What do you get when you mix together pinatas, pizza and pretty Jimmy Choos? Give up? You get a super festive yet fancy fete filled to the brim with gorgeous details and tons of fun. This creative couple chose to ditch their current city of NYC and headed to Austin for a Tex-Mex inspired day. And the results are nothing short of amazing. Matthew Moore Photography snapped away late into the evening to capture all the goodies and you can click here to see even more.
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From the Bride…Glenn and I got engaged at the end of December and we immediately knew we wanted to have our wedding in the fall. That meant I had to find a venue pretty quickly, if we were going to have it in 9-10 months. I started looking non-stop for possible venues in the northeast, near our home in Brooklyn. I’m an art director at Allure magazine, and Glenn works in creative services for J. Crew, so we are both pretty picky when it comes to aesthetics. After almost a month, we still hadn’t found a place that we could afford that was really “us”. At that point, we considered having the wedding in Texas, where I am from. Almost immediately, I found the Barr Mansion, in Austin, on another “real wedding” blog post, and we fell in love. I enlisted my parents to pay the site a visit (and take a million photos) and we put a deposit down at the beginning of February.
When we decided on Austin as our destination, I immediately knew that we had to stay at the Hotel San Jose. It is just such a well designed place, where every detail is considered. Even though I grew up in Texas, most of our friends and family live elsewhere, so almost everyone who attended was from out of town. I was really touched that SO many of our friends made the trip from New York (almost 70 of them!). A lot of our friends stayed at the San Jose, which turned out to be the perfect meeting place in the evening for drinks and during the day, for lounging by the pool and getting ready. Everyone loved Austin—it’s almost like a little New York in Texas, but with BBQ and friendly people! In the morning before the ceremony, Glenn and his close friends went to a shooting range nearby and had the best time. Very fun for a bunch of New York City boys!
Almost everything was bought or sourced online—I just didn’t have the time to physically go shopping for things and being so far away, it just made more sense to find our vendors through various websites. My co-workers must have thought I was crazy… every day, it was another package coming for me! My thank-you cards, rehearsal dinner dress, vintage postage stamps… everything! I ordered my dress from Net-A-Porter about 5 days after Glenn proposed. I loved it at first sight, and they offer free returns, so I figured why not? It turned out to be a perfect fit and required no alterations or fittings. I also bought my shoes from Net-A-Porter; the sash and veil were from BHLDN.com. My necklace was something I found at a thrift store for $5 years ago and just happened to work perfectly.
Glenn wanted something special for the men in the family and his friends to wear, so he commissioned custom-made ties from C. Chauchat. Curie is a friend of ours, who makes the most beautiful ties by hand. She layers a semi-transparent fabric over a solid fabric to create new patterns and colors. Family members wore a light colored tie and close friends wore a darker tie with shades of green and blue.
I am a graphic designer, so I knew from the beginning that I wanted to design our invitations. I had heard it is hard designing for yourself, but I had no idea! It took longer than I expected, but we couldn’t be more happy with the results. We had them printed with Anne Noonan at Soho Letterpress in New York. She did an absolutely incredible job… all the pieces are extra extra thick, for an amazing feel. I wanted a really heavy, sturdy outer envelope, so she used a cover weight paper and cut them all out by hand! Also, the liners were a specific pantone color that she printed especially for us. Overall, amazing.
We went a little crazy with custom-made stamps… I used them to stamp the escort cards, welcome bags, favor bags, thank you tags and matchbooks. All the stamps I designed and then ordered through rubberstamps.net. I stamped table numbers on small manila tags, and then typed the names on the reverse side, using an antique typewriter Glenn found. We tied these to votives using bakers twine. At the table, there were books of matches that I stamped using a copper ink pad. My mom made all the candied pecans for the favors. We packaged them in little muslin bags that we stamped with a little logo I designed with a pecan tree. The bags were tied shut with a stamped “thank-you” manila tag.
Glenn found most of the jars for the centerpieces during one of his shopping trips to the yearly Brimfield Antique show. The rest we scavenged ourselves at Dead Horse Bay here in Brooklyn. I designed and printed the table numbers to match the escort cards and matches. The rodeo lights and Confetti System pinatas were also Glenn’s touch and really helped to personalize the space. We found the Mexican paper banners while we were visiting my parents in San Antonio. Having grown up in south Texas, I really wanted that sort of TexMex flavor reflected in the decor. In addition to the decorative piñatas, we also had a colorful one for the kids. We thought it would be fun to kick off the party and of course all the adults got really into it!
The barn at Barr Mansion recently went through a renovation and as they were building, they added in a great pizza oven in the back. I really wanted to include pizza in the menu somehow… Glenn had the brilliant idea to have pizza come out later in the evening, to keep the dance party going! We also had little to-go pizza boxes, so guests could take slices back on the buses with them. Also, we can’t say enough good things about Matthew and Katie Moore. As soon as I saw their work, I knew we would mesh well. I love his eye and use of color and lighting. We were so excited to work with them, and they were so amazing in helping us feel comfortable and relaxed on the day.
Venue + Catering: Barr Mansion / Wedding Photography: Matthew Moore Photography / Floral Design: Stem Floral Designs / Invitations: The Bride / Invitation Printing: Soho Letterpress / Wedding Dress: Adam via Net-A-Porter / Bride’s Shoes: Jimmy Choo / Veil + Sash: BHLDN / Bridesmaid + Flower Girl Dresses: J.Crew / Suit: Yves Saint Laurent / Groom + Groomsmen Ties: C. Chauchat