In honor of the first anniversary of our wedding I have decided to put together a series of posts about various DIY aspects of our wedding.
There are dozens of brides whose DIY spirit astonishes and impresses me. I gleaned insight and inspiration from countless websites, blogs and posts on LiveJournal and TheKnot. I dedicate these posts to all the unnamed brides (and a few grooms) whose creativity inspired me to get crafty.
I should preface this by saying that I was absolutely, positively, not the little girl who dreamed of her wedding day. In fact, I was fairly well convinced that I would never get married simply because I had no interest in it all. How time changes us! When I came to the conclusion that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with Thom I looked forward to our marriage. The marriage; not the wedding.
Living downtown I kept saying to him, "City Hall is right down the street. We could just go there and be married." Each time he would respond, "I don't know honey... I always pictured myself having a traditional wedding."
Another day I might say, "we don't need a big cake, right?" And he would quietly say, "I don't know honey... I always pictured the traditional big, three-tiered cake."
Sigh.
About six months into our engagement I started looking at the wedding in a different light. Here was an opportunity to create the biggest, bestest, most wonderful event I would ever create. I started looking at our wedding day as the day that would be the most about us - what we love, who we are, why we chose each other - and to make a public declaration of our commitment to each other in front of those individuals who matter most to us. When viewed in those terms, who wouldn't want a wedding?!
We started thinking about what best describes us. We both love being on and near the water so we immediately thought "beach." We also love our New England region and I was adamant that our wedding - this "biggest, bestest, most wonderful event" be elegant. This all brought us to our ultimate theme: elegant, coastal, New England.
The inspirations came flowing like water. Coastal... sand and water... our colors would be beige and blue. Elegant... silver and gold. New England... classic, vintage. New England coastal... hydrangea. If you've ever been to Cape Cod you can't walk 10 feet without seeing another hydrangea shrub. Conveniently for us they are naturally blue.
We found our venue a mere eight months before the wedding. Save the date cards had to go out the next month! Enter the first DIY project...
