As seen in Elegant Wedding
Spring/Summer 2004

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My Wedding. My Way.
One bride who shied away from formality and convention found the perfect mantra for her wedding day ...

GETTING PERSONAL All-in-one invites featuring photos of the happy couple, were one of many custom details that made the day extra special.

When my boyfriend proposed to me more than a year ago, I panicked. It wasn't the thought of spending the rest of my life with him that terrified me. I wasn't distressed by the fact that he never balanced his checkbook, or that he worshipped AC/DC, or that he used more hair products than I did. My fear was much larger. So horrifying in fact that on more than one occasion, the mere thought of it actually made me sweat. And, as far as I could tell from all the weddings I'd ever been to, I couldn't possibly get married without it - the Chicken Dance.

I couldn't think of a single wedding that I'd been to since I graduated from college 10 years before where they didn't do the Chicken Dance, where the bride and groom didn't come down the aisle to "Pachelbel's Canon," do the "for richer or poorer" vows and smear wedding cake across each other's faces.

I didn't want to dance with my father to "Sunrise, Sunset." I couldn't imagine having a fake bouquet made just to toss it away to a crowd of single women. And I certainly didn't want some strange bachelor, likely a second cousin thrice removed, reaching up my dress to pull off my garter with his teeth.

"I guess I can't get married," I told my mother, who stared at me with the alarm that you could only see on the face of a woman with one child - a woman who had been mentioning, on and off for the past 32 years, what a wonderful grandmother she would be. It's not that I couldn't deal with all of those ludicrous traditions. The problem was, every wedding I'd been to seemed to be the exact replica of the wedding betore it, and the wedding before that. I practically had to look at the names embossed in gold on the matchbook to remember whose wedding it was.

I wanted my wedding to be special. Different. Fun. I wanted us to behave like ringleaders instead of royalty. I wanted our guests to be surprised.

"We can do that," my mother said. And we started to plan.

Looking back now, I can admit one thing: It's much easier to do the Chicken Dance. Formulas are easy to follow, which is why so many people follow them down to the Dollar Dance. Of course, we didn't leave a single tradition intact. (In full disclosure, I must reveal that my mother is an event planner. Yes, I know. I had an edge. ) But you don't need to do everything we did. All you need is a special touch here and there to make your wedding unforgettable. Let me share my 10-point plan:

Programs printed on fans served double-duty at the warm May wedding.

The Tone

Aside from our penchant for rare French cheeses, we are not a particularly elegant couple. We re simple. Creative. Silly. We like to hike and camp and watch action-adventure movies. We have close relationships with our friends and family, and we involve them in our lives (probably even more than they want). So, a wedding with a big church, receiving line, limo, black-tie, white linen, DJ and a going-away outfit just wouldn't he "us."

What would be? Casual. Intimate. Fun. Those three words became our mantra. Every idea we had, every choice we made, needed to satisfy at least one of those three concepts.

"The tone of the wedding should be determined by who the bride and groom are as people," says wedding planner Melissa Brannon, owner of Uncommon Events in Bucks County. "It should be about their lives, about who they are and why they are who they are. It's all about them. It should feel like them."

Before wedding planner Melissa Paul, owner of the Main Line's Melissa Paul Ltd., even starts planning, she asks the bride and groom to fill out a questionnaire. "I want to know what their favorite movies are, who their favorite music groups are, where they vacation," says Paul. "I want to know who they want to be as a couple."

The Colors

Don't be afraid. Weddings used to be filled with color, with whatever wildflowers you could gather. Then, Queen Victoria started making decor rules, and nuptials have been awash in white and ecru ever since. Just say no.

Color sets the mood. When my then fiance and I looked at linen samples, we decided to choose two colors on our own and then compare. We picked the same shades: lime and raspberry. Lime tablecloths and raspberry napkins. Lime flowerpots and raspberry geraniums. Lime mojitos and raspberry cosmopolitans.

"Bold colors are big," says Paul. "And thank God for it." She's done red and turquoise, chocolate brown and pale blue, lavender and green, even orange, red and hot pink together. And bridesmaids need not he afraid either - just because you choose strong colors doesn't mean that they must be draped in lime satin with a big tulle raspberry bow.

A watering can topped with a bow was part of the bold raspberry-and-lime color scheme carried throughout.

The Invitations

We knew two things: We didn't want our invitations to be ivory and engraved with black flowery script, and we didn't want guests to open the envelope and have all kinds of cards, pieces of paper and those irritating squares of tissue falling out. We wanted it to be all-in-one: wedding and reception details, response card, hotel information, directions and suggestions of things to do in the area (which, in our case, was western New York state near my hometown). A graphic-designer friend created an invitation that was casual, intimate and fun - a 24inch-long strip of glossy paper, folded like an accordion into seven panels, each one alternating between lime and raspberry backgrounds, covered with black-and white photo strips that we took in a booth at an arcade on Chestnut Street.

The best part? A logo she designed using our first names that appeared on everything - from the place cards and programs to the guest book, favors and thank-you cards - giving the wedding, in advertising speak, a "brand."

The Rules (when to break them)

When Brannon suggested for one wedding that the guests could take a trolley from the church and arrive on one side of Rittenhouse Square where a Dixieland band would meet them and march everyone across the square to The Rittenhouse hotel for their southern-themed reception, the bride just stared at her. "You can do that?" she asked.

Yes you can. When our guests arrived for the ceremony, we met them at the entrance to the resort, hugging and kissing and greeting them as the hosts of our own party. Once they sat down, we jogged down the aisle, our parents on our arms, to the song "Makin' Whoopie." We took the mike and welcomed everyone, introduced our parents and our grandparents, the friend who made the invitation, the friend who printed the invitation and the friend whose sister made the cake.

In lieu of a guest book, guests signed a square platter with permanent pen for a memento the couple can use.

We called up our buddies from high school and college for photos, which let everyone know who everyone else was. The minister, a family friend, invited guests to stand up and offer marriage advice. We wrote our own vows (it's scary, I know - that's why we used cheat sheets), asking each other "to laugh with me," "to stand by my side" and "to never rain on my parade."

And, after the deal was done, we strutted up the aisle to the Raiders of the Lost Ark theme song. Later in the evening, people told us that they had never been to a more intimate wedding, that they had never been so moved, that they had never felt like such a part of the ceremony. And we had achieved our goal: casual, intimate, fun.

To get your creativity flowing, check out Weddings from the Heart by Daphne Rose Kingma (Conari Press, 1991) or The Ultimate Wedding Idea Book by Cynthia Clumeck Muchnick (Crown Publishing Group, 2001).

The Guest Book

Do you really think that, in 10 years, you're going to pull out a satiny ecru book with lined pages and read over a list of signatures? Are you sure you want an engagement photo with signatures around it hanging on your wall?

We went to Color Me Mine in Chestnut Hill, painted our logo and the wedding date (in lime and raspberry, of course) on a hig square platter, our guests
signed it, and we fired it after ... so we could use it. (It's ideal for the first Thanksgiving with the in-laws. )

You could ask someone to take Polaroids of your guests as they arrive and mount the photos in an album. You could have pieces of gorgeous paper and elegant pens and ask your guests to write down a wedding wish for you, and place it in a wishing well. You could have small guest books on each table where guests can write advice. You could steal from the Quakers and ask everyone to sign a marriage contract as witnesses to the promises you made. (To learn about other cool and ethnic wedding traditions, visit http://www.world-wedding-traditions.net.)

A graphic artist designed a logo for the bride and groom to use on all their wedding stationery.

The Music

Dixieland, salsa, swing, bluegrass, big band, classical, mariachi - your options are endless. (At one fest, Paul had different musicians playing at different points all through the night.) But, as Brannon points out, "It takes a confident bride and groom to make a choice, to not worry that guests won't have such a great time if there's just one type of music." (Be sure to offer the band an extra-special tip if they don't fall prey to requests from guests for the Chicken Dance, the Macarena, the Electric Slide, or Celine Dion's "My Heart Will Go On.")

If you decide to have an after-hours party, like many of Paul's clients, you can follow her lead - coffee, cordials and a blues band, or a martini bar and a techno DJ. And, no matter when - rehearsal dinner, ceremony, reception - if your friends can sing, make them sing. (We started the reception with our college theater friends singing "Seasons of Love" from the musical Rent.) If your family sings, make thern sing. (Instead of a father/daughter dance, my dad completely shocked me by grabhing the mike and singing his own Iyrics to "Lady is a Tramp" - "My Daughter is a Champ.") If you can sing, sing. If you can t sing, sing anyway.

The Flowers
For centerpieces, roses are out, or so say some of our experts. It's that simple.

Brannon, who often works with Barney DeFusco at Robertson's Flowers in Wyndmoor, lit an entire room with massive rectangular candles, using flowers only as accents.

Paul, who works with many floral designers in the Philadelphia and New York areas, did an entire wedding, including the bouquet, in fluffy white feathers. She also filled huge glass containers with massive elephant ears for one wedding, accented the tables with fall leaves for another and mixed fruit in vintage mercury bowls with chunky candles on top of mirrors - yes, mirrors - for another reception. "[The mirrors] may seem tacky, but they reflect light like nobody's business," she says.

Try rocks and wood with orchids sprinkled over them. Both Brannon and Paul also like to hang arrangements from above. The centerpieces for our May wedding were baskets of annuals - impatiens, geraniums and vinca vines - that the guests could take home and plant.

Custom-printed Frisbees were fun and festive favors.

The Gift Baskets

When a bride wanted an "elegant country" wedding, Paul let the gift baskets in the hotel room set the mood. "She wanted the event to feel like we opened Grandma's cupboard and pulled everything outside on the lawn," she says. The baskets were filled with homemade cookies wrapped in colorful gingham dish towels.

Other decor highlights included 185 mismatched antique chairs, mismatched china, lemonade served in mason jars and old leather furniture set up around the dance floor.

For another wedding, Brannon filled baskets with wine from Chaddsford Winery, along with other welcoming gifts, and then wrapped them in personalized paper with the bride's and groom's names on it, created by Melanie Faigus, owner of Out of the Box Design in Wyncote.

Since we invited children to our wedding, my father handed out gift bags with their names on them at the start of the reception, each filled with sippy cups, groovy sunglasses, bubbles and game books - which gave their parents free time to have fun.

The Cake

From far away, our cake looked like a cake - six tiers with fresh flowers looped hetween them. But it wasn't a cake, exactly. It was a cake of cupcakes, which my husband and I served on trays to each guest to ensure we had face time with every single person who came.

"Cakes can be fun," says Brannon, who just planned a cake in the likeness of one couple's three dogs. (The cake arrived in Philadelphia on a one-way plane ticket from Mike's Amazing Cakes in the Seattle area. ) She also favors croquembouche - a hard caramel cone that newlyweds can smash with a champagne bottle, freeing a flood of profiteroles - from Robert Bennett at Miel Patisserie in Center City and Cherry Hill.

Children were treated to their own gift bags filled with goodies.

More and more, instead of cakes, Paul is creating an array of fabulous desserts - from special chocolates and dainty cookies to individual cheesecakes. For the elegant country wedding, she set up an ice-cream bar and served homemade apple and pecan pies.

The Favors

Trendwise, it's out of favor to give favors. "The bride and groom have already given so much by that point," says Brannon. But we wanted our guests to have something that would remind them of the day. We thought about homemade cookies made from our grandmother's recipes. Ingredients to make the mojitos we served. A CD of the song our friends sang. Polaroid snapshots taken throughout the night.

Finally, I secretly decided to have favors made that would be a surprise to my new husband, who is an avid (and quite good) Ultimate Frisbee player. At the end of the night, I rolled out a wheelbarrow filled with lime and raspberry Frisbees I had ordered from http://www.crestline.com. On them, I had our logo printed, along with the date and one phrase ... what else? Ultimate Team. EW