Gimme the deets! All the stuff I spent hours on... Details details details...

I have to admit. I'm a little sad this is my last "official" wedding recap post for you. I've slowly been reliving our wedding vicariously through these recaps and it's been wonderful. I loved everything about our wedding, and I was so happy to see that when it all got laid out it was exactly what I wanted. Better actually. I had a few moments when I was 3/4 of the way through a project and thought "oh god, what am I doing?! How does all of this tie together?! This is going to look like crap! I've gone too far though!!!". I think we all have those moments. But I stuck it through and I'm glad I did. So. Here you are. The little details that made our wedding about "us" and not just "a wedding". Please let me know if there's anything I missed or that you'd like to see a tutorial on, I love hearing your feedback! These are in absolutely no particular order (the majority of these photos are from Stillmotion, they're amazing!):

Food

I've already said how we basically booked our wedding around our photographer and caterer. When they were available = our wedding date. Dan and I each got a priority, mine was photography, his was food. I think the two worked well together no? So anywho, the incredibly talented Ezra Title worked in a lot of what we loved from previous meals with him and from our own favourites. For example, the prosciutto and melon above. When I lived in Italy I don't think there was a day that went by when I didn't eat this eat least once. Usually twice. Or more. Don't judge me. We also LOVE organic beef, so Ezra did us the organic flank steak for dinner. The salted caramel ice cream was a favourite from Dan's birthday dinner the year before that we both would like to eat by the gallon. And the cake. Well come on, it's pretty evident by now that that was all me!

I think our guests really appreciated that we shared our infamous "Ezra meal" with them and appreciated every mouthful. Since the wedding we've gotten a number of comments about it being the best meal of their life, so mission accomplished I think!!

Teapots & Creamer/Sugar Pots

Once I found my inspiration with the teapots I went whole hog on them. I scoured thrift shops, Craigslist, and friend's parent's silver cabinets for old unused clunky teapots that no one loved any more. I would not spend more than $10 on a teapot (I had one exception but it was worth it and balanced out with some other bargains I got). In the end, I amassed something like 30+ teapots and 50+ creamers. I spent hours with bridesmaids, parents, and my parent's neighbours polishing those puppies up and making them gorgeous again. They were so pretty and added such a unique touch to the tables, they were totally worth the effort. Plus I think the fact that half our guests had had their hands on them at some point made it all the more special ;)  I still have them all in the basement, somewhat unsure of what to do with them. Maybe a rental company is in sight?! LOL!

A quick note about the flowers, the white roses were for my Omi (grandmother) who had passed away the summer before the wedding. She had the most gorgeous rose garden you've ever seen. I DIY'ed the baby's breath cream/sugar pots to save a good few hundred dollars off the floral budget. Totally worth it. Our florist, Pink Twig, was incredible to work with and I think they enjoyed the "outside of the box" edge the teapots brought to the arrangements.

Papergoods

I designed, cut, and assembled all of my papergoods myself. What a task that was! But it was full of love! My handy dandy Cricut worked late every night cutting my menu backers, place cards, and little placecard birds. I used Sure Cuts A Lot in conjunction with Illustrator to break out of the Cricut cartridge box. I love that program and the world it opens up for you! For the corners of my menu and placecards, I used a corner punch and emboss from Fiskars that added a bit of a vintage flair.

Table numbers were the bane of my existence for about a week. I would sit and think and google search for ideas. Nothing seemed just right. I eventually gave up and ended up slapping these together at the last minute with a lace border and the same font we used on our invites and programs. They were simple and functional, and looked cute with our vintage flair. 

Our programs I designed, printed, assembled and sewed, to coordinate with our elevator invites. Whew. Those were a lot of work! More than our invites!!!

 

 

 

 

Can I just say how much I loved our escort cards? I realize they got tossed out, but I freaking loved them. We sat them in flats of wheat grass spread out on a barnboard table Dan made for me. Each table got their own pattern of fabric covered button which coordinated with the fabric on their caramel favour. Yes. I am that anal retentive and I think it was worth it :)

 

 

 

I'm not going to lie and I'm going to totally toot my own horn, my banners were amazing. LOL! They made for my favourite shots of the day. They were actually on my DIY projects to-do list and I had scrapped them because I thought I didn't have enough time. One night we were sitting around and I thought "Oh screw it, I'm going to give it a go" and put together the banners while we watched a movie with a friend. The Just Married banner came out so well I thought I'd try the Going to the Chapel as well! I am SO SO SO happy I made that push and got them done, I think it just completed the Winnebago and put that polished touch on our photos.

Flip flops & Pashminas

 

 

 

Love your guests. Treat them like royalty. They've come a long way, gotten all dressed up for you, sat through the speeches, given you a gift, throw them a good party and make sure they're comfortable in return! I smashed the Old Navy $1 flip flop sale and bought as many sizes as I could get my  hands on. I think I ended up with about 50 pairs (both mens and womens), and honestly, I likely only needed about 25. I found another bride who bought my leftovers off me though, so that was great news for me! 

The pashminas I bought at a little cash and carry shop for $5 a piece. I bought 30 of them and I should have bought 50! They went like hot cakes! It started pouring rain halfway through our dinner, so I think the ladies snapped them up to cut the chill. I still get compliments from our friends and family who say they're the nicest pashmina they have and still use it all the time!

I put little tags on both the pashmina's and flip flops just to personalize them rather than just shoving them all (artfully) in a box. The baskets I bought in Chinatown for about $15 and worked really well and looked very cute and rustic. The flip flop tags said "nice shoes" around the edges. That was the first thing Dan ever said to me, so it was a little inside joke to us.

 Guest book

I made our guestbook using Photobook Canada and I loved it! The quality was fantastic and they had a special linen paper specific to guestbooks. I used our engagement photos and created a 12 x 12 book about 30 pages long. I loved reading through all the comments from our guests after the wedding. Every page had at least one note and some of our guests got creative with little bubbles over our heads, etc. It was fantastic and adorable!!!

Hangers

 

What bride doesn't want a Lila Frances hanger?! When I showed the hangers to Dan he was so excited about them he wanted one for himself AND all his guys. Our entire wedding party each got their own hanger, including the kids. Lila was great to work with and since we ordered early (and in bulk) she gave us a great deal!

Okay. I seriously have to take a break. I have so many more details to share with you, and I'm afraid of making this the post that breaks the site! I'll be back with details part two ASAP!

The Reception

Well hello again! Let's pick up from the receiving line shall we? After we had hugged and kissed all our guests, they grabbed their escort cards out of the wheatgrass on the barnboard table Dan and his friend Luke built. It was gorgeous! The button on each escort card was covered in fabric that matched the jam (caramel) jar skirts on each table. Each table had its own fabric pattern that my sister and I picked out on a trip down to Buffalo where we discovered the amazingness that is JoAnn Fabrics.

Once our guests were settled in and the wedding party had been announced we had our first dance to Joshua Radin's Today. 

 

And from there, we sat down at our sweetheart table for our first meal together as husband and wife. I'm so happy we decided not to do a head table. We chose our wedding venue based on having our favourite chef/caterer Ezra Title with us. It's nearly impossible to find a venue who will allow you to bring in your own caterer as we discovered, but it was worth all the hard work. Ezra's meals are such special and important nights to Dan and I, we wanted to make sure our wedding meal was equally as private and special as when we have him in our home. Our guests loved that we had our own table and I appreciated being able to eat without 150 people staring at us! 

 

 

I'll step back a moment and show you the whole tent. My wonderful husband and a literal team of helpers worked for two solid days to set up and decorate the tent. It was a huge schmozzle to say the least, but it got done and it was gorgeous. Some of the little details that were supposed to happen had to be missed but only myself and Dan knew about them and overall, I think it still turned out beautifully. 

(The chairs are over at the ceremony in this photo)

This tree was a total show stopper for me. The Alton Mill built a huge firepit in the middle of the event space after we booked with them, and while we loved the look of it, we weren't really sure what in the world we were going to do with it to make it "wedding pretty". Enter our friend Luke again. He somehow found this corkscrew hazel bush while traipsing out in the woods one day and dragged it home for us. The thing was literally about 18' long and we had to cut it down to size (about 10'). I purchased stems of orchids and some different types of moss from a wholesale florist shop (one of the perks of being an interior designer is access to cool stores not open to the public!). Two of my very good friends spent hours decorating the tree wiring on the orchids, placing the moss and votives around the base to make it perfect for me. It was breathtaking. I couldn't stop staring at it. Seriously, whatever it was I had in my head that it would look like, they totally surpassed. And as beautiful as it was in the daylight, at night with all the votives lit and the uplighting.... oh gosh.... it was like a fairytale. Simply stunning. It was the perfect backdrop for our sweetheart table.

The whole look of the wedding I called rustic elegance and were inspired by our silver teapot centrepieces sitting on barnboard at each table.

At each place setting, each guest got a little jar of homemade caramel, a packet of Forget-Me-Not seeds from the Alzheimer's Society of Toronto, a menu and their place card. I cut the menus and the little birds on the place cards using my Cricut and then punched the corners using a cut and emboss corner punch.

 

 

And then we feasted! Unfortunately as of yet, I only have two photos of the meal because it was so tasty everyone was too busy eating to take photos! Trust me when I say it was a m a z i n g. Simply the best food I've ever had at a wedding if I do say so myself! 

During dinner it started raining pretty heavily and the heaters we rented weren't really very effective, so we moved inside early to start dancing. We'll pick up next at the late night buffet!

Button button who's got the button?

Ages ago I saw this photo and it's been my inspiration for our escort cards since:

(Source)

I went to Joanns and picked up 10 different coordinating fabrics to use as our jam jar skirts and for our escort card buttons. The trick is to make sure they are all different enough that in the smaller size for the buttons they are still distinct from each other and easily identifiable. I'm still having table numbers but I really liked this added element to the table settings.

I bought my button forms (size 45, or 1-1/8") online at Start To Finish Supplies. 150 buttons plus the button mold/tool cost me just shy of $60 including shipping. This is WAY better than buying them at Joanns where 3 buttons will cost you about $3.50. I also bought a pack of 3 buttons at Joanns previous to shopping online to test it out, and I'm happy I did because it gives you a little half moon template for cutting your fabric. Super important!

Making the buttons is really fast and simple, trust me. First, use your template, fold your fabric over the half moon and cut out your circles. I cut 16 of each since I'm having 16/table (two rectangular tables of eight pushed together). So in the photo below I have my half moon template, my cut fabric circles, the two pieces of the button, the button mold tool above and a finished button.

Next, put a fabric circle into the white bottom piece of the button maker tool and put the larger front piece of the button on top. Push these down to the bottom of the mold. You can turn it over and see if you like how the pattern of your fabric is aligned and make adjustments.

Next, put the back piece of the button on (hook side up) with the edges of the fabric folded inside. 

Now use the blue piece of the tool and push down hard on the back of the button. If your fabric is thick, you may have to try stepping on it with your heel.You'll hear a little pop noise when you've got the back on.

Now pull out your button! Voila!

Make sure you have a good helper to guard your new buttons. They will be coveted by many ;)

Here are our buttons and our matching jam jar skirts! Adorable!