Garden Pacific Northwest Wedding

As if we don’t dish out enough, here is some beautiful wedding eye-candy from the astounding lens of Amanda K Photography. Taylor and Mike’s nuptials in Seattle focused heavily on the beauty of the Pacific Northwest, while also incorporating natural and earthy tones you can’t ever go wrong with. Stacy Anderson Design kept the blooms elegant in tone and style and Alexis Marie Events wrangled all of the fine details of the day to make sure that even in a rainstorm typical for the northwest, everything was still a vision to behold.

From the bride, Taylor: My vision was sort of a mish mash of a few different themes: A garden wedding, with the feeling of a seaside affair while paying tribute to the Pacific Northwest. With guests coming from all over the country, we wanted them to really have a great time. I wanted lots of lush greenery and ferns, soft natural tones, lush florals, and elements like sun bleached mussel shells strewn on the dining tables and a raw oyster station to bring in the ocean. I was aiming for elegant, earthy and personalized.

I also wanted a huge emphasis on photographs. We made a large display table inside with dozens of framed family photos, ranging from antique portraits of my grandmother’s wedding day to photos of our parents as kids, and everything in between. We had a few baby and family photo albums on display, and then I got tons of loose prints made as well. My aim was for every guest at the wedding to be able to find themselves in a photograph somewhere – loose prints we strewn onto the coffee tables and high tops for people to be able to thumb through during cocktail hour. We also had a photo booth for some fun candids, and our guestbook was our trusty little Fuji film Polaroid camera.

We didn’t have a ton of DIY elements, but we had tons of personalized elements throughout the day. What we did create was the escort card display, where I pasted cards into a vintage window we bought. My talented cousin created sketches that we used in lieu of table numbers, highlighting all the different locations that Mike and I have lived or hold dear to us. It was a really wonderful way to incorporate all the traveling and moving we have done, while simultaneously including our guests who had come in from or also cherish all those various locations. We also chose coffee as our favors (Seattle, duh!), but chose the brand based on its name, Herkimer coffee – Herkimer is a county in rural upstate NY, and between my family’s vacation home up there and Mike’s family being from Rochester NY, everyone instantly recognized the coincidence in the name and loved it! We had stamps made by my friend Allison, using the calligraphy that Libby designed for us, and stamped all the coffee with our “logo”. Also, my brother graciously made a customized corn hole set for us by hand! We also created cards for each guest’s seat, thanking them for joining us and reminding them how much it meant to us.

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Along with the dozens of photographs that we brought, we also brought about half of our home to be used as decor! The rug we stood on during our ceremony was my grandmother’s; Mike was wearing his grandfather’s tie clip; we brought a vintage globe and old wooden soda crate for the guest book display; lots of brass candlesticks and trays to place around the venue; my brother played guitar as I walked down the aisle with my dad, and the song he played was “Here Comes the Sun”, which was my parents’ recessional song at their own wedding; instead of a reading or poem during the ceremony, we had Mike’s mom prepare some thoughts on love and marriage, which she shared and moved everyone; instead of a stranger, we had Mike’s brother-in-law marry us; we brought in the ferns to adorn the aisle, and the coffee favors sat on my grandmother’s old tray table.

Any advice for couples planning their weddings now? If things don’t go the way you planned, don’t sweat it! You’re the only two (and your planner) who know that it didn’t go “your way” – your guests won’t ever know! Some things, big or small, are bound to go wrong.