today i wanted to share two special wedding-related notes and then i promise i’ll cut back on the happily ever after talk.
i’m excited to announce that for the next 6 months i’ll be guest blogging at martha stewart weddings. the team at ms weddings reached out to me about blogging our wedding planning process and featuring our wedding in the magazine next year and i decided it would be a fun project- and a chance to talk about something different for a while. i know some of you have had it up to hear with any wedding talk on d*s, so you’ll be happy to know 99% of my wedding babble will now remain over at the ms weddings blog. click here to check it out.
and in other wedding news, i was super excited to hear from d*s reader and textile designer heather palmeri about her beautiful vintage-inspired wedding. heather and her husband andrew (who is a web designer for the nytimes) were married at buttermilk falls inn and spa in milton, ny. they took advantage of the beautiful natural setting, and heather’s incredible collection of vintage vera napkins, to create a special day that i thought would be inspiring for anyone planning a wedding, a holiday party, or just looking for some ideas for special meals at home. all of the vintage fabric really got my mind going so i hope you’ll find heather and andrew’s wedding as inspirational as i did. thank you to heather, and her photographer, julia newman, for sharing these shots. (click here for extra shots of the wedding)
[My stepfather cut down all of the stumps for the table. The menus and table numbers were just printed out at home on our ink jet printer. All of the apothecary and milk bottles were found at antique shops by my mom. All of the flowers were dahlias and were purchased from Stems in Red Hook, NY. My friends Allie and Mara did all of the floral arranging and styling of the tables. Allie even made all of the boutonnieres and corsages! (My bouquet was created by the designers at Stems)]
[My stepfather has a sugar shack in CT. and makes the most amazing maple syrup. We knew this would be a great favor and he loved being involved. I used a few of the leftover napkins and cut them up (painful!) and tied them around the jars with twine. I loved the impact of all of them on the table at once!]
[The napkins are all vintage Vera. As a textile designer, I knew that I wanted to incorporate a lot of pattern. We decided to forgo the idea of choosing a specific color palette and instead decided that we wanted it to just be colorful! I had help from family and friends collecting the napkins from ebay and flea markets and vintage shops. A lot of people were so excited by them that they took them home with them after the wedding (which is fine by me, b/c I don't really have room to store 100 napkins anyway!). Additionally, I used the napkins to make fabric flowers to decorate the branches that held the place cards as well as for the fabric covers on the maple syrup jars (see below). We also had a Vera tablecloth (that came with one of the sets of napkins) that we used as a backdrop for a Polaroid photo booth.]
[All of our invitation stationery (invites, rsvp's, thank yous and place cards) were printed by my wonderfully talented friends Anna and Mara at Dutch Door Press. I did all of the artwork and my husband did the typesetting. It was truly a group effort and one of my favorite things about the wedding. All of the calligraphy was done by the incredible Betsy Dunlap.]
[The cake and cupcakes were made by Anne and Rebecca of CAKED in Brooklyn. It is a secret family recipe of chocolate cake with butter cream frosting and they're delicious!! The cake topper was made by a friend of mine, Laura Keenan.]
