Let Them Eat

The cake came from our friendly neighborhood farmer's market cupcake lady. She made the cake, dropped it off with Meghan-the-day-of-coordinator and then at the last minute we decided that my little tiny peg people should go on the regular cake. Because I'm crafty darn it. Crafty. She also arranged some extra flowers around it. My youngest sister at it for breakfast every day for a week after the wedding. It was so unbelievably delicious. I remember reading somewhere on APW about a couple who served cake to everyone and we hadn't really thought about who was going to serve the cake so I ended up doing it. Which gave me a chance to speak to everyone who wanted cake and made me feel like a real hostess, I loved it. I also managed to resist feeding David cake. Which. I. Did. Not. Want. To. Do.

Feeding cake to my sister-in-law, which I did want to do. Please ignore my double chin.

If anyone in Western or Central Maryland or South Central PA wants a fantastic farmers market cake tasting like magic, shoot me an email and I will hook you up. I have all the hook-ups.

All photos by Shaun Yasaki

Snap Dragons and Lavender

Way back in the pre-engaged engaged phase where we were getting married but he hadn't asked and I was scouring the interwebs looking for beautiful things I decided that if Meg and Peonies could do their own flowers than so could I. I found a DC area floral warehouse, ordered online and Friday morning Dad and my sister Jessie (yeah, I have three sisters, and a brother, there are a lot of us floating around) went to pick them all. My favourite flowers are snapdragons and I basically took the two colours of snapdragons that the warehouse had and then picked six other things in basically the same colours, a tiny bit of greenery and some berries and that was that.

I had been saving jars upon jars to pour the candles into and we used the rest for the centerpieces. None of them looked the same and we all just kind of went for it. People advised me to do a test run but I was poor and lazy (and still am) so I just decided to go for it when the flowers arrived and we did.

Gorgeous bridesmaids and sister put together flower arrangements

We arranged all the flowers in buckets and cookers and two of my bridesmaids, my Oldest-and-Best-Friend who DIYed her flowers in December and my sisters and I went to town. We made our own bouquets just sort of gathering them up and handing them off and that veteran friend wrapped the bouquets with floral tape and navy ribbon (something blue!)

Littlest sister rocks the hell out of flower arrangements

Maid of honor turned out to be florist extraordinaire

Now for the specifics: I kept looking for these when I was planning and I couldn't really find much. I had 400 stems, and spent less than $500 and we had SO many flowers. There were six bridesmaids bouquets, my bouquet, two little flower girl bouquets, twenty-table arrangements, four alter arrangements and heaps and heaps left over. We filled every vase in my parents house and there were flowers everywhere. It took a lot longer than I might have anticipated, there were seven of us and it took several hours to sort everything out. And the mess. There was a really big mess. My dad got the job of carrying all the stems and leaves to the compost bin.

A Bit of DIY, A Bit of DIT

SO. I figured it was time for some official photos and some round-up sort of things. I thought I would start with some of our many many do-it-yourself or do-it-together projects. Our wedding got very very DIY. My bridesmaids and I did the flowers, David and his groomsmen steamed the linens and cleaned the barn, my mother and sisters did a hundred little DIY projects and my uncle and my mother's cousin together painted the farm sign the morning of the wedding, we hung all the lights, my sister wrote the place-cards. Our wedding was not just something we picked-out and put together, our wedding was something that we built, that our families built. I wore a flower in my hair my friend from college made for me, I carried a bouquet wrapped by my Oldest-and-Best-Friend, our wedding felt like something we had spirited out of nothingness. To show you every single one of our do-it-yourself projects or do-it-together projects would take days, but here are some of my favourites.

The wedding was held in the barn on the farm my family my family bought my freshman year of highschool. There is a room in the barn that The-Oldest-and-Best-Friend and I painted and cleaned out to use as a fort and my little sister later took it over and painted it lime green. I lived in the house on the farm by myself when David and I met. The barn was full of hay and pigeons and David spent hours and days and hours pulling hay out of it and spraying it down and trying to get rid of the pigeons and keep them out. It was his full-time job for most of June and July.

I ordered two reams of tissue paper online (shipping that stuff costs a fortune) and my sisters and a few adorable friends spent many a random episode of Bones making those Martha Stewart Pom-Poms that every single other bride seems to have at her wedding. We made what felt like thousand but we barely had enough, I loved the way the antique white looked against the barn, we had them hanging over the wedding cake and over the band (which was my brother's band, they are totes stellar, listen to their music, buy their cd).

These sparklers don't really count as diy but I put them in a jar and wrote a tag and they were the best wedding exit ever. Yeah, EVER.

This freezer was in the bottom of the barn the entire time I lived there. My little sister did some serious disinfecting while leaving the rust intact. I wanted rust. My friend Meghan who was my day-of-coordinator propped it open and we filled it with glass bottle cokes and Perrier (dear Sam's Club, I love you). The bar ended up right next to it.

I was planning on making a ring pillow for the boys to carry but three days before the wedding that wasn't done and I was planning on having them just march up the isle. My mom offered to make a ring bowl and boy did she ever. Mummie is the single greatest boss of paper mache and rocked the hell out of this wee bowl. My sister Ellen (Tres) painted our initials and the date one it as well as the gold ring.

Ellen also wrote ninety names on these old fashioned mailing tags and she and my dad wrapped them around the napkins we got at Sams Club. I poured 90 candles using soy wax. I bought fifty pounds of the stuff online (here) and had everyone I know saving jars for me. I used all 50 pounds. There are now candles EVERYWHERE at the house.

My bridesmaid Christina apparently burnt herself a lot and frank most of a box of Franz while making these babies but they looked GORGEOUS. I was moaning about not knowing what to put in our hair and she told me she had it and she did. She made one for each of the bridesmaids and I considered it evidence of the excellent time they all had after I left when I found two in my parents pool the next morning.

I got the idea to use a chalkboard for a seating chart ages ago and my 13 year old sister, Fiona, jumped on it. She found the frame for $3 at a garage sale and she primed, painted it, bit of chalkboard paint, bit of wood, wood glue and some nails. She's the bomb.com My sister Ellen then used chalkboard pens to write the seating chart on it. Right now it's waiting to be put on the wall of our new apartment in Durham. I can't quite bring myself to erase the names of everyone who was there with us. Lovely lovely lovely.

Photos by Shaun Yasaki and my sister Ellen