The super fabulous photos in this post are from Nicole Montmarquet Photography. |
There is a lot of craziness in weddings. But — One woman's craziness is another's obvious must-do. I personally get a panic attack thinking about flowers, but somehow not about fabric. I can bake and cook with the best of them, and will, and in fact made two pies on the day of the wedding (crazy!!), but draw the line at decorating a cake at the last minute. Possibly because I decorate cakes (of two layers, max) by covering them in whipped cream and/or ganache. Period. Classy, but not wedding-worthy, perhaps.
Every time I say to one of the girls, “Can you believe so-and-so did that for her daughter's wedding?” they remind me that others might say the same about sewing six dresses. But to me, sewing is less panic-inducing than shopping for a specific dress.
You will note that some fairy lights are already in place. There had already been two weddings in this barn before ours! So we knew it could be done 🙂 |
Obviously no one was going to hem all those napkins (maybe you could if you had a year to plan it out! Stop! Stop the madness!), but I hit on the idea of using a rotary cutter with a pinking blade to simply cut up lots of colorful fabric. (Just so you know, I think that 15″ square is the smallest you can go, but works with fabric that is approximately 45″ wide — you might have to fudge a bit if your fabric is more like 42-44″, but that's the smallest to aim for. Ideally, they would be 20″, but for that, you'd really need a treasure trove of sheets, methinks, or there'd be a lot of waste.)
This idea would not be particularly cost effective if you didn't have a combination of the following:
And best of all, I think I can use many of the squares for Sukie's wedding quilt! (Properly washed, of course.)
Another idea was to use burlap as table runners. I spent a fair amount of time pricing burlap. Found out that burlap comes in different textures. And colors. Started dreaming about burlap. Ended up getting it at Home Depot. The other day, a neighbor left a roll, still in its packaging, out in her “free” non-trash pile (she's moving). Sigh.
Real clothespins are way cheaper than cute little craft clothespins, and have the advantage of being quite useful afterwards. |
The rolls at Home Depot can be divided to make 3 foot-wide lengths, and thusly each roll will run down the center of a bunch of tables.
Cut it by pulling one thread out of the length, and cutting along the resulting gap.
Here we have Sukie hard at work at something — seating plan? While Rosie gets flowers in shape.
The girls were quite excited about doing their own flowers, which suited me just fine. Most of the flowers were ordered from Blooms by the Box, which we found not only good price-wise, but also just having excellent customer service. The hydrangeas were from Costco online.
And lots of the extra flowers for the tables were from our very own garden, lovingly tended by Habou. Sukie really envisioned lots of little jars with small posies on the tables, which ended up looking fabulous with the napkins and votive candles (no open flames in the barn!).
The bunting was made by dear Annie for Sukie's shower, and re-purposed at the barn. Sukie worked hard on those programs! |
Of course, other than the venue itself (and I highly recommend mooching off of friends), the big-ticket item is the food.
And what you do about food depends a lot on what kind of event you are having. For us, with lots of out-of-town guests and lots of intensive work in other departments, catering was a must. Luckily, we found a caterer who could provide good food at a good price. (Some caterers come with linens and napkins and lots of things like that, in which case, go for it. This one just did the food, so we opted for making the napkins and borrowing the tablecloths from a friend who had bought hers for her daughter's wedding off of Craigslist for $50. For 25 tablecloths! And generously shares them. Since renting them costs $10 a piece, that was a great boon.)
Sukie wanted food with a Middle Eastern flair, and the caterer had a good source for appetizers that were exactly what she had in mind. We figured it was worth springing for it.
Middle Eastern: Feta, olives, stuffed grape leaves, spinach and meat pies. Western: Cheese and fruit platter. |
Sukie's godparents. |
Along with appetizers and lemonade, some fabric-covered hay bales out on the beautiful lawn. |
For the dinner, we chose lamb kebabs and chicken kebabs, salad, rice, potatoes, and grilled vegetables. We had pita bread instead of rolls.
But a huge savings comes with doing your own dessert.
As anyone with the merest acquaintance with our family knows, ice cream is #1 on our list of desserts. And as it happens, we live very close to a wonderful dairy that produces the best ice cream around. When Sukie and I were discussing dessert, we felt that if we could incorporate Rota Spring ice cream, we would be super happy. And what goes with ice cream, I ask you?
Pie!
She decided on apple and strawberry rhubarb, and here you have my happy helpers cutting up apples for me!
I made two pies, and seven of my wonderful friends (I think it was seven) chipped in two pies each, bringing them on the day of the wedding to be set out by the caterer!
Brilliant! With chocolate chip or vanilla ice cream (3 gallons each!), it was just so wonderful.
A sweet homemade touch — this one from Annie (friend, sister-in-law of Rosie) — is the wedding quilt that everyone signed with their good wishes. She put the top together, and can quilt it at her leisure.
A few shots of the ambiance in the barn. The lights and the lanterns went a long way to giving that magical quality, don't you think?
Watching Sukie's dance with Papa, which was epic. |
athenamiles says
I am LOVING your wedding posts. With 2 so close together, you can talk as much as you want about them!!! I think I'm enjoying them so much because I love how creative your family is, and weddings are such happy events. I just love seeing the pictures and hearing more about them! 🙂 So don't apologize for any wedding talk, you can do as much as you want.
Mama Bean says
oh i just loved every little bit of this post, from top to bottom. thanks so much graciously inviting us into the wedding experience <3 blessings to the newlyweds! :)
Susan says
AMEN – I echo Mama Bean – LOVED this to bits. Keep the wedding posts coming for as long as possible 🙂
AHeartLikeMarys says
I don't think you could ever post *too much* about the lovely weddings. I enjoy reading about all the great details! Thank you for sharing (=
Lifting Up Thomas.... says
I will never get tired of seeing these beautiful weddings. Love it!
ayearinskirts says
Awww…you make me want to be a Lawler. Such a lovely affair you all put together 🙂
Jamie says
Sukie's godmother's dress is fabulous! Could you put yours on a hanger and take a shot? It looks fabulous, too!
Thank you so much for sharing details about the wedding-tell us as much as you wish because it isn't tiresome in the least and we are soaking it up! Can't you feel how restrained and polite we are all being in not demanding the details!??! Tell us more! : )
Sheryl says
I agree with all the above posters! Yes! Yes! More! So lovely. Thank you for sharing! Sheryl
Shaped Pens says
Thanks for sharing!
Sara says
It's all so beautiful and creative, and much easier to enjoy when you know you didn't break the bank for it! Do post all you want (or is it all WE want?) about the weddings!
Amy says
Where do I start? I loved the idea of the barn. It looks like you were able to create an atmosphere around it and that is awesome. Favorite thing? The flowers and candles in Mason jars.
Also don't feel bad about posting wedding stuff. We love it.
Barbara says
What a lovely wedding. I think all weddings should be the kind with a collection of homemade pies. Just between you and me though, I'm not sure I have seven friends who bake homemade pies! Need to work on that.
Jessica says
This might be the most beautiful reception I have ever seen! Your family did a great job.
Woman of the House says
Everything turned out beautifully! I love the colorful napkins~very festive!
Jessica says
This might be the most beautiful reception I have ever seen! Your family did a great job.
Mary says
I LOVE these posts! Please keep them coming. The ideas are wonderful. I am filing them all away for when/if my son every decides there is a woman out there just for him. I love the napkins and turning them into the wedding quilt…genius! My husband would totally go for the pie table. Such a wonderful gift for so many hands to be involved. Now we need more details on Deidre's wedding…pretty please!
Debbie says
Who says we don't want more wedding posts?! Keep them coming, please; this was wonderful. The more I see Sukie's dress, by the way, the more I love it- so elegant.
You did a beautiful job; what a triumph. Can I hire you for Amiya's wedding, D.v.??
Love,
Debbie
Margo says
oh thank you thank you thank you for such a fun post! I love the “Mass and a party” mantra and I'm going to tell that to every bride-to-be I know – it changes it from fairytale-extravaganza-of-my-life to the right focus.
I adore the napkins! I once sewed 60 napkins for a friend's store, to be used every time they had a reception. It was a lot of work, yes.
I also love those hanging mason jars with flowers on the barn poles. Did you get them with holes in them, or did you put the holes in?
Party Linens says
You ladies did a great job on setting up everything. just fyi I think the table linens are amazing.
lydiacubbedge says
Sigh. So pretty. My little sister is getting married this winter, and I am passing on the DIY flower links to her and my mom. They live in an expensive area, and finding the venue has been so hard. Makes me wish we had friends with a heated barn! I have a feeling there is going to be a lot of DIY even from 600 miles away!
Mia says
I appreciate these posts so much and will be filing away ideas for the future as we have two daughters and a son. You mentioned dancing. What music did you use? Was it a DJ or live music? I am just curious what observations you have about that angle of the reception. Thanks.
Kelsey says
I love these posts! I got married this past June myself, and honestly, it was the most stressful thing I've ever done! (Not the “getting married” part, but the “having a wedding” part!) My husband and I originally envisioned our wedding to be similar to Sukie's – rustic, enchanting – but it ended up being quite a bit more formal, and expensive. We live in a very expensive area, plus once we chose a more formal (albeit gorgeous) reception venue, everything else sort of had to be scaled up to match… alas. We did have lots of help, but my family is 1000 miles away, so I sometimes felt a little lost to the winds. Having gone through it all now, I can say with total conviction that one of the most important things to invest in is a fabulous photographer. (This doesn't have to be expensive – ours was a bargain! – but she was incredible to work with and the photos are exquisite.) The photographer is with you the whole day, plus they capture memories that will carry through generations. I actually did not enjoy my wedding day very much, due to being extremely frazzled, but the photos are so beautiful that they make up for that. I'm so glad to see that Sukie's are equally lovely!
Anne-Marie says
Another vote for lots of wedding posts! I have five daughters, so I'm storing up ideas.
I think the most important point you make, after “it's a Mass and a party,” is that each family has to think about what is most important to them. Surely that must help a lot in avoiding the wedding-industrial complex.
I am curious–did you and your girls spend a lot of time looking at mainstream wedding magazines and websites? If so, did you find that it tended to sidetrack you (as you so neatly put it), or was it just a source of ideas to consider?
Joy in Alabama says
Thanks for the specifics. My 2nd daughter is getting married in November and we are just beginning the actual planning since it's going to be a very small wedding. I love hearing where you found things and how you made different things and I love all the photos of the details. Can't get enough wedding info because I also have a son who is getting married next spring. Thanks, again!
Melissa D says
I love these wedding posts! They really bring a tear to my eye, and I'm pretty jaded since I write about weddings & wedding finery all the time. The weddings where you can feel the love bursting at the seams are the only ones to have!
(Can I ask for some sewing tutorials on these simple napkins and other things, and what sewing machine might work well for a beginner who can barely sew a straight line?)
Betsy M says
Thank you for sharing all of these details Leila. I am trying to gleam every bit out of these posts as my youngest sister is getting married next spring and us older sisters get to help plan it. {Imagine Bridgette at age 30 and all of the older sisters helping 🙂 } I love the idea of the napkins – did you starch them or was your fabric thicker/stiffer to begin with? The pie and ice cream idea is also genius!. She has celiac and most of our family is gluten intolerant so we are debating on ideas for cake (and the rest of the food for that matter.) I think the very best part of this post though is your “It's a Mass and a party” bit. So true.
Your wedding was just beautiful Sukie, thanks again for sharing.
Lauren says
I loved every single word of this post! What a lovely, gorgeous, dreamy, perfect wedding. I think the homemade napkins were a fabulous idea! They definitely completed the whole look. Well done!! You LMLD ladies should start a wedding planning/consulting business. 😉
Elizabeth says
Beautiful! I love the napkins into wedding quilt idea. And having pie and ice cream for dessert! The second-to-last picture is very sweet as well. You look so happy!
priest's wife says
everything was lovely…can we have some photos from the ceremony, pretty please/
Jenny says
I love hearing about the wedding plans because it is a peak into a foreign world for me. Wedding planning at my house took the form of 'who do we need to pay to do this for us?' I have daughters and no expectation of the kind of financial resources my parents have, so I'm paying attention.
Now about these napkins. I have had a thought about making napkins for our family to use instead of the paper ones. I am fed up with throwing away 10-20 napkins every day. Now I have no fabric stash, I don't know how to sew, and I don't own a sewing machine. I could probably get my hands on pinking shears. What kind of fabric would you use? Is it even feasible to get rid of the paper napkins? Any thoughts are welcome here.
Anitra says
I would love to know, too! I CAN hand-sew and I do have a few discarded sheets. I don't have a sewing machine, though. Hm..
Anne-Marie says
Not Leila, but another cloth napkin user. You want a cotton fabric with a bit of body to it, for absorbency (or linen, but that's much more expensive). Look for fabric, but also check out tablecloths that can be cut up. Sheets, IMO, are too thin. Thrift shops might be more helpful than yard sales. Of course, you might find napkins themselves at a thrift shop. I once bought several dozen at an auction for $10!
To start with, you'll only need as many napkins as there are people at your dining table. Later you can make spares.
I would hem them rather than just pinking, because when you wash them even a pinked edge can fray. Here is a tutorial on making a rolled edge hem by hand, which is quite easy: http://natashalh.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-sew-a-ro…
Deanna says
I never tire of wedding posts! I have 4 daughters and two sons and I think a lot about home made weddings like you've all done and it's wonderful! Great idea about the fabric napkins with the rotary cutter and pinking blade! Genius really!
Keep the ideas coming!
Deanna
Molly R says
I had to come out of “lurkdom” to tell you how much I love all your wedding ideas! Cloth napkins! Burlap! Fairy lights! A barn! And especially, fabric covered hay bales. My daughters are only 3 & 4, but I hope we can having such charming weddings years from now. Also, let me tell you how much I enjoy your blog. I have 6 under age 9, homeschool and live in a big old house with a big old barn, so I get lots of inspiration and encouragement from your posts. Though it sounds silly, it's like hearing from a good friend when I read you while folding my laundry! Thank you, Lawlers, for this blog.
Elizabeth says
So lovely! Thanks so much for sharing 🙂 And I really like the signing of the wedding quilt instead of a guest book. My husband and I did a scrap book and had a table with scrap book supplies–the idea was both to entertain the kids who would be there and have something fun to look at later, and we enjoyed seeing what people put together for us. And we had pie at our wedding too! My mom made some, a church friend made some, and I made a few too, the day before the wedding (which some people did think was crazy…but baking is relaxing for me, and at that point, there was nothing left to plan. Might as well bake!)
Patty says
You all are inspirations! Thanks for allowing us to focus on what we want for weddings, making the simple things beautiful, and not obsessing. We had Boston Chicken cater our wedding! Reception held in church yard, under a tent! With all the teens decorating. I literally handed them some decorating supplies… candles? tule? I think I had a stash of small vases with fake flowers in them I'd gotten on sale? white string lights maybe? I don't remember! And said, “Here, do something with that!” and walked away and let them make it pretty. They did a great job! Certainly not as classy as some of your suggestions, but the easy-going vibe was what I was going for, and I think your girls and I had that in common!
Ashley says
This might be my favorite of all of the weddings I've read about – and since I'm about 6 weeks away from my own wedding, I've read about a lot of weddings in the last few months! This one, though – I want my wedding to feel joyful as this one looks. I love how vibrant and magical it seems from the pictures, and how much handmade love went into the details! I also appreciate your strong dose of common sense, which we're doing our best to infuse into our wedding. This is a wonderful reminder about what's important, and what's not. Thank you for sharing, and congratulations to Sukie!
Sue says
Love, love, love every bit of it!!! What a gorgeous bride. What beautiful taste and amazing talent. How fun to get to experience it a little through your blog. I love the feel of that last photo… more, please?
Lauren says
Love your dress. Until reading your blog I had never heard of Boden. Can you do a blog post on your favorite clothing brands or places to buy clothes? Just curious because your family seems very thrifty, but focused on good quality. I like Lands End and Gymboree for kids clothes but don't have any “go to” brands for myself, as I am a young mom that is constantly fluctuating between nursing/post partum/pregnancy but likes to look put together by wearing dresses, skirts etc, when leaving the house. Thanks for all your creative and inspirational posts! 🙂
Occasions In Print says
What a fabulous post! Love all the details of love that you poured into the wedding. Talk about the memories created!