Ben and Aileen’s Wedding

Their Story

**A huge thank you to Style Me Pretty for featuring our wedding today!!! Check it out here**

It’s hard to know where to begin with today’s wedding…because it’s mine! Ben and I were married on July 31st (hard to believe it’s already been 3 months!) Since then, I have been dying to share all the details here on Love & Lavender. First off, I have to give a big shout-out to our amazing photographers, Mark and Rosie of Simply Rosie Photography. They road-tripped all the way down to Seattle from Winnipeg, Canada to shoot our wedding…and they were so great! Not only did they capture everything perfectly, but they helped us with lots of day-of details like a last-minute rehearsal and the cake cutting.

Ben and I were on a budget for our wedding which really forced us to get creative. For example, I love designer dresses but I knew they were way out of my budget. So I designed my dress and had it custom-made from China. It turned out well (luckily!) and fit me without any alterations.

My bridesmaids wore dresses from Anthropologie–and I’ve seen them wearing these dresses since, so I know they were actually re-wearable! Yay.

I had two pairs of shoes! I bought the ruffly ones for the wedding, but they were a little short so I wore a pair of yellow wedges I already owned for the ceremony.

My bridesmaid Sarah did my hair and makeup. She did an amazing job!

That’s my husband Ben! He’s so handsome 🙂

We did bridal party pictures before the ceremony, which was a great way to relax, taking advantage of the croquet area that we’d set up.

We had the guys wear suspenders instead of suits or tuxes to save money. Although they were a little skeptical at first, I think it turned out well.

We made the boutonnieres out of little paper pinwheels (which were a recurring theme in our wedding). We also DIY’d all the flowers the day before the wedding. Huge thank you’s to my mom and my bridesmaids for helping with that. We used white garden roses, pink ranunculus, and billy balls for the bouquets. Then we wrapped the stems with twine and glued little pinwheels on them too!

Our venue was the Beau Lodge, a gorgeous 70-acre property surrounded by woods. As soon as we visited it, we knew that it was perfect!

For our guestbook, we had guests fill out notecards with advice, memories, or well wishes.

We made the programs (and invitations and all the paper signs) ourselves. We used a little vintage suitcase to hold the programs.

Ben and I got married in front of a mossy apple tree–it’s wasn’t the typical ceremony spot at our venue, but we loved it. We made the wooden signs that we had throughout the wedding.

Right after our ceremony, we had all of our guests take pictures at our photo booth. We had hung paper pinwheels from a tree and set up a little bench with empty white frames.

We had some fun at the photo booth ourselves!

The food was amazing, if we do say so ourselves! Ben and I agreed early on that we wanted to have food that we ourselves really liked–and lots of it. So instead of doing something formal, we went with burgers! We rented a couple big barbecue grills and had some friends man them. Then, we had tons of sides, all lovingly made by our families the day before our wedding. There was seriously SO much good food.

My mom made the punch, which was really good, and I couldn’t resist getting some striped paper straws!

For our centerpieces, we laid out paper doilies as runners and stacked vintage books that I had collected from thrift stores. Then, we used mason jars and milk bottles as vases and propped paper pinwheels and vintage keys around them. Of course, I had to incorporate lavender, which we harvested from Ben’s parents backyard.

The pinwheels were an easy (but time-consuming) DIY project. I used mostly old sheet music that my mom had, accordion folded it, then glued buttons on either side to hold them together.

We loved seeing these photos of our guests having fun with the books.

We also loved these sweet photos of our grandparents (mine above, Ben’s below).

We hung a bunch of photos of ourselves throughout the years on twine that we stretched across the entrance of the lodge.

We had no shortage of dessert at our wedding! The tiered cake was by Pure Bliss Desserts. We also had cheesecake made by Ben’s sister, Italian cream cake and cookies made by Ben’s dad, old fashioned doughnuts from our favorite local bakery, and lots of candy. Needless to say, we both have a sweet tooth 🙂

The cake topper was one of my favorite DIY projects. I’d seen similar ones for over $100 online, so I decided to try my hand at making one. It took awhile, but the total cost was somewhere in the neighborhood of $10 so I’d say it was pretty worth it!

We totally forgot about getting a pretty knife for cutting the cake, so we used this one. Haha!

A month before the wedding, I found a pretty antique desk at a thrift store that had these gorgeous drawers. So I lined them with kraft paper and we used them to hold the cookies and the candy! I loved how it turned out.

Ellen and I couldn’t resist getting a Love & Lavender shot. I was kind of greedy with my lavender bundle!3

Lastly, here’s a couple shots of Ben and I. We went on a scenic drive with and stopped at some pretty spots along the way!

Whew! Is your finger tired of scrolling?? Told you it would be a long post! Thanks to Rosie of Simply Rosie Photography for all the photos!

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