What feels like many moons ago, I shared my own Keswick letterpress wedding invitations here on the blog and at long last it’s time to share a few photos from our summer wedding last year. We celebrated our wedding with a two-day celebration in the beautiful Thousand Islands region of upstate New York, from which I hail. We were married in a private ceremony with just the closest of family and friends and then toasted our newlywed status with a cocktail party. We had planned for a beautiful outdoor ceremony at the Sackets Harbor Battlefield in a tree grove overlooking Lake Ontario. The weather had other plans. Rather than dodge rain drops, we moved our ceremony indoors last minute and were married at the private catering facility at the Madison Barracks where our cocktail party was to be held. It was nothing I had planned, yet, it was everything I could have ever wanted.

I wore a gorgeous lace Casablanca dress that I still love, champagne gold and pewter shoes from J.Crew, a Twigs & Honey flower in my hair, and a birdcage veil from Something Bold. My daddy walked me down the makeshift aisle and we both cried the whole time.

Though I am flower-obsessed and wanted a wedding that felt timeless, elegant and stylish, I had little to no interest in the bouquet tradition. I wanted simple, pretty flowers that didn’t break the bank. The answer was a small bouquet of my favorite flowers, white roses, for myself and pretty baby’s breath bouquets for my bridesmaids. We ordered the flowers wholesale and made them together as a group the night before.

Following the ceremony, we asked all of our family to join us for a group photo. Getting forty people to all look at the camera at once and smile was more work than you might imagine and it’s not really our style anyway so in the end we just asked people to hang out while our awesome photographer, James Bass, grabbed some shots. I love this one. It’s like we have this huge wall of love and laughter and joy behind us, which is a pretty great metaphor for the love we experience every day from our oversized collection of family, friends and loved ones.

For Friday’s festivities, we kept the details simple. The highlight were the DIY ceremony programs that I designed, printed, scored, folded, corner punched and individually handbound with a needle and baker’s twine. For the tables we created simple white hydrangea centerpieces that were clustered in the assorted milk glass vases my mother and I collected in the year leading up to the wedding.

The following morning we woke up in our hotel suite at the Edgewood Resort in Alexandria Bay and met up with guests from out of town for brunch and a day of sight seeing along the St. Lawrence River. This down time spent relaxing with loved ones is exactly why we planned a two-day wedding and, though more complicated at times, it’s still one of the best decisions we made. Later that evening we welcomed 150 people for a full reception at the Edgewood in a gorgeous room with panoramic views of the river and a wood-clad gazebo ceiling.

Our reception was really all about fun. We ditched our bouquets and instead all carried clutches – the girls carried black satin ones I had bought for them and I carried a jewel green clutch that was a gift from my lovely friend Cheyanne. The girls wore different styles of dresses from Dessy in champagne paired with black shoes and pretty necklaces I made for them. The guys wore classic black tuxes with champagne ties made to match the dresses. Being the crafty type, I was all about the DIY details – I designed and handcrafted everything from the table numbers to the favor tags to the cocktail napkins to the escort cards to coordinate with our Bella Figura letterpress wedding invitations. Because we’re both obsessed with sweets, favors were little kraft paper bakery boxes filled with homemade cookies baked by my mother and stepfather.

Being literature buffs, the cake was topped with a cluster of paper flowers made from the pages of old romance novels. Otherwise the design was simple – we worked with the pastry chef we did because her cakes are amazingly delicious and the strawberry champagne flavor reminds me of the birthday cake my mother makes me every year. Splurging on a fancy fondant cake was of no interest to me, this was all about the cake for us. We ate the top tier for breakfast while on our honeymoon – hands down the best breakfast I have ever had.

Our wedding ended up being a perfect reflection of us and who we really are. It was all about the love. In fact, people still talk about how much fun they had and, for me, that’s what really mattered. I could recount all of the projects that didn’t get finished (there were several), all the great ideas for fancy little details that never happened, but when I look back those are never the things that come to mind. I remember getting married, being blissfully happy and living happily ever after. (Or something pretty close to it.)

{Photos by James Bass.}