Here are a few more details from our wedding.
This is our Tears of Joy basket. The idea was to give everyone something to dry their tears and also keep as a memento of our wedding. I originally saw this on blog somewhere and have yet to be able to locate it since, but I thought it was the cutest idea. I purchased the basket at a thrift store for cheap and collected the hankies on eBay. After thoroughly washing and ironing each one, I displayed them in the basket with a sign that read: “As a memento of the day and for tears of joy (if any), you may take (and keep!) a vintage hankie.”
Instead of a traditional guest book, we decide to do ‘Recipes for Love’. I purchased a vintage recipe box along with vintage recipe dividers (in the original packaging!) on Etsy. I painted the box white and gave it a distressed treatment and added a blue knob to the lid from Anthropologie. I also added the silver label holder and slipped a little piece of paper in that said ‘recipes for love’.
The hand made sign next to the guest book read: “In lieu of a traditional guest book, we ask that you leave us a note, thought, drawing or recipe (for food or love) on an index card for us to file in our recipe box. Next to the guest book was a mason jar full of pencils that I covered in coordinating scrapbooking paper.
A copy of Edward Monkton’s A Lovely Love Story (which was read in the closing of our ceremony), was placed on a table inside the barn for people to look at if they chose to. It now has an honored place on our bookshelf. I just love this story – so simple and touching!
I cut the escort cards out of Kraft paper and glued the ivory nameplates on top. They were then attached to the frames I made (details here) using tiny clothespins. The cool thing about this project is that I am now using one of these in our bedroom as a decorative jewelry organizer, and it looks awesome!
Here are all three of the boards together in front of the barn, untouched.
For the card box, I borrowed my mother-in-law’s vintage milk crate from White’s Dairy Farm. I covered a piece of foamboard with leftover fabric from the escort boards to cover the wire milk compartments. I punched holes in the sign and attached it with grey satin ribbon.
I knew all along that I wanted table names instead of numbers, I just couldn’t decide on a theme. We went back and forth between classic Hollywood romance films and Beatles songs. Although we both (especially Tory) love movies, we settled on Beatles songs because in all honesty, we hadn’t actually seen many of the classic romances. I added a little info about each song for the guests to read if they chose.
I made little tents out of Kraft cardstock, and glued the names to both sides. I added some ribbon because, well, I just love ribbon. You can also see the votive holders in this photo – for those we used small jelly jars purchased at WalMart, added split peas in the bottom for some color, and tied some twine around the opening. p.s. Oh! Darling is my all-time favorite Beatles song 
I made menus for the buffet (so everyone knew what they were getting) and the bar. The venue put them in frames that they had.
I wanted a variety of vases for our centerpieces, so my mom and I spent the months leading up to the wedding scouring flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores and our family’s storage spaces for unique and colorful vessels. We gave all of the vases to Martha and she made magic!
I cut the burlap runners to size from a few giant sheets that I purchased in Home Depot’s garden department for next to nothing. I had no idea you could even buy burlap at Home Depot, and this saved us a ton of money we would have spent at the fabric store. I love the juxtaposition of rough fabric against the shimmery pewter linens. We had chocolate chip cookies from Ginger Elizabeth Chocolates as favors. We picked them up the day before to ensure freshness, and spent the evening before the wedding packaging them. Here’s a better look at the labels. This was the “Here, There And Everywhere” table.
This is a look into the reception area from the entrance of the barn. We covered a board with fabric that matched the escort boards and plastered it with photos of us throughout the course of our relationship, including our engagement pics taken by my friend Andrew Nixon.
All photos in this post by Rochelle Mort.
