Birds & Guitars: A Homemade Wedding - Site Preparation

I always wanted an outdoor wedding in my parents' front yard by the pond. I didn't grow up dreaming about my wedding, but this one piece I had all planned out.. Even before the pond existed. Dad and I hand dug it with a shovel years before I even knew when or who I was marrying. Lucky for me I found someone willing to go along with it. :) Even with years of planning (in my head), there was a lot to do in the yard to get ready for the wedding. We worked for months to get it ready. We put in sod and planted pink flowering bushes (most of which didn't see the wedding thanks to mischevious goats and late spring freezes - Oh, the hazards of a West Texas ranch wedding), we fixed and painted our antique church pew collection, and Mom and Dad even had a concrete dance floor poured and an iron gazebo built above it (thanks to Jeff's Dad for helping out with that, and especially Dad's friend Richard. He did an amazing job). This is a collection of a few of the photos I could find from our months of hard work.


Cement truck pulling up



Discussing the plan



Rain = Mud = Stuck Cement Truck





Me watching them work - I was making a cake that day!








Dad finishing smoothing it up

 

Richard and Dad starting the Gazebo over the slab

Richard welding

Officially up in the air!

Finished Gazebo (and Sasha, lol)

More pictures to come! I'm not done!

Birds & Guitars: A Homemade Wedding - Flowers :)

Okay... so nearly eight months later I'm trying to finish "The Wedding Blog" and slowly turn it into a blog of our now married life. So first things first, the remainder of the wedding preparation....

I wanted an outdoor country wedding and we set out to accomplish everything I wanted and still stick to a reasonable budget (I'm pretty sure we still went over it, but for the most part we tried).This wedding, was largely a DIY/Home-made wedding. Luckily for me my Mother is wonderfully crafty and raised me to be as well, so this was not a problem at all! We also had a few friends and family help us out with certain parts and pieces. The only thing we ordered and did not make was the wedding party attire (including my dress). The groomsmen and bridesmaid attire was ordered from Amazon.com and I purchased my dress from David's Bridal (one reason we went way over budget!). However, I did do my own tailoring of my dress, which was super scary!

I chose turquiose and chocolate brown as my colors along with fuschia accents, primarily in the form of flowers. I wanted a variety of fuschia flowers and had wanted to use fresh. But I also wanted flowers that would last until the last guests left. Who wants droopy flowers mid-reception? In the end we decided since we live in West Texas and the wedding and reception were being held outdoors at the end of May in unpredictable levels of Texas heat... That going with a mix of silk and live flowers was our best bet. We shopped the sales at our local craft stores and bought loads of silk fushia flowers, then ordered live "Hot Lady" fushia roses fresh from Ecuador. Mom made all the bouquets, corsages, boutinerres, table centerpieces, and aisle arrangements. The result was beautiful. :)



Flower garlands waiting to be put on the arbor (Phone pic = blurry)





Some of the Silk Flowers we used (phone pic)



Roses shipped fresh from Ecuador




A box of roses :)



Bouquet from live and silk flowers



Boutinerre using live rosebud, silk leaf and turquoise accent



Aisle arrangement test run



Table centerpieces test run





Table Centerpieces

Today we put together prototypes for tables. Absolutely love it. :)