Northern California Pink and Purple Wedding

The most important part of any event is the attention detail, and this bride left no corner untouched. However I may have a biased opinion, since that bride was me. None the less, I had a vision and I made sure that vision transcended throughout the entire event. Every piece of paper matched and served a purpose, while every detail fit the theme. Touches of textured flowers, bits of bling and bows mixed together to create the most beautifully romantic yet fun and girly day of my life.

SMU VS. Tulane Engagement Session

This lovely engagement session (aka MY engagement session) had a sheek side and a playful side. Kelvin from Geoff White Photography shot the entire thing at my old high school campus, Sacred Heart Prep in Atherton, California. We started sheek in our “fancy” clothes using the beautiful brick Main Building as our backdrop. Then we decided to mix it up a bit to give you a taste of our playful/competitive sides. We threw on our alma mater memorabilia and hit the field. The hubby played football at Tulane, so it seemed fitting.

My Northern California Wedding

My Wedding at a Glance

My wedding day was the most wonderful day of my life. Everything went wonderfully and was absolutely beautiful! I could not have asked for more, but of course I am a little biased. I do, however, take credit for the entire thing. I did have a “day of” wedding planner that took everything over the week before and ran the actual event, but other than that, I planned the entire thing all by myself. It was so much fun and I loved every moment of it. So much that even though I love my husband to death, I would totally get a divorce just so I could plan another wedding. Maybe I should spare hearts and just become an event planner.

The Dresses

I knew I wanted my dress months before I ever put it on. It was love at first sight and could not imagine wearing anything else, considering everything else in the wedding was centered around it. The invitations, the cake, the flowers, everything was inspired by my beautiful flowered skirt wedding gown. It was designed by Jenny Lee in Newport Beach, CA. It is from her Spring 2011 collection, however I changed the color from ivory to white and made it a sweetheart neckline. It was perfect! For the girls I decided to put the bridesmaids in purple and my junior bridesmaids and flower girl in a soft pink. All the dresses were the same satin finish with their own version of bow on the back. The flower girl’s skirt pink rose petals floating inside her skirt and little white shoes with a flower poof on the toe.

The Accessories

When it comes to jewelry, I am a minimalist. I am not one for necklaces or pearls. I decided to wear an old pair of clip on costume jewelry earrings that of course mimicked the roses on my dress. For my bridesmaids, I wanted them blinged out. They all wore beautiful (fake) diamond  encrusted earrings, necklaces and cocktail rings to match their blinged out dresses. For shoes, I wanted all of us to match, so my girls wore a black pair of close toed heels and I wore the matching pair in purple of course. I even got my Hubby to wear a pair of pink and purple socks. Lets just say I pay a little too close attention to detail sometimes. I also had a fabric flower in my hair that I had made special by a friend to match my dress. When the bridal party got to the reception, the bridesmaids were given pink parasols to use for our grand entrance. Instead of a normal bridal party entrance, where everyone is introduced and usually tries to do something funny, but ends up being too long and little awkward, we decided to hire a jazz band and do a Second Line into the room. It was perfect, because it fun and upbeat and definitely got the party started on the right foot. Plus we got to use the parasols as the perfect backdrop for our kings table. Halfway through the night the Hubby and I did a costume change for our first dance. We danced to “Time Of My Life” and did the choreographed dance from Dirty Dancing. I wore a short white dress with Mary Jane dance shoes that I stuck little Swarovski crystals all over. It took about 4,000 crystals and weeks to finish, but it was so worth it. Totally adorable! For our toasting flutes we used these awesome mason jar wine glasses. It was a touch of my country girl soul poking out of a very elegant affair. Thanks to my in-laws for those.

The Bouquets

My brooch bouquet was possibly my most favorite thing about my wedding, except for my dress of course. My mother in law made it for me to use at my rehearsal dinner, however, I loved it so much I decided to use it for the actual wedding. It was far too beautiful, both inside and out, to be wasted on the rehearsal. Along with her beautiful brooches, she got all the important women in my life to add to it. It is absolutely amazing, and I will cherish it forever.

The Flowers

Obviously I did not need any flowers, thank God, because I wanted peonies, but I got married in late October, and it is very hard to find peonies in October. Somehow my amazing florist, Jeeryn of Tanjeeryn Designs, was able to find just enough for my girls. The bouquets were a beautiful mix of pink peonies and purple hydrangeas. The flower girl carried a pomander of purple mums. The boys had boutonniere with pink and purple roses accented with corresponding mums and greenery. One of my favorite touches, that I am sure a lot of people did not even notice, was our initials made out of flowers on the church doors.

The Stationery

As I said the invitation was totally inspired by how it mimicked my wedding dress, but I fell in love with fullness that the purple gave the pink. Originally I wanted a pink and green wedding, but after I saw this gorgeous invitation suite by Sarka, of Citrus Press, the green was out and it was purple and pink all the way. I used the invitation design on everything from the table numbers and wedding programs to the menus and escort cards. Sarka was amazing and worked so hard to give me exactly what I wanted. The uniformed details were seamless.

The Favors

We had the most amazing favors. Not only were they adorable and useful, but there was a very special meaning behind them. My Hubby asked me to marry him while playing cards with my family. He discarded a joker with the words, “Will you marry me?”, written on it. It was perfect. So for our wedding favors, we had personalized decks with our picture on it made. We also had a pink and purple candy bar, which served as both decoration and favors. I made personalized Hershey Bar wrappers with our pictures on them and Hershey Kiss labels with our names on them. I know what you are thinking… And yes, I glued about 500 Hershey Kiss labels the week before the wedding.

The Cakes

I am not a cake person, but I loved everything about my Wedding Cake. Even the way it tasted, which is surprising. I did a little something different for my cakes. I decided to have a fake Wedding Cake made, that had one real pink lemon flavored layer for us to cut at the wedding. The rest of the cake was made out of styrofoam. We then had multiple flavors of sheet cake in the back that we used for serving. This worked out great, because they not only was it cheaper, but I got to keep the top styrofoam part of the cake and have it on display in my house. It gives a whole new meaning  to the tradition of saving your wedding topper. We also had a Groom’s Cake. If you are not from the South, you might not know what that it is. In the South it is very common to have what is known as a Groom’s Cake. It is usually a fun flavor like chocolate or red velvet, and it tends to be decorated in a way that represents the Groom. Both of my cakes were made by Venus, of La Vie Douce Design. She did an amazing job replicating the cake I wanted. Perfection!

Well that pretty much sums up my wedding. I hope you enjoy, and if you are planning a wedding yourself, ohhhh how I envy you! Good Luck!

Cowboy Chic Couple’s Shower

Both of my Maids on Honor threw me the most amazing Couple’s Wedding Shower last summer. One of the most amazing things they did was they let me help. I get so excited about these types of things and wanted to try out some of my DIY ideas that I knew where not going to fit in with my wedding theme. I tried my best not to take over or be too controlling, because honestly this was their party and they were doing me a favor by letting me be involved.

Couple’s Cowboy Chic Shower Inspiration Board

Step 1: Pick a theme

Even though I am a California girl, I am a country girl at heart and had spent most of my adult life in Texas. Plus I was marrying an Alabama boy, so a southern theme was a no brainer. I decided to make it a little girly and call it Cowboy Chic, which really just means wear a dress and some cowboy boots and call it good.

Step 2: Pick a location

My grandmother was ever so generous to let us use her beautiful backyard. One of my favorite movies has always been Father of the Bride and I always wanted to get married in my grandmothers backyard or at least have the reception there. I knew that would never work, so I figured having a shower there would be the next best thing. Plus I did not have to travel very far once I got my dress on.

Step 3: Pick a date

Duh… but harder than you think. Accept the fact that you cannot accommodate everyone’s schedule. Impossible!

Step 4: Invitations

I scoured the internet for western themed ideas and pulled from various sources to finally come up with our finished product. I made them myself in PowerPoint. It would have been nice to have some higher tech software, but I made do with what I had. Maybe someday… I got the invitation paper from Michaels for like $10 (I had a 40% off coupon) and printed them off at home. It was so easy and fun!

Step 5: Decor

There were a couple of signature things I knew I wanted right away… I had been eyeing the Martha Stewart Pom Poms for a while and knew how fabulous they would look in my backyard in shades of pink. I think I ended up making about 50 of them. I loved them so much I could not bare throw them away after the party. We ended up saving them and used some for the rehearsal dinner, some on a sign my grandmother had made for us, and I even used a 3 of them as my bouquet at the rehearsal. The second item on the decor list was Mason Jars. We used the larger ones as vases on tables filled with Peonies and Sunflowers (Peonies are not cheap) and the smaller jars we used as drink glasses. You could fill them with your choice of liquor, Shiner Beer, Pink Signature Drink, Sweet Tea or wine (My girlfriend had labels made with our baby pictures put on the bottles. It was adorable and possibly my favorite detail at the party!)

Step 6: Food

Since it was a country, western, southern, cowboy chic, whatever you want to call it party, we had to have BBQ. We ordered the best California BBQ you can find (which is hard) and went to Armadillo Willy’s. I smuggled some Rudy’s BBQ Sauce home from Texas and had some friends make corn bread muffins and homemade potato salad. For dessert we had non other than warm apple pie and cold vanilla ice cream. Mmmmm I am getting hungry just talking about it.  It was absolutely delowcious!

Step 7: Favors

What is a party without favors? We made little S’More Favors for each guest with little personalized tags that said, “S’MORES, Y’all!”

Notes: It turned out to be a great party. We had way too much alcohol and food left over due to my fear of never having enough (sorry girls), but other than that no complaints here. It was fabulous and the girls did an amazing job. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Inspiration Board – Pink and Green Wedding