Etsy Wedding Scrapbook: Valerie Tyler

Throughout this blog, you will have the opportunity to meet many members of the Etsy Wedding Team who will also share with you some of the photos and details of their own weddings, weddings we have attended, or our" Always a bridesmaid stories" I figured to kick off the series, I'd share with you a few details of my own wedding.

I happen to be a jewelry designer, and a teacher. These two things make me a bit of a micro-manager. So when it came to the details about the role of flowers in my wedding I was really rather anxious.

For starters, I knew I did not want to spend a fortune on floral centerpieces for my tables. I toyed around with the idea of ordering fresh flowers in bulk, but knew there was no way they would ever successfully make it to the tables. The solution came from a lot of brainstorming on my part and the help of my rather artistically created mother. I wanted the centerpieces to be natural, but not particularly fragile or pricey. What we ended up doing was get affordable glass vases. I then used natural bamboo poles, grasses, and money changers (unfortunately I couldn't find enough **real** moneychangers, but they still looked and felt real). We then recycled smaller glass bottles as well and put the bamboo inside the bottles to center them inside the vases and filled the entire vase with glass pebbles to weight it. The bottles were then wrapped inside vellum, and a black ribbon added for flair. I think the total cost per centerpiece came to about less than $10.00 a centerpiece.

Since my wedding, I've noticed different versions of this. I had a friend who took beautiful branches and put them in a vase. She made personalized cards to commemorate occasions and events that she had in common with her wedding guests and typed all the happy memories on artsy cards. She hung the cards from the branches. They were a great way to get to know the other guests, and let each guest know how much the bride and groom cared about their special memories of their times spent with the guests.

I've had also dreamed for ages of doing the old-fashioned toss of the bouquet coming out of church. It had always seemed so elegant and glamorous to me. The whole bouquet toss and accompanying garter dance at the reception just didn't really fit with my personality or my husbands. The solution was that I had a throw away bouquet of simple daisies, tied loose. I walked out, untied the ribbon and tossed the flowers to----the children! It was a delight to watch the flowers scatter through the air and watch the children gleefully catch them all.

Having been married on the Fourth of July weekend however, I think one of my favorite moments was when we all lit sparklers under the tent outside. Cute little tin buckets filled with sand and star cut outs were perfect places to put out the hot sparklers. The grown ups were more hilarious than the children even running around twirling their arms in the air (note: my change of dress for late night dancing too!)