Happily After All: The Church Details

I decided to do a quick recess from the order of recaps, and instead of jumping right into the processional and ceremony, like I had promised, I'm going to take you on a tour of all the church details.  This way I can go into depth about them a little before you get a chance to glance at them during the ceremony recaps.  I gave you guys a glimpse into the decorations when I set up the week of the wedding, but there were things that weren't quite finished yet, and detail pictures always look better when taken by a professional with great lighting =]

We'll start with the outside of the church and work our way inside.

The wood sign I made pointing our guests in the right direction.  You'll see this sign again in future recaps...

The new wood sign a member of the congregation made just a couple months before the wedding.

The wreaths and painted letters I made.  These wreaths recently underwent a transformation and were used for the wedding of family friend.  She added some purple flowers into the mix and took off the letters.  They were gorgeous, and now the work is done for me for my cousin's wedding in October.  I was planning on adding in purple for her, and now I don't have to!

The "Quaker Marriage Certificate" that I designed and had printed through UPrinting.com  They offered me a poster print when I hosted a giveaway awhile back.  I touched on it briefly here.  You can get a glimpse of it fully signed in the picture below.  It was a nice alternative for a guestbook at the church.

This picture worked out nicely too, since we don't have any pictures of us signing our marriage certificate.  Our pastor had us sign it the night before at the rehearsal and we didn't think to take any pictures.  I really wish we would have done it on our wedding day, all dressed up, and gotten a couple pictures.  But that's okay!

 Here is the finished program.  Even though I hated them at 2 o'clock in the morning the week of my wedding, I'm really glad I put in the time and effort to pull off what I initially wanted.  Our guests loved them, I got to keep one, and the back page actually ended up being extremely helpful in getting through our family portraits.

These are the two baskets of bubbles we used for our exit.  I bought all of the bubbles from the Dollar Tree and tied little green bows around each one.  The baskets were on sale from Hobby Lobby and the ribbon tied around it was left over from other projects.  It was very easy, just a little time consuming!

These reserved signs were another last minute project in the week leading up to the wedding.  I think I might have done them on Thursday possibly?  I stuck them on the first four pews on each side of the aisle.  Since the church was so small and we were expecting such a large turnout, I wanted to make sure that all of our family members got a good seat up front, and didn't end up standing or in the balcony.

And here is the altar with our unity candle, altar arrangements, and the "table runner" I made as well.  I never did do a DIY post on that, but it was very easy.  I printed out the design on my printer and laid it under a piece of white material.  Then I traced and painted the design.  Then it was just a matter of hemming the white material and attaching it to the green material, and then hemming those edges as well.  I actually used Heat N' Bond instead of sewing it together.  It held up wonderfully throughout the day, but it never made it to the reception hall like I was originally thinking.  It just wasn't worth the hassle of taking it over there and finding a spot for it.  Anyone have ideas of what I should do with it now?

And as a sneak peek to our ceremony, here is a picture of the whole church decorated and filled with our friends and family.

Next up:  This time I'll actually do the processional!

Unless otherwise stated, all pictures are by Brandy Swartz of Photography by Brandy.

In case you've missed anything...
Heading To The Church
Slipping Into My Dress

The Flowers

Getting Pretty
A Crazy Lady The Morning Of
Decorating the Reception Hall
Honoring Our Family
The Rehearsal

Decorating the Church

I went out to the church last night and got it all decorated for Saturday! My mom went with me and we knocked it out in about an hour.  I'm so glad to have this done and over with.  Everything is out there and ready to go.  Then we'll set up the reception on Friday morning.  It's great that I don't have to do any setting up on Saturday morning.

Here's what the fellowship hall looks like.  I'm actually hoping that there won't be any people in this part of the church.  Because if there are, it means that we've run out of room in the church, and these guests will be sitting and listening, but won't actually be able to see any of the ceremony.  This is where the boys will be getting ready, and where we'll all gather to line up for the processional.  I'm sure there will be people wandering through before and after the ceremony though.  Previous to this, there were Easter colored tablecloths on the table.  So I picked up some green ones while I was at Party City looking for balloons.

Oh and by the way...check out this sweet wall...

I'm thinking it would make a perfect spot for some fun photos while we're sitting around waiting for the ceremony to start =]  A little creepy that it's a rolling, carpet wall...but it does happen to be the perfect color!

We laid out some flower arrangements on the front steps and hung up the wreaths.  I grabbed these flower arrangements from the basement at work and added some green bows to them.

We obviously had to pull in the flowers until Saturday, but I wanted to make sure they looked okay there.  And I finally got around to stringing up the letters inside the wreaths with fishing wire.

Then I went and put everything up on the altar.  I originally painted and sewed this as a table runner for our head table.  But now I'm thinking it can do double duty and bring it out to the reception after the ceremony.

I posted about the unity candle here.  The only thing missing is the altar arrangements.  There will be two of them and they'll go on either side of the unity candle.

Then it was on to the pew bows.  You can see the original post here.  I ended up just putting rubber bands around the pews and then folding the wire on the back of the bows down over it.  Super easy!

In that first picture, you can get a glimpse of the banners Mr. T's mom made hanging up.  You can also see the vent in the middle of the aisle.  Today Mr. T cut out a thin sheet of plywood to place over top of it so no one's heel pops through after the aisle runner is down.  We just have to paint it so it blends in a little better.  Now all I have to do is make some reserved signs for the first 4 pews.

We have to find/buy two small tables to place at the end of the aisle on each side to set our bubbles and programs on.
Out in the entrance is a table with our "Quaker Marriage Certificate."  With the last UPrinting.com giveaway I hosted, I got a poster to use as well.  I decided to make one of these to use as our "guestbook" of sorts at the ceremony.  It will just be signed by the people that are at our ceremony, as a way to show their support and encouragement of our wedding.

We'll sign it, our pastors will sign it, the maid of honor and best man will sign it, and then all of the guests.  I'm looking forward to keeping this to look back on in the future.  If there are ever any tough times, we can look at this and be reminded of all the people that had faith in our marriage and supported our decision.

And that's about it for the church!! We're keeping it pretty simple because the woodwork and the stained glass is gorgeous enough itself.

Our Venues, Part One: The Church

Where we would have our wedding was a no brainer for Mr. T and I.  It was going to be in a church, no doubt about that.  And there was also no question that it would be in the adorable, old, country-farm church that Mr. T's family has been going to for years, Trinity Goodfarm Lutheran Church.
A little background on our religions first.  We are both Lutherans, while I'm of the ELCA variety and the Mr. is LCMS.  Not a huge difference in my opinion, but that's just me.  My family had stopped going to our church years ago.  A new pastor came in and really shook things up, and most of the congregation left.  So they're in the process of finding their new "home" so I don't belong to a church right now.  So the obvious choice was to have it at Mr. T's church which I've attended numerous times since we started dating.

Let me show you some pictures, and I think you'll get the idea why I'm so excited about this church.  It's just so cute!

The front of the church.  The doors on the left lead to the fellowship hall.  To the right (out-of-shot) are the front doors.

And here is the out-of-shot view from the previous picture.  The cute red front doors. (Ignore my family wandering around!)

A sign in the front yard that I'm hoping we can put our names on =]

"Brides-Eye View" from the front of the church looking back.

The altar at the front of the church.  I just love all the gorgeous woodwork in this church and you can catch a glimpse here, but the entire church has beautiful, original stained glass windows.

The fellowship hall decorated for Easter.  We can use this in the case of overflow.  (This is a definite possibility but more on that later.)

The kitchen that us girls can get dressed in if we decide not to come ready.

The best part about this is that it is a very small congregation, so there was no competition for our date.  And, Mr. T's dad is the president of the church, so for the price of a donation made to the church, our ceremony location is set.

So now you know where we will be getting married in less than 9 months!  This is the church I will say "I do" in and promise to love Mr. T for better or for worse, surrounded by all of our family and friends.

And let me just say, I can't wait!!