(All photographs by IlluminArts Photography)
Melissa & Steve of Farmington, NM
Married June 9, 2007
Durango, Colorado
The Details
How long to plan the wedding: About a year
Number of Guests: 250
Budget: $8,000
Wedding Site: Chris Park Pavilion at Haviland Lake - Durango, Colorado
Wedding Theme/Décor: I guess I would say the Colorado mountains were our inspiration. The colors were green, coral, brown and Champagne. We used as many natural elements as possible, as well as items we already had or could borrow or rent. The tables were set with green table cloths with white squares in the middle, topped with wine glasses filled with green sand or coffee beans and candles and surrounded with pine brows and green ribbon.
The Flowers: The flowers were inspired by a 'wild flower' bouquet and featured all of the wedding colors as well as many natural elements. The boutonnieres featured acorns.
The Menu: We had a casual BBQ buffet.
The Favors: No favors - we figured they would just be thrown away and cause more trash than anything.
SPECIAL TOUCHES
We served s' mores as the groom's cake.
The wedding topper was my grandmother's.
My dad surprised me and had Steve give me his mother's ring (whom passed away before
I was born) as my wedding ring.
My aunt designed the invitations and we had them printed on scrapbooking cardstock in the wedding colors - they were beautiful.
We had some family friends' children play their violins for the ceremony. They are in the top of their age group in the country for fiddling so it was one more personal touch.
What went wrong
Steve broke his leg 3 weeks before the wedding and had to have surgery. We were so thankful he was ok. It didn’t interrupt our plans too much. The only hard part was that we only got to have our First dance ( he sat in a wheel chair the rest of the night).
The food was late, which ended up being ok, we just had the cake while we waited. The cake was the wrong shape, but still tasted wonderful - it gets cut up anyway!
What would you do different
I wish we had found someone to direct everything the day of the wedding. My mom and I missed time together getting ready because she was busy setting everything up.
MY Advice
1. Listen to your fiancé and really make sure you ask him what he would like. Steve picked out the spot for the ceremony as well as the cake, don’t assume they don’t care. I was really upset when Steve didn’t want to wear a tux or suit, but he was really uncomfortable in them. I had to remember that he had to spend all day in his 'outfit' too and I wanted him to have fun and not worry about what he was wearing.
2. Take all the help you can get. We never could have done all of it without the help from all of our friends and family, they were amazing and even pointed out some things that worked wonderfully that we hadn’t thought of.
3. Don’t think you have to spend a lot of money to have a beautiful wedding, the best part of our wedding was that I could look around and see all of the great things my mom and I had imagined, and spent the last year hunting for, come to life so wonderfully, and because we did it all ourselves it meant so much more to see the finished product. Be Flexible!
Honeymoon Locale: Backpacking in Wyoming.
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Photographer: IlluminArts
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