REAL WEDDING: JENNIFER & THOMAS

Though neither of us can recall our first date (it’s hard when you live “together”, have a college meal plan, and always go to the movies as a group), we finally became a couple on New Years Eve that same year.  Since then our 7 years together have certainly been an adventure and we’ve made so many great memories together.  We lived in Australia for some time, graduated college with honors, backpacked through Europe, and more!  Then, on one lovely evening in October, Tom took me hot air ballooning, where we watched the sun set and he asked me to marry him.  The whole experience was absolutely amazing and I was soon very eager to start planning!
 

Our Wedding:

In planning our wedding, we really wanted to focus on things that would represent us a couple.  We both are very lighthearted, energetic people, and a little bit quirky, and we wanted our wedding to reflect that while still being elegant.  We scoured our area searching for the perfect place with no luck, and then, after weeks of searching, our M.O.H. found The Morris Arboretum.  It was an historic carriage house and garden located in Philadelphia and we knew just from seeing the website that this was THE place.  Then came the decorating and, by recommendation from a friend, I decided to check out some blogs, one of which being Janie’s The Bride’s Cafe!  The weddings and ideas were so beautiful and modern and I was inspired by things from the flowers to styles of photography and more.  I literally spent hours just browsing that pages and collecting ideas!

As for decorating, we stretched our budget to get the place and then were left with the task of trying to cut costs elsewhere to make things work.  Luckily, we ended up being able to accommodate the things we wanted and even add some extra fun things that cost very little but made things more personal to us, like serving assorted pies instead of cake, having a French fry bar, a DIY Photo Station, a shelf featuring old family wedding pictures, a wish tree in lieu of a guest book, having a college roommate perform the ceremony, and, of course, our shoes that color coordinated with our wedding colors. We loved our wedding so much and had so much fun throughout the process picking out things and designing! A big thank you to our family and friends that all pitched in to help make our day a day we will remember as one of the happiest and most fun days of our lives. 

We could not have done it without them or without people, like Janie, who posted wonderfully fresh and beautiful ideas that helped us create the day that we had envisioned.   Things weren’t always easy and planning was certainly stressful … but everything turned out just fine, we all had a wonderful time, and it was certainly all worth it in the end!!

With love and thanks to everyone involved in making our wedding day special!’