Notes from the Bride & Groom {Jessica & TJ}: One of my very favorite parts about the entire wedding planning process was creating my own dress and working with Suzanne at Atelier des Modiste. It’s something I would recommend for so many brides because you can truly create the exact dress you want in any style and any fabric, and then it becomes something that is so totally you (plus it was less than half the price of most of name brand dresses I was looking at). I came to suzanne with inspiration, told her the style I was looking for, she provided me with some feedback, and the process was seriously so fun! From picking out all the gorgeous fabric lace, to adding the fun detail flowers- and even to her putting the gorgeous embroidery over my heart on the inside of the dress- nothing but perfection :)

The groomsman all wore their own suits, but TJ and I picked out some super fun vintage bow ties on Etsy from xoelle, and let them pick what they wanted to wear day of- and I thought learning to tie their first bow tie with the instructions was pretty fun for his younger brothers in particular. Another fun thing that TJ did as a gift to the groomsman, was gave them a gift certificate to the Vans store- and as their grooms gift they all “created their own vans” to wear to the wedding- which made for some fun pics and a cool, personal keepsake.

Far and away my favorite DIY of the entire wedding was our quilt. As a part of our response card we asked for guests to send a piece of fabric- and to my surprise nearly everyone did (people sent everything from shirts, to baby blankets, to jeans and just random fabric). I pieced together the quilt (not very beautifully) and then a local quilter did the heart embroidery on top and finished it off. I wrote the ceremony (which I would also recommend since it made it sooo personal for us) and as part of that we did a “community blessing” where everyone in the audience held hands and connected all the way to us- as we were wrapped in the quilt with pieces of them all around us. It was one of my favorite moments of the ceremony, and maybe one of my favorite pics from the entire wedding (maybe also bc this was when it started to pour rain!). We then used the quilt as a backdrop for our photo booth which was fun bc people got to go up and pick out where their piece was on the quilt. TJ and I now have the quilt on our bed and it’s an awesome reminder of that amazing moment.

Another easy DIY we put together for the ceremony were the packets of rice (well heart shaped, bird safe, candy confetti rice really) but it would work well for bird seed or confetti too! These were a colorful addition to the wood benches waiting for guests before they sat down at the ceremony. I ordered some glassine bags on Etsy, picked up some a bunch of different, bright, colorful paper at papersource, bought the confetti filling, picked out a cute love quote and printed that up on my printer at home- then essentially cut the paper in heart shapes, pasted the larger and smaller colored hearts together and the saying on top- then we filled up the bags and sew them shut over the heart so you could just rip them open and grab the confetti to toss!

As far as other special moments during the ceremony I can’t forget to mention that while it did rain for about 1/2 of the ceremony, at the very end when we were exchanging wrings and saying I do the sun popped out and hooked us up with a double rainbow- which was amazing.