Guess what today is. It’s the day that we officially introduce one of our pretty new writers to you. And she’s a keeper. SMP-ers, meet Chantale Montgomery, blogger behind the fabulous site, La Belle Bride. Chantale is officially a wedding obsessed freelance writer. Unofficially, she is a style savvy, totally charming, super fun girl who loves eye candy as much as we do. Needless to say, we our feeling pretty lucky to have found her. So, please give Chantale a warm and hearty Style Me Pretty welcome and feast your eyes on the delicious wedding she is kicking off her visit with!
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You can always count on an impeccably styled rustic wedding to make a girl swoon. And for this charming wedding, I definitely assumed the swoon position. Really though, what’s not to love? Let’s take attendance shall we: gorgeous, scenic backdrop? Check. Adorable equestrian touches here and there? Check. Colorful fresh flowers, woodsy accents and DIY treats throughout? Yup. Dashing groom and stunning copper-haired bride? Photographed by the talented Tec Petaja? Most definitely. Oh and let’s not forget MULTIPLE types of pie. Yum!
From Alicia, the adorable DIY bride:
Instead of choosing colors for our wedding day, I found two inspiration boards that embodied the style and feel I was going for. The boards were rustic, involved nature, rich with golden sunlight, used twine, ebony, and wood, and I basically just kept those images in the back of my head as I made my decor decisions. As a redhead, I was drawn to peaches, browns, and ivories and I’ve always adored shabby chic style, so I basically trusted my gut and bought things I was drawn to.
I did many, many DIY projects for our wedding! Our out-of-town bags were one of my favorites. We use muslin bags decorated with stamps. Horses became an organic theme throughout our wedding and I had a custom stamp made out of a horse that my husband drew. The horse he drew was actually a horse we’d met at our venue’s stable the year before–he was their first colt, named Doc. His image was gocco’d onto our save-the-dates, on our invites, on our out-of-town bags, and signified our head table at the wedding. We stuffed the bags with goodies like chapstick, homemade granola, Emergen-c, and saltwater taffy.
Throughout the year before our wedding, I frequented garage sales and picked up vintage jars and other glass bottles (like a great turquoise milk carafe). These jars were used as vases in centerpieces and along the reception barn’s windowsills. I also picked up vintage cake stands from the yard sales for the pie bar that Teacup Bakery created for us. We had eight different flavors of pie (some fruit and some mousse) and sliced them into tiny pieces so our guests could try as many as they liked. One more thing I bought at a garage sale was our birdcage. Instead of a guest book, we had guests sign horse-themed postcards (purchased from ebay) and drop them in the birdcage.
The venue had a clothesline which most couples use for their escort cards. I was inspired to hang photos on the clothesline, but not of my husband and I as many couples do. We hung pictures of us with our guests. It was really special to show a little piece of history we’ve had with them over the years.
Going along with our horse theme, we displayed our escort cards (done by Seasonal Delights on Etsy.com) with horseshoes. Seasonal Delights is a stationer who uses stamps to create adorable gift tags and other cards. She had 10 horse stamps (including the one I sent her of my husband’s drawing) and we had 10 tables, so we used the stamp images as table “numbers.” Each tag had an image of a horse and a person’s name on it so they knew where to sit.
Our table centerpieces not only featured three jars full of peach, yellow, and ivory flowers, but the table numbers were boosted by two-inch log stumps. My dad made these from the trees in my parent’s backyard and brought them with him from California. The card holders were purchased from Pottery Barn.
More to come from this DIY packed day posted by Chantale at La Belle Bride!