Today celebrate our one year wedding anniversary. In honour of this milestone you are cordially invited to a throwback of our very own small meaningful, affordable, backyard wedding. I am breaking it all down, including all the lessons it taught me along the way.
I can honestly say June 3, 2021 was one of the best days of my life. I’ve never laughed so big, smiled so hard, and cried so many happy tears.
Over the years, Adrian and I talked a lot about what our wedding day would look like; We thought we’d plan a big destination wedding and invite anyone who wanted to come. And now, I can’t even imagine things different than this intimate wedding.
A lot of people thought we were crazy planning a COVID wedding with all the restrictions and uncertainty. There was a lot of ‘what about’ questions, and I would be lying if I said I wasn’t worried. But we chose to embrace it all and dive in to preparing for the biggest and best day of our lives.
We picked Thursday June 3, 2021 not only because June 3 was our first date, it was the date Adrian proposed, and 2021 was also our 10 year anniversary.
Priorities:
The first thing that we did was become very clear on our priorities:
- Planning a wedding on a budget, and with 3 kids we would rather spend the money on a family vacation rather than one day.
- An authentic representation of us as a couple, from the location, ambiance, décor right down to the date.
- We weren’t looking to through a big party. We wanted this to be a meaningful and personal celebration of our love and commitment.
With our priorities clear it was fairly easy to make the rest of the decisions.
Location:
The Ceremony was outdoors at the Britannia shipyard and Historical site which was FREE, one caveat was that it needed to take place after they were closed at 4pm, This worked because our date fell on a Thursday so we had to wait until the kids were out of school. We chose a location that was a frequent spot of many of our romantic first date walks. It was tucked out of the way of foot traffic providing both privacy and a view of the water.
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- Britannia ship yard
The Reception was originally going to be cocktails and hors d’oeuvres at a local brewery, but given the strict COVID measures we pivoted to a backyard reception. This turned out to be the perfect backdrop, checking all 3 priorities, authentic , personal, and budget friendly.
Decor:
The wedding color was pulled from the champagne/gold color of the bridesmaid dresses. The theme was an elegant rustic country; incorporating our love for antiques and Adrian’s passion and talent for woodworking. I mainly pulled things from our house adding a few small accent pieces from amazon. The show stopping 3 foot tall “Love” letters provided by my employer The Great Little Box Company, provided the perfect focal point.
Flowers:
Local wholesale florist Niki Trading, did a fabulous job providing arrangements that were affordable, and worked with our theme. The flowers provided simple texture, and rustic romantic vibe while fitting perfectly with our theme.
Cake
Our Birch Tree wedding cake captured the sweetness of the special day.
My super talented friend Sabrina of @mrsjonescookies made this into a delicious reality. Sabrina managed this while pregnant and with 3 small kids running around. Sooo….. she is basically a superhero. This blows my mind because I can barely pour a bowl of cereal with a 6-year-old around.
Bride & Grooms Attire:
I purchased my dress from Lulus for $98USD+ tax and shipping. My Mother-In-Law is a seamstress so alteration were free . I chose a dress that was simple and paired with with a dramatic veil from Amazon, my jewelry and hair accessories were also great amazon finds.
Adrian picked out a whole new wardrobe from Moore’s for the same price that it would have cost to rent suits for all the boys. Rather than one day wears they were able to wear these pieces multiples times throughout the year.
The Food:
With the limited guest list of friends and close family, and our eldest having a diary allergy, we wanted to keep things simple and affordable. We also didn’t want anyone to have to do any cooking or cleaning. We decided on specialty pizza from Stevenson Pizza Co. , and Sushi from Ichiro Japanese restaurant and Adrian parents made a beautiful Charcuterie tray. I rented tables, chairs, linens and tableware. This pulled the whole reception together with a simple elegance and helped to reduce clean up.
Photographer:
I used Thistlewood Photography and Wandering Monster Media for my wedding photo’s and video. I have to give a special shout out to the incredible Ashley Macdonald and family. This husband and wife team agreed to do my 2020 wedding in 2019 but with Covid it had to be postponed. In 2020 they announced they were pregnant and STILL shot my wedding in 2021 with a 3 week old baby…TOTAL ROCK STARS.
Plannnig a wedding on a budget:
Now that you’ve virtually crashed our backyard wedding, you may wonder how much our big day set us back. Well I can say thanks to a major DIY effort and a lot of help from our friends and family, we managed to host the entire event for under $5,000.
The whole experience taught me that the price tag on a wedding, the carats in a ring, or the size of a guest list doesn’t make a person any more or less married. Nothing about a wedding can quantify the love and commitment between two people. Every wedding is a unique representation of the bride and groom and their individual tastes and values.
