Wedding at the Oregon Gardens

My friend Marisa got married over the weekend at the gorgeous Oregon Gardens. She didn't need much as far as decor went, since the place itself is the decor, but she had a few things that added to the event. I was lucky enough to be able to help set-up the ceremony, cocktail, and reception sites. Thankfully, I had my husband and sister with me to tackle all the projects.

Here are just a couple of cute ideas and decorations from her big day.

Escort cards inside a vintage suitcase. Marisa had classy vintage travel theme as part of her wedding. She hand wrote all the names of her guests on the escort cards and we had the fun challenge of displaying them.

The cards on the bottom were laid inside paper folded up accordion style. The middle cards were tucked into a seam of the suitcase and the top ones were stuck into the lining of the suitcase with a straight pin. One of the challenges discussed before the wedding was what she was going to do with her friends who didn't share the same last name? She wanted the cards laid out in alphabetical order, but it was easy to do with couples who shared the same last name. So those guests, either because they are dating, married, but didn't take one another's names, or in a same sex relationship, what would make the most sense? We went with alpha order between the two people. So looking at the last names of the couple, whose last name came first? Using their last name, the card was inserted into the pile in alpha order.

Behind the vintage suitcases, was a framed world vintage looking map. Marisa cleanly stuck map pins and string into cities and places they've been, were born, been to separately and together. She created a little legend in the corner and color coded everything, so guests could learn more about them.

Her reception tables were glass vases of varying heights, shapes, and colors. We predetermined how many of what size were needed for each table. Then we went around a filled some with candles and others with one or two dahlias.

The table number was a picture of a famous city they have traveled to. Each picture looked a little vintage and on the back of the number had a little story about that city. 

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.

Travel Theme Wedding Invitation

Over the years, my mom, sisters, and I have saved wedding invitations, save the dates, and shower invites that were our favorites. So when it came time to create our invitation, I pulled out the cardboard box and went through the invitations. Our wedding invitation, once completed, had bits and pieces from many of the invitations in the box.

The envelopes were kraft paper just like the Save the Dates. Once again, the same ink stamps and red address labels were used on the outside of the envelope. My mom also happened to find some very appropriate mailing stamps; they were like vintage ads from each state asking visitors to come visit their famous attraction.

I am so thankful for my Aunt Linda addressing every invite; I love seeing her handwriting on them!

Each took two stamps because of the weight and the thickness of the invitation. We had a fun night of assembling the invites and Sara had to use a rolling pin to flattened each one! Once opened, the invitation was wrapped in cranberry and brown ribbon, with a kraft tag stamped with BELIEVE.


The long invite opened like a two fold pamphlet with a pocket in center section. Stuffed in the center section was the ceremony invite, the response card, and a map of the downtown Vancouver area.


The ceremony invite, you might recognize from the Save the Date posting. The picture is from a color postcard. We just used the front side of the postcard and turned the image to black and white.

Our invitation language is a bit off from the traditional language you typically read. We wanted it to sound more like us and how we felt.

On the right flap of the invitation was directions to the ceremony and the reception. Behind it was a series of papers what we called a "Travel Brochure."


I picked sites around the downtown area and labeled them as dates. These dates were places that our guests could visit while they were in town. Places that weren't too far from the ceremony or reception, and would highlight Vancouver.


All of these dates were marked on the map that was included in the invite. Like I mentioned above, the map was tucked inside the center section of the invitation. Even how the map was folded was planned! The same night Sara was rolling the invitations, Kelsey brought out the 7th grade expert note folder in her and came up with how each map should be folded. Like this:


Once opened, it was a piece of artwork. It was after all, made by an artist--Sara's husband Ethan. Ethan has a true gift from God, he can paint, draw, sculpt, create, copy, and use bee's wax! I sat down with him one night, with my laymen hand drawn example and this is what he came up with. So nice!


As I mentioned, also inside was the response card. The front side were various replica vintage travel stickers. I found these, of all places, at a discount fabric store in Portland at the cash register. As Mom and I waited in line to check out, I looked over and couldn't believe my luck! I thought, "Check! Response cards almost done!"

I am not positive, but I think these replicas were exactly that, reproductions of hotel stickers that used to be in circulation.

Given that the front sticker was vintage, we turned the response card into our own vintage postcard.

As you can see, the red labels were used again! I just wish the post office had better postcard stamps that I could have used. Little did I know then, I probably could have created my own stamps on-line.

It was fun to receive all the postcards back in the mail, as many people wrote sweet fun notes on them. I decided I wanted to keep these notes and fond memories around after the wedding, so I created a wall collage. I cut around each vintage sticker and arranged them in a frame. These now hang in our family room and I always enjoy looking at them.

Close up of the stickers.

Hope you enjoyed the breakdown of our wedding invitation.

Wedding Save the Date

For our save the date, my sister Kelsey created a vintage "Greetings from..." postcard. I tried to find a real "Greetings from Vancouver, WA" so she wouldn't have to create one, trying places like Fred Meyer and on ebay, but didn't have any luck. The closest we came was purchasing a card from an ebay vendor, but she never sent the card or responded to any of my emails. When I finally resorted to giving her negative feedback on her vendor profile, she finally responded, but of course had a million excuses. Then she had the audacity to give negative feedback to Evan's account, which made Evan mad...but at me! Oops!



Kelsey also made sure to incorporate our wedding colors, cranberry and brown, and of course added in local Vancouver flair with photos of real landmarks and statues in the area.

The other side of the postcard has the first picture take of Evan and me together. When he came down to visit for the first time, I took him to Oaks Park in Portland. They had a photobooth there that actually had a high quality camera with a good printer. This picture is still on our fridge!



This card was also the first time we introduced the "believe" theme to the guests. Little did I know how much "believe" would stick, where now many of the signs in our home, have been given several Christmas ornaments, and been sent cards among other things and all say BELIEVE!

We hand wrote all the guests' addresses on traditional red mailing labels. Since the postcard had images on both sides, we ended up sending the postcard in an envelope. Mom found cute postage stamps that we thought went with the vintage travel theme and we stamped three different travel stamps on the envelope in brown and cranberry ink.



Over the next couple of months, Mom was still on a hunt to find vintage postcards and things to help with our invitation. She found an old Academy postcard and a Washington postcard that she thought we would be able to somehow use.

The lawn on the right is now a parking lot.

The back of The Academy postcard.

An old postcard featuring Washington State all its cities. Hand drawn icons represent what that city was known for at the time. Take note that Vancouver is spelled wrong.

The postcard is from 1948.