Scroll to the bottom to read words from the Bride Cass on her thoughts, inspiration, and ideas behind her beautiful wedding day in Norwalk, OH.

 

My husband, Ben and I drew inspiration from several things. We both are inspired by the artistic, indie style and wanted to bring that into our wedding. Mixed with this artistic style, we also wanted to include an outdoors look. We’ve been to multiple of our friends’ weddings in the last year, where we were able to gather ideas. We noticed that at two weddings in particular, a lot of the decorations were handmade by the bride and groom, which added a whole unique element of beauty. We also liked that through the wedding we could see the couple’s personality coming out through their decorations. Another thing that inspired us was our guests themselves. Our goal was to not leave anyone out on attending the wedding that should be there. We wanted to show that our marriage is about God, serving one another, and serving the people around us. One thing we did to emphasize this was serving each other and our wedding party coffee during the ceremony… instead of the unity candle.

 

We focused on small details that were simple, but over all made the wedding beautiful. Some of these things were paper cranes that we hung from the pavilion at the ceremony and over the dance floor at the reception, handmade fabric boutonnieres for the men, mason jars decorated with yarn and lace as center pieces, fabric bunting (flags) that hung in the pavilion at the ceremony and draped in front of the head table at the reception, and hanging lanterns made from yarn. Ben and I did all of these by hand during our engagement. Other things that were really lovely were our isle runners which were mason jars full of water and lemons, an old chest filled with blankets for our guests to use during the outside ceremony, and a coffee bar which was an old dresser with hundreds of unique coffee mugs towering out of it and out of wooden crates that were alongside the dresser. Also, since we had an outside wedding, we painted some old shutters and Ben was blindfolded as I came to the isle the shutters were pulled back and the blindfold was removed. The song that I walked down to was “sea of love” by Cat Power, and is from our favorite movie, Juno. One of my favorite details of the wedding was our cake. My sister made it for us. It was a simple white, three tiered cake, with small tree twigs and little bird on it to fit our outdoor theme. The cake was sitting on a large slag of tree truck, which Ben spent the day cutting with his grandpa the week before the wedding. Other larger slabs of wood were used around the reception as well to further enforce the outdoors look. The attire of our wedding party was also one of my favorite things about the wedding. The bridesmaids wore beautiful handcrafted dresses made of recycled materials, which were bought from Etsy.com from the seller ArmoursansAnguish. The men wore brown pants, a blue dress shirt, and grey suspenders and bowties. Our ring bearer wore the same, and our flower girl wore a ruffled cream dress, also bought on Etsy. Lastly, my dress was stunning. It was a simple lace dress, that originally had straps with a keyhole back, but I ended up having the straps taken off before the wedding. It was lightweight and I’d never felt more beautiful in anything. My veil was a simple flower crown, which was a sweet surprise for Ben because he loves it when I wear flowers in my hair.

 

One of our biggest sources was Pinterest. I had been building a wedding board for months. This was where I got the idea of using bottles and jars on the tables, having burlap table runners, birdcages for decorations, etc. Another resource was RuffledBlog.com, which is a wedding blog where you can get ideas from pictures of other weddings. I learned how to make the bunting from a D.I.Y. tutorial on CraftGawker.com. Other than that, we were really blessed by the help of friends who stayed up late with us the night before to decorate the reception hall and then got up early to decorate the ceremony location. We also took advantage of friends who had birdcages and other things for decoration. Also, a few of the bridal party got together to make huge prints of our engagement photos, which was framed by large tree branches. This creative decorations was a surprise to Ben and myself and it fit in well with the style we had created.

 

One of our really sweet moments was our “first look” photos with our photographers, Ben and Les. We were able to have some time alone for a few minutes before the wedding, and our photographers took photos from a distance. Ben was blindfolded and waiting for me in the rain with an umbrella as I came behind him and gave him a kiss on the neck. It was a really special moment to have that time with him before the wedding and to have it captured on camera. Another moment that was really special was when I walked down the isle. I didn’t think I would cry, but the moment I saw Ben my eyes welled up with tears. By the time I got to him, I understood the expression “it took my breath away”. I wasn’t even crying very hard, and yet I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Following that was our vows, which both of us wrote ourselves. We hadn’t heard each other’s till then. Ben’s was an amazing spoken word/poem that he spent days on. It was perfect and beautiful. Our vows meant a lot to both of us, because it was a verbal expression of the commitment we were making to each other that is to be carried out for the rest of our lives.

 

Overall, our wedding wasn’t perfect. It started out as a rainy, cold day, the reception location was changed the day before the wedding due to weather, mason jars broke, and we had the wrong song for our “first dance”. But to us it was perfect and simple; the imperfection made it real and “down-to-earth.” The day was about love, and we believe that spoke volumes over the small things that went wrong… and at the end of the day we were married and that’s all that mattered.