Our Wedding: The Details

It was very important to me to include special touches throughout our wedding. I wanted our guests to feel welcome, for it to be an intimate and personal event. I ultimately wanted it to reflect us as a couple, and I think we achieved that.

Unfortunately, a lot of details were missed by our photographer on accident. I still wanted to share some of the details I felt made our day special with all of you. Thankfully, my friend Michelle who designed most of our paper stuff took nice sample pics that I saved and can share with you! I left off a few signs, some of which are in other wedding posts, and a couple that I just didn't have pictures of...oh, well.

Here are our vow cards! We read traditional and personal vows, typed them up and glued them to the back of the card. While they are totally unnecessary, I thought they added a special touch. I plan to display them in a shadow box frame with some other wedding things, and hang it somewhere on a shelf in our home.

Our reserved chair signage at the Cermony.

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I painted our monogram on to an aisle runner.

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Our Ceremony arrangements at the "altar". I bought 3 bunches of dried dune grass for each vase at Hobby Lobby. The vases were bought at Home Goods. I have these arrangements displayed in our home.

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Our program basket. I bought a black basket after Halloween '09 at a deep discounted price, spray painted it white, and lined it with burlap. The programs were tri-fold brochures I won in a Uprinting giveaway. You can't see the signage that was attached to the basket that read "please take a program".

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I asked my dad to make a small surf board out of wood for our guests to sign instead of your traditional guest book. I orginally saw the idea somewhere online, but with a real surfboard. We wanted to do something creative and beachy... this was perfect. We are planning to display it in our office. (btw - I have an extra one if you or someone you know is interested in buying it from us! Please email me or leave a comment.)

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Our bouquet tags!

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Our cocktail menu we had in clear acrylic frames at the cocktail hour bar, and both of the bars at our reception.

A guests photo of one of our drink flags in action! We had "N (heart) D", and "Stir it up". They were a big hit! I bought a pack of the wooden stir sticks at Walmart in the craft section, cut out the designs I had made out of cardstock, and glued them on.

When guests first walked in to the Ceremony from inside the building, or from the parking lot, there was a table with a drink dispenser with iced water, and cups that they could enjoy while they were seated.

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Dance floor decal

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We had some baby's breath arrangements on our buffet table.

We had another large arrangement in a different area in a corner. It was a tall vase of dried curly birch branches with some beachy decor around it. We also had a large piece of driftwood on our sweetheart table, which sadly was thrown away :( I brought some real coral from home, and had aqua mason jars throughout the reception area with white votive candles lit, and sand inside of them.

Pretty much anything I needed decor wise we already had at home, (or we bought and now use in our home).

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Our reception table flowers. We had some short and tall centerpieces. The blue hydrangea's didn't turn out the way I had hoped... I was going for more of a light blue and a little more "lush" but I think they still turned out pretty. We also had some white votive candles on the tables.

The sign you see is one of our our table names. We named all of our tables after Daniel's favorite surf spots around the world. The sign holders were bought from the Dollar Tree. They are actually small picture easels and I spray painted them white.

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I also DIY'd all of our burlap table runners and chair ties. While burlap isn't for everyone, it was one of my favorite details, and I thought it went with our beachy themed wedding. I spent hours cutting fabric until the wee hours in the night the week of our wedding! :) Thankfully, I was able to sell all of our runners to another Bride after the wedding!

Our cake table runner. This runner wasn't photographed very well, but was underneath our cake. I thought it turned out SO well. I absolutely love it and I am looking forward to using it again when we entertain. You can buy one here.

We don't have any pro pics of our Mr. & Mrs. chair signs at the reception. This "Bride" sign is actually a mock up, and I later changed it to Mr. & Mrs. You get the idea though...

This sign was attached to bathroom baskets, which were seagrass media baskets from Target. Sadly, I have no pictures of our bathroom baskets, but they had everything you could imagine ladies and gentlemen needing "just in case". The sign read "Please help yourself to the contents within. Compliements of the Newlyweds". I lined the baskets with burlap. They were a hit with our guests. One guest was even caught (by one of my bridesmaids) trying to take the entire basket after the reception was over.. yikes! lol

Our card holder. I bought this large lantern at Home Goods, and I hot glued some beige satin ribbon and starfish on it.

One of two favors we had... a CD with some of our favorite songs, and songs we thought would be appropriate on a beach wedding CD. We put them in seagrass media baskets from Target with a "please take a favor" sign attached.

Here is the inside of the CD favor when opened. We used one of our engagement pics for the CD label.

Here's our song list. You should be able to click on it for a close up, but if you can't view it and want to know what songs we used I'd be more than happy to send you our list.

Our second favor was dry erase memo boards for the fridge. They were in a cellophane bag and secured with a monogrammed label. I won these in a giveaway, otherwise we would have done without them. You can't read the bottom but it says "Please pray for us as we begin our new lives together".

Our favors and escort starfish tags in action (a guests picture).

We also had a photo booth for guests to enjoy throughout the night. You can see the slideshow here.

For the kids, I won some monogrammed beach pails and filled them with age appropriate things, and put them on their tables. We also made out of town bags for close relatives. They included a door sign "Please do not disturb, we're getting ready for Nicole and Daniel's wedding", water bottles, snacks, a sunscreen stick, an area map with coupons to near by restaurants, and a welcome letter. I passed them out at our rehearsal dinner since we only had 8 of them. I later learned the beach pails and OOT bags were greatly appreciated! It's all in the details! :)

For our bridesmaids, I made these totes and filled them with flip flops to change into at the reception, a necklace to wear that one of my bridesmaids helped me make (they looked similar to these), letter press thank you notes, a small beach scented candle and spray from Bath and Body Works, and a card. The groomsmen got engraved money clips, and monogrammed etched beer mugs (like these). The Jr. Bridesmaids got monogramed key chains, flip flops, pearl necklaces, and a card. My mom, dad, and Daniel's mother all got personalized hankies, and a card. Our officiant, wedding planner(s) also got cards. Sorry I did not take any pictures!

Here are the ribbon wands I made. We had our guests wave them as we exited our reception.

Here's a peek at our luggage tags we used on our honeymoon! I loved the idea and just had to have them.

If you missed my older posts, here are our save the date postcards, invitations, photo sharing cards, and thank you's.

You can order custom wedding things from Michelle too. Go to her Etsy shop here. You'll be so glad you did. She is very talented, and I highly recommend her. She was recently featured in Martha Stewart Weddings Magazine! She was by far my most FAVORITE vendor to work with! She was just amazing. Every email was replied to right away, and she doesn't stop working on your order until it's perfect in her eyes. Through working with her we formed a wonderful friendship! I even visited her in San Diego while we were on our way back from our Hawaii honeymoon! :) Love ya girl!

Well, I hope you enjoyed seeing our wedding pictures! If you have any questions about anything please don't hesitate to ask. Sorry for the poor picture quality on some of them! ha.

*All paper sample pics were taken by Michelle, and the rest which are not credited are from my iPhone!