@snippetandink.com}