Wedding details.

All that ranting about the brown tuxedo and other stupid wedding inventions took me back to my planning stages. The nine months prior to our fall wedding were nuts. I was living in an alternate universe, and only now do I recognize how absurd the whole thing was. At the same time, I know that all of my obsessing paid off in the end. I was determined to have this wedding on *my* terms, and not on Martha's or David's or even Vera's. We had a church ceremony with an outdoor, tented reception in the hills of WV, and I was going for a natural, pretty, let's all get together and celebrate vibe. Here are some non-pro details shots taken by my brother and sister-in-law.

First, the altar arrangements. Simple cymbidium orchids with bear grass in vases bought at Ollie's for 6 bucks:

The modern stained-glass window at the chapel:

A beautiful friend playing the part of bridesmaid in a black velvet JCrew dress with bouquet:

And the official JCrew pic:

One thing I should say is that all of my bridesmaids are beautiful, skinny bitches (I hate them), so this dress looked fabulous on them. Probably wouldn't have been a great choice if the girls had all different body types.

My husband's brother, playing the part of groomsman. We purchased nice silk ties to gift the men with since the rental options were all hideous AND AREN'T EVEN REAL TIES. The boys wore classic black single-button jackets with notched lapels. His bout is a single freesia stem.

The porch of the house where the reception took place:

The cake, 'twas red velvet with buttercream icing and a little fondant lace detail and it was yummy and looked edible and somewhat homemade and I loved it for its un-Martha-ness.......with mom and dad's cake topper from 1972 and a homemade cake stand (crown molding and spray paint, that's all I'm saying):

The world's most perfect gardenia, a flower very special to my family, used floating in crystal bowls on the cake table, in the moms' and grandmas' corsages, in my bouquet, and in mini form as a bout for my hubs:

The long, linear tables. Be gone to banquet-hall hell, round! Also of note - the nice, bulbous wine glasses that we bought at Gabriel Brothers for...get this.....17 cents a piece. Of course, we still have 300 of them sitting in the basement now, but geez! The wine glasses the rental company had were so teeny-tiny, with the shortest stems I've ever seen. So finding these was a real coup.:

Me and the hubs about to cut the cake. My dress is a Nicole Miller, found at the NYC Filene's Basement Bridal Extravaganza sale for $250.00, originally $1800.00, still on the NM website. Oh, yes. And husband also wore a single-button jacket, but with a black silk tie:

And, for posterity, my red satin shoes:

Of course, there are a million and five details that I'm not showing here, like my homemade invites, save-the-dates, programs, menus, seating cards, honey favors, welcome bags, etc, etc, etc. But I'm still slow at this blogging thing and that already took me forever. And I can't use all of my original content at once, people.