Sneak Peek: Our Intimate Backyard Wedding Inspiration
It’s been a few weeks since I’ve rambled about our wedding vendors, so I wanted to share some of the inspiration we’ve been gathering along the way, mostly thanks to Pinterest. We’re planning on having two long, wooden tables in our backyard, picnic-style, with benches for our guests. It’s been quite a challenge trying to nail down a vendor for renting a few rustic tables, but I think we’ve finally found a reasonable option thanks to Craigslist. We snagged some yellow, grey, and gold streamers which we plan on slinging over bulb string lights to give the yard a pretty glow (and hopefully not catch our house on fire).
We had been debating whether or not we should make an arbor, but I think we’ll be dying and tying ombre-style pieces of yellow fabric to the dogwood tree, along with hanging mason jar vases with flowers and candles. I really love these tissue paper-covered lanterns and we already have oversized yellow balloons from our barbecue that never happened, so those should look pretty (assuming we don’t get another Hurricane Irene).
I’ll be wearing the Orla Kiely dress below from BHLDN, which I managed to score half off with a little luck. The vintage heart earrings were a gift from Pete, as was the yellow felt headband from Giant Dwarf. I still have to figure out what type of shoes to wear, but I’m leaning toward something glittery like this pair from Steve Madden (Pete is a flats lover, so I have no complaints on that end!). For our flowers, we plan on blending succulents, billy balls and other wispy accents to bring our yellow and grey theme together.
We still have plenty of grey and white striped paper straws leftover from our barbecue, so those will also be put to good use. We just bottled our first official homebrew and plan on making a Berliner Weisse for our guests who are brave enough to taste our homemade hoppy goodness. We’re also going to explore canning this weekend, so we’ll attempt to make Ginger Peach Jam (get it? ginger? red-headed hubby to be?), so hopefully it will make the cut for some tasty favors. For our place settings, we’ll be combining mismatched vintage china, so I’m looking forward to having an excuse to go thrifting together—we started this weekend and had great success (I was even recognized by a cool gal who reads my blog!).
I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m most looking to the yummy food (apart from getting to be Pete’s super lucky future Mrs., of course). Four words: Red velvet whoopie pies. Just sayin’. I’m looking forward to the entrees and stuff too, but for the most part, I just want to snarfle sorbet and lemonade while holding hands with the ginger.
My apologies if all of the wedding talk is completely boring, I just like sharing our ideas like a big goober.
*For those of you who are viewing this post on your mobile device, you can thank Pete for his fancy web developing skills since he just launched the responsive version of my site this weekend. I am very lucky to be able to reap the benefits of such a tech-savvy fiance, so thanks to Pete for the new version update.
Here’s a peek of what we were dealing with before, and below is a glimpse of what the bedroom looks now, with 
Betty White approves of the changes we made, but we still have a lot of work to do to make it homey (like artwork on the walls and thrifty decor).
Here’s a photo of the room when we moved in, complete with the previous owner’s canopy, curtains, VCR, and stained mattress.
We have to figure out what to do with the antiquated air conditioning unit, which has a nice family of very opinionated birds living in it. We’re thinking we’ll have to turn it into a small window…not sure what other choice we’ll have. The furniture we inherited from the previous owner is a frightening shade of yellowed white, so we have a lot of spray painting in our future once the weather warms up. The closet could also use some white paint since the sad, hollow wood doors seriously bum us out.
For those of you who have a good eye for detail, you’ll notice we haven’t touched the wood paneling in the hallway since it was half-primed when we moved in. I guess that’s next on our list. I’m not sure what to do about the ceiling tiles (how difficult is it to replace ceiling tiles?), but I did appreciate the break from having to paint the ceiling with several coats of white.
Betty White was being very contemplative when I shot this in the bedroom mirror like a total sneak. She thinks we overdid it with the matching and the paisley, but she has faith that we can make it look better with a little love.
Tackling our last wallpapered room was tiresome, but it’s satisfying to know we can pack away the wallpaper steamer—unless we get incredibly ambitious and remove the wallpaper in our closets (yes, our closets).
Is anyone else guilty of making a room too match-y?
Photo courtesy of 
Photos courtesy of 
For our caterer, we wanted to have as much locally grown, fresh food as possible, which is why we went with 
Photos courtesy of 
Our florist, 
Photos courtesy of 
It was important to us to have a non-denominational officiant, which is why we were drawn to 
