Wedding Day Details

In honor of our upcoming first anniversary on Sunday, I thought I would take a look back at our wedding last September and share some of the details we incorporated into our celebration. We got married in Portland, Oregon at Waverley Country Club. Our ceremony was outdoors on a lawn overlooking the Willamette River, beneath a huge, old oak tree. September in the Northwest usually means nice weather, but there's no guarantee it will be dry, so we took a little bit of a gamble. Fortunately, we were blessed with an exceptional day - low 80s, sunny, and breezy.

After the ceremony, we moved over to the patio for a cocktail hour and passed appetizers. It actually turned out to be more of a cocktail two hours, which probably helped fuel the dance party later in the evening. After cocktails, we moved inside into the dining room for dinner, and then finally into the ballroom for dancing. One thing (of many) that I really enjoyed was that our wedding felt like three separate parties in one because it transitioned from an outdoor cocktail party, to a dinner party, to live music and dancing.

Of course there were many other details that I loved. Our colors were raspberry pink and chocolate brown with accents of grass green. I wanted the colors to be really vibrant, lush, and summery. We used a wide variety of late summer blooms, mixed with fruits and berries (such as sliced kiwis, figs, key limes, and raspberries), vegetables (including artichokes), seed pods, and twigs to achieve a really organic, textural look for the bouquets and centerpieces.

(I don't have digitial copies of my professional pictures and wasn't near a scanner, so I apologize for the poor quality picture-of-a-picture. However, the prints are gorgeous and all the credit goes to my wonderful photographer, Jamie Bosworth.)

Another detail I loved (as did our guests) were the table number cards. We wanted to do somethng more unique than just numbers or names of places, so we decided to name each table after a specific location in Oregon or Washington that was meaningful to us. Because we had so many out of town guests, we added a little write up explaining the significance of the Northwest location-- for example: a lake I grew up camping at with my family, a beach town he visited frequently with his family, the neighborhood in Seattle where we both lived when we met, favorite spots in Seattle where we had spent time together, etc. Our guests loved learning about these special areas. We printed the cards on cardstock and incorporated the garden rose motif and fonts from our wedding invitations.

Credit: Jamie Bosworth

One thing I really wanted was a cake with chocolate frosting (since it was one of our wedding colors, and, more importantly, I am a chocolate fiend.) However, after visiting many bakeries and soliciting several professional opinions, Jason vetoed chocolate frosting because he thought it would not go very well with one of the layers that was white cake with lemon curd filling and whole raspberries. In the spirit of compromise (I figured I might as well start the whole marriage thing off on the right foot), we ended up selecting white buttercream (which was delicious) and then I had the baker create free-form chocolate ganache banding around the botttom of each cake layer to tie in with our chocolate brown color scheme and the natural style of our flowers.

Finally, our guest book. Like many couples I've seen recently, we didn't want the standard collection of signatures in a guest book, so we did a Kodak photo book with images of the two of us growing up and then during our relationship. (We used many of the same photos in our the slideshow we presented at the rehearsal dinner.) It's funny how most people signed their name on the page that most closely related to them-- whether it was a relative signing on a page with a photo from a big family reunion years ago, or a bridesmaide signing on a page of me during my college years with our group of friends. It made it that much more personal and fun because everyone left cute messages that were relevant to various different times in our lives. It's something I love to read through, and I know it will be a treasured photo album that we'll love to periodically flip through over the years.

Next up, I'll show off some pictures of us on our big day. I can't believe it's been almost a year!