Throwback Indie Wedding Guide 2011: A Wedding Tale: Vintage & DIY Style – Alexandra & Ryan (Part Two)
Hello loves, it has been one crazy week here at the VI house. I'm finally getting over a very painful sinus infection and trying to play catch-up! Welcome spring! I'm officially done with winter, how about you? Until things are back to somewhat normal here please enjoy some throwback Indie Wedding Guide this weekend from some of my favorite past features.
What was your favorite wedding detail? Cont.
I really enjoyed making "whimsical" crafts for our wedding; like my felt flower and button rehearsal bouquet, the paper doll seating chart, or the twist-on-the-traditional paper-maché bride and groom cake topper.
I made a stack of "wedding presents" wrapped in vintage paper and ribbons to hold the cards guests gave us, and placed it along with the other presents on our traditional gift table.
For favours, we did a candy buffet – but used vintage ribbons and containers to hold our pink, yellow, and white candy. Each jar or container was labeled with puns on 1950s hit songs, like "twizz and shout" for the twizzlers, or "mama said there'd be mints like this" for the scotch mints.
To preserve our memories, I designed a guestbook at blurb.com to look like a 1950s romance novel – inside was the story of our lives and our relationship and guests wrote their greeting around the photos!
Did vintage play a role in your wedding? If so, how?
From the moment I said "I will" to the day that I said "I do," I was smitten with the idea of having a vintage-inspired wedding. The time period between 1948 and 1964 holds so much charm and fascination for me that it was a natural choice and source of inspiration for our wedding. My desire to have a mid-century wedding was no doubt fuelled by my early and ever-going love of 1950-1960s romantic comedies. In fact, my dream wedding/life comes directly from those images forever burned onto my retinas as a child: Elizabeth Taylor in the original Father of the Bride, and "bunny-nose" June Allyson, Betty Grable, and Doris Day in every movie they ever made. By referencing old cinema classics, 1950s wedding guidebooks, interior design and fashion magazines, and by intently studying home movies and wedding pictures from the era, I was able to build up an impressive file of notes on classic weddings of the era. Besides our wedding day attire, accessories, and hair styles, I was careful to include period-specific flowers and floral combinations (hence the profusion of carnations, dahlias, old roses, and gladioli) in our church and reception decor. Our unsual colour palette (ballet pink, blush pink, buttercream yellow, mustard yellow, gold, charcoal grey, and white) was directly inspired by old "Hollywood" style hotel lobbies and ultra-feminine boudoirs. Our guests loved seeing the 1957 Bel-Air parked outside of our tiny church, and were extremely enthusiastic about our 1930s-1970s playlist at the reception. The dance for was packed all night – not a single guest was sitting down!
Any vendor recommendations?
I'd highly recommend our floral event designer, Larissa Meade from Bridal Beginnings in British Columbia – she was so professional, and her creativity and understanding of my vision blew me away. When some mishaps occurred on the wedding day, she drove back to my house and personally fixed each and every bouquet. An angel!