Today I'm celebrating my third wedding anniversary with my sweet husband & soulmate, Bo. God couldn't have sent me a more perfect man FOR ME, and I'm so grateful for him.
My husband and I, as a team, worked together planning this wedding from top to bottom, start to finish and here is just a little taste. There were so many little details, even the photographer couldn't capture them all {and it would take me much, much too long to tell you about all of them!}.
As far as brides are concerned, I was pretty daring with color. More so than I would be if I were planning my wedding present day ;-} Lime, dark pink, and tangerine were some of the bright, bold colors used in my wedding as you can see in this picture of my sister and me.
I love when the bride carries a colorful bouquet. I adorned my bouquet with a butterfly broach, and my bridesmaids' bouquets with broaches as well.
My nephew and godson, Jack, was only 6 months at the time and a little too young to be in the wedding :-{
I love this picture of my dad holding my hand in the limo.
I searched high and low for jewelry and couldn't find what I was looking for {I wasn't wearing a necklace, so I wanted a thick, chuncky bracelet with crystals and ivory beads}. I finally found Lisa, who made exactly what I had envisioned. She even attached a little blue bead as my something blue.
We chose to have pictures taken before our ceremony. I was torn about this decision, but my husband and I both really wanted to enjoy our cocktail hour. I was also a nervous wreck about the thought of seeing my husband for the first time while walking down the aisle. I am not a public crier, and I was pretty sure I would loose it while walking down that aisle if I didn't see him beforehand. Looking back, this was definitely the right decision for us. We had pictures taken at Independence Park with our bridal party in Philadelphia. The old brick buildings were exactly the backdrop I wanted.
My girls all carried parasols -- they made for a great photo opt.
Once we arrived at Cescaphe Ballroom, we had the entire place to ourselves for about an hour. It was great! The entire bridal party and our parents had private rooms upstairs where we were able to decompress for a little while. The staff had all kinds of delicious food out for us, so we could get our pre-wedding munchies on. There may have been a champagne toast or two that took place as well ;-}
I had one of my 8th grade students make my bridemaids' jewelry {yes, 8th grade -- she made me a bracelet for Christmas and I loved it, so I knew she'd do a great job!}. She used brown beads on all the bracelets, but they were all different as she used a variety of shapes and sizes.
Details, details, details...
Rather than placecards, I choose to display my seating chart on these big display boards. I used one of Cescaphe's recommended vendors to make the boards.
In addition to our reception, our ceremony was also held at Cescaphe. I am 100% comfortable recommending this venue to anyone getting married -- they definitely are skilled at what they do and were unbelievable to work with. Joe, the owner, went above and beyond to accommodate all our requests. One of the things we loved was that as our guests arrived for our ceremony, they were all held on the patio and seated in the ballroom at one time for the wedding. During that holding time, the patio was open and some light, pre-wedding cocktails were served. My husband is a food/drink & entertainment connoisseur and made most of the decisions concerning these things. That explains the ice bar he "had to have" for the patio.
Mini lemontinis served in lemons {aren't they cute?!}.
Cocktail hour band -- they were fabulous!
After we were married, Bo and I had a quick mini session with our photographer. We walked next door to a hip & trendy bowling alley called North Bowl {Northern Liberties}. We were able to get some really fun pics here!
We displayed all our families' old wedding invitations all the way back to our great-grandparents. It was so neat to see how much the style of invitations have changed over the years ;-}
We had a specialty martini menu, and I created four different options for drinks. The "Something New" was our signature cocktail and served with rock candy.
In lieu of a traditional guestbook, I choose to have my guests sign a platter. Now it sits on a plate stand in my dining room, and I love that a little piece of my wedding is within view everyday.
We decided to add a photobooth late in the planning process, and I'm so glad we did. It was a blast! I even used our photobooth pics to create
our first Christmas card as a married couple.
Two copies of the photobooth pics were printed. One copy the guests kept and the other copy was placed into a scrapbook with personal {and some ummm...drunk....messages ;-}. It's a fun keepsake!
Introduced as Mr. & Mrs. -- sparklers shot off as we walked down the steps!
The food -- incredible. Bo and I are dying to attend another Cescaphe wedding so we can actually take everything in and savor the food. When you are the guests of honor, everything is such a whirlwind!
I did not have a theme to my wedding, but I love green apples, so they definitely worked their way into the day more than once. These were the intermezzo -- apple sorbet served in hallowed green apples.
Our signature cocktail was what we named a "Bubbly Appletini." {Bubbly by Colbie Caillet was our wedding song, which is why we incorporated champagne into our signature cocktail}. It was your classic appletini with a splash of champagne and a rock candy garnish. Our favor was a recipe card and a rock candy swizzle stick.
Cescaphe had tons of options for different table sizes and shapes. We chose to set the ballroom up using round, oval and cluster tables. This pic shows one of the clusters {three rounds put together}. They allowed us to seat large groups together.
See the green apples making an appearance again? They were used in our centerpieces, too. If you click on the picture to make it bigger, you might also be able to see the table number signs. I added pics of me and Bo as children, with our families, etc. to each table number sign. I tried to incorporate some of the people sitting at those tables in the pics if I could. They were really cute!
We choose a cake with chocolate icing -- it was yum!
We were taking a little break and enjoying some of the decadent desserts from the unbelievable dessert spread Cescaphe served while watching our guests dance the night away.
Cigar bar on the patio...
My hubby requested we do this. There is no picture of the set-up, but we bought all kinds of cool cigars, arranged them in square glass vases and added some monogrammed matches. It was a nice little hangout for the guys.
The mummers also made an appearance at the end of the night. My husband used to help out with the South Philly Stringband and thought it would be fun for the guests if they performed.
I spent a ton of time hand painting about 25 umbrellas for our guests to use when the mummer's performed. Bo helped me with about one and half of them and gave up -- haha. It just wasn't his thing.
My favorite umbrella ;-}
I made bags that were butlered to each table as the mummers arrived. Each bag contained props for the guests to use {2008 glasses, sparkly hats, umbrellas, etc}.
Happily wed -- sigh.
Although I've always had an eye for details, my wedding was what inspired Studio LIME Design, for it was then that a true passion for entertaining was born. Hope you enjoyed!
**Venue --
Cescaphe Ballroom {check out their newest location -- Tendenza -- looks amazing!}
