Romantic West Vancouver Wedding
This wedding is spectacular. I mean, if I could travel back in time and attend this gorgeous day, I soooo would. Because this is the kind of wedding where romance stands front and center, surrounded by gorgeous blooms from Heathers The Flower Shop, fab DIYs and a whole host of beautiful images from Jamie Lauren. See them all here.
From the Bride... He proposed on top of a mountain on a trip home while we were living in Australia. We quickly decided to get married in my hometown of West Vancouver near the ocean and surrounded by greenery. We relied on our talented vendors and amazing family and friends to help plan our wedding from abroad. Then we set off on a four-month around the world trip, taking the long way home. While not exactly the standard path to planning a wedding, it worked for us! We ordered Etsy decor online while touring India, created a wedding website in Katmandu while recovering from our trek to Everest Base Camp and stamped and addressed 100 postcards on a short stopover in Germany.
We wanted our wedding to be personal and intimate, so we planned it ourselves including as many DIY elements as feasible and working closely with carefully selected Etsy vendors. Naturally, we wanted to include a subtle hint of travel in our wedding. We DIY’ed our save the dates by selecting photos from our favorite Melbourne photographer, then stamped (custom designed via Etsy) and hand addressed the postcards. While travelling through Munich, we found postcards from an art gallery and sent those as our invitations. We used luggage tags for our escort and place cards, vintage suitcases for our cards table and a map as our guest book. We skipped tradition where it didn't suit "us". We ordered organic pies from the best local bakery and had a wedding pie since the Groom's absolute favorite thing in the world is homemade apple pie. Other personal touches were to arrive in my Dad's 1930 Chevrolet, which has been in my family for over 70 years and the honey favors, which came from the Groom's cousin's farm. Each table was adorned with a hand stenciled number and named after our respective hockey team’s most iconic players, and we danced our first song to a country two-step, which added an equally Canadian touch.
The ceremony was the most memorable part of the day for us. We wanted our guests to be an important piece of this tradition, so we arranged the chairs very close in a circle around us, which created a really intimate atmosphere. We also included an acknowledgement of family and friends at the beginning of our vows. After almost three years living abroad, it felt extra special to celebrate a perfectly west coast wedding amongst our dearest family and friends.
We wanted our wedding to be personal and intimate, so we planned it ourselves including as many DIY elements as feasible and working closely with carefully selected Etsy vendors. Naturally, we wanted to include a subtle hint of travel in our wedding. We DIY’ed our save the dates by selecting photos from our favorite Melbourne photographer, then stamped (custom designed via Etsy) and hand addressed the postcards. While travelling through Munich, we found postcards from an art gallery and sent those as our invitations. We used luggage tags for our escort and place cards, vintage suitcases for our cards table and a map as our guest book. We skipped tradition where it didn't suit "us". We ordered organic pies from the best local bakery and had a wedding pie since the Groom's absolute favorite thing in the world is homemade apple pie. Other personal touches were to arrive in my Dad's 1930 Chevrolet, which has been in my family for over 70 years and the honey favors, which came from the Groom's cousin's farm. Each table was adorned with a hand stenciled number and named after our respective hockey team’s most iconic players, and we danced our first song to a country two-step, which added an equally Canadian touch.
The ceremony was the most memorable part of the day for us. We wanted our guests to be an important piece of this tradition, so we arranged the chairs very close in a circle around us, which created a really intimate atmosphere. We also included an acknowledgement of family and friends at the beginning of our vows. After almost three years living abroad, it felt extra special to celebrate a perfectly west coast wedding amongst our dearest family and friends.