anatomy of a truly personal wedding: laying the groundwork
When we started working with Caitie and Curt, they were very clear about what they didn’t want for their wedding — no church ceremony, no matchy-matchy bridesmaids, no cookie-cutter approach to décor — and considerably less sure about what they did want.
But the longer we talked, the more patterns began to emerge.
Caitie loves enormous old trees, medieval literature, hand-made crafts, and everything purple. She also has a soft spot for peacock feathers.
Curt loves classic rock, literature in general, Mark Twain in particular, and obscure bits of trivia. He’s a pirate at heart, and has been since kindergarten.
They both love books, movies, family traditions, quirky humor, Shakespeare and Disney in near-equal measure, and pie.
So where did that leave us?
To help them design a wedding whose every detail told their story without creating a visual hodge-podge, we needed an organizing idea … something to tie the elements together in a way that looked beautiful, spoke volumes, and made sense. We knew books had to figure prominently, but we were also determined to find a way to incorporate pirates and princesses without crossing the line into kitsch or cartoon.
Hours of brainstorming later, we realized that it came down to which books we chose. With that, we were on our way toward a “vintage treasures” concept that brought together antique copies of Treasure Island, the Brothers Grimm and Perrault’s Fairy Tales with bits of Victorian silver, sparkling cut glass and family keepsakes.
