I’m so excited to share this wedding with you today! What’s most amazing is that the bride, Ashley designed her entire paper suite. You can see more of her work here, on her blog she’s named, Pigeon Post (darling!). I’ve asked Ashley to share some of her insight from the wedding day, which makes for a fun read. I hope you enjoy these GORGEOUS images by Daniel Kiyoi! His work is always fabulous!
We spent the first 3 months of our planning looking for the perfect location. We eventually decided that nothing beat the park where Jamie proposed – The Willows in Villanova, PA. He had decorated a big tree with 30 strings of lights on a little island in the middle of winter. That same spot is where we saw each other for the first time on our wedding day. That was my favorite moment of the day – watching his face light up when he saw me and having that one moment to ourselves with no one else around. After we met, we got the whole wedding party together and took some really fun photos, including some of us chasing a huge flock of geese! One piece of advice for those planning their wedding: if you’re not totally tied to the idea of waiting to see each other until the alter, meet before and make it special – it was surprising to me how much of a difference that made. I was able to be completely relaxed during the ceremony and felt like I really got to take it all in.
Our wedding was very hands-on. I am a graphic designer and my husband Jamie is incredibly good at planning so we teamed up and challenged ourselves to plan the wedding in just 7 months. Our wedding truly was a labour of love – it seemed as though everyone we knew was part of making our day a success. Our photographer Daniel Kiyoi is a good friend from college, friends Michael & Tricia Curtis did the videography, Jamie’s uncle performed the ceremony, his cousin sang during the service, my friend Renee D’Amour did my make up, and my aunt did my hair. Jamie’s sister Joni also helped coordinate the day and his mom sewed our napkins and our programs. We spent months scouring flea markets for all of the blue glass bottles we used, as well as old cameras to use for a photo booth.
We got our flowers from Flowers by Priscilla in Paoli but we were able to save some money by doing the table and the ceremony design ourselves and had the florist do the bouquets and boutineers. We also saved some money by cutting out the DJ and making our own iPod mix which actually turned out much better than I expected. Our guests got into it and felt comfortable skipping songs or finding their favorites – it was such a blast!
My dress was Monique Lhullier and all the guy’s suits were J.Crew. We used Etsy to find someone to embroider handkerchiefs for our groomsmen and someone else to make the flower for my hair. My dad bought me my necklace at a vintage store just 2 days before the wedding. I had jewelry designed for my bridesmaids by Leah Dull. I designed our invitations, programs, table numbers, etc. I have been designing wedding invitations for a couple of years so it was a fun challenge to decide how to go about my own. You can check out a small sample of my work here.
It was such a joy for us to work with people we love throughout the planning process and to see it all come together was amazing. The saying “it takes a village…” could really be applied to wedding planning so if you can find people you are comfortable working with and who can take a way an ounce of stress out of the process, it will make it that much easier.
