Our Fall Wedding Decorations

We were married in a beautiful historic building in downtown Vancouver. Even though The Academy is beautiful on its own, I still wanted to add some "Wack touches". My mom, sisters, and I spent a lot of time planning the decorations for the ceremony, measuring the altar, measuring the length of the aisle, counting candles...you name it, we talked about or planned for it.

I thought I would share some photos taken of our wedding day site, many of these photos are from friends and family members as I didn't think to ask our professional photographer to take pictures of the decor.

The aisle was lined with fall leaves on vines and at every other pew was a lantern with a battery operated candle inside. Loose leaves were also scattered along the entire aisle. I found all the leaves on Craigslist for $20! The gal I bought them from also used them for her wedding.

On either side of the sanctuary are two alcoves where typically "rental arrangements" are used by brides. We tried to come up with our own "window display", so we wouldn't have to rent arrangements from The Academy. We came up with a fall display using lanterns, vases, tree branches from Mom and Dad's yard, and fall leaves. A couple of the stands for the lanterns were indoor plant containers turned upside down. In the end, we spent a little more than if we had rented, but we get to keep everything!

After watching the Sex in the City episode where Miranda gets married, I wanted a bouquet like hers. Her bouquet was fallish, it wasn't too floraly and it seemed to look more natural and not forced together...if there is even such a thing. My mom took the photo of Miranda's bouquet to our local farmer's market and talked with a vendor there; he said he could make a bouquet like that for my bridemaids.

I was very happy with the way the bouquets turned out. The arrangements were more burgundy, than what the picture above shows, and each bouquet was tied with a light pink ribbon. My wrist corsage was made by my friend Ali's mom. She made my two wrist corsages for my high school junior and senior proms, so it was special to have her make my wedding corsage.

Here is a picture after the ceremony with my bridesmaids and their bouquets. Don't they look great?!

Before guests entered the sanctuary, we had a small table set up with the programs and some decor (of course which included a lantern). Stuffed inside each program was our guestbook photobooth card for folks to fill out while they waited for the wedding to start.

Look at all those programs my family and bridesmaids were lucky enough to help me fold and tie a ribbon around! Kelsey really was the brains behind the program, she took my vision and made it happen on the computer.

The altar was the only place we could have real candles lit and I wanted the entire thing filled! Candle holders from Mom's and Grandma's crystal collections were used. It looked so pretty and created quite the mood when it was lit entirely. It worked out well to have so many candles as three of my cousins and three of Evan's cousins were able to light them all pretty quickly.

A special touch was added to the altar, by my mom, without me knowing it. She placed special stones with words like Hope, Trust, Love on them, around the base of the Unity candle (candle seen above in the center of picture). I noticed them as soon as we lit the Unity candle during the ceremony, it was so sweet of her to do that!

The stones are now mixed in with decorative rocks which surround candles placed inside a round plate that is displayed in our home throughout the year.

While planning the ceremony decor, I didn't want to keep the look and feel just inside the sanctuary. We broke a rule by placing decorations on the stairs leading up to the sanctuary! We placed Mason jars on every other stair. A fall leaf and a fall foliage piece were tied to each jar with raffia. Inside was another fake candle.

I just wish I had a picture of how the stairs looked; I only have a small snippet of it on video!

Also as guests came up the stairs, they saw a small display inside an alcove. My guess is this space used to be windows, but have since been closed off. We placed a photo of Evan and I from a few months before the wedding along with a bronze believe sign, fall leaves, and a lantern.

Close-up of some of the candles afterward, you can see they were all placed on a brown runner made especially for the altar. Another believe sign was placed among the candles, it was given to me as a shower gift.

There was so much to set up in the few hours we had, that we couldn't have done it without our fantastic family members and friends.