Holy awesomeness, Batman! I could not be more excited for the wedding of Aaron and Dayna, with all the colors and creative design elements. The couple truly poured their personalities into their wedding, and they rocked the house with their epic nuptials.
From the bride, Dayna: Without ever discussing it, my new husband, Aaron and I knew a lot of things about our wedding day the evening we were engaged. We knew we’d be financing the wedding ourselves. We knew we wanted a friend to marry us. We knew we wanted our professional wedding photographer friend to take our pictures. We knew my band (you can find video of the bride singing here) would be playing our party and that I would sing with them. And we knew that my graphic designer husband would be designing every piece of collateral for our big day. Having all of that knowledge in advance was a huge help in getting our wedding into shape very early in the process.
We also make decisions very quickly. On the recommendation of one of my bridesmaids, we looked at some pictures online of the Full Moon Resort in Big Indian, NY and within two days, had put down money to secure a date with them. The Full Moon was the only venue we went to see and it turned out to be the perfect one for us. On the drive home from touring the venue, we picked our theme – Lichtenstein/’50s Romance Comic Books with a polka dots and stripes color palatte – and had already mentally created our invitations before we made it home. I selected my dress on my first day of dress shopping and never looked back.
Once we ran out of decisions that were easy to make, we focused on the rest with the understanding that we wanted a wedding that was different from any we had ever seen. We had a lot of help in coming up with wacky ideas thanks to a few of the less traditional wedding blogs. To avoid the cost of flowers, we decided on origami bouquets that could be created with the help of my crafty bridesmaids. I saw a blog posting about a tongue-in-cheek program to entertain and inform guests and ran with the idea. We picked and chose the most creative ideas and gave them a twist to make them our own.
Aaron viewed the build-up to our wedding as one gigantic art project. Our Save-The-Date invitation became a stop-motion video (which you can find here, in all its awesome glory). Our invitations were works of art by themselves. Our centerpieces, polka dotted flower pots that held wire trees hung with mini-Lichtenstein paintings that we encouraged guests to color and give back to us as a guest book substitute, took months to create, but ended up being worth every moment we spent painting and gluing them.
I said at the wedding that a DIY wedding is less “Do It Yourself” and more “Do It Yourself with the help of everyone you’ve ever met.” This turned out to be very true in our case. Our bridesmaids made their own bouquets, blinged out my bouquet, created my Muppet envelope box from scratch and even ended up working as our makeup artists on the day of the wedding. I ended up recruiting not only my band, but several other professional musician friends to work as entertainment for the evening. Our officiant worked with us to write our ceremony. Our friends put together their own reading of some of our favorite movie quotes about love. I oversaw the proceedings, but without them, the wedding we’d planned simply wouldn’t have been possible.
The day of the ceremony, we only had 3 hours to set up the resort before the guests arrived. To make sure we utilized every moment, I put together schedules for every member of the bridal party, plus our officiant and parents, that were highlighted to focus on each person’s responsibilities on the day. I also put together instructional packets with every task that needed to be accomplished and used pictures for illustration whenever necessary. Amazingly, we finished our set-up (in three separate locations) in under an hour.
Because we had so few vendors to deal with, so much time to prepare and so many people helping us (not only our bridal party chipped in – all of their significant others did, as well), our wedding day was pretty seamless. My husband and I were able to fully enjoy our special day without worry about anything going wrong and it truly was a perfect day for us – and we hope for everyone who helped to get us there.
Couple: Aaron + Dayna Webber
Date: September 23, 2012
Location: Big Indian, New York
Photography: Casey Fatchett Photography
Venue: Full Moon Resort
Ketubah: MPArtworks
Bridal Gown + Fur Shrug: Macy’s Bridal Salon by Demetrios
Necklace: Tiger Lilly Jewelry
Bridal Bouquet: Nerd Nuptials – with *extensive* upgrades and blinging done to original bouquet by bridesmaids (one of the best DIY projects, I think).
Bridal Fascinator: TheRedMagnolia
Hair: Hair by Annaliese
Bridal Footwear: Heeler Dealers, Rock and Candy
Wedding Bands: Sziro Jewelry, Neta Wolpe Jewelry
Bridesmaid Dresses: My 50’s Vintage Dresses
Bridesmaid Petticoats: Sterling and Pearls
Bridesmaid Fascinators: Janine Basil
Bridesmaid Rings: Gabeadz
Bridesmaid Flasks: Liquid Courage
Bridesmaid Necklaces: Amazon Curated Collection
This is such a great idea! As a big comic books fan, this is really cool!