From The Bride:
Dustin and I planned our wedding in a pretty short amount of time—about 4 months. We originally planned on a really small, private ceremony, just the two of us, in upstate New York, with a party afterwards for family and friends. We made the mistake of sharing our plans with our parents, and well…the idea wasn’t exactly embraced by either side. Now that it’s all over with, we’re happy our families pushed back, but at the time is caused us a lot of stress. We weren’t comfortable spending a lot of money on a big wedding, nor did we want to make a whole production out of it. We made some compromises along the way, but held our ground when it came to the things that really mattered, and we ended up having a really lovely, low-key wedding.
Everyone always says “The details don’t matter…No one will remember them anyway!” My advice to detail oriented brides is, ignore those people. If you care about details, then details matter. YOU will remember them, and chances are there will be some other people that will really appreciate them as well. Pick a few areas you want to be really special, and focus on that. Not every little thing matter, but SOME little things matter.
I’m a big details person, so I focused a lot on the little things that would make the day beautiful and special. To start, we chose bridesmaid dresses for my two girls in dusty shale from J Crew. JCrew has very limited physical locations for its bridal collection. Plus, both of the girls live out-of-state (Florida and western PA) so we had to do everything by phone, iChat and e-mail. It was really challenging for the girls to find the best fitting dress virtually, and dusty shale is a really strange color so it was a challenge to find other colors to match to it. We ended up sticking with simple grays, blacks and silvers for the rest of the bridal party. We put together the guys’ clothes from a few different stores, and I found adorable gray houndstooth bowties for the little boys on etsy (we had two adorable boys in my family and we couldn’t chose, so we included both!)
We chose the Chapel in the Historic Village of Allaire as our ceremony site. It’s a really lovely (and small) old chapel located in Allaire State Park. For the ceremony, I made the ring bearer pillow from moss, ribbon and a found birds nest. My maid-of-honor made a “Here Comes the Bride” banner for my cousin to carry down the aisle ahead of me. Because neither of us is religious, we chose to have a secular officiant perform our ceremony. Xana from Weddings by Melissa in Marlton, NJ performed a really beautiful and personal ceremony for us. It was short, sweet and very ‘us’. We received so many compliments on how personal and unique it was.
For our brunch reception, we chose the Salt Creek Grille in Rumson. It’s a lovely rustic restaurant (which went perfectly with our ‘rustic whimsy’ theme!) on the water. We made simple centerpieces out of mini spruce shrubs wrapped in burlap and decorated with vintage keys we made into ornaments for each guest. I found these awesome animal table number holders on BHLDN, which added a little something extra to the simple table. I found a vendor on etsy that makes cake toppers, and we had a custom wolf&bird cake topper made for us in our favorite colors (there’s a story behind the wolf and bird).
All of the entertainment for our reception was done by friends and family. My dad wrote our wedding song and put together a series of love song to play throughout. My dear friend and bridesmaid sang a beautiful song for me, two family friends sang love songs they wrote, and my uncle did a comedic rap about Dustin and me. It was so fun and special to have our loved ones performing at our wedding.
Our wedding day was nuts. It was an early ceremony and we wanted to do photos beforehand, so we were up at 4:30 AM getting ready. Dina Gardner did my make-up, then we headed to my hairdresser at Ambiance Salon in Island Heights. Our photographer Pat Furey has been my friend since high school, and he was really a champ waking up at 6:30 to start taking pictures. Our wedding pictures are awesome for a few reasons.
One, Pat is spectacular.
Two, I was willing to get my dress dirty. Pat suggested that we head to the barn where I keep my horse Waldo before the ceremony to do pictures. I LOVED that idea. I knew the light would be awesome at that time of day, and we would get some killer photos with my horse on the beautiful farm grounds. I was thrilled, my mother was not. She was against the idea in fear of me ruining my dress before the ceremony. She was convinced that my dress would be torn and covered in mud. It was a huge point of contention, but I strapped on some boots and held my ground, and Dustin and my bridal party supported me (though my girls trailed behind me the whole time holding up my dress). When my best friend asked me why I was so set on it, I responded every time with, “Because I want awesome photos”. I knew that taking the risk would be worth the product…I could envision the resulting images. Pat had us literally laying on the ground and climbing on fallen trees through greenbriar. My dress was dirty, yes, but no one noticed and I didn’t care. Had I chosen to play it safe, I would have missed out on some truly awesome wedding photos.
You’ll get push back from people if you want to do things differently. Everyone has an opinion when it comes to wedding planning. Think of the mood you want to set with your party, and make it happen. Stick to your guns. Do what you want, and forget the rest. Not everyone wants the cha-cha slide and a garter toss.
