V's Wedding: the Garden Setting

As you all know, my best friends Virginia and Dan were married in late June. I am finally able to share the professional pictures with you (the editing process took a while!), taken by Anita Soos, so you can see more of what we did to make their day unique. Just to remind you, the ceremony and reception were in Virginia's mom and stepdad's backyard in Guilford, Connecticut. The sign above, created by Dan, marked the entrance to the house.

I'm jumping straight to the centerpieces because they were the central feature of the decor. They were central in planning the look of everything else at the wedding and were the aspect we have been most excited about for the past year. Each centerpiece was unique—Virginia and her mom collected vintage wooden boxes over the past year and Anita (who was responsible for the entire visual look of the wedding from invites to flowers and photography) and her assistant Dee planted each with an assortment of flowers in the color palette. Virginia and her sister sewed the table toppers from three different but coordinating fabrics from Purl Patchwork. The table numbers were another vintage find and each table had different enamel or metal numbers.

Here you can see a table that had just one large box in the center. The rustic wood of the boxes with the somewhat loose arrangements went perfectly with the garden setting. And it was so fun to see the idea that Virginia had for so long come to life in such an impressive way.

Here is their guest book arrangement, which had two options: you could either type them a note using the vintage typewriter (Virginia and Dan are both writers and V has a special place in her heart for typewriters) or simply write in the kraft paper Moleskin books. I actually had those notebooks and used Mod Podge to secure on some paper lace to dress them up. I also added a piece of ribbon as a page marker. We had both because the typewriter was still at the repair shop two days before the wedding! But it came through just in time—and we decided to give guests a choice. There were also a handful of flip cameras floating around for people to record messages and moments during the evening.

This was one of my very favorite spots at the wedding. These are the wedding photos of Virginia and Dan's grandparents, labeled with small manilla office labels and hung on a wall of the shed. In the center are the table listings.

Here you can see a close up of the frames and the images. I loved the way that the colors of the flowers that were arranged around the shed worked against the wood. And there was just something so pleasing about the formal pictures hung in that setting.

To close, here's a sneak peak of more of the photos that I'll share here tomorrow! (That's Virginia and her sweet sister Caroline.)