Official Wedding Photos: Part 2 (Formals & Reception)

Hello all!

Before I post our honeymoon photos (we just got back), I'm terribly overdue posting the second installment of our June wedding photos.  I took the summer off blogging and have some serious catching up to do!

Our wedding day was perfection - we couldn't have ordered better weather and everything went delightfully well.  It was such a  joyful day.  I feel so blessed.  

After our gorgeous outdoor ceremony, we cut our wedding cake and celebrated with champagne and hor d'oeuvres (see my first post here) on the veranda.  Then we quickly dashed away with our families to do some formal wedding photos.

~ Formals~ 

Here we are with our beloved, wonderful mothers:

David with his grandmother who turns 90 this week and is a charming firecracker of a lady in perfect health:

With the mothers and grandma:

Here we are with David's parents and our very small wedding party!

And here we are with the mothers and wedding party:

After about a million more family photos, we went off to do photos of me and David.

I felt like the Queen posing for this one:

I love this series of photos of us walking down a garden path:

~ The Dinner Reception ~

My favorite part of wedding planning was the reception tablescapes!  

Our event stylist, Alexandra, and I had such fun developing the aesthetic.  In the end, we chose to do all-white table linens and warm brass candlesticks, with gold chiavari chairs.

I searched for months to find enough brass candlesticks to fill the tables.  Most came from thrift shops, with a few of the finer ones purchased from antique stores.  We added pink water glasses from Anthropologie to provide a dash of brightness to our softly-coloured tablescapes:

I designed all our paper goods, including place cards and menus, with the amazing calligrapher Jenna Rainey of Monvoir.  Check out her work beautiful work here.

Our central floral arrangements were created in footed brass bowls I sourced from both antique and thrift shops.  Our flatware was fluted with gold-tipped ends:

We also had tiny floral arrangements in glass bowls (Anthropologie) at the end of each table.  Since we couldn't repaint the room, we worked lots of foliage into the little arrangements to relate to the (green!) walls.  And the gold tones of the brass worked well with the golden woodwork on the walls.  This is the only problem working in a reception space that isn't painted a neutral - you have to work with the palette you've been given!

Our wedding favours were beautifully wrapped in white paper boxes with hand-dyed (in France) rose silk ribbon from the utterly exquisite ribbon collection at Froufrou Chic:

Our selected favours were bottle openers (Wm Sonoma) for the men and porcelain rose bottle toppers (Anthropologie) for the ladies.  Since we only had 22 guests, we splurged a little on these!:

We also had a charming stuffed wool lion favour for our baby guest:

Our reception dinner was gourmet perfection, created by the Reader Garden Cafe executive chef Merritt Gordon.  We started with a lovely asparagus soup followed by a green salad with candied pecans:

The dinner was fun and lively as we celebrated and visited with our happy guests:

Don't forget to say hello to small guests:

The meal was amazing - Alberta AAA organic braised beef short ribs with crispy onions. potato puree, and sauteed greens.  Perfection!:  

Dessert was a divine chocolate cremeaux (like a mousse cake) with shortbread and fruit preserves, and edible flowers to garnish:

During dinner, our photographer captured a few more details, including our invitation suite and gifts table:

As sunset neared, around 9:30pm, David and I escaped for a few more photos:

Luckily the garden still had some lovely late spring blooms:

It was such a wonderful day!

~ The End ~

Making our day perfect were all our amazing vendors, whom I cannot thank enough:

location reader rock garden & reader garden cafe (proprietor katherine moore)

photography: genevieve renee

decor styling by alexandra of pink and honey (and a very involved bride!)

florals by blue hydrangea

paper goods by mon voir

wedding cake by crave

vintage furniture rentals by vintage loved

reception dinnerware, flatware and chair rentals by special event rentals

officiant tamara jones

guitarist jason delaney

Clothing, accessories and hair:

bride's dress: sonia's bridal, customized by bride's dressmaker 

bride's veil: david's bridal

bride's shoes: nine west

bride's earrings: adorn boutique

bride's bracelet: nordstrom

groom's attire: henry singer (suit and cufflinks hugo boss)

matron-of-honour's dress: the bridal centre

bride's hair: jennifer mcfarlane

bride's makeup: ashley gill