Our Wedding in Pictures

Here is a few pictures that really tell you more about our wedding:

My garter was hand made by my mom

and my engagement ring was picked out by Jason

My cute "I do" undies for my something blue

and a dress tag hand made for my dress by my sister in law

I chose ball room dancing shoes because they were sooooo comfortable!

My great grandma's pearls

My husband and my brother

My wedding dress top was unique, so no need for a lot of jewelry

The ring-bearer and pillow was hand made by my cousin since a pillow and 1 year old wouldn't have worked well

A photo guest-book in the chapel - idea thanx to the knot

Our sand ceremony

so we could keep it we poured it into a candle base and plan to add to it on anniversaries

Our flower girls and pew ties.

We did a simple ribbon and flowers as pew ties to match the ceremony colors

The flower girls and their baskets - inexpensive sashes helped them match the ceremony colors

Our chapel flowers - my mom did 2 just to bring in our colors.

One of our favorite wedding pictures. Us looking at each other through the looking glass with the downtown Long Beach skyline behind us

Another favorite shot - Us leaning against an old metal wall

My dress and veil and flowers. We DIY'd all our wedding flowers!

The amazing Queen Mary and us

Our cupcake tower allowed us multiple flavors to please all the guests palettes

Our DIY centerpieces with our C monogram

Our table assignments - framed to add creativity

Our fun cake topper, we loved the bride grabbing the groom

The cake cutters - hand made by my dad

Our reception Venue at night

Wedding Day!

After almost five years of knowing each other we tied the knot! We had a small intimate ceremony on the Queen Mary. The Ceremony was officiated by my cousin Jen Miller and her husband Austin Miller. They made the ceremony US! It was so personal and fun and entertaining and loving. Our photographer, Stephanie Bailey, captured all of our special moments for us to cherish for years to come. So many friends and family members stepped up to help make the night very warm and inviting. My uncle Ric DuRand even surprised us with 2 hula dances.

Family Affair

Having such a large family we decided to use them to our advantage. They knew that with us saving money we could invite more people to celebrate our day with us. So, below are some ways friends and family came together to make our day special!

Bridal Party - We chose all family to stand up for us on our special day. Friends come and go from our life but family is forever. My cousin and her husband married us. My other cousins stood up for us. And my cousin's four beautiful girls were our flower girls. And Hunter, my nephew, was our ring bearer. Check our Maryn in the front. She's letting the photographer know she's done!

Flowers - We did them ourself! We had a college friend cometeach us how to doarrangements, bouquets and boutonnieres. Then the day before the wedding we got together as a family and arranged and wrapped for a few hours. We did not cut the bottom of the bouquets or wrap them until the wedding day so that we wouldn't be holding soaking wet ribbons.

Va

ses - My mom made a few large arrangements to dress up the chapel and venue. I trusted her with this since she always does a beautiful job. It was just the touch of height and color for the chapel and a few tables in the reception.

Garter - My mom volunteered to sew me my garter! She did an amazing job with the size andfabric and details. This was much more personal than buying one from a store. The time that went into it made me enjoy wearing it that much more.

Something Blue - Ashley Taylor made me a beautiful hand stitched tag to go in my wedding dress that had our initials, the date and a heart. This will be a piece of the wedding I will always keep. I also got a cute pair of blue undies at my bridal shower to wear under my dress.

Ring Bearer Pillow - We were pretty sure getting a 1 year old down the aisle with a pillow would not work. So, I found a great idea of making a small pillow to attach to his wrist. My cousin Jessica made the pillow and even made it look like my dress! This idea was asuper success. Hunter ran down the aisle and the

ringsmade is safely.

Cake Cutting and Serving - My dad does woodworking so we found a way to get him involved too. He made us custom cake cutting and serving pieces that we will have forever. They stay in our hutch and we bring them out anytime we need a flat serving piece.

Grandma's Pearls - My dress had a lot of detail at the top so a flashy necklace didn't work. We chose my grandma's pears because they were from family and they added just the right amount to the dress. Not to mention their color matched my dress.

Personal Touches

You have to make the day YOURS! So, we wanted to share the things we did that made us happy :)

Rehearsal Dinner Slide Show - We collected old family pictures from both sides of our family and played them on a loop at the rehearsal dinner. This gave everyone funny thingsto comment on and jogged their memories about funny events.

Custom "C" Centerpieces - We went around in circles looking for something elegant and simple that we could do. With our venue being an old ocean liner I looked up photos of the Verandah Grill and noticed that they used to have lamps on the tables. So, we covered inexpensive cylinder vases with velum and dressed them up with black satin ribbon at the top. To really make them ours we printed a light watermarked C on the velum that matched the light watermarked C on our invitations.

Quiz - My old roommate had a great icebreaker at her wedding that i had to use. We created a fun ten question Quiz about us to be placed on the dinner tables. This got people talking at each table that may not have known each other before. This got childhood friend and new friends involved because the questions spanned our whole life. You can see the silver/burgundy quiz way down in the bottom left corner of this picture.

Bridal Party - Jason and I wrote a short paragraph about each of the people in our wedding party. We printed this off on color coordinated paper and left these on the dinner tables for guests to enjoy. We did this for two reasons; te first was to tell the people involved how much they mean to us, and to tell our guests about the amazing people we chose to be in our wedding.

Welcome Packet - We created an easy welcome packet for the guests staying at our venue. We wrote up a quick thank you letter with a huge "Thank You" at the top. We left that visible when we folded the letters. We enclosed important family member's phone numbers just in case someone needed to be gotten ahold of. We folded this letter around 3 local maps that covered the areas around our wedding so that visitors could easily find their way around. We wrapped a purple ribbon around it and it was done. I had a family member get room numbers from the front desk and distribute them to the wedding guests staying at the venue.

Cupcakes - Who doesn't like cupcakes? We chose these yummy handfuls of celebration formany reasons. First, you can most likely cut out that annoying cake cutting fee that the venue charges. You can also bring home your uneaten dessert much easier than a slice of cake. We were also able to have 8 different flavors to suit all of our guests's sweet tooth's! Our cupcake lady also made us a cake to cut so we wouldn't miss out on a cake to freeze for our anniversary.

Cake Topper - Another way to make the day very YOU is to chose a cake topper that represents you. There are many websites that sell entertaining cake toppers that can keep your guests' laughing. Ours looked very normal from the front but had a cute surprise when you peeked around back. the Bride had her hand on the groom's toosh! We set up our cake table so people could walk around all sides and enjoy the view.

Guest Thank You Gifts - We went along with our theme when choosing a gift. We actually debated wether to do a gift at all. Once we decided it was a useful gift or nothing the search was on. My faithful assistant thought up the idea of a luggage tag since we were getting married on a ship. We were set! We had a great promotional code for a gift website and spent little on these cute gifts. People loved them so much that there were none leftover! Some websites even recommend using something like this as an escort card. Preprinting the guest's name on it would eliminate escort cards, if you chose to do those.

Photo Guest Book - We found this idea on The Knot and fell in love. What do you usually do with your guestbook after the wedding? pack it in a box to collect dust in the attic. So, being the ingenious couple we are we knew that would not work for us. We wanted our guestbook to do double duty. Our guest book was full of all of our engagement photos. We had them on white pages so that there was plenty of space to write around them. Now the book lives with our other photo books right in our living room so that we can enjoy it any time!

Sand Ceremony - Having our wedding on a 1930's ship with

ornate wood throughout left us unable to use exposed flames. So, we found the sand ceremony was our best option. Again, not wanting this to sit and collect dust in the attic later we had to get inventive. I found two small vases that we could pour from very easily. Then I found a great hallow candle stand at Pier 1. This was perfect! The sand could live right under the candle in our house forever. We filled the bottom with a little sand before to represent the time we had spent together so far. As we poured during the ceremony we left a small amount in our individual vases to represent us still having individuality. And, we left room in our large candle stand to add sand at our anniversaries as we aged.

Framed Table Assignments - I found this idea on The Knot also. But there these cute frames were actually up on a wall. What venue is going to allow you to put 10+ holes in their wall. Probably none! So, we gathered all of our 8x10 frames and then purchased a few more at the 99c store to round out our batch. We spray painted them all black and easily printed our 8x10 paper with the table number and guests to fit right in.