I fell in love with Erin and Jon’s budget wedding as soon as I saw it – I loved the cute, affordable and easy-to-DIY details, the beautiful venue and the bride’s lilac dress (which was actually a bridesmaid’s dress from J Crew). The day was held at Shadowbrook Restaurant in Captiola, California on the bride’s birthday (!) and was planned, in the most part, by her mother. She did almost everything herself, from chalk painting the mason jars to making the dessert trays from using vintage plates and tea cups.
“The overall theme for our wedding was vintage shabby chic”, explained Erin. “I have always looked up to my Nana and Papa and their marriage and I wanted our wedding to feel classic and vintage like an old love story. We had vintage photos of couples in our seating chart and lavender medicine bottles from 1900s in each centerpiece. Most of the décor was from antique stores and flea markets. I wanted the colors to reflect the season so we chose lavender and purples.”
“I didn’t need or want it to be a big fancy event”, she continued. “I wanted it to be about our love and all the people who have supported us to get to this moment. Jon is a writer. We decided to have some of our favorite writer’s quotes instead of table numbers. Each table was given a quote about life and love. Our table was the Tom Waits table. He is Jon and my favorite musician. Tom Waits and his wife Kathleen Brennan write his music together. Jon has always said we are a team like them. We also picked them because the moment I knew I was in love with Jon was at the Bridge School Benefit concert in 2007 where Tom Waits played.”
“Having my wedding on my birthday was so much fun! There are five family members including myself that have their birthday within four days of each other. We always have a big celebration ever year. It is also St. Patrick’s Day weekend and we are Irish. We had a family reunion already planned that weekend and we decided to turn it into a wedding! My birthday has always been a big family event so I thought having my wedding day on the same day would make it extra special.”
“In terms of the decorations, my Mom did almost everything herself. Jon and I antiqued all the hardback books for the centerpieces. We shopped at local antique stores in Soquel and the Fairfax Flea Market in Los Angeles. My cousin Dana made all of our cheesecake desserts. She is a baker and it meant the world to us that she took the time to contribute to our big day.”
“My Aunt Sue also did all of our flowers. I’ve always looked up to her as a child. She has the best sense of style. When she volunteered to help I was so overwhelmed with joy. I wanted them to feel like them were picked from the wild and placed in jars. We kept with the lavender and purple theme and added accents of greens. Our favors that were packets of wildflower seeds were from Fairyland Bazaar on Etsy. Our guestbook, which was a hand painted tree, was from The Inky Bean.”
“My favorite part about the wedding was having my Nana see me walk down the aisle”, she concluded. “She is almost 87 years old. It was very important to me to have her there. I joke with my husband that he is the love of my life but she is my soulmate.”
