Nicole + Joey met through the punk scene and wanted their wedding to be just like them – fun, kinda ridiculous, but full of love. They made lots of their details for the day such as the tea cup candles on the tables (which doubled as favors for guests), the embroidered table numbers, the escort cards + display, 7″ vinyl records as favors, and the adorable floral collars for their two frenchies who were their ring bearers! :) They choose the Smog Shoppe in LA (one of my personal favorite venues) which was the perfect backdrop for their day.

Thanks to Brandon Kidd Photography for the gorgeous photos and congrats to Nicole + Joey!

We decided to write each others’ vows and read them for the first time at the ceremony. Somehow, we both wrote REALLY similar ones, both mentioning our puppies, how much fun we better have during our marriage, and how since we met, it just kinda felt right. Joey threw in a quote from Justin Timberlake and had me mention his ‘baby blues’ and I made him promise to love me more than his record collection even when I’m grumpy.

We met through the hardcore/punk scene so we had four of our friends’ bands write or cover songs that meant something to our relationship then pressed a vinyl 7″ to give away to our guests. All of the songs are perfect and we even used one of them as our first dance song. Our friend designed the cover and we pressed the records in blue vinyl to match our cake!

We had the best vendors in the world, Brandon Kidd for photography, Courtney Caplin-Cotter for day-of-planning, Eco Caters, Sweet and Saucy for dessert, and Primary Petals. They were all simply amazing and we kinda want all of them to be our friends!

photography: Brandon Kidd Photography // venue: Smog Shoppe Los Angeles, California // day-of-coordination: Courtney Caplin Cotter with LVL Events // floral design: Primary Petals // wedding dress: Legends by Ramona Keveza // hairpieces: Blue Orchard Bridal // shoes: Random ebay find! // bridesmaid dresses: All different floral dresses from etsy and modcloth.com // hair: Jenny Hampton // makeup: Julia Newbold // invitations, record jacket design: Eagle Barber // catering: Eco Caters // cake: Sweet & Saucy // music: DJ Furn Zavala // vintage plates: The Vintage Table Co.

Misato + Chris made their wedding a DIY affair since they are both pretty crafty. This included fun projects like their animal toy escort cards, lace table runner, and photo tree! But their first priority of the day was the food! The Northside Social was the perfect venue since it’s one of their favorite restaurants in the DC area. Their wedding was simple + easy going – just like the two of them. :) Thanks to Love by Serena for the photos + Caravan for the film and congrats to Misato + Chris!

We used little animal figures (dollar store purchase and spray painted) as guests’ name cards and a pair of elephants (it was a salt and pepper shaker that we bought online, filled the holes and spray painted) as the cake topper. Christopher’s last name is Horton, so we have embraced Horton the Elephant!

The wedding favors were sake glasses that we hand wrote our initials on and were also used for the toast during the reception. Misato’s mother brought coasters made out of Kimono fabric from Japan for everyone to take home as well!

The message/photo tree was put together by friends using washi tape, leaf shape sticky notes, and Polaroid pictures.

We were very lucky to have creative, crafty and supportive family members and friends who helped us so much to put our wedding together. We could not have done any of this without them, especially having to change the location of the ceremony due to the weather on the day of!

photography: Love by Serena // venue: Northside Social, Bon Air Park Arlington, Virginia// bridal gown + bridal store: LM collection from Bloomingdale’s // bridesmaids’ dresses: Anthropologie // cake: Sophie Camp, Northside Social // catering: Northside Social, Lyon Hall, Liberty Tavern // florals: Bought from Potomac Floral and then DIY // hair: Keiko Goto from Ozuki Salon // makeup: Akea from Sephora // jewelry: Anthropologie // men’s attire: Banana Republic, Express, Topman // shoes: Nine West // videography: Caravan

Darcie + Neal choose The Sunset Club in Seattle for their wedding venue and thus the venue determined much of their inspiration for the day. From the antiques to the roaring fireplaces to the crystal chandeliers and the hand-painted walls, there was no other place like it. I’m in major love with Darcie’s pale blue Elizabeth Dye wedding dress and all the handmade details for the day including heart garland, fun giant balloon centerpieces, origami escort cards and so much more! With gorgeous photos from Julie Harmsen Photography, their wedding is sure to inspire lots of other DIY couples!

From Darcie: My husband Neal and I can appreciate a martini in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria but are generally really casual and goofy people. Our challenge was to create a wedding that fit the turn-of-the-century style of the Sunset Club and our styles as well. We decided to use a “posh & playful” theme to make the space our own. There was never any doubt that I would be creating many of the decor elements myself. I am an artist and perhaps a little too excited by things like embroidery thread and tacky glue. I only wanted to buy things I couldn’t make. Originally, I even wanted my mother to make my wedding dress…but she was not up to the pressure. Though our wedding was a formal affair, we wanted it to reflect our lives together. Having so many handmade elements helped us achieve that. It honestly never occurred to me to hire someone to, for instance, make the programs. I suppose I get that from my mother.

Our invitations were all collaborations with my mother. I did all of the drawings and design work with a drawing program on my iPad and Adobe Photoshop. My mother did all of the calligraphy as well as finding the perfect paper (imported from Germany!) and working with the printers. As a visual artist who has a comic blog, this was something I just couldn’t resist doing myself.

The Sunset Club is such a beautiful venue that we wanted to keep the added decor relatively simple. I wanted the aisle to be defined in some way without renting a cumbersome aisle runner so I came up with the idea of confetti to bring some playfulness to the room. I bought books of multicolor cardstock and used different size hole punches to punch as much confetti as my hands could handle. I only used the colors in each book that corresponded to our chosen color palette. I also bought a package of paper in a beautiful green that looked great in the venue and used a heart punch for heart-shape confetti. 

When I saw the arch under which we would be married, I knew that a curtain of pom poms and paper flowers on ribbon would be all the decoration we would need. I feel it was playful and elegant simultaneously and now it’s hanging up in our apartment!

I have always loved origami and wanted to incorporate it somehow regardless of the fact that it didn’t really match our venue. I found instructions online to make two bears looking at each other and I messed with it to make it into a bear and a bobcat instead. I choose paper colors specific for each guest so the folded cards could serve as a keepsakes as well.

I saw lots of fingerprint guestbooks on Pinterest and just loved the idea of having a piece of art to hang after the wedding. The drawing tied in the balloons we used for the reception centerpieces and Neal and I decided on having a bear and bobcat being carried away by the balloons. Neal is the bear and I am the bobcat. We chose these so-called “spirit animals” years ago as they each are good representations of our respective personalities.

We decided on balloons both as a way to utilize the incredibly high ceiling in the ballroom and to bring in the playful aspect we wanted. Though we were using balloons we wanted to make sure it didn’t end up looking like a high school dance and we were inspired by the elegance of the Geronimo balloons we saw online and in the BHLDN catalog. We ordered a crazy amount of tulle, ribbon, streamers, and raffia twine and created just what we wanted: elegant balloons! To anchor the balloons physically and visually we ordered cheap three-tiered dessert stands, spray painted them ivory, and filled them with tissue and yarn pom poms. I enlisted the help of all family members on both sides to make the hundreds of pom poms we needed!

photography: Julie Harmsen Photography // venue (included food, furniture, linens, servers, etc.): The Sunset Club Seattle, Washington // wedding dress: Elizabeth Dye // alterations: Debra Hadeen // balloons: The Red Balloon Company // bride’s eyelash extensions: Allison at Unique Skin Boutique // bride’s hair color: Sharon at Radar Hair & Records // bride’s makeup + hair: Jenny Bowker // bride’s nails: Yoko at En Salon Musée //  dj: DJ Tecumseh at Bamboo Beats // flowers: Patty Tronquet at Pocket Full O Posies // groom’s tux: The Tuxedo Club // officiant: Pat Stimac at A Heavenly Ceremony  // string trio: Seattle Modern Strings

Often it’s your venue that becomes the inspiration for the rest of the day. As soon as Tawny + Irv stumbled across the Elysian in Silverlake, California they knew it was the perfect venue for them. They wanted a venue that had a city feeling without losing elements of why they love being outdoors so much. A former mold shop, the space has a great industrial feel with a greenhouse structure in the middle of a beautiful garden filled with bamboo, succulents and fruit trees. Elysian quickly became the inspiration for many of their details!

To help us make our wedding completely about the two of us, we decided early on that we didn’t want to do anything just because “you’re supposed to do that on your wedding day.” We nixed any traditions that didn’t hold any meaning to us and only did what would make us happy. Any details that were important to us we personalized. We covered a wall with frames filled with photographs and old keepsakes that were collected throughout our relationship. We hired a friend to illustrate us and then put those illustrations on drinking glasses that we gave out as favors. We built our own photo booth and gathered props that were meaningful to us as a couple or reminded us of our childhood. We pretty much planned a day filled with our favorite things, surrounded ourselves with our favorite people and celebrated!

Sounds like a perfect wedding to us – oh, and the Kogi truck and Sweet Lucie’s for dinner? Super yum!! Thanks so much to Ben Blood for sharing these photos and congrats to Tawny + Irv!

Love Tawny’s Sarah Seven dress!

We wanted to be able to see our wedding through our guests’ eyes, so we set up an Instagram wall. In our program we told our guests to tag any photos they posted to Instagram with a specific hashtag. We set up a projector and had a live slideshow cycling through photos from the entire day. It was nice for guests to get comfy on the couch and watch, plus it’s also nice to be able to go back and easily see Instagram photos from our wedding!

And their wedding film :)

photography: Ben Blood // venue: Elysian Los Angeles, California // day of coordination: Olivia Griswold from Pink Cloud 9 // floral design: Jennifer Young // wedding dress: Sarah Seven // shoes: H&M // bridesmaid dresses: Ruche, ModCloth // hair: Tracy Anderson // makeup: Amy Clarke // groom suit: Zara // cinematography: filmed by Amari Productions Super 8mm footage and edit by J.P. McLeod // paper goods: Liz Grant, Programs by Ammiel Mendoza and Matthew Park // catering: Kogi // drinks: Wunderbar // cake: Match Box Kitchen // cake topper: Jamila Silvera // ice cream cart: Sweet Lucie’s // dj: J.P. McLeod // photo booth: Tawny Alipoon Photography // custom illustrations: Genevieve Santos

Xanthe + Sam got married at Xanthe’s childhood playground – an organic fruit farm/ yoga studio on the Mid-North coast of Australia! Such a magical location… Their wedding is so super sweet and filled with so much character + love! Everything for their day was done by Xanthe + Sam – including the table flowers, the hanging light globes, and the food + cake was by their familes. It truly was a family affair! :) Love the whimsical elements to their day including the flower girl masks, the love boat at their ceremony, and the photos in the orange grove. You would never know from looking at the photos, but the couple had some drama with their venue leading up to their wedding…

“It had been seriously flooding for the month leading up to the wedding and we were starting to look into where we were going to move the wedding to if people couldn’t get to the property. Then for the week leading up to the wedding, we had blue skies and lush green grass from all the rain! After the wedding the flood continued and the main highway connecting Sydney to Brisbane was flooded over! We were so lucky to get a perfect weekend in the middle of one of our wettest months on record.”

Big thanks to Lara Hotz for the lovely photos and congrats to Xanthe + Sam!

How fun are Xanthe’s red heart nails! Love!!

For our reception, I was obsessed with all the chairs having individual style and being mismatched. So for the whole engagement I was collecting cheap white chairs. I ended up having to hire half but I liked the fact that it looked like a chair party! Similarly I also collected beautiful mismatched filament light globes which hung from the ceiling. At the last minute we realized there was heaps of jasmine vine on my sister & bridesmaids neighboring properties, so we draped vines all over the ceiling which ended up looking great.

photography: Lara Hotz // venue: East Coast Yoga Barbers Ln Yarrahapinni, Australia// florals: Piccolo Pear // bride’s dress: Made by costume designer Wendy Cork // bride’s shoes: Jeffrey Campbell // flower girl masks: TMod, Target // groom’s attire: PJohnson // rings: NV Designer Jewelry // makeup: Tira Jaye Hair and Makeup // paper goods: Xanthe + Sam // catering: entrees by family & WoyWoy Fishermans Wharf // mains: Flavours of Spain

Brittney + David love movies. They met in film school and now both work together at Disney Animation! They have worked together on films like Tangled & Wreck it Ralph so it’s no surprise that their wedding was inspired by their favorite movies along with lots of handmade paper details! From their lovely handmade ceremony backdrop and paper flower bouquets to their Jaws themed Save the Dates and movie named cocktails, their wedding has so many fun + personal details! Here’s what Brittney had to say about their inspiration:

“David and I tried to do as much as we possibly could to make our wedding day unique to us! One of the first decisions we made was that our wedding would be held at my family’s home. The house I grew up in is a beautiful Victorian home that overlooks a lake in western Pennsylvania. With both of us being artists, it was also important that we infuse our personal styles in all of the little details that we possibly could! We designed (and engineered) our own save-the date cards and pop-up invitations. I particularly love working with paper, so I decided to make all of our centerpieces, bouquets, and boutonnieres (with the help of our bridesmaids and groomsmen) from scratch! Our favors were limited edition art prints of lovebirds that we set up at every place setting. We even made confetti for our guests to toss at the end of the ceremony from scrap paper that was left-over from our invitation construction!”

Thank so much to Sloan Photographers for the photos and congrats to Brittney + David!

My dress was an Ines de Santo gown that was customized to have more of a 1950s starlet silhouette.

Our signature drinks were all based on some of our favorite movies – the “Ron Burgundy” (based on Anchorman), “Under the Sea Sangria” (The Little Mermaid), and “Muppets Take Malibu (Muppets Take Manhattan), which came complete with googly-eyed drink stirs!

And here is their wedding video from Landshark of Sharkpig:

We were just so overwhelmed by the love and support we received from everyone around us for our wedding! Planning a Pennsylvania wedding from Los Angeles was difficult, but so many people offered help in so many ways that everything turned out much better than we could have ever hoped! My bridesmaids stayed up with me until 2am the night before the wedding to make our bouquets, and David and his groomsmen designed and constructed their boutonnieres themselves! Some of our guests from Los Angeles flew in with emergency crafting supplies for us two days before the wedding! And our neighbors even surprised us with fireworks during our reception! It was the perfect end to a fabulous day, and we couldn’t be more thankful to have all of these wonderful people in our lives!

photography: Sloan Photographers // venue: Brittney’s Family Home, Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvannia // event design: JPC Event Group // event planner: Allyson Veronesi of JPC Event Group // florals: Paper centerpieces and altar decorations by the bride, Bouquets and Boutonnieres by the Bride, Groom, and Bridal Party // dress: Custom Ines di Santo gown from Lovella Bridal // shoes: Feather Shoes by Something Bleu (from BHLDN), pumps by BCBG (from Macy’s) // hair + makeup: Hair by Claudia of Claudia’s Salon and Spa // groom’s suit: Ralph Lauren Suit from Bloomingdale’s // videography: Geoff Boothby of Sharkpig // paper goods: Brit Sketch // catering + cake: JPC Event Group