I love weddings where a couple’s family and friends join in to help create a really special day, and today’s wedding is just that: a labor of love! On a budget, this bride and her family crafted their way into their perfect wedding, full of handmade details and sweet memories. And seriously, how contagious is the bride’s smile? So much joy radiating out!
The beautiful bride Amanda shares:
If I can describe my wedding in anyway I would call it a southern vintage wedding. I grew up in the south and when I was attending my teaching college in eastern North Carolina I became obsessed with crafting and refurbishing and distressing furniture. When it came time for planning the wedding I combined my mason jar loving ‘antiquey’ style and found a middle ground. We chose a modern plantation house wedding where we were married in the backyard with a gorgeous pond as a back drop and food and cocktail hour was within the different floors of the house. My plan was to have the upstairs stage the main part of my vintage style with tea cups and lily ashbury decoupaged boxes and victorian style frames; where as the downstairs reception area was more towards old fashioned bottles, bunting, crates, burlap, and doilies. We wanted this to be a celebration, not a museum!
One of my favorite memories of my wedding was the morning of the wedding when my family, bridesmaids, and I were preparing the flowers. My bouquets and boutonnieres were bought through an amazing floral company from my small hometown but the rest were cut from my wedding planner’s amazing garden YARD (no not a spot or two, the whole yard, folks!) I will never forget rolling up my jeans the morning of the wedding and going outside and cutting roses and flowers off the newly rained on bushes. I could have just bought the flowers and had them assembled and called it a day but it truly meant so much more to me that it was assembled and put together with the ones I love.
When it came time to plan our wedding I had no idea the color scheme I was going to choose. I’ve always considered myself a very colorful person so when I found a photo online of bright pops of colors from flowers and little details I chose a main color of ocean blue and went to work. For one full year I scoured thrift shops and flea markets for old fashioned bottles and tea cups that I could use to make our dream come true. I spent a lot of time crafting and making the decorations for the tables and the upstairs. My motto was “I’m only buying and making the decorations that I will keep in my house after the wedding.” I had so much fun picking patterns and colors and seeing how they went together with out overdoing it too much.
One of my favorite details of our wedding was the wedding cake. When we initially started planning our wedding, Jonathan and I were on a strict budget and weren’t going to do a large extravagant cake. When we told my husband’s mother she was heartbroken and offered to buy our wedding cake for us. After many conversations we decided it would be nice to have a cake and so I contacted Dreme cake artistry to see what she could do. When she drew up the plans of the cake I had given her the ocean blue color and my love for paisley patterns; I wanted an artist doing my cake and boy did we find one! On the day of the wedding, the cake blew me away by it’s color and classiness. It was perfect and everyone at the wedding was talking about it.
At the end of the day I could honestly say this wedding was handmade with a lot of love and that is one of the best feelings in the world!
Photography | Meet the Burks | Venue | The Oaks at Salem | Planner | Natalie Worth | Cake | Dreme Cake Artistry | Hairstylist | Sameira Jones
