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Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Details Scmetails

Or, how your wedding can be absolutely gorgeous and insanely memorable without gratuituous amounts of details.

First of all, I have insane amounts of respect for the people who can pull off elaborately coordinated weddings, where everything goes together perfectly and everywhere you look you'll find thoughtful, creative details. If you are one of those people, high five to you my friend!

But this post isn't for you. This post is for the lazy brides, the brides who just aren't super detail oriented. The brides who don't notice 95% of those details unless they're on a wedding blog such as Once Wed or whatever, and then they make you break out in a cold sweat. This is to show the non-detailed oriented brides like me how your wedding will not suck because you aren't making 5,000 handmade cupcake flags.

Exhibit A: Our church. It's lovely, isn't it?


We didn't decorate a d*mn thing.

Except for the gay pride decorations that were already there.


We didn't need to decorate the church. It was gorgeous. Did you see the ugly green chairs? Yeah I didn't notice either. Besides, we were in this building for 25 minutes tops. I'm not decorating a room for 25 whopping minutes.

Probably the most detaily thing at our reception: the dessert table.


Here is a typical table. Simple centerpiece, table overlay, favors at each seat, and the reserved sign since this was a parent's table or something. This is super, super simple. And it looks fine. Please note the non-decorated chairs. You can pass on the chair upgrades you guys, trust me.

The buffet line. We had a buffet because it's way cheaper, and they are the only kind of wedding meal around these parts. We moved 225+ through these tables in under 20 minutes. The decorations here are just left overs from the tables.

Here's a peek at the head table. The empty vases are for the bouquets. It's really simple, once again.

And here's a good shot of the hall with people in it. If you look closely along the sides of the room, you'll see fake trees with Christmas lights in them. The center refused to move them. I didn't fight this since they were pretty much unnoticeable.

Our gift table with our stunning $5 card box with the lid that wouldn't fit. I refused to cut a hole in the top (that would've look nicer) because I wanted to reuse this box for fabric storage post-wedding. This probably could've looked better....but here's where the lazy part of me kicked in. Didn't care, still don't.

This table was set up when guests first entered the reception. Some extra overlays were thrown on it and there was a display of family wedding pictures in NON-MATCHING frames. I was too lazy to get matching frames, and it worked.


There were no place card holders, no photo booth with clever props, no pretty linens, no fancy chairs...and I thought everything looked lovely.

So if you're like me, and have a full time job and lots of other things going on, or you're lazy and don't really care, it'll be OK, I promise. I had to dig to find these pictures, and I can guarantee you that they will not be making it into the album. We kept it simple and went with spaces that were already nice looking, and I am thrilled with how it all turned out. Once Wed is not knocking down my door to blog my wedding...but that wasn't what this was about. It was about us staying sane and keeping things affordable, and we did that and still had a beautiful wedding. The details were never a priority for us-it was about committing ourselves to each other for life, bottom line. Everything else was purely extraneous to us.

Are you a bad*ss and had lots of gorgeous details? Are you nervous your wedding won't have enough details? Or are you lazy like me and owning it?

All photos courtesy of Gail Fleming.

12 comments:

  1. Great post. I just posted about how at my MOH's wedding, she didn't go out of her way to do any special details besides the basics, and her wedding was awesome anyway. It's not about the stuff, it's about the people. Your wedding sounded like it was a blast, and like you said, you're not going to look back at these pictures again so who cares?

    We're having some DIY details but I'm not making myself crazy over it.

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  2. Thank you thank you thank you!
    Love your wedding
    Love your simplicity
    Love that you made it about getting married to the man you love!

    Perfect wedding :)

    (I didn't care about a lot and my caterer loves the details... I told her to have at it. I didn't even have to ok things, she just did what she pleased. It was fantastic)

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  3. Great post. Also, whenever you did have a detail it worked, see: family photos! I love seeing those. Who needs matching frames?

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  4. you're awesome...the details are not what people remember...its the union! amen sista!

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  5. What did you guys do for favors? I am having a hell of a time trying to figure something out for those.

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  6. love this post! and i love that after watching your journey you spent time and energy on the details that were for your family or bridal party as thank yous not for your wedding "photoshoot" very down to earth if you ask me... at this point in my count down i have found myself talking down my wedding vendors too - well ok, just my florist - because he has grand visions - and i respect that - but i am also on a budget and we are on a beautiful farm that doesnt need much dressing up...i have been using the word understated in every sentence to hit home the fact that we dont NEED a big- fancy- cake- display- place- holder- arrangement so the cake is brought in dramatically and takes its place - really? that sounds like one more thing to coordinate and worry about, and what about ANNOUNCING the arrival of the cake (which also is understated and handmade looking) fits into understated - really?

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  7. I love this post! And the simplicity of your wedding was just gorgeous on it's own. It's so true too, nobody but other brides even notice the little things. I didn't even notice most of the details I'd worked so hard on at our wedding!

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  8. Dude, all I can say is that moving all those peeps through the buffet so fast...AMAZING. That's the kind of awesomeness I love to hear, and people will definitely remember that.

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  9. Dude, how did we end up posting on similar topics on the same day? I appreciate your take on all this stuff. All the things you "slacked" on ended up looking fantastic. It really just goes to show that you can put your focus on the things that matter, and the extraneous details will still work out. That stuff doesn't matter! I love it.

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  10. Matching frames and fancy chairs. Psht. I am a lazy bride who got conflicted by all the pretties out here in blogland. But mostly, I'm lazy, so three cheers for this post. (And for that dessert table. I might love that cake.)

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  11. Lovely post, as always...

    And FYI: I was there, and didn't even know there were fake trees with Xmas lights. Seriously. And I thought I notice everything. haha. :)

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  12. AHhHhhhhh!!! Thank you so much for this post!! I've been so caught up in the details and wondering if I will ever get them all done and it's crazy stressing me out...I am accepting the fact that things won't be perfect and I am getting to the point where I don't care anymore!

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