Something Old, Something New: [Real Wedding]

Planning a wedding takes a lot of time and patience when picking out all the details and vendors. How about through in the element of being across the ocean while planning your wedding? That's just what Carly (today's bride) had to do! She was in London for half of her engagement planning the wedding from a far (and then in law school for two more months after that!). With lots of Skype and a very helpful fiancee they pulled off a gorgeous wedding full of DIY elements.

Planning details from the bride: Tony and I both grew up in little mountain towns in east Kentucky, and we wanted the wedding to reflect our rustic, crafty Appalachian culture. We tried to do this with lots of DIY stuff (which also saved money!) and other little touches-- for example, my mom made homemade apple butter in tiny mason jars to place on the tables as favors. In true eastern Kentucky fashion, we had a bluegrass band play the ceremony. They were fantastic, and even learned a bluegrass arrangement of "In My Life" by the Beatles for the processional just because I said I'd like to use it!

The shoes-- my biggest splurge-- were from Hey Lady Shoes.

We got this ring bowl from Paloma's Nest.

From a craft idea I saw on Ruffled and modified slightly, we glued the burlap, lace, and ribbon on mason jars to hold the ceremony flowers, and we made hooks for them from wife.

My favorite feature of the whole wedding was the arch. After seeing a picture I liked of a grapevine arch, Tony went back in the hills behind the house where he grew up, found saplings/vines that are common to the area, and braided them together by hand with the help of his dad. I put the finishing touches on it by suggesting draped burlap around the base to hide the support, and a "good luck" horseshoe on the top.

Tony also made the table numbers by putting a wood base on numbers we got from the craft store, and we took swatches of the bridesmaid dresses so that we could match the paint color.

From an idea we saw on another blog, we made the garland hanging at the head table with food coloring and white paper doilies, folded over on string.

To keep in line with our crafty look, we bought a lot of stuff from etsy. One of my favorite little details was the personalized cake topper, which we got from Lollipop Workshop.