Forest Inspired Wedding at Terrain

When today’s couple entered Terrain at Styer’s for the first time, they knew they had found something special. Better yet, the bride knew that she wanted to get married there — after all, it perfectly highlighted her love of trees, forests, and all things woodsy. Maria Mack Photography was the next piece of the puzzle, and soon everything was falling into place.

From the bride, Catherine: Our style was just us! We wanted to focus our style around “our favorites”! We love throwing parties at our house, so we wanted to have awesome party, with all of our favorite people and of our favorite things. Paul knows how much I love trees. And greenery, and sticks, branches. Basically I would like to live in a forest 🙂 I always envisioned lots of twinkling lights, candles everywhere, lots of wood and birch! So when he took me to Terrain for my birthday 2 years ago, we spent hours there and fell in love with the place. We knew we wanted to get married there.

Since everyone was doing “rustic”, that is not really the word or look we were going for. It was more like homey, woodsy, really bringing the outside in. I always knew I wanted moss table runners with soft romantic tea lights in different metals. Paul really loved the idea of the overhanging draped linen to bring it all in for a homey feel. The theme was truly just us. We wanted to enhance the true beauty of Terrain and use natural colors and textures… browns, grays, burlap, twine, metals and I added the hint of purple to make it all pop. For our Décor, we decided to take items from our home that complemented the look and feel of our vision. Decorations and signs that we have collected on our trips over the years or gifts that people have given us. And now they are back in our home as a constant reminder of our love on our wedding day. Talk about DIY 🙂 Our vase on the sweetheart table was a gift from friends, so were our wedding champagne glasses and forks and knives, and the personalized coasters and wood signs at the bar. The fence baskets used to hold the programs also hold magazines in our living room. We brought in the hanging bottles and all of the pussywillows that we used for our ceremony altar and aisle decorations. They were from pussywillow tree’s from my aunt’s home in Maryland and a huge pussywillow bouquet from my aunt in Maine!

We had many DIY projects, including: Hanging Photos of every guest – we wanted to decorate the outside porch area of terrain with photos of everyone! We bought twine and clothes pin and made vertical hanging ropes of photos of us with all of our guests. Programs – we had so much fun creating these. We made the programs with brown kraft paper and twine and made it like a flip chart! In it included our favorite things, the best RSVP madlibs postcard responses and a thank you at the end which included every guest’s names. We thought this would be fun to read while they were drinking their Champagne and Guinness before the ceremony. I really wanted everyone to feel appreciated and a part of our day. Another big part of the program was the wording we included for the group pronouncement. My brother was the officiant and we really wanted our guests to all be a part of pronouncing us husband and wife, so they got to read along. It was awesome to hear! Seating chart – we found a map of downtown Philadelphia (where we live), and made a board of the map pointing to where each neighborhood was. Each guest would be at a table was a different neighborhoods in the city. The neighborhoods were displayed on real sewing machine bottoms that were written on with chalk! I found them at a flea market and kept going back every week until I had a total of 10 for our tables! Favors – Individual Photo Frames of the Guests! When the guests arrived at their table, they found a photo of themselves in a copper bronzed tree frame. We had so much fun picking out photos of everyone and putting them in the frames. Now, it’s really cool to see them displayed at our friends houses when we are visiting them! We also had Seed Packets – We had someone on Etsy make us a stamp of Let Love Grow, Paul and Catherine. We bought the wildflower seeds and sealed them in kraft brown envelopes.

Any advice for couples planning their weddings now? Our advice would be to really make your wedding your own. Don’t try to satisfy the needs of others or get too much input from others. People are always going to have an opinion and it may not be what you were thinking originally. Stay strong if you have a vision! You have been waiting your whole life for this day and it should be as perfect as you are together. Dance to the song you want to (um, hello 80’s), eat the food you want to (sliders, french fry station, donuts, rootbeer floats and fried chicken), get the flavor or two flavors (chocolate chip and carrot cake!) of wedding cake that you want to! Between Paul and I, we have been to over 20 weddings together in the 3 years of dating. It was so much fun to talk about our own vision each time we left a wedding. Really take the time to decide what you like and don’t like from other weddings. It’s not to say that those weddings are not beautiful or amazing, but they may just not be your style. We wanted our guests to walk into our wedding and have it scream “This is so Cat and Pauli’s wedding.” And we think that it did exactly that!

Wedding Music:
Groom’s Processional: “Nothing More,” The Alternate Routes
Bride’s Processional: “Today,” Joshua Radin
Recessional: “I’ve Got a Feeling,” Black Eyed Peas
Reception Entrance: “Hello,” Martin Solevig
First Dance: “Higher Love,” Steve Winwood