Wedding Weekends No. 1

At the beginning of this year, I got engaged to my wonderful fiancé, and since then I have been so incredibly excited to plan our wedding. At the time, I wanted to get started right away because I was so excited, but it seemed a bit too far from our wedding date to begin with the planning process. However, I will say that from having planned a good chunk of the wedding already, it is never too early to be looking for venues and vendors. I was so surprised to find that so many vendors were already booking into 2023 at the beginning of 2021, but I then realized that because of Covid, so many brides and grooms had to push their weddings back, meaning the vendors were booked further into the year already. I am so happy these couples are finally getting to have their special days, and luckily our wedding is not until 2022, so we were able to find some vendors we love who were available on our date. 

Because I love wedding planning so much and often search for others who are doing the same so I can gather inspiration, I wanted to start creating my own blog posts about our wedding. I’m thinking this will be once a month, at least to start, as there isn’t too much to write about yet since we are still a year out (and already have most of the big things booked). Hopefully, this will be fun to read, and maybe give some guidance to those who are starting out planning their own wedding. As our wedding gets closer, these posts may become more frequent, but for now, I will post once a month on the weekend (hence, wedding weekends!)

The first topic I wanted to talk about was style inspiration since you need to think about what you want your wedding to be like before you can plan it! I know as soon as we were engaged I ran to Pinterest to start putting together a board for our wedding, curating a collection of images that had the exact style we were looking for. Admittedly, I already had a wedding Pinterest board that I have been adding to over the years. It’s always fun to dream about your wedding day, as I’m sure many people do before they’re engaged. I looked through this board and searched on Pinterest until I found the style that I was looking for. During this time I was also trying to find a venue, which ended up influencing the overall style we settled on. The venue has such a big impact on the feel and mood of the event, and really sets the scene for your design. I wanted our design to complement and play off of the venue we chose, which is a historic inn. I wanted a very classic, New England summer feel, with ginger jars and hydrangeas as our main pieces of decoration. These really compliment our venue and bring out that historic New England feel I am going for. I adore the hydrangea runner in the photo below and hope to take that idea and transform it into a runner that goes along the bar instead, either across the top or draped along the front.

We decided to have a cocktail-style reception instead of a full sit-down dinner. We wanted to create an environment that was conducive to conversation. Traditional wedding setups group people together, and oftentimes people do not stray far from their tables. My fiancé and I both have family coming who have not yet met, and we would love for everyone to be able to chat and get to know each other while exploring each room of the venue and trying all the different foods in each room. The cocktail-style reception is also great for my fiancé and me to get to talk to our guests. We don’t want to miss out on saying hello and thanking everyone for coming. Because of this decision, we won’t have the traditional table settings, but instead, we will have food scattered around the venue, as well as passed hors d’oeuvres, and plates available at the stations. A lot of my inspiration was found through pictures with table settings, but instead of using them for our own table settings, I am taking the inspiration of the colors, patterns, and styles to use when decorating the venue. 

A lot of the pictures I loved on Pinterest are a bit more extravagant than what we are going for, but still provide great inspiration for the design of our special day. The photo below is the inspiration for some of the table setups on the large tables where the food will be displayed. I love the soft, billowing runner with the ginger jars and light, airy florals. Mixed with some elements of vintage china and candle holders, I think it creates such a beautiful combination of historic charm and New England summer, which is exactly the style I am aiming for.

I hope to incorporate some earthier tones as well, in hints of greenery wrapped around the wooden posts in our venue, and through some rattan chargers or table mats on the display tables. Our venue has some beautiful, historic wood floors and beams that I would like to highlight and tie into our decorations. I also would love to bring the blue and white onto the tablecloths on the tables that we do set out for our guests to sit or stand at.

The decor will also feature pops of peach to help break up the blue and white that make up the majority of the color scheme. I love the photo above because it has the blue and white that I adore, but it also includes greenery and pops of peach that brighten the display. We will have similar tall greenery (ours will be cute round topiaries) to add height to our display and cocktail tables. I think this style is very classic New England, but also adds a twist of Italian countryside picnic that I think is so beautiful. If I could have my wedding anywhere, I would want it at either a chateau in France or an Italian villa, like Villa Catignano, which hosts weddings that are unbelievably beautiful. If we can bring some of the beauty of an Italian villa wedding to our own New England venue, that would be the ultimate dream.

I am so excited to continue updating you on our wedding planning process. It has been so much fun so far, and I can only imagine it will become even more fun as the date gets closer and we get to start finalizing the details of the day. I can’t wait to update you again in September!