A Vintage DIY Wedding, II

Leila and Matt’s wedding is a DIY wonderland. I think my favorite project from theirs is the vintage floral napkin and place card tag tucked in between the fork picks. Let’s continue, shall we? Shot by Katie Slater, who graciously shared this gem with us today.

More from Leila:

We wanted a vintage garden style, with a yellow theme, to go along with the gorgeous grounds of our venue. To accomplish this, I scoured thrift stores, Ebay and Etsy to find old mason jars and small bottles for our flowers, vintage serving trays, and other items to use to decorate the space.

It was a lot of fun to search for each little piece, like the vintage tablecloths, the trays, the vases, etc. I really had a lot of fun with this, especially making things, like the card box, the garlands, and the seed favors. Having the handmade and vintage objects made the wedding feel intimate and genuine for me.

I made flower garlands for the serving tables and bars using green ribbon and yellow vellum, cut with a flower-shaped paper punch. For the table seating cards, I used mini tags from Bake it Pretty, and typed names using a type writer onto paper which I then glued to the tags. I hung them onto a bulletin board covered in yellow fabric – one of my favorite little details of the event. For the favors, I made hand-typed seed packets filled with flower seeds from our garden, and Matt designed guitar pics with our names and had them printed at InTune Guitar Picks Inc. ). My absolute favorite part of the decor was the napkins. Matt’s dad very generously offered to have one of his sewers (he owns a furniture store) sew us napkins using reproduction vintage fabric I bought. They added a nice pop of color to the tables.

Matt’s dad owns a furniture store and was nice enough to have one of his employees sew us 150 napkins using reproduction fabric I picked up at Mawmaw’s Thimble in Knoxville. It was a tedious project, but really tied everything together and added a nice pop of color to the tables.

I really wanted to find organic flowers, but this just didn’t happen. I was very excited to be reminded by my mother of Pinchbeck’s Rose Farm in Guilford, CT, that grows their own roses and employs people with autism to tend them. Not only were the flowers absolutely gorgeous, but they were locally grown and supported a good cause. For supplemental flowers, and we collected daisies, ferns and buttercups from the roadside and woods.

I was super excited about our wedding cake. I was lucky to stumble upon Antonia Davis’s Flower Upon Flour bakery, in Bedford, NY. I’ll admit that the cakes and the dessert display was my absolute favorite part of the wedding.

Art Nouveau Elopement At A Historic Bank Wedding Venue

Some parting words from Leila:

My only two regrets were not getting enough sleep the week before; I was absolutely exhausted during the event; and not smiling more during the ceremony. I was too tired! All in all everything was perfect. Everything we did was meaningful to us, and we did nothing just because you’re “supposed” to do it. Our friends and family really came together to help clean, bake, craft, organize, cook, etc. etc. etc. the days leading up to and including our wedding. The whole experience made us realize how blessed we are to have such wonderful people in our lives.

And a golden piece advice to brides planning their weddings now:

Go with the aspects of the wedding that are important to you and don’t worry about the rest. If you don’t hire a wedding planner (we didn’t), the planning process is very time consuming, but a lot of fun. We had a lot of help from friends and family – which was both enormously useful and made the event so meaningful to us.

Wedding Vendors (Milford, PA):

Venue: Grey Towers National Historic Landmark / Photographer: Katie Slater of Carla Ten Eyck / Second Photographer: Sara Code- Kroll of Growing Tree Photography / Florist: Cathy Ryle of Dingmans’s Flowers (570-828-9999) made the large ceremony arrangements, Pinchbeck’s Rose Farm in Guilford, CT is where they purchased the flowers for their centerpieces / Caterer: The River Rock Inn / Wedding Cake: Main cake from Flower Upon Flower in Bedford, NY, chocolate cake from Take the Cake in Guilford, CT and cannolis from Libby’s Italian Pastries in New Haven, CT / Wedding Dress and Shoes: J.Crew (Lyden dress style) / Veil: TessaKim on Etsy / Hair: Donna Helene in Milford, PA (570-296-7221) / Groom’s suit: custom made by Manuel in Nashville / DJ: The Wagon Riders, out of New Haven, CT ([email protected])