Can you believe our favorite day of the week is already here? The day we get to double up on pretty posts and share even more wonderful weddings with you! If you needed a little extra boost to get you through the work week then today’s lineup will certainly do the trick and help you make it all the way to the weekend! Don’t forget, you can see even more of each wedding by checking out the full galleries!
A Nantucket wedding just wouldn’t be complete without a little nautical thrown in! Zofia Photography captured this superb sea town wedding filled with history, loads of handmade details and precious vintage pieces. I’m absolutely in love with the flags on top of the cake (made by the mother of the groom) and the Christmas cracker favors (a New England must have). It’s hard to have a bad time with a paper crown on your head! There are even more fun photos from this East Coast island party in the full gallery!
Click here for more inspiration in the full wedding gallery!
Jason and I dated for ten years – we were high school sweethearts. I’m from Colorado, he’s from New Jersey and now we live in Boston. He’s in his residency at Tufts Hospital and I started my job a week after we got engaged in January. Between work and wedding planning, it was a busy nine months! When we were deciding on a location for our wedding, we had two obvious choices – Nantucket, where Jason’s parents retired some years back, or my hometown of Aspen, Colorado. We chose Nantucket because it was closer to where we live, the East Coast was where most guests would be coming from and, of course, it is a beautiful place for a wedding — a destination that feels worlds away but was not too far for most of our guests to travel. Jason and I love the history and feel of the island – Moby Dick, the cedar houses, and the beautiful bleakness that can come over the place. In designing the wedding, I wanted to have a vintage Nantucket feel and look that was not overtly nautical. We also wanted to throw a great party! I took a lot of inspiration from my mother, who passed away in 2006. She threw wonderful parties that always managed to bring out the kid in even the most staid adult.
Since we were splurging on the location, DIY projects, which I already love, became a focus. With the help of family and friends, we made all the paper goods, the cake topper, the guestbook, the favors, the directional sign and the escort card flowers. My mother in law made the cake, the linen pew flowers, embroidered the gift bags and made the table runner and tablecloth under the escort card flowers. She’s a champion. I made all the paper goods – invitations, menus, programs – with the amazing design assistance of my sister, Rye, who is a talented artist and graphic designer (and who also spent almost as much time as I did wedding planning!). She found among my grandfather’s things a dance card from a dance a relative attended in 1881 in Leadville, Colorado as well as a 1930s hand-drawn vintage postcard from Aspen. These gave us some great elements to work with, and let me bring in, in a small way, my family’s long history in Colorado. I used vintage postage stamps, which was a lot of fun. We brought in lots of authors, boats and state-themed stamps to make things more personal – I’ve actually bought stamps since the wedding, for myself. They’re little pieces of art! I noticed that while women commented on the invitation itself, the men commented on the stamps. Something for everyone.
I also made the seating cards, which were by far the most labor-intensive project. I ordered copper tags from an electrical supply wholesaler, bought a metal hand-stamping kit, and stamped each attendee’s name on a copper tag when I had free time over the course of several months. With the help of my bridesmaids, I tied each tag to sola flowers, feathers and dried flowers, each of which corresponded to a particular table. As the favors, I made sea salt caramels. They were wrapped in Christmas-cracker style poppers with exploding snaps, and each contained the candy and a paper hat I made in our wedding colors. Guests also took home photos from our photo booth.There were lots of small personal elements. Jason and I met in an English class. The books on the table were books we read in that class or by authors we read together. We share a love of classical music, and chose as the processional song Nulla in Mundo by Vivaldi, a piece we’ve listened to together hundreds of times over the years. For his wedding ring, I gave Jason my grandfather’s ring. On my bouquet, I tied my grandmother’s locket, which is engraved to her from her father and contains photos of the two of them. We love food and cooking, so when we had the chance to have a raw bar, we took it! More than anything, we knew our guests were travelling to be with us, so we wanted to show them a great time. We had croquet and a beanbag throw during the cocktail hour, which was a lot of fun, and assembled gift bags with Cape Cod potato chips, lobster gummies, information on the island and luggage tags that I made myself.
Many have said it before, but I will say it again – the photo booth was the hit of the party. Inspired by my mother’s love of costumes and dress up, I gathered a lot of fun costumes. Early on in the night I put on a cowboy hat and hit the dance floor, and after that, there were more costumes on the dance floor than there were by the photo booth. Certain hats never came off certain guests – it made for great photos and a really silly, fun night.
Wedding Photographer: Zofia Photography / Wedding Dress: Priscilla of Boston / Ceremony Venue: St Paul’s Church / Reception Venue: Great Harbor Yacht Club / Florist : Joyce Jaskula / Bridal Hair: Tresses and the Day Spa / Photo Booth: Nantucket Photo Booth / Music: DJ Phil Taylor