A Wedding Photographers Wedding { Part 1 }

On October 29, 2011, I said YES! With that began the wedding planing. My first stop, the wedding date and the easy part for us. Aaron and I had selected a date months prior to being engaged due to my busy 2012 wedding season. He wanted to be sure there would be time for the wedding and honeymoon.

Next on the list was to pick a theme, color pallet, and decide on how many guests we would like to attend. Easy right? My colors changed about 10 times, we couldn’t get the list short enough, and a theme? My own style. Sound familiar? It took me a few months of planning to finally pick my colors…

My dress was white, the tuxes gray, and the bridesmaids dresses were navy. Everything I’ve not seen in my 100 weddings and exactly what I was going for, different. So maybe my dress color wasn’t, but that’s a story for another day.

Then I had to pick my theme and coordinate that with my venues so they that matched. I still don’t know to this day what theme category I really fall into but if you ask me, I would say we had a Rustic/Shabby Chic Wedding. These were a few of my magazine clippings I carried around. They were great for reference and helping others see my vision, that and Pinterest. However, my mom told me yesterday over some Thanksgiving dinner, that she still had no idea what I was doing until she saw everything together the day before the wedding. My translation… everyone thought I was a nut! : )

So with my colors picked and my theme selected, I set out in search of the perfect venues. I called some of my favorite places and each one either replied with “booked” or “not in your budget.” Then an old friend reminded me of a camp I had went to years ago as a kid. Low and behold the camp would be the perfect place for a reception… a log lodge on a lake with a fireplace and off the lodge was a fire ring perfect for an afternoon campfire.

I was still a little unsure on where we would have the ceremony. I was hoping for one outdoors, but being Pennsylvania, in the fall, I quickly crossed it off my list. A few weeks before I had found the reception site, I toured the countryside searching for the perfect little white church. What I had failed to remember was the small little white country church a stones throw from the camp entrance. It was perfect!

Then there was the decor for both the ceremony and reception that I had to plan. Let me tell you, I have no idea what I was thinking when I said that I would create all 19 of my one of a kind centerpieces myself. Not one matched the other. It was quite a task, and if you know me, then you know that everything I do has to be perfect!

I spent months collecting pieces that I would use to create the centerpieces. I searched high and low for things. Then a week or two before the wedding my wonderful bridesmaids came over and helped me transform all my random pieces into fabulous centerpieces.

However, I still had no idea how it would all look without the live pines and small herb plants not being in yet. So the day before the wedding we still had to set the other half of the centerpieces up. It was quite comical watching me run back and forth from tables to boxes. I would have loved to record me. I probably went about 6 miles just running back and forth. Here are the results…

Lastly the ceremony decor…

If you ask me what I would do differently, I would have given all my magazine clippings to a decorator and said, “Here! You create it”. I loved being able to create my vision myself but out of all the planning the decor was the most stressful portion. However, I am happy to say though that I LOVED everything! It turned out just like I had imagined. = D