our wedding

On September 4, 2010 Damian and I were married at Four Chimneys Inn in Bennington, VT.

All photography on this page by Steve Holmes Photography, unless otherwise noted.

I did not want a big wedding. But, I’m the only girl out of three kids and Damian is the first of his siblings to get married, so we knew we had to at least attempt to do something that would make everyone happy. Planning was rough. In retrospect I think I stressed out way more than was warranted, but I felt like if I was going to do a wedding, I was going to do a wedding. There were so many beautiful weddings out there on the web (and I didn’t even have Pinterest at that point!) and it was hard to narrow it down to something that would accurately reflect “us.” I know it sounds silly, but having a cohesive theme actually made it so much easier to find everything we needed, from flowers to bridesmaids gowns. In the end, we created the visual aspect of our wedding around Van Gogh’s “Sunflowers,” with aqua and yellow as our main colors.

After we settled on a basic idea, I created this inspiration board on the Dessy web site. I’m actually amazed at how much my wedding really reflected the feel of my original plans.

Next we sent out a “Save the Date” using postcards of the inn where we were planning to get married. Because we only had about 80 guests it wasn’t difficult to hand write them all.

A family friend does small-run, custom letterpress work, and he made our gorgeous invitations. My husband even got the chance to help with the printing. The little shop is called Moonstruck Press. You should check it out!

Once we had some colors and ideas to work with my husband created a wedding web site for us. We were able to use Pantone colors to match everything and we even found a font that was similar to our invitations, which used the Artcraft typeface from 1912. The site is no longer active, but here’s a screenshot.

Then we got to work! My mom and I did a lot of DIY projects for this wedding. Probably my favorite project we worked on was our escort cards. We used a mason jar stamp (which you can buy here) and I hand-lettered the cards. I love how they turned out. Do you recognize the fabric from my inspiration board?

I found this great DIY and thought that cloth napkins would be unique wedding favors. I had hoped to sew a bunch of them myself but my mom ended up doing most of them (thanks, Mom!). Here’s our version:

They looked beautiful with the rest of our table setting. Our gorgeous flowers were done by The Tuscan Sunflower in Bennington, VT. I bought the blue mason jars on Etsy, and we found the milk glass vases at various thrift shops along with a bunch that my grandmother let us borrow.

My second favorite DIY was our candy buffet. This was so much fun to create and I think our guests loved it, too. The beautiful embroidery in the frame was done by my paternal grandmother. It was a gift at my bridal shower but I knew that I wanted to incorporate it into our wedding somehow. This was the perfect spot for it. My husband designed the little sign for the buffet.

There were lots of other little DIY touches scattered throughout the wedding. My mom created our gorgeous arbor (she painted it and did all the decorations!), and she made our cake! I couldn’t have gotten married without her. She took all of my ideas seriously, and made them happen.

And, now the wedding attire. I bought my dress at David’s Bridal. I had wanted sleeves, originally, but I really like what I chose. I loved the flowing layers of chiffon on the skirt and we were able to bustle the train for the reception. I wore a veil for the ceremony but then I took it off and wore a chiffon shrug for the rest of the night.

My daughter’s dress also came from David’s Bridal. It was a cute, sort of matching version of my dress. She lost her second front tooth the morning of the ceremony! A wedding moment we’ll never forget.

My husband’s suit and tie came from Express and his dress shirt came from a local shop. Handsome, no? I love a man in a gray suit.

Last, but certainly not least, our bridal attendants. The bridesmaids dresses came from David’s Bridal (one stop shopping is so much easier!) and the grooms purchased their own suits somewhere…not sure where…but their ties came from from Express.

That’s a pretty good overview of our wedding. If you have any questions about specific items (where we got them, how we made them, etc.) please feel free to send me an email kelli {at} monadnockmama {dot} com. If you want to see the rest of our photos, including larger versions of the ones on this page, feel free to check out Our Wedding album. Or watch our slideshow at the bottom of this page (I’m working on a stylish one with music, but it’s not ready yet).

And, we lived happily ever after…