Our Wedding Day Vision

One of the first things we had to determine, before we dove headfirst into our plans, was to determine what we wanted our wedding to look like. We both were huge foodies, who loved to cook, eat, drink, entertain and had a penchant for bygone eras. (We both came into our relationship with record turntables AND record collections in early 2003. If you don't know what either are, I'd recommend you Google it!) 

I started to envision a 5 pm wedding ceremony, with an elegant retro-vintage vibe. My soon-to-be husband had introduced me to the Thin Man movies and we fancied ourselves a modern-day Nick and Nora Charles.

While those movies were done in the 1930's, we loved the cocktail element they portrayed and how people actually dressed up and looked sharp when the occassion (and there were many) called for it. We were both smitten with the gorgeously tightly fitted, double-breasted suits of that era for men. Wouldn't it be great to have a tuxedo that looked like that?!

Early when we had just started dating, we watched the original "SpyKids" movie together. If you have not seen that movie, the beginning of the movie starts with how the parents met and their dramatic wedding day. I instantly fell in love with this fictional couples wedding cake: a tall-tiered number, bright yellow with bold flowers piped in frosting across the sides and a Day of the Dead wedding couple figurine for the cake topper.

It indulged my love of bright colors, being untraditional in the usual-boring-typical wedding cake look, and the Day of the Dead figures incorporated my Mexican-American fiances heritage while providing a fun and funky element. When we first watched the movie and saw the wedding cake, we agreed that should we get married someday, we wanted our cake to look JUST.LIKE.THAT.  (Right after we were engaged, I bought my first official wedding planning magazine and a DVD copy of the "SpyKids" movie!)

Plans and ideas began to take shape and form off of our initial concepts.

A vintage, Spanish-inspired wedding venue perhaps? (Old Laurelhurst Church below...)

And while we didn't want to go completely Mexican (no Mariachi bands, thank you!) in our wedding plans and themes, we did want to incorporate some elements into the ceremony and the overall scheme including a Day of the Dead bridal couple cake topper...

I imagined 1950's inspired cocktail dresses for each of our wedding attendants to wear and for those dresses to have elbow-length gloves as a key accessory.

We knew we wanted food to be an important focus at our reception dinner.  Meanwhile, I was dying to have Chivari ballroom chairs for the ceremony and reception, my favorite since childhood.

I also wanted silver beaded glass Belmont plate chargers for the dinner portion of the reception.

Together, we envisioned a three or four-piece jazz band playing during dinner and a post-ceremony cocktail hour with a bar that served signature cocktails. We preferred a formal sit down dinner instead of a dinner buffet and wanted to make our wedding a throwback to a bygone era of long ago: a time when manners and etiquette and formality meant something and was appreciated.

We knew we wanted a smaller wedding (no more than about 75 guests invited) and that we wanted it to be a representation of the two of us.

Finally, we had an outline for the rest of our plans to begin falling into and expanding into place!