Ceremony Location and Such

We did some serious searching as for where to have our wedding ceremony, and by “we” I mean myself and Justin’s mother, Sandy.  Justin did not see the location until the day of the rehearsal.  Let’s just say he’s not that into wedding planning, thankfully I had Sandy.

I had just two things I was looking for in the location, I wanted it to take place outside and preferably near some trees.

We checked out the Bulow Plantation Ruins, which is close to Justin’s parent home, which is where we had already determined we would have our reception.  The Bulow Plantation is mostly associated with it’s history, being the ruins of a former sugar mill plantation.  It is very rustic and pretty, take a gander for yourself…

It was definitely in the running for our ceremony location, but I wanted to check out a couple more places before hopping on board with the plantation.

We then headed to Washington Oaks State Park, which is equally, if not more beautiful.

As you may have figured out, I have a thing for moss covered oak trees. L-O-V-E them.   I actually loved Washington Oaks so much, that I requested to book our ceremony there.  Unfortunately, our date was already taken by another couple.  Thanks a lot other couple! I guess it wasn’t meant to be.

I went back to good old google and did some more searching and found a place called Princess Place Preserve.  It is a nature preserve that is on the Matanzas River.

I pretty much fell in love with the old oak trees immediately.

It also has a charming old lodge on the property.  I ended up checking if our date was available and it was, so we were in.

Next, we had to get an isle to walk down and some decorations to make it look like a wedding was going to happen! So that’s just what we did.

Sandy made this amazing hydrangea wreath to hang on the tree that we decided would be our backdrop for the ceremony…

We decided to use shepherd hooks with hanging mason jars filled with more white hydrangeas to line the isles.

And in case you are dying to know(I know you are) the chairs are rentals from Rentaland.

I also made reserved signs using chalkboard markers and small chalkboards I found at Hobby Lobby, but I’ll tell you more about that later.

One more chalkboard sign that I made that I’ll explain more about soon.

We also decided to use our friend Mike Shackelford as the musician for the wedding ceremony and reception.  Because let’s be honest, who doesn’t like live music better than pre-recorded music?

I am so happy we chose the preserve.  It ended up being a nice sunny day and we both showed up.  Score!

PS it was a great back drop for pictures!

 

Wedding Guest Welcome Bags

Hey, What do you know?  Another wedding post!  This one just so happens to be about the guest bags we put together for our out of towner friends that came to celebrate our big day with us.  I figured I wanted these bags to accomplish two things: show our appreciation to our family and friends for treking their butts all the way FL and also to contain functional items that they may want to use while visiting.  I did some brain storming with Sandy(Justin’s mom) and we decided on a few things to include in these bags.  Here is what we came up with:

• a couple water bottles
• brochures and maps of surrounding towns
• some kind of candy
• sunscreen
• welcome note
• schedule of events

We decided simple white paper bags would be a good option. So we scooped some of those up along with some green ribbon to tie things together.

I started with putting together the welcome note…

Next up was our schedule of events…

Then I put together a transportation schedule, since we had a shuttle going to and from the hotel and the reception.

We gathered some brochures and maps from our local chambers of commerce. Then Sandy used the ribbon to tie everything into a little bundle.

As you can see I also created door hangers for our guests hotel rooms.  Sandy found something similar on etsy which was the inspiration for these.  I decided to give it a go and make my own.  I created a document on our computer with the wording I liked and some clipart.  Then, I bought a large hole punch from Michaels to make a large hole at the top, so our guests were able to hang them on the hotel door knobs.

Boom. Do not disturb door hangers for everyone!

Sandy ordered the sunscreen online.  We went with small individual packets and popped them in little cellophane bags tied with some more ribbon.

As for candy we went with key lime salt water taffy and some regular chocolates.  I figured key lime salt water taffy was a little more Floridian than the usual candy.  We also plopped these into cellophane bags tied with ribbon.

From there everything went into the bags along with a couple bottles of water.

We sort of did an assembly line operation to get all 60 of these bags filled.

We also tied the welcome note along with the two schedules to the front of the bags with the same green ribbon.  

And there you have it, 60 welcome bags.