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Friday, February 14, 2014

Our DIY, Budget Friendly Wedding: Part 1

Wow! It has taken me a lot longer than I thought it would to get these wedding photos posted. Joe and I asked a friend to take photos for our wedding and she offered to do it free of charge! Hard to pass that up. Our photographer gave us the CDs of our wedding photos unedited and I thought that one day I would get them edited and printed off; but I never have...much to the dismay of my mom who keeps asking me for a photo (it's only been a year and a half...get off my back Mom; just kidding). Thanks to picmonkey.com; I finally have some of my photos edited (I just learned about this program and I love it). I have spent my Valentine's night watching love stories on the Hallmark Channel and editing wedding photos...perfect! Joe is coaching a basketball game tonight. He gave me my Valentine's Day gift yesterday at school (my favorite things) and for our Valentine's date night we scouted a high school basketball game and then ate Subway.


Here is the first installment of wedding photos. A few things to note: Joe and I had our wedding in the middle of a drought. I had grown all the flowers for our wedding; but the drought killed them all so we ordered flowers from Sam's Club. They come in big bunches and you have to make your own bouquets but since that is what I was planning on doing anyways it didn't bother me that the bouquets were not professionally done. My mom and brother did the flowers and I think they did a great job! You will notice that a lot of the flowers look kind of droopy and that was because as I mentioned in an earlier post there is an amazing (as in powerful) breeze at our house. Even though our area was in a severe drought it actually rained (sprinkled) the morning of our wedding making it hard to decorate before I had to leave to get my hair done. If I could do my wedding over again I would have chosen a different hairdresser that was closer. I will not share my experiences with the hairdresser because it is the one bad spot in my day and I don't want to spoil this post with negativity.

This was at the entrance of our driveway showing our guests the way. 

More signs helping guests find their way.


I watered these every day to try and keep them alive in the drought. We had to do a lot of watering that summer and most of it was in vain since most things like my flower and vegetable garden ended up dying.


This was our memory table. Those are pictures of our family members that couldn't be with us on our special day. I wish I would have made a sign for it so people knew just exactly what it was. I painted an old desk that I found in Joe's parent's garage. It is not set up exactly how I wanted it and I wish there were some flowers on it for more color; but I wasn't there to set it up since I was getting my hair done. 



Guestbook station. I had some of my high schoolers be my guestbook attendants. My friends and I made a bunch of scrapbook pages for people to sign and write their advice to the bride and groom. The wedding guests stood in front of the quilts and got their picture taken. I later placed the pictures on the scrapbook page they had written on. I will post pictures of the scrapbook pages later. This was a cute way to do the guestbook; but I kind have wished I would have done a regular guestbook too because a lot of people did not want to get their picture taken and kind of just skipped over this section. I think if you have a younger crowd at your wedding this idea would work much better. 

Gift Table. I made the card box out of an old case I found at a flea market. I lined the inside of it with cardboard pieces that I had wrapped in burlap. Then I made the "cards" banners using some cute fabric I found. I used pinking shears on the fabric so it wouldn't fray.


This is what our guests first saw of the ceremony area. The tall green plants are supposed to be sunflowers; but because of the drought they didn't flower or get as tall as they should have by the day of the wedding. I think the first sunflower actually bloomed two days after our wedding. I watered those flowers everyday...Joe's family even helped water them. When our spring started to run dry Joe's brother and dad filled the water tank from the well at Joe's parent's house and drove it to our house to try and keep the flowers watered. Everyone tried really hard to try and have some color and vegetation at our wedding.






The cutout of the carriage came off of the shutters on our old farmhouse. We fixed up the outside of our house so it would look nice for our wedding. That is what we spent most of our wedding money on...but it seemed like a practical thing to spend money on since we were planning to live in the house for a while. I will post pictures of the amazing farmhouse transformation at a later date. 



We borrowed the straw bales from a farmer in the community so that we didn't have to purchase them. The tree stumps down the aisle were also borrowed. I was lucky that Joe knows everyone in the community and knew who to ask for what. It was amazing how many people in the community were involved in our wedding and were willing to help out in various ways. 


  I will post the ceremony and reception pictures in another post. Hope you enjoyed looking at the pictures! Let me know your thoughts or if you have any questions.



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