Final wedding post

This will (hopefully) be my final wedding post. I still have odds and ends to sift through and put away, but I’m ready to return to quilting! My studio desperately needs to be put back in order (again!). That will be next week’s project.

But first, if you’re not sick of wedding-related stuff, I’d love to share our daughter’s handmade wedding. We were doing all of this on a very low budget, and we had about 180 guests. Of course, we wanted it to be unique and reflect the bride and groom’s personality. It was fun to watch it evolve. We focused on a vintage feeling and incorporated as many family elements as we could.

To carry out our multi-layered theme, we used a lot of vintage lace, all from the thrift store, along with paper doilies and book pages. (Don’t worry, we didn’t use any valuable books; just a few old dictionaries, a couple of thesauruses, and one complete work of Shakespeare which was about 8″ thick and was ready to fall apart. They were all from the Goodwill Outlet, which means these books would have ended up as landfill if we did not repurpose them.)

We used doilies for the wedding invitations, seating cards, menu cards, placemats, coasters, and buntings, among other things. We used book pages inside invitation envelopes, for the bride’s shoes, the aisle runner, the table centerpieces, table runners, two welcome wreaths, two backdrops, and more buntings.

Each of the twenty guest tables was covered with a lace curtain or lace tablecloth from our favorite thrift store (just 69 cents a pound). We topped that with a wreath of rolled dictionary pages with the edges dyed lavender. On that we placed a two-tiered glass cake plate, made from glass plates, goblets and/or candlesticks from the same thrift store (59 cents a pound), and one person at each table got to take the tiered cake plate home. We filled the lower tier with paper flowers, and the top tier was filled with tealight candles. At each place was glass punch cup favor, a lace bundle filled with chocolates to nibble on, a chocolate-covered shortbread cookie made to look like a teabag, a program booklet, and a guestbook page.

We had one table filled with family photos of the couple’s ancestors. That table was covered with a very special Army-Navy table cloth owned by my mother.

The bride wore my wedding dress which was restyled to include a beaded overlay and lace from her future mother-in-law’s wedding dress. She wore her hair in a braided crown which was woven with ribbons to create a veil of sorts. Her wedding ring was fashioned from the groom’s grandparents’ rings. Her shoes were covered with dictionary pages. She also wore the lavender petticoat that we dyed for her sister’s wedding.

The groom wore a top hat and a vest made from a bridesmaid skirt. The bridesmaids wore dresses made from lace tablecloths and curtains. I wore a tablecloth, too.

The bride made her own bouquet and the ones for her bridesmaids. She used fabric flowers which she made from thrift store clothing along with buttons from her childhood button collection, various broaches, and bits of lace. The corsages for the mother-of-the-bride, the mother-of-the-groom, and the bride’s grandmother were made of handmade fabric flowers and a piece of lace from each of their own wedding dresses. She also made the boutonnieres, each of which incorporated a fabric flower and a dictionary page leaf.

We also had a photobooth for guests to use during the reception. Everyone had a blast dressing up a bit and acting silly.

Most of the photobooth props came from — you guessed it — our favorite thrift store. The chalkboard was a last minute project that began as a hot pink metal tray. Two days before the wedding I covered it with quick coat of white paint followed by some chalkboard paint. A little lace and some fabric flowers covered my smudges.

Sorry, I was too busy enjoying all the fabulous cookies that the groom’s mother made, so I forgot to take pictures of the buffet lines, but I’ll leave you with a picture of the cupcake table.