Give me a wedding designed around a mid-century modern concept and you’ll have one giddy blogger on your hands. That’s for darn certain. But add in an entire gallery of crisp, clean captures from Archetype Studio Inc, and you’ve just let me have my cake and eat it too. With detail after detail of streamlined perfection (did I mention they gave custom silhouettes as favors?) I firmly believe this Houston fête is minimalism at its finest. So sit back and get comfy, because this pretty party is just getting starting…
From the Bride…Jason and I knew from the beginning that we wanted a unique and personal wedding, which was the driving force behind the planning of our special day. Since we met while working with power tools, on a church mission project, we decided to DIY as much as we could, to make sure our wedding was reflective of us and our love of building things together. We immediately started our planning with an inspiration board. As lovers of good, mid-century design, all our favorite items played harmoniously with one another and instantly created an obvious theme of juxtaposing materials. We knew we wanted to avoid a color palette that we would regret in 20 years and also didn’t want to limit ourselves to matching everything with a bold color. Therefore, we chose a neutral scheme of grey, white, and sand. We utilized the texture of overlapping tonal shades and heavily relied on the warmth of the materials to read as our ‘color’. Our graphic designer created an amazing cohesive suite for us with a save the date, invitations, and wedding reception signage. My favorite detail was the wood-grain embossed cardstock of our invitations, paired with silver foil lettering. If Jason and I could be paper, we like to think our invitations are what we would look like!
Our wedding day was full of special moments, including our families getting ready together at the hotel, with our wedding parties. Jason and I were able to deliver letters to each other to read, and Jason’s was so touching it made me feel even more blessed that God picked him to be my husband. We also chose to do a first-look, since it would give us a moment to share our thoughts with each other and have a few, quiet minutes to ourselves. I immediately realized it was the best decision we ever could have made, onceI saw his sweet expression and the tears in his eyes. I’ll always cherish that moment and Terilyn and Koby’s amazing photos that reflect just how personal it was for us!
I fell in love with our reception venue while on an architectural tour with my company. After showing it to Jason and visiting a handful of other venues in town, nothing said ‘us’ like this modern building. We knew we had found a unique place and were booked as their first wedding reception! A beautiful downtown Houston church was perfect for our ceremony and it was important that Jason’s childhood pastor marry us. We asked family friends to do the scripture reading and the solo’s, and even included honorary groomswoman and bridesman positions for two of our dearest friends. We carefully selected the solos based on our favorite hymns. We spent a lot of time making our ceremony personal, Christ centered, and a little quirky. Our pastor included in his homily a description of a poster Jason gave me while dating. We chose to display this framed poster at our reception, because it describes our relationship so well. We shared a joyous walk down the aisle as husband and wife, to ‘In My Life’, by our favorite band, the Beatles.
At the reception, silhouette artist, Cindi Rose, was busy cutting silhouettes of the guests to take home as a favor…..her accuracy and speed was a hit with our family and friends! The band was insanely fun and sang our favorite oldies and Beatles songs that kept guests of all ages dancing. Our florist, can only be described as my kindred spirit and has a level of creativity that’s out of this world. In lieu of traditional ribbon or lace around the bridesmaid’s bouquets, he soaked thin slices of wood in water before wrapping them around the bouquets; one of my absolute favorite details. His magical mind also worked with us on the custom designed cake stand for our reception. We knew our architectural, cantilevered cake wouldn’t look proper on a regular table, so he created an acrylic stand, incorporating our favorite succulents and manzanita branches into the base. We chose not to have a groom’s cake, but rather design a cake that reflected both of us. Instead, we alternated the flavors of the cake tiers, in order to have a variety. Since Jason and I admire mid-century architect Richard Neutra’s iconic house numbers, we decided to make our own. We cut them out of poplar wood, painted them metallic silver, and mounted them to blocks of cedar to use as the table numbers. Jason also built the custom white trays used for the escort cards, which we filled with pebbles and succulents, to accent the cards, which were done in calligraphy by my sister.
At the end of the evening, we walked through a dazzling sparkler send-off to our bright orange getaway car. Jason bought the 1970 Roadrunner about two months before we began dating, and has worked on restoring it throughout our entire relationship; a true labor of love. Our getaway departure was my FIRST ride in the completed car, and I couldn’t think of a better way to christen it, than to ride away from our wedding reception as husband and wife!
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Photography: Koby + Terilyn Brown, Archetype Studio Inc. | Floral Design: Floral Events | Ceremony Location: Trinity Lutheran Downtown Houston | Reception Location: The Asia Society Center of Houston | Invitations: Emily Larson Designs | Band: NiteBeat Band | Dance Floor: Bickner Dance Floors | Catering + Wedding Planning: Silverstone Events | Cake: Cakes by Gina | Make Up + Hair: The Perfect Face | Dress: Pronovias of Barcelona | Shoes: Kate Spade | Bridesmaids Dresses: Monique Lhuillier | Groom + Groomsmen Attire: Jos. A Bank