Katy ~ today’s beautiful bride ~ refers to herself as a professional bridesmaid. Having served as an attendant at many a friends’ wedding, she knew what she liked and set about assembling a team who could help her achieve it. Little Black Book members ~ Tifany at Gourmet Invitations, Abby at Abby Rose Photo, Hollye Mackler and Haute Bride all played significant roles in their areas of wedding expertise! Katy has shared many of the planning details with us! So we’ll just let her take the mike …
Beyond wanting our wedding to be different, Mike and I wanted it to be modernly elegant, but still feel very intimate…which is a hard balance when you both come from small families and have a huge guest list. At the end of the day, we wanted every one of our guests, whether they traveled from near or far, to feel a part of our day. From the ceremony to the reception we wanted it to be a reflection of us, but something that everyone could enjoy. Because as I said at our rehearsal dinner, “this day is as much about all of you who have made us the people we are today and supported us, as it is about us!”
Katy went on to say … By the time I got engaged, I was pretty much known as a professional bridesmaid. Lucky for me, I had been in so many of my friends’ gorgeous weddings, it gave me a good starting point for everything I wanted for our big day. However, anyone that knows me, also knows that I love to be different, not in a dye my hair blue kind of way, but always have my finger on the pulse of the newest beauty product, celeb line for target, etc… That being said, we chose what I thought were non-traditional wedding colors. However, as I scoured the blogs for some ideas, I realized that my colors (midnight blue and key lime) had become the most popular wedding colors for SUMMER weddings. So I thought great, I have such great taste that every bride is using the same colors! The only problem ~ we were getting married in October. So I decided to add another color that would pop, my “something different” if you will. It hit me that orange, beautiful pumpkin/fall orange would provide that … and tie into the fall season.
Since everyone who was part of our wedding is so special to us, we really wanted to get them personal gifts. For my girls, I got Kate Spade make up bags in our wedding colors, a hoodie with a vintage patch with our wedding date, a vintage purse that matched their personalities and a hand-embroidered (again by my amazing sister) handkerchief with their monogram for them to use on the wedding day.
Mike and I are lucky to have such great family and friends who really helped with all of the details, but by far, one of the best decisions we made was bringing on Misty from Bells and Bliss to be our coordinator…to really keep everything running smoothly and on track…it was great to have eyes and ears in Michigan, while we were planning from DC.
After getting all of the big stuff done, photog (yes, I booked Abby before I even had a date), church (the one my parents were married in 32 years ago), the reception place, and the date … I dove into the details. I am from Michigan and Mike is from Pennsylvania, but we met, fell in love, and currently are still living in DC. We knew we wanted to include elements from each place to really give our guests a true feeling of our history and our future.
First, I decided on working with the AMAZING Tifany from Gourmet Invitations and we modeled our invites and extras off of the tie Mike was going to wear! Even the stickers on our out-of-town boxes (filled with MI and PA treats and facts) matched our invitation suite. Our seating chart was modeled after the Washington, DC metro system, and our tables were named for stops that had significance to us individually or as a couple.
(see all SMP gallery images from Katy & Mike’s wedding here)
You can see even more images of Katy & Michael’s wedding on Gourmet Invitation’s blog and on Abby Rose Photo’s blog!
For décor at the wedding, we wanted it to be modern, and fun, yet elegant. We worked with Misty and our amazing florist, Hollye to come up with fresh, different tablescapes. I have always loved chivari chairs, but they had become all the rage, so I wanted to make them different. That is when I came up with the weaving idea (I had seen a picture of one color). This was an extremely labor intensive task, it took the ladies from Happenings almost 20 hours to do. The flowers, I adored…there was just enough orange in the girls bouquets to make it pop, and tight orange rose centerpieces looked amazing in the ballroom against the navy linens.
After all of that planning and thought, I wouldn’t change one thing about our day…my dad walking me down the same isle, he was married in and seeing Mike at the other end…one of our closest friends Amber, reading Mister Rogers instead of a traditional reading, and exiting under rice, and our AMAZING photog stepping on my veil…I wouldn’t change any of it. I know that brides always say this, but it couldn’t be more true, things will go wrong on your day and you can’t worry about it. As I was walking up to get ready to go down the aisle with my dad, I realized our string quartet was playing the wrong song as my girls walked down and I couldn’t have cared less, because the only person that knew was me and it wasn’t stopping me from marrying the man of my dreams.
Congrats to Katy & Mike! And a huge thank you to Abby Rose Photo and Tifany at Gourmet Invitations!!
Photography: Abby Rose Photo Invites: Gourmet Invitations Coordination: Bells and Bliss Floral: Hollye Mackler Dress: Lazaro, Jewelry: Haute Bride, Bridesmaids: Anna Elyse, Flowergirl/ring bearer: Pegeen, Cake: Zingerman’s Bakehouse