I've been sharing stories from our wedding hoping to help walk those planning their own wedding through some of my processes and how we went about piecing our day together.
Today's post addresses one of my favorite elements: Details. They are the small pieces of a couple's story, they share insights to the family heritage, and often, details can be the elements that took the most thought and time to choose.
Our details told the story of our engagement in Paris, our formal setting, and our love of classic literature, champagne and antiques.
Because of the Paris proposal, I wanted to incorporate France subtly into the wedding without it being overly obvious. (The only Eiffel Tower anything we had was a pin that I put on my bouquet that my mom received as a child on her first visit there)
We had also decided to ask for books in lieu of a traditional wedding registry and held our reception in the mansion's library, thus making books a sort of unofficial theme.
I spent the year scouring estate sales and Etsy for French antiques. My favorites were the small silver footed cups that came from an old hotel in Paris near where we stayed on the proposal trip and a white Limoges porcelain platter with gold accents. I placed our floral centerpieces atop classic books from the home's collection and pages that I had taken from vintage French poetry books (also Etsy finds).
For our invitations, I wanted something classic and formal. I loved the idea of a wedding monogram that we could continue to use after our wedding. I chose to go with a folded card which was a little different than most current invitations. But it allowed our letterpressed monogram to be the star when the envelopes were first opened.
The finishing touches were the vintage stamps I'd been collecting throughout the year.
Finally, for our florals and overall color scheme of gold and slate blue, we embraced the Fall season. I wanted to use as much golden yellow foliage as I could and added touches of deep red. Each centerpiece was slightly different from the next with varying autumn shades and flowers and each was accompanied by pears which were hand painted gold by my sister in law.
