September 3rd: Our Wedding Story

Looking back on our September 3rd, I am simply amazed at how faithful God has been to us. I could count blessing after blessing in how everything and everyone came together for our wedding. Throughout the eight short months we had to plan our wedding, we have learned and grown so much; God has taught us to be patient, to compromise, to trust, the deeper meaning of friendship and sacrifice, and that a truly "perfect" wedding is simply one where two hearts come before God seeking sincerely to become one in Him.

Hearts became the theme of our wedding because we loved how it represents the deepest part of who we are and the very part of us that we want to be joined together forever. Will and I also often use hearts in our chat messages, texts, cards, letters, and emails to each other and it always makes me smile. With the heart symbol as my inspiration, I began designing the stationary for our wedding starting with our save-the-date postcards and formal pocketfold invitations.

At the same time, Will and I were on the search for an elegant and romantic wedding venue with lots of character. We found everything we were looking for at the historic Ebell of Los Angeles. The beautiful Ebell clubhouse, built as a women's club in the late 1920s, included a pretty courtyard garden, stately art salon housing rotating art pieces, and gorgeous lounge ballroom with glistening floor to ceiling windows and magnificent chandeliers. We loved that the Ebell was so rich in history, distinctive architecture, and elegant vintage pieces like a rustic grandfather clock and antique patterned couches. Coupled with the fabulous staff and delicious French inspired cuisine by Chef Louis Pechan, the Ebell was absolutely perfect for the timeless and romantic evening ballroom reception we were envisioning.

For our ceremony we discovered nearby First Congregational Church of Los Angeles and immediately fell in love with the grand cathedral architecture of the church and majestic organ lights that made the sanctuary glow with color. Also a historic landmark of Los Angeles, the church felt like a perfect meld between old and new, traditional elegance with a colorful modern flair. Although our first impression of the regal sanctuary constructed in a revival gothic style seating well over 700 guests was actually quite intimidating, we soon realized it would be the perfect setting to reflect the sanctity of our marriage ceremony and the seriousness of our vows.

Although I never really intended to be a DIY bride, I've always enjoyed artistic and creative endeavors so when it came to our wedding, I decided that I wanted to design and hand-make many of the details myself; before I knew it, our wedding had evolved into a pretty massive arts and crafts project. We bought two paper cutters, dozens of ribbon spools, and ordered card stock from online wholesalers. We recruited our friends for many long nights of paper-cutting, pattern-punching, card stock-glueing, and ribbon-tying. I shopped around for decorative elements and bought monogrammed mugs from anthropologie spelling out "love" for the guestbook table and a small antique-looking wooden chest for our card box. We also added many personal touches such as displaying our parents wedding photos at the welcome table, creating a photo guest book with our engagement pictures, including our favorite recipes along with heart-shaped measuring spoon as wedding favors, and hand-painting table numbers on wooden plaques. 

We wanted a soft and romantic color palette so we chose blush rose, sage green, champagne, and brown as our wedding colors. Our florist incoporated lisianthus, hydrangeas, lilies, roses, eucalyptus, and branches in our wedding florals to accent our colors while keeping a flowy and organic feel to all of the arrangements.  My bridesmaids wore rosy pink tea-length dresses with a lacey shrug and champagne Steve Madden heels with bows (they were a great find, on sale at over 50% off!) that matched the sash of the dress and the champagne vests and ties of the groomsmen. I chose to rent my wedding dress instead of purchasing one, but had a custom hanger personalized with our names made for the dress from an Etsy shop. My dress had lovely lace detail, intricate beading, a classic A-line silloute, and a sweet and girly bow in the back. I also especially loved my ruffly wedding shoes from Nordstroms that were in the softest shade of blush. We also incoporated our colors into the seating cards using a pink heart to designate the salmon entree choice, a light brown heart for chicken, and a green heart for vegetarian. 

When the long-awaited day finally arrived, there were so many unforgettable moments that our wedding day actually felt much longer than just a single day, yet it that passed by so unbelievably quickly that everything seemed like a blur. 

I will never forget the echo of the big double doors of the church opening as my dad walked me down the asile, Will's calm and composed voice repeating our wedding vows and my own shaky and emotional voice, laughing together when our DJ accidentally announced one of my bridesmaids as a groomsmen and vice versa, making our grand entrance into the reception down the grand staircase of the Ebell, how we sang "Marry Me" by Train to each other as we danced our first dance, my dad's very moving speech and toast (I never knew he was so eloquent!), Will and I thanking all of our guests and especially our parents for all of their love and support (I teared up a bit....I couldn't help it!), singing happy birthday to my grandfather who's 84th birthday was the very same day, throwing our shoes at our groomsman Mike who tried to embarrass us during a newlywed game, and finally dancing the night away with all of our friends (we were so wonderfully surprised that our friends joined us on the dance floor! We didn't hold back and we are so glad many of our friends didn't either!). 

We are filled with gratitude for the many people who truly made our wedding an unforgettable and fairy tale day: Our parents' unending support that made our dream wedding possible, family and friends who flew in from all around the country to celebrate with us, fabulous vendors and coordinators who made sure our special day would be just the way we envisioned it, our wedding party and friends who spent all day cutting paper for programs and spent all night gluing invitations, talented friends who led praise, sang, and put together a truly memorable slide show, church leaders who counseled us and prayed for a us, generous family and friends who showered us with mountains (literally) of gifts...

Most of all, I know I am the luckiest girl in the world because I was marrying the most kind, patient, understanding, and supportive man I have ever known. Will has truly humbled me in everything I thought I knew about love. He encouraged me to indulge in my creative vision for our wedding and drove me all around the city visiting wedding vendors and exploring venues. Though not a very arts-and-crafts person by nature, he dove headfirst with me into an immense DIY wedding project. I took the lead on most of the wedding preparations, but when we had trouble with a rude and dishonest vendor, when we thought we had almost lost our church venue, when we were missing 1/3 of our wedding favors two days before the wedding, and when I ultimately dissolved into tears from stress and frustration, Will would always calmly take over (he was always much better than me at handling these sorts of situations) and reassure me that I wasn't planning our wedding alone. On our wedding day, I was overjoyed with the final realization that from this day forward, no matter what we planned next, no matter what our next big project was, no matter what challenges and surprises lay ahead,  no matter where God leads, Will and I would always be facing it together.

The verse in our wedding ceremony program from Psalms 115:1 reads "Not to us, Not to us O Lord but to your name be the glory because of your love and faithfulness." Our prayer is that starting with our wedding day and continuing with our marriage and throughout the rest of our lives, we will glorify our Heavenly Father and always remember that it is He who holds us together with His love and faithfulness.

Our Wedding Vendors: 
Ceremony Venue: First Congregational Church of Los Angeles | Reception Venue: The Ebell of Los Angeles | Photography: Pix of Life | Wedding Dress and Bridesmaid Dress Rentals: Beautiful Day Wedding | Groom and Groomsmen Tux Rentals: Frair Tux Shop | Coordinator: Events by Lynette | Floral: Ninfa's Flowers | DJ: Steve Kikuchi of High Resolution DJs | Makeup and Hair: Etude Lounge | Photobooth: Photobooth Love | Cake: King's Hawaiian |

87 days and paper pretties

Today I stumbled upon a treasure trove of paper crafts and invitation inspiration. I could spend hours poring over the beautiful card creations of Homespun with Heart by Danielle Flanders. Each lovely handmade card is absolutely overflowing with creative details and it takes me a good few minutes looking at each photo to take in all of the intricacies of her designs. Here are a few of my favorites~ (it was so hard to choose! everything was so adorable)

 love the cute moss detail~

the aqua and lime green are so summery and pretty together

"lifting you up in prayer" and hot air balloons~ so clever

I love the creative use of all the various materials like thread, twine, felt, lace, and buttons. So many fantastic scrapbook and card ideas! See more at her lovely blog here. 

Paper resources

Just thought I would share some of my great finds for specialty paper and envelope retailers. These are great resources for card making, crafts, and of course DIY invitations, programs, seating escort cards, menus, and pretty much all other wedding stationery on a budget.

Cards and Pockets

Cards and Pockets was the first DIY paper materials site I came across that really inspired me to make my own wedding invitations. Will and I really like pocket fold-style invitations because they are elegant and keep everything neat and simple...but ordering them through an invitation designer typically runs more than $5.00 per invitation. Cards and Pockets, on the other hand, has all of the materials for pocket fold invitations for under $2.00 per invite. Their color selection in pretty basic so they didn't have exactly what I was looking for but its a pretty fair selection and a great place to start when thinking about DIY invitations.

Paper Presentation

Paper Presentation is a wonderful boutique paper shop without snobby boutique prices. Their website is adorable and they have a great unique selection of pretty paper patterns and unique styles and shapes for their pocket folds. There's also pre-cut cardstock in many useful shapes like tags, circles, squares, and hearts. Makes putting together designer-looking invitations super easy!  

Paper and More

Paper and More is like a paper wholesaler but you don't have to buy in ridiculous bulk like some of the other online retailers where the minimum order is 250. I like their collection of recycled paper products, the colors are nice and earthy and they are made from 100% recycled materials so its perfectly green! Also, pretty much every product I've browsed on their site has rave reviews from customers about the high quality items for affordable prices.

Paper!

I know its a little weird to be really excited about paper (and up past 1am in the morning writing about it)...but I've been searching all over the internet for paper goods and found some pretty wonderful things. It's just paper-- but with colorful patterns, scalloped edges, linen texture, luster finish...and in every imaginable shade of color. Well, not exactly every imaginable shade, which is why I've been doing an extensive online search just to find the perfect color combinations of paper materials for our wedding stationery.

via oncewed

These pretty cards are actually made of wood not paper but how cool is that? via thenewlyengaged and nightowlpapergoods

The above are all via parcelpost, a great blog resource for all kinds of lovely paper inspirations

So I've pretty much decided we are just going to dive head first into this DIY-our-own-wedding-invitations idea. It will be the most budget-friendly option and we will be able to customize and design all of our own stationery so it will be more special and personal. It's been fun so far....planning out potential designs and finding the exact shades of colors that we want for all the paper materials. That's not to say I won't regret my decision in about a month when we actually start putting things together and attempt to make over a hundred of these things....but right now I'm pretty excited and ready for the challenge!