Photo Credit: Rachel of Naturally Captured Photography

We had the best Anniversary weekend, see what we did here! This week I plan to share with you the details of our wedding day and how we made it unique and personal for us and those that have supported us from the beginning.

In the first photo is my Pandora Bracelet I received from my grandfather in Europe as a wedding gift surprise. I also had my manicure include a purple heart on my ring finger in case TJ got nervous and didn’t know what finger to put the wedding band on. The second photo is my Sperry’s, my shoes. I knew I didn’t want heels and early on we decided that we were both going to wear Sperry’s, which is why I wore white ones and he wore black ones with purple socks! Even better, they were comfortable and I wore them the whole day, had to personalize them with my purple laces but they were adorable, especially for my established photo.

I gift my mom a guardian angel on the wedding day, it represented her mom, my grandmother that had passed away. My grandmother passed when I was 3 so I don’t remember her all that much but my mom tells me that she adored me and I spent lots of time with her. I knew she was with us in spirit but I wanted my mom to have a little reminder that she was with us.

We also wrote our mom’s letters to read on the big day thanking them for all of their help, love and support in making us who we are today. We had the letters wrapped around white roses they they could carry with them all day.

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We also gifted our parents handerchiefs with little notes embroiderded on them. These were to wipe away the tears of joy and happiness. It is also a keepsake they can cherish for many years to come. This idea came from my mom always having cloth handerchiefs from her mom and Germany so I found someone that would embroider a little note on them.

Check out those personalized cuff links. The ones photographed below are TJ’s, they say the date so he will never forget and “forever and always.” The golf ball bowl holds golf ball shaped cake balls made by Becky from Beckaboos Cakes in Stephens City. These were a pre-ceremony surprise for the guys since most of them like to golf and everyone loves a cake ball. I particularly love the photo below with all the guys and their cake ball. I did get to try there but I will spare you that image, chocolate all in my teeth, it was after the ceremony so no worries!

Pictured below is our unity candle. These candles were done for us in Germany on my last trip shortly after we were engaged. I knew I wanted to incorporate family and German traditions, my parents had a unity candle and I knew I wanted to get one from Europe. All of the purple and lettering is wax, not stickers! The two on the side have our names on them and then one in the middle is obviously where we became one.

Below is another item from my trip to Germany. In Europe they have long license plates like there and you can get them personalized. We had two done up, one that said “Just Married” and this one with our names on it. We had this one on the front of the car we drove from the ceremony to the reception and the just married one on the back of the car.

Another German tradition is for the family and bridal party to create a mini newspaper about the bride and groom, giving background information, embarassing stories, and tid bits. It is a fun combination of our they met and things they have done while being engaged and planned the wedding. Our newspaper wasn’t done by our wedding party but by yours truly, ony becuase no one knew about it. I had the help of the Northern Virginia Daily to print these, all 500 copies!!! But it was a big hit and gave our guests something to read while we had our formal portraits done.

You may have seen these hangers before with the married name written on them holding the wedding dress. My wedding dress was a little heavy and we didn’t want to risk breaking the hanger so it was photographed with my bouquet. This was purhcased from Etsy.

While in Europe I also had our toasting glasses enscribed with our name and the date. It was pretty neat because someone actually wrote this on the glasses right in front of me and free handed it. The other photo is a game piece that we had out on each table, there was tic-tac-toe and the peg game like found at Cracker Barrel. We ordered the golf tees and my dad made the wood pieces.

And to continue with our golf theme, the grooms cake. I found the “warning” sign at a second hand store and knew I had to get it and surprised TJ with his own gold themed grooms cake with cholcate filling of course! The photo below is of our cake forks which we used to feed one another, I wasn’t going to ruin my make-up and dress by smashing cake in each others faces so we had antiquish forks made with “I do” written on them.

As one of our thank you gifts to the parents and bridal party, we had mugs or wine glasses made for everything. Pictures below are the mother of the bride and father of the bride glasses. They were a big hit, especially for the guys, look at how big that thing is!!

And lastly, my dad made me a personalized, handmade, card box which I now use to hold my wedding memories. I showed him a pinterest photo and he made it his own as I knew he would.

And those are some of the small personal touches we did to made our special day special for everyone. Until next week, I will introduce you to the bridal party!!