wedding wednesday: ceremony location and details

When we left off, all the ladies and all the gents had been beautified and were ready to go. While we were doing that, some really nice folks were putting the finishing touches on the ceremony site.

If you'll remember, it took quite some doing to find our venues. Even though it was stressful and I thought the search would never end, I think it turned out fabulously. We got married where we met, two years (almost to the day) later. We were indoors--since I didn't want to worry about rain or heatstroke in August in Texas. But, man! There were so many windows and such great natural light. And when you add in the huge butterfly habitat behind us, we might have been outside. With air conditioning.

The area we were in is just a lobby. I had to rent the chairs and have them set up by nice friends. There's a large sculpture hanging above our "altar" that happened to go perfectly with our colors.

Since there are such high ceilings, I wanted to pull down the eye a little and had The Brother build a simple arbor-type structure. When I say simple, I'm referring to the materials and lines. It caused a few problems of it's own but turned out great. You'll see it a bit more in future photos but here's one of the bases (that caused problems of their own as the flowers were all dead the morning of the wedding).

Because it really is a lovely space, we did minimal decorations. Some of my lovely friends and family helped me make these paper flower decorations for the aisle chairs:

There was a table behind the rows of chairs that held our formal guestbook.

It also held our programs, maps to the reception, and parking passes. By far the most exciting item on the table, however, was the memory candle. I wanted to do something to honor the many people who weren't there that day. My SIL had done the same thing and I really liked it. Since the venue didn't allow open flames, I purchased a really cool fake candle online. The outside is wax and inside is a bulb, of course. But! It has a little sensor that allows you to blow the light on and off.

You'd think that candle was exciting enough (for dorks like me) but instead of a traditional candle stand, we placed it on a cake plate that belongs to my MIL's mother. It's crazy old and has been used in 4 or 5 generations of weddings in their family. I was honored to use it and couldn't have been more relieved when it made it through the day intact.

Up next? The ceremony begins!

(All photos by Monique Montoya.)