Between our upcoming anniversary and my brother getting engaged, I’ve got weddings on the brain. Big time. Since we weren’t blogging back in 2008, I’ll share our wedding experience with you in a series of posts here at The LOH.
THE PLACE
We knew that we weren’t going to have a church wedding and we didn’t want to get married in the same spot as my prom, so we decided on our local theatre, where my dad and I performed in many shows together throughout my childhood. The architecture is amazing (1931 art deco). Check it out:
THE STYLE
Art Deco. We pulled the colors for the wedding right from the theatre.
THE SPACE
We also put together this space plan.
THE THEME
As for theme, we both come from big families that we can’t get enough of, with parents that are still together and love each other! Since that’s both wonderful and rare, we decided to make our wedding a celebration of the love we all share for each other. Our theme is ‘Our Family Tree’. Both families are naturally open and welcoming, and we couldn’t wait to have everyone together!
A GREEN WEDDING
Here are some of the things that made this a green wedding.
- invitations that used 1/6 of the average amount of paper
- use of a wedding website to RSVP and to get out of town guests all of the necessary info
- centerpieces that doubled as favors (less consumption) (tree seedlings, making our wedding an event that planted 90 new trees)
- shower centerpieces were potted plants, rather than cut flowers
- shower invitations printed on handmade recycled paper
- ceremony & reception in same location, with hotel across the street (less fuel consumption)
- the pomander decorations went directly to another bride for her wedding
- less overall consumption (no bridesmaid dresses – they wore something they already owned, use of vintage accessories, etc.)
- no new engagement ring, therefore not feeding the massively corrupt diamond industry
- less fuel consumption due to lack of usual staff (no band, DJ, cake, etc.)
- no registry
AN OVERALL NOTE
We chose to eliminate a lot of the usual wedding stuff. I’ve got nothing against stuff, but at the end of the day, what we hoped people would remember and treasure about the day are the moments that we will have shared. We wanted the focus to be on the people. We didn’t want stuff to be a distraction, so anything that didn’t serve a necessary function was cut. Bridesmaid dresses, centerpieces, the garter, the wedding cake (canoles instead), matching suits or tuxes for the Groomsmen, aisle runner, toasting flutes, you get the idea. Things were purposefully simple, to keep the focus on the love between us all, the love that brought us all into existence, and the love that’s brought us together on this day.
Stay tuned for tomorrow’s post – Everything Paper!
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Yay, I’m so glad you’re posting this! So sweet! And I love that you weren’t a slave to tradition, getting lost and overwhelmed in the “stuff,” as so many brides do. Can’t wait for the next post!
Fantastic stuff. I wish I had read this 8 years ago when I was planning my wedding. I would have implemented so many of your ideas.
Thank you, ladies! Preparing these posts is a really nice trip down memory lane. Can’t wait to share more! And Lauren, it’s hard to break from tradition coming from where we come from, I think. People expect what they expect, and you don’t know how they’ll react to something different. We lucked out that folks liked what we did (or at least, that’s the impression I got!).
Brooke this is awesome! We also broke tradition and had no “stuff”. Just a small ceremony and indulgent dinner with ten of our nearest and dearest. I wouldn’t change a thing! Looking forward to more posts!