I have such a fun + creative wedding to share with you guys today! The bride is an actress and the groom is a musician, so you know the wedding will be anything but boring. I also love how Terryn describes their inspiration for the day – and the dress – wow, wait until you see it!! Thanks so much to Floataway Studios for sharing this lovely wedding with us today (and be sure to check out their save the date at the very end)!
“Our inspiration was Ethereal Disco! It’s amazing how a couple of disparate words put together can really conjure up a distinct feeling. The feeling those words evoked for me was my theme, sort of juxtaposition between acoustic and electric. I feel very connected to the earthy, bohemian, laid-back style of the ‘60’s, but I also really gravitate to the more vibrant energy of the 70’s. I also got really inspired by circles and the geometric designs found in nature. The colors we chose, purple and yellow, felt like they lived in that world: vibrant and electric, and yet found easily in nature. The theme revealed itself after I found the wedding dress. The first dress I tried on ended up being “the dress”. It was a vintage Bob Mackie (1974) that had been worn by Diahann Carroll on her TV show in the ’70’s! It wasn’t even intended as a wedding dress. It was just so unique and had these amazing bursts of yellow on it! It actually had 2 sleeves originally but my friend Rita and I were like “What if it only had one sleeve!” As soon as we decided to make it asymmetrical, it just clicked!”
A great memory for me was just before the ceremony started, Wendy, our officiant and dear friend, led me and my bridesmaids in this beautiful meditation that really helped us all get present and grounded. She asked everyone to breathe together and focus our thoughts on the love between me and Jon and our happy future together. It was beautiful. When we opened our eyes, every one of us was crying. That meditation really helped me to fully realize what was happening: I was just about to merge my life with my soulmate’s and all our dearest friends were there to celebrate that. There was so much love on that day that I will carry with me. Jon commented on how amazing it was to have all our friends and family, those we love, in one place at one time. That exact combination of people will probably never happen again, so it was a really special thing to look around and see all our family and dear friends there together socializing and celebrating. What a wonderful memory!
What song did you walk down the aisle to? We both love the Beatles, as do our parents, so we did a whole instrumental Beatles medley! Jon and the rest of the wedding party walked out to “All you need is love”. I walked out to “Something”. Then, after the ceremony, we walked to “I will.” Jon is a musician, so we had a couple of his musician friends do the music. They played the guitar and the mandola. It was just gorgeous and it set the mood perfectly.
My favorite moment was when Jon was saying his vows. We’d written the whole ceremony together, but kept our individual vows secret until that moment. I’ve never seen such emotion coming from him. It was the most beautiful thing to see and hear the man I love declaring his love and devotion for me, telling me all the reasons why he loved me, things I’d never heard him say before. It makes me cry every time I think about it. He could’ve said anything and I would’ve loved it, but he said the most lovely things and he said it all with such heart and such sincerity. I will never forget that moment.
I asked my dad, who is an artist, if he could do the table numbers. We also had him create the art for the sign-in poster (to be framed later, in lieu of a sign-in book) I love his art and it seemed to fit perfectly with the theme. He had a blast doing it and we couldn’t wait to see what he’d create for each number.
We wanted our wedding and reception to be a reflection of not only our distinct personalities but also our values. We really wanted to keep things as green as possible, so we used a venue that was 100% solar powered with tons of recycled and sustainable features. We decided to have a completely vegan/vegetarian menu, catered by a company that uses organic and locally sourced produce. It seemed weird to serve meat at our wedding when we’ve been avoiding the stuff for decades! No one seemed to miss the meat. In fact a few guests have even gone vegan since the wedding! We sent our save-the-dates via email rather than using paper, and although we did use paper invites for the wedding, we used recycled paper, and our rsvp cards doubled as well-wishes cards, which we used at the wedding, displaying our guest’s words of wisdom, poems and artwork on the giant screen interspersed with photos of us. Guests loved seeing their cards up there on display! We also saved the cards as keepsakes to put in an album. Also, to try to keep waste to a minimum, I created the succulent terrarium centerpieces with the idea that they would last a long time and need very little water. And most of the glass containers were found at thrift stores! Lastly, the wedding favor succulents were meant to be kept and re-planted.
• We heard so many people say they didn’t remember their day, that it was all a blur. It may sound obvious, but we really made a conscious decision to be present and enjoy the day. It worked. We really felt relaxed and present and just let everyone’s love envelope us. All the planning that you do leading up, let it go on the day and just be there! If you want to keep things simple, which I did, try to find a venue that doesn’t need too much brought in and that you really like aesthetically, that way you can spend time focused on other things that are important to you and not have to worry about bringing in a gazillion tables and decorations. And if you do need to rent a bunch of stuff, see if you can have your caterer deal with the rentals. Our caterer did that for us and it helped out a lot.
• My friend Elizabeth gave me this advice, and it was great so I’ll pass it along: “The stress surrounding the planning of the wedding is not necessarily indicative of the marriage itself.” :)
• Also, amidst all the planning chaos, I would recommend finding some sort of wedding related activity that you enjoy that kind of shuts your brain off. For me it was planting the succulents and sewing the cake toppers. I rediscovered my crafty side and it became my chill-out time. It made the planning really fun for me.
• The best money we ever spent was hiring a day-of coordinator. Jeff’s help and advice was invaluable. There was so much we didn’t know and I think the day flowed really nicely because of him. If it’s not possible with your budget, consider having a very organized and trustworthy friend be in charge of some of the logistics, like for example loading up all your stuff at the end of the night! Whew! What a relief it was to have people helping us with that!!
• Lastly, enter wedding contests! You might actually win! We entered Floataway’s stop motion contest and we won!! We got free engagement photos & video and free wedding photos & video!! It saved us thousands of dollars!!! Their photos are just gorgeous and so unique. And they were so great to work with! They did an amazing job!
Vendors:
Venue: Smog Shoppe, Los Angeles
Photographers/Videographers: Floataway Studios
Catering/Wedding cake: Auntie Em’s
Vegan Groom’s cake: Proof Bakery
Wedding dress: vintage (1974) Bob Mackie (purchased and altered at Paperbag Princess)
Bridesmaid dresses: BCBG
Bride’s Hairstylist: Alexandra Lee
Groom’s suit: Theory
Bouquets/Boutonnieres: Holly Flora
Succulent Terrarium Centerpieces & Succulent Wedding Favors: created by the Bride
Cake Topper: handmade by the Bride
Table numbers/sign-in poster: William G. Westbrook (Father of the Bride)
Photo Booth: Snap Yourself
DJs: Sean Patrick and Eli-173
Officiant: Wendy Haines
Day-of-Coordinator: Jeff Fleming – jeffflem{at}gmail[dot]com
Did you create your own stopmotion film? I would like to do one but am curious as to if it’s possible to do without hiring someone. LOVE EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS WEDDING =]
I’m in love with all of the creativity and personality…from that stunning dress to the stop motion film.
Love it!! This is the exact color scheme I’m going for for my wedding. So great to see it used with such class and style!
I’ll be doing an Oregon twist rather than a SoCal one, though.
I love this dress, AMAZING! and the shoes and the bridesmaids…. just fab!
Beautiful! So glad your guests didn’t miss the meat – hopefully they won’t at ours, either!
That dress. Amazenuts!
This whole wedding and the design is BEAUTIFUL and unique. I didn’t miss the meat in pictures, either!
that save-the-date is so sweet, i cried!
super color combination! love the mix of mod, hip, boheme, happy, color, and eco. super.
Freakin’ LOVE this wedding! The colors are amazing and I love the mix-matched purple bm’s dresses!
AMAZING photography by floataway! love how the couple stuck with the theme. and their save the date is the cutest!
Hands down! Cutest save the date ever, to freakin cool! :)
Love the colors and all the bubbles :)
Thank you so much Jen for this feature and more importantly sharing our stop motion contest with your readers so we found this amazing couple!!! So excited to do it again later this year!!
Where are the bride’s gorgeous shoes from???
I super love the “Save The Date” video!!!!!!
very very very creative! :)
Love all the photography. And the Save the Date vid was incredible!
LOVE everything about this
The color palette of this wedding is one of the best I’ve seen in a long time. So vibrant and completely classy.
Love everything about this wedding. :)
oh the dress!
this wedding is so unique from the dress, to the sign-in sheet, and her dress? Oh my goodness!! Gorgeous wedding!
stunning — i LOVE it. i’m not married, not even engaged…but if i ever…i’m stealing soo many of your ideas. much happiness to you!!
Such a fun, beautiful wedding! So many wonderful, colorful details. Love it!
Thanks guys!!! So great to see everyone’s reaction to the photos!
The shoes are *gulp* Paris Hilton brand!!! Believe it!
i never thought to make a ‘save the date’ video. that was adorable. now im thinking, i might make a video of the two of us to show at the wedding reception. hmmm. yeah :)
LOVE THE SHOES! I can’t believe they’re Paris Hilton.
I absolutely love this wedding!! So unique and what a wonderful dress!
Cutest video/save the date ever! I love it, all of it!
Such a beautiful wedding I could really see the 60s styling coming through on this one.
Very nice looking couple and the wedding looks like it went off without a hitch. Great news for the couple! http://essenzawedding.com/