Wedding Bell Blues

I planned my wedding by myself (with help from my fabulous mother and some inspiration from Pinterest), from across the country. It was a bit stressful, but it really wasn't bad, especially with the wonders of online shopping.
 

We didn't have a huge budget, luckily we were able to have the ceremony and reception at my parents' lake house, which really cut down on costs, but I've also never been someone who would want to spend $25,000 on a wedding. Yes, it is a very special day, but wouldn't you rather put that money towards, say an insane honeymoon trip around the world, or the down payment on a house?
 

With a little bit of time and effort, I was able to get everything I wanted, and not break the bank.

I ordered our flowers (white roses) from Costco. You can order them in bulk, they showed up two days before and we all made our own bouquets and my mom and aunts made flower arrangements for the tables.

I am so tan

We had a ton of flowers, 200 white roses for around $160.00. I had also been collecting new and vintage brooches for a few months before the wedding, and added them into my bouquet for a bit of sparkle and uniqueness.

I was a bit stuck on what to get for favours, it seemed like a waste of money to give people something just to give them something. I thought about doing edible favours, like baskets of cherries, or homemade chocolate chip cookies (thankfully my sister talked me out of that with a little common sense about what happens to chocolate left sitting out in the 100 degree July heat), but settled on handled mason jar drinking glasses, which could serve a dual purpose as favours, and also let me get away with not buying or renting glasses for the guests.
 

I searched for quite awhile to find these at a reasonable price, a lot of the time the shipping was twice as much as the glasses themselves ($300 for shipping, seriously?) but finally found some from BarProducts, Inc. It was $200, shipping included, for 150 glasses. I bought cute favour tags on Etsy, and I couldn't have been happier with the result.

Since the wedding was in Montana, we continued the rustic theme into the centerpieces, using slabs of cut wood as the base (thanks Dad!) and placing different sizes of mason jars with white candles on top. It was simple and beautiful, and fit the atmosphere perfectly.

We made our own cupcakes, with fondant flowers from Pfeil and Holing, and my very talented friend Amanda made and decorated a cake for us to cut.

I toyed with the idea of getting a vintage typewriter for our guest book, I've always wanted one, and I figured it would be my wedding present to myself, but then I thought about how much I loved playing with them when I was little, and realized we were going to have a lot of kids at our wedding. I had a horrible vision of going to read our guest book only to discover it was nothing more than pages upon pages of unreadable typewriter text.

I decided to get a vintage suitcase instead, and I found one on Etsy with a gorgeous purple lining. I knew it would be great for our wedding, and also serve as a wonderfully decorative addition to our home afterwards.

I also found some vintage black and white postcards on Etsy, and had the guests write us a postcard and leave it in the suitcase, along with any cards we received.

I plan to put the postcards in a photo album with our wedding pictures, as a fun keepsake from a wonderful day.

A few more special details were this handkerchief for my flower girl, and this cape and ornate glass box for our ring bearer.