Ruffled

Any time Christine Lim and Sweet Woodruff collaborate, you can consider us happy wedding bloggers. From the Jenga guest book to the glittered Jimmy Choo heels, we soaked up all the details and fell in love with every single one. Just wait until you see the brilliant ivory and orange wedding cake from DT Bistro!

From the bride, Rebecca: Between our family and closest friends, we knew we would have a guest list of around 140 people. At the same time, we wanted to keep the wedding as intimate as possible. We tried to achieve that by keeping the colours warm and more importantly, incorporating little touches of ourselves wherever we could. We love board games so we placed a Jenga set by the guestbook and asked everyone to jot down marriage advice on each of the blocks. For our bonbonnieres, we sourced little tins of tea sachets from our favourite tea company, and we wrapped each tin with ribbon from my favourite store (Mokuba). (When Darin proposed, he had tied the ring to a long strand of Mokuba ribbon!)

Bouquet recipe: Lots of garden roses, ranunculus, dahlias, sweet peas, and veronica.

I’m not sure if we had an overall theme or style that we were trying to achieve, but we knew that there were certain things we just needed to have. String lights were a must – Christmas lights are a year-round decoration in our home! An added bonus, the warmth of the string lights looked so beautiful against the rustic backdrop of the old converted church where we celebrated. We also wanted to have long harvest tables, which felt more communal to us… like everyone is a part of one big family! The one other thing we knew we had to incorporate was our love for music. The reception part came easy – a good friend of ours had volunteered his DJ services as soon as we were engaged, and since he knows us so well we were comfortable giving him full reign of the evening. For the ceremony, we knew we had to find a specific someone but weren’t really sure how. One of our favourite places to go to while we were dating was a small creperie in Toronto, and on some weekends there would be an accordion player playing French-style cafe music. With a little google research we were able to connect with him, and we were so glad we did because having the accordion and clarinet play during the ceremony and cocktail hour was a definite highlight. They walked around amongst the guests during the cocktail hour, which really lent to a more intimate feel, and the sound of the music was so charming and old-worldly – a perfect match to our venue.

An exact colour scheme was hard to pin down, but in the end it became a mix of corals, peach, blush pink, and orange with touches of gold and silver. I was most excited about finding the dresses for each of the ladies in my bridal party – I knew I wanted them in different dresses all in neutral colours, and with a mix of texture (lace, brocade, etc). One of the DIY projects was putting together the seating chart. We had found a beautiful old wooden frame, not really knowing if it would be large enough to fit all of the place cards. With help from my bridesmaid, we stayed up one night measuring out twine to hang from the frame and properly spacing out all the cards to fit within it perfectly! Another project was the menu cards. Aside from ribbon, beautiful stationery/greeting cards is my weakness. Instead of printing out menu cards, I thought it would be a great idea to place cute Rifle Paper & Co. cards on the tables with the menu handwritten inside.

Any advice for couples planning their weddings now? Don’t procrastinate! We had planned to take a few days off work leading up to the wedding day, so we ended up leaving quite a few things till the last minute. However, it just caused unnecessary stress and less hours of sleep! Try not to leave things like the seating arrangement and your thank-you speech till the week of the wedding – they ended up taking more time than we had expected.

Wedding Music:
Bridal Party Processional: “La Vie en Rose”
Bride’s Processional: Pachelbel’s Canon in D
Signing of the Registry: Gymnopedie
Recessional: The Wedding March
First Dance: “Our House,” Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young
Parents’ Dance: “Stand By Me,” Ben E. King
The ceremony music was played by an accordionist and clarinetist. During the cocktail hour, they walked around playing a mix of French cafe style music and rock songs including ones from Beirut, The Strokes, The Kinks, Postal Service, Belle & Sebastian. Our wonderful DJ played an amazing mix of songs from the 60s and 80s (The Kinks, The Zombies, Sam Cooke, Otis Redding, The Velvet Underground, The Smiths, The Cure), and more recent indie music (Sufjan Stevens, The Magnetic Fields, Pavement, Broken Social Scene, Beach House, St. Vincent). He even threw in Forever… by Jesse and the Rippers!

Wedding Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada / Photographer: Christine Lim / Flowers: Sweet Woodruff / Venue: Berkeley Church / Portraits Location: Spadina Museum / Groom’s Getting-Ready Location: Shangri-La / Wedding Dress: Reem Acra via White Toronto / Veil: White Toronto / Wedding Shoes: Jimmy Choo / Hair Pin: Jennifer Behr / Bridesmaids’ Dresses: BCBG, Laundry by Shelli Segal / Groom’s Suit: Freeman Formals / Caterer: Berkeley Catering / Wedding Cake: DT Bistro / Accordionist: Ronen Segall / DJ: This Broken Mixtape
Wedding Invitations: 7eightynine / Transportation: M&M Limousine

I have to admit, Toronto is quickly becoming one of my favorite locations for weddings. It seems to have a never-ending abundance of stunning venues, like the Drake Hotel – which you’ll see in this wedding from Christine Lim. This beauty is pushed over the top with impeccable floral design from Coriander Girl!

From the bride, Betsy: Though my husband and I both care about design and aesthetics, the words that kept coming up in our planning had more to do with how we wanted our wedding to feel: warm, intimate, personal, and fun. The ceremony was very important to us; we put a lot of time and thought into writing it, as well as choosing the readings and music. After that, we wanted great food and a can’t-stop-won’t-stop dance party to take us through the night. We filled in the blanks with design elements that held personal significance and made us smile (like peach carnations and gold dinosaurs), whether or not they necessarily made immediate sense together. In the end, it looked and felt like us, which was exactly what we wanted.

Overall, I think the vibe we ended up with was a kind of eclectic, industrial glam with touches of vintage charm, not all of which we can take credit for. For instance, my lovely and beautiful bridesmaids each have terrific style, and without any real coordination other than the color of the dresses, they ended up looking like the most glamorous 60s girl group — it fit the party and the venue perfectly. We had a loose palette of gold, peach, pale pink, and black and white, but we didn’t let ourselves stress out too much about coordinating the details. We trusted what we liked, and it all came together in the end.

As far as DIY went, we were incredibly lucky to have the help of our very talented family and friends. One of our closest friends (and a groomsman) is an amazing graphic designer who created all of our paper goods. My stepmother-in-law is a phenomenal hostess, and she surprised us by turning the simple welcome party we had planned into a huge pre-wedding feast. The guest favors were a lovely team effort from my parents: My mother is a beekeeper, so she supplied honey from her hives, while my patient father put together all of the packaging. Receiving the gift of time and energy from the people we love kept us sane and also helped make everything even more personal.

Any advice for couples planning their weddings now? Know your DIY limits. It was important to me to make the wedding cake, but I didn’t want to be stressing out about piping frosting when I could be spending pre-wedding time with a rare assemblage of all my favorite people. Rather than taking on a big traditional cake, I made three smaller cakes, and focused on great flavors instead of elaborate design. I baked the layers and made the frosting ahead of time, then had someone at the venue help to put the simple, spare cakes together the morning of the wedding. Also, even if you’re not having a destination wedding, consider hosting a welcome party for all of your guests to meet or catch up before the big day. By the next night, people from the often very disparate spheres of your life will be greeting each other like old summer camp pals, which helps everyone (including you) have a better time. Finally, have hilarious family and friends. One of the most frequent comments we still hear about the wedding was how much everyone loved the speeches!

Wedding Music:
Groomsmen Processional: “I Walk the Line,” Johnny Cash
Groom’s Processional: “Funky Good Time,” James Brown and the JBs
Bridesmaids’ Processional: “Deanna (Acoustic),” Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Bride’s Processional: “I’m Sticking with You,” The Velvet Underground
Recessional: “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher,” Jackie Wilson
First Dance: “Higher Power,” Jonathan Richman
Last Dance: “Lust for Life,” Iggy Pop

Wedding Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada / Photographer: Christine Lim / Flowers: Coriander Girl / Venue and Caterer: The Drake Hotel / Wedding Dress and Accessories: My dress was a 1930s vintage gown from a store called Backstage in Charlotte, NC. I made my headpiece from an art deco bracelet from the same store / Wedding Shoes: Sacha London / Groom’s Suit and Groomsmen Ties: Hugo Boss / Groom’s and Groomsmen Pocket Squares: 18 Waits / Wedding Cake: Bride / DJ: Trevor Young / Wedding Invitations and Paper Goods: Flaming Unicorn Skeleton

This next wedding is truly a handmade affair. The bride, Amanda, hastily busied the hands of her closest friends and family to assemble a wedding akin to 4-H club meetings of yore. We’re absolutely smitten with the charming use of “best in show” ribbons, adorning different elements from the cake to the bride’s little sister! Don’t forget to take a peek at all details in the gallery!

From the bride, Amanda: Just around the same time we started planning the wedding we came across some old family slides of Tom’s dad participating in a 4-H club fair. We liked the hodge-podge, under designed look and feel and set out to replicate it.

The whole thing was a DIY project. We had our hands all over every little part of the day… well except maybe for the food. The crafty things we did included invitations, letterpress mini-menus, best guest ribbon awards, family member awards (i.e. Best Little Sister), succulent terrarium centerpieces, overhead projector slides, “best” cake, dessert competition trophies, bunting, the letter writing station…

Any advice to future brides? Do it together. We made sure that we made it something we could both feel ownership of.

See the entire (and revamped!) gallery here

Wedding Songs:
During dinner we played old french jazz… songs by Francis Lemarque, Alain Romans, Charles Dumont…
First dance: it was to a Nina Simone song. Then we ripped up dance floor to a bunch of old Soul classics including Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Mel Torme, Aretha Franklin…

Wedding vendors (British Columbia, Canada):

Wedding Photographer: Christine Lim / Invitations & Menus: Designed by bride and groom; printed by Vince Perez of Everlovin’ Press / Wedding Flowers and terrariums: mother of the bride / Wedding Cake: bride’s aunt, and Amanda made the “best cake” ribbon / Wedding Catering: The Seasonal Experience / Wedding Favors: made by bride and groom / Wedding Dress: Handmade by bride’s friend from a vintage Vouge pattern / Bride’s Accessories: Bride’s Hair: Lindsay Fournier of Beehive in Vancouver / Groom’s Suit: The Francis’ by Hugo Boss and a Penguin tie