Okay okay so we got married two YEARS ago, aren’t technically newlyweds anymore, and have talked about our wedding to anyone who will listen, BUT I still have yet to blog about our big day so for everyone on the internet this is, as Phoebe Buffay would put it, BRAND NEW INFORMATION.
We didn’t hire a wedding planner or coordinator (I’m too type A and hands on for that, but if you’re not like me I do highly recommend getting one). And since I planned the entire thing myself I have lots of hits – and misses – to share about everything from venue selection to day of timelines to wedding dress shopping on a budget. It’s honestly too much for one blog post so I’ll be rolling out Wedding Wednesday blog posts to cover all the ins and outs of our wedding journey throughout the next couples of months.
In the meantime I wanted to share the highlights of our big day! It truly was the best day of our lives and while I was never the girl that grew up dreaming of her wedding day, I definitely was the girl that had a pinterest board of 1000+ wedding inspo pics once she got engaged. You can check out that board here.
Now for the fun stuff: I knew I wanted an autumn wedding, a beautiful location, a black tie affair, an afterparty on site, and ambiance up the wazzoo (lol). With me being from NYC and Erik being from Boston we spent a few months after getting engaged looking at 20+ venues along the eastern seaboard to find ~the one~! I honestly think it took us longer to find the venue than to start dating, ha ha. We finally landed on The Ashford Estate in southern New Jersey and could not rave about it more. The wedding series will have posts on all the fine details: the venue search, my wedding dress debacle, all the things I DIYed, etc., but for now feel free to scroll below for photos from our Ashford Estate wedding + little details from each part of the day!
GETTING READY
A little BTS of our morning! Erik and I did not see each other until the first look so this was the perfect time to chill and hang with our best friends. Definitely recommend having some brunch options and mimosas flowing! I also DIYed my mom’s ‘mother of the bride shirt’ and these squad outfits for my girls to get ready in. The sweaters said their names and wrote out the wedding date on the backs. I’m not a buttoned up kinda gal and I’d already gotten a handful of robes from bridesmaid-ing so I wanted to do something a bit different and fall cozy!
THE FIRST LOOKS
I’d seen a bunch of photos online of bridesmaids reacting to seeing the bride and I LOVED them. Yes, this day is about you and your honey, but your best friends have (probably) been there just as long or longer and it’s special to see them see you! Highly recommend adding a photo op like this to your photographers shot list (I’ll do a post sharing my shot list; I was very specific haha)!
Then of course I went down and saw Erik for the first time. It’s always a big decision to see or not to see before the walk down the aisle but if you’re doing a true fall wedding (oct/nov) you may not have time on your side if you want shots in daylight. I’ll explain more in that post, but that’s ultimately why we did a first look and I’m SO GRATEFUL we did one!
BRIDAL PORTRAITS
Honestly picking my wedding colors – or lack thereof – was one of the hardest decisions during the entire wedding. SO MANY PEOPLE WILL GIVE YOU THEIR OPINIONS (!) so my best advice is to just have a vision in your head and don’t let anyone talk you out of it. I gifted my bridesmaids the leather jackets after the rehearsal dinner & I love how the photos turned out!
PS. these are NOT “bridesmaids” dresses and I LOVE that about them. The girls actually can wear this dress again and it didn’t cost an arm and a leg… win/win!
THE CEREMONY
There are so many special rooms and spaces at The Ashford Estate and we wanted to utilize all of them! We had our ceremony in the whitewashed rustic barn, our reception in the main house ballroom, and our afterparty in the library + firepits. And when it came to decor (again, I’ll do an entire post on this) I KNEW I wanted one thing…candles! Hundreds and hundreds of candles…
Okay, not to leave y’all on a cliffhanger but I’m already 1000 words and 40 images deep and I still have so much more to share — the ballroom reception! the waffle cart! the afterparty! the caricaturist who drew us all drunkenly at 2am! I’m realizing I definitely need to split this into two posts (sorry!) I’ll be sure to add part 2, but in the meantime let me know what other topics you’d love me to cover in the wedding series!
