Our Wedding is Featured on The Knot!

Exciting news today... thanks to our fabulous photographer submitting our wedding, it has been featured on The Knot! It's fun to see how someone else interpreted our wedding and wrote about it! I wouldn't exactly say we're the most "organic" couple... haha. :)

Head on over there to see it!

That One Time We Made the Flowers for Our Wedding

Ready for your second installment of "How It's Made: Douglas Wedding Edition?" Great! Today we're talking about flowers. This post comes along with it's very own huge shout-out to my friend and 'little sister,' Megan for basically being a floral genius and doing the brunt work of this project. I could not have done it without her... basically I just paid the bill and barked orders. She's also the one who did our engagement photos and also did my hair for the wedding. She's basically a champ. So, here we go.

Step one. Head to Michaels or your local craft store and buy out their whole selection of silk flowers. [Ha... jk, there's like a million flowers there... just try and estimate what you'll need.] Other supplies you'll need: Floral tape, wire cutters, ribbon, packaging tape, any little baubles or extras you want... for example we added feathers to the boutonnieres. We guesstimated that we spent about $60 total on flowers. Not bad for a day's work! And of course, take a photo for posterities sake.

Step two. Spend two movies worth of time selecting, cutting, and assembling 6 bouquets and 11 boutonnieres. We cheated a little bit in that we did use some packaging tape to hold some of the flowers together... but that was eventually covered with an ample supply of floral tape and ribbon, so no one was the wiser! [I'm tellin' ya—cheating works!] We made my bouquet a bit fuller, pinker, and glammy-er [check out those gold baubles!] than the bridesmaids and we tried to mix up the boutonnieres a little by adding little sprigs of color or mini succulents here and there.

Step three. Admire almost finished-product. Here you can see both the boutonniere and bouquet before they were wrapped... the boutonnieres were wrapped with copper wire [see below] and the bouquets were wrapped with thick cream ribbon with a strip of thick lace ribbon in the middle.

I love how Brian's boutineer turned out! If you didn't know I have a crush on succulents so the little babes in there just make my heart so happy. And the feather and copper wire really do a great job of adding that extra little something. 

All the bridesmaids with their lovely bouquets... and, just like bridesmaid dresses, with silk flowers you can totally use them again! [No, really, check it out here.]

I am super glad we did our own flowers for the wedding! It is seriously one of the best choices we made. We made these back in July so they were done months before the wedding, which was such a relief and they turned out exactly how I wanted! Plus, I now have my wedding bouquet on my dresser looking exactly how it did the day I got married. So sweet!

Has anyone else made their own flowers for their wedding day? Link up to some photos... I'd love to see them! 

//all wedding photography via Availeth Photography, all process photos via my awesome, like 2 MP phone camera

5 Tips for Planning a Wedding [on a budget, in a time-crunch, or otherwise]

Loverboy and I were engaged for 5 1/2 months, which in some circles is pretty average, or even plenty of time, but in many other circles it's short. And we were certainly on a "tighter-than-average" budget. So I feel like I'm at least a little bit qualified to write on the subject of planning a wedding... on a budget, in a time-crunch, or otherwise. Here are 5 lessons I learned while planning mine.



1. To-do lists are your friend.
And that being said, Google Docs is your friend. [I ranted about it here.] But seriously, wedding planning would have been a billion times harder without shared docs. Thank you google. Right away I made a to-do list for every month, and as the wedding approached I started doing weekly to-do lists, and finally in the last week or two I made daily to-do lists. This helped my brain soooo much in that I get super distracted when there's a lot to get done. However, with my time-specific to-do lists, I had just a few things to focus on at a time. In my book, to-do lists are a MUST for wedding planning, which might be obvious, but doing it in time increments was really helpful for us.





2. Stick within a budget.
There are three main ways we stuck within our budget. All we did was borrow, cheat, and skip. Let me explain ...

Borrow. HUGE shout-out to all the amazing friends who lent us decorations for the wedding! We might not have had this wedding if it wasn't for your generosity! [Well, we would have had it, it just wouldn't have been as pretty!] So, moral of the story, be one of the last of your friends to get married so you can borrow their table cloths, jars, lanterns, candle holders, cake cutters, banners, etc! ;)

Cheat. We actually got quite a few of our decorations at the Dollar Tree! Who knew, right?? Well, now I guess the whole world does, but before that.... Anyways, we got our silver trays and gold frames for all a buck a pop! Does my heart good! We also got glow sticks in the dollar section at Michaels and all the white milk glass vases were thrifted for 50 cents to $1.50 each. Cha-ching!

Skip. There were a lot of things on my Pinterest board that were oh so darling, but I ended up deciding they would just take too much time or too much money. So instead of focusing on the cute things I wasn't able to do, I focused on the fun things I was! I capitalized on projects that were quick, simple, and cheap. My favorite.

3. Have a wedding coordinator.
The pastor we met with for premarital counseling could not stress it enough. And now that I'm an experienced married woman (ha!) I can't either! Our wedding coordinator was a friend from my post-college stint with the Navs, who also made our incredible cake and cupcakes (she's superwoman, I'm tellin' ya!). It was super magical not having to deal with problems or questions on the day-of and she also helped me think through tons of details in the planning process! The only qualifications she had was that she has been married before, attended and been in multiple weddings, helped another friend plan hers, and is super duper organized, efficient, and has an awesome take-charge way about her. So if you have a friend in your life like that, I'd say swipe her up for your wedding coordinator before someone else does! [But P.S. make sure she is honored in the role, not used!]

4. Don't sweat the small stuff.
This goes right along with my "skip" rule of sticking within a budget. Spending my time and energy on those simpler, big-impact items, like our ribbon backdrop and quote pallet was one of the best choices I made. Sure, I didn't really know how the centerpieces would turn out until we got to the barn the day before. BUT, I did know that I had a bunch of cute stuff that I liked and so I didn't sweat it. I knew it would turn out. Also, most people don't remember if your napkins perfectly matched your color scheme or if each vase had the same amount of flowers.

5. Do what you want.
Ultimately, it's your guys' day. Don't do something (or not do something) because of what someone else thinks. Yeah, having Mexican food at a barn wedding is kinda quirky... but guess what? Everyone loved it! If you feel like you really want something in your ceremony or reception that might not be the "norm," I say go for it! It's your one and only day to celebrate this union with all your friends and family, so why not make it memorable and special and oh-so-very-YOU!

And remember, it doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful.

//photos via Availeth Photography

Sneak Peak: Bedroom

I'm back! I'm back! And this is my very first time writing as Mrs. Heather Douglas. And boy, do I love the sound of that! The Mr. and I got back from our honeymoon on Friday and have hit the road running this weekend on getting our apartment put together! There's a lot still in process, but I wanted to give you just a little sneak peak into one of my favorite rooms of the house... our bedroom! 

We (well, let's be real, the bridesmaids and I) had made this ribbon as a backdrop to be hung from the arch we got married under, but it ended up being a bit too windy the day of our wedding. So instead, we hung it above where we sat at the reception and it was still perfect. As I was making it I was definitely envisioning it going over our bed after the wedding so I was so happy to see that it turned out!

We got this lovely brass headboard for just $25 on craigslist! I love the shine that it brings into the room and it goes great with the framed art above the bed!

This gem can be found at Hobby Lobby... which if you live in the cities... get excited... drumroll please... they are opening a location in Maple Grove! I almost peed in delight when the lady in Duluth told us (we snagged this puppy on our honeymoon). However, I think Loverboy might be a little frightened. For our bank account. It's kinda reasonable. [Kidding, hunnnyyy]. ;)

I just love this space! I love that there's a reminder of our wedding day right above our bed, and I just love how everything came together so nicely. Keep your eyes peeled for more sneak peaks and hopefully a room reveal or two in the near future!

P.S. Married life rocks! My champ of a husband just walked in the door with this. Parks and Rec and chinese take-out sounds pretty amazing right now! Peace out!

30 Days and Counting

One month.

Four Weeks.

Thirty Days.

It's so close. 

This has been my mantra every day for the last couple months, and is even more important in this final month before our wedding...

I'm so super excited for the details. For the decorations, the food, the music. I can't wait for the photos, the dancing, the dress. But above and beyond [a million lightyears] all that is the moment that we vow our lives, our beings, our souls to each other for the rest of our days on this earth. The moment that we declare our decision to choose each other every day. That's what it's all about. And in front of God and our friends and family, we will covenant our lives to each other and we will celebrate [read: PARTY] and at the end of the day, we will be married. *insert happy dance here* 

Phone Dump [AKA thank yous galore]

1// Invites! It's been a long process... and the saga is still continuing... but we're getting there! (Thanks mom!)

2// My seriously adorable niece. HOW has she not shown up on the blog before?? I think I had a 6-month-long lapse of judgment or something. We got to hang out with her for awhile on Saturday afternoon after the shower (thanks Danielle and bridesmaids and everyone!) and got to witness her first crawl... watch out world. Not only is this baby the most adorable one you've ever seen, she also happens to be a genius and leaps and bounds ahead of any other baby in every category possible. Biased? Me?? Noooo.

3// Ohhhh man. He had to know this would show up somewhere on the internet. Loverboy decided he wasn't quite hipster enough for The Oh Hellos concert we attended on Friday night so he decided to add a lil somethin'-somethin' to his outfit. [Actually it was a dare that he valiantly saw through and got us free drinks! Horrah! (Thanks Kate!)]

4// We attended an Imagine Dragons concert on Saturday night (that was about 100% less hipster than afore-mentioned Friday night concert). I had never been at the TCF Bank Stadium before so it was a pretty sweet experience. However, we were so high up that it kind of just felt like we were listening to really loud radio in a really big crowd. Nonetheless, Imagine Dragons. For free. (Thanks Hedbergs!)