Alicia & Chris’ Garden Wedding Reception!

i am sharing such a lovely event with you today!  it is the wedding reception of alicia and chris.  i really love that it was more than just a reception, it was truly a beautiful expression of incorporating everything that was special to the their hearts, their families, their treasures and their passions.  alicia was so kind to share about their day below and i hope other engaged couples are inspired to really make their weddings personal and unique to them as well!  here is the story…

“Our wedding was originally scheduled for July, and when we found out that my beloved grandmother was dying of cancer, we moved our wedding ceremony date up to March, in the hopes that she would be able to attend.  We already had everything planned for our reception in July at the South Coast Botanic Garden, so we kept the reception as scheduled on the original date.  When we were planning our wedding, we decided early on that we wanted it to reflect things that we love, which included all of the decorations being either vintage or handmade.  We originally had all these ideas of themes and concepts for the reception – Alice in Wonderland, Pride & Prejudice, but when it all started to come together, we ended up wanting it to feel kind of like a grander scale version of welcoming everyone into our own house. That’s why we wanted to use a lot of our own furniture from our house, and all the flowers from our garden, etc.  Whenever we have friends over, we always love to make them feel like they are coming to a tea party – and always have tons of tea (often made from my herb garden), homemade scones and tea sandwiches.  We wanted the “cocktail hour” to reflect that since that’s something that’s very “us” as a couple. We have a couple of families of birds who live in our yard, and I am always planting types of wildflowers that will attract butterflies, so birds and butterflies were a big inspiration in a lot of the decorations.  The bird nest cake topper sculpture was actually the first project that I made when starting the wedding planning.

We did everything ourselves, including the flowers, mostly from our own garden. I planted all the kinds of flowers that I wanted to use ahead of time to prepare.  Some items of note – the dollhouse was originally given to me by my grandmother’s sister and I had it since I was a kid.  My grandfather was an artist and first taught me about working with clay by starting out making all kinds of things for that dollhouse, and then we started moving onto jewelry.  So that dollhouse was a huge starting point in my creative journey!  His father was a famous Hollywood artist back in the day, and taught him about working with clay, and so it’s kind of a family tradition.  The vintage typewriter was a gift from the same grandfather because he knew I loved to write poems and short stories.  He gave it to me when I was a kid to remind me that I can do anything or be anything I wanted to be when I grow up. We collected all of the vintage china that we used, and a lot of it belonged to my grandmother.  Before she passed, she was very involved with helping us plan our wedding, and she said she couldn’t wait to see her china used for something “fancy”.Most of the vintage books were from my grandparents house, and I remember reading them when I was a kid with my grandparents. My other grandfather found a bunch of his wife’s old doilies and thought that I may want to use them for the wedding.  I sewed them all together into one tablecloth that was on the guest book table, on her sewing desk.  The other crocheted tablecloths were my maternal grandmother’s, as well as all of the cloth napkins we used.  I sewed all of the lace tablecloths on the dinner tables. A lot of the other misc vintage items we have are things that were at my maternal grandparents’ house and my grandma gave me before she passed away recently.  The quilt we used by the lake was my baby blanket that my sewing grandmother made for me when I was born. One of the pillows that we had on the benches was embroidered by my great-grandmother in 1947, but she never finished it.  I found it and completed the project.  Another pillow my grandmother embroidered, but also never finished.  I finished that one too and they both normally are on our couch in our living room. All of my diamond jewelry I designed and Chris had custom made for me – necklace was my wedding gift and earrings were my Christmas present from last year.  Two other hobbies that we both really love include boating and horseback riding.  We brought our vintage “boat shelf” as a prop for some of our portraits, and went to the stables across the street from our reception for some photos with horses.”  

it was truly SO very special and donny and i were so blessed to be a part of it.  here is our little summary of their lovely day…