You might remember Julie + Tyler from their engagement session earlier this year. They are both suuuuper nice people and we loved every minute of shooting their wedding. Tyler is a pilot, and they incorporated that theme in both the engagement session and the wedding decor. Love it. Julie worked so hard on all the little DIY details — from the invitations, to floral centerpieces, to the seating chart.
I asked Julie about designing and planning her wedding, and this is what she said:
“I went to ACAD for graphic design so the whole idea of creating mood boards and gathering my ideas was naturally where I started. Right after getting engaged I bought a sketchbook and this became my wedding idea and research book. Everything wedding related – all my research and ideas went into this one book. Every time I found something I liked either in a magazine or on the web I would cut it out and paste it in or write down little notes and ideas.
I wanted to incorporate something of both Tyler and I into the wedding. Tyler’s passion is airplanes and since we choose a spring wedding we decided to try and play off of these two elements without over doing the use of airplanes. In one sentence, our wedding played off of the idea of a spring garden party with an undertone of aviation. We exhibited this through the use of flowers as our main source of decorations and little touches of aviation – ‘love is in the air’ saying/stamp, paper airplanes, postcards, airmail invitations and programs, luggage tags, etc. Since I had a sketchbook full of ideas it just started coming together and the ideas took off!
We used the saying ‘Love is in the air’ in our engagement photoshoot so we decided to make it our wedding theme and played it out as much as we could – invitations, favors, guestbook and of course we reused the sign at our wedding. We tried to keep it clean and simple yet feel elegant and fun.
It was lots of work and numerous hours were spent with an exacto knife cutting paper. For me I love art projects and cutting paper so I had so much fun turning my ideas into reality and seeing it all come together. It may of been a lot of work (I am sure some people thought I was crazy) but I would do it all over again! A friend and I spent 12 hours cutting and gluing the invitations together — although 4 years at ACAD and suddenly exacto knives, rubber cement and crop marks are the new standard, lol. All along I wanted to create an event where the theme was carried throughout so I could place the different elements in my portfolio and it looked unified.”
Julie’s mom plays the piano as Julie gets ready upstairs.
Q: What was your favourite moment of your wedding day and why?
Julie’s answer: This is a tough question. I honestly loved every moment of the day and thought everything was perfect for us! I wouldn’t change anything. If I had to pick one moment I would say my favourite would be walking down the aisle. In those couple minutes that it takes for the ushers to open the door, for my father and I to walk down and then to be looking at my fiance at the front so many thoughts went through my head. I was excited, extremely happy, overwhelmed by all the family and friends all in one place, the realization that this is happening and that new chapter of life is starting. It was a great moment!
Julie’s bouquet had a relaxed, wildflower feel to it.
Q: If you could give future brides advice about their wedding day, what would it be?
Julie’s answer:
1) The day of your wedding don’t stress over details just enjoy every moment of your day. No matter what happens at the end of the day you are married to your best friend!
2) Once you can state in one sentence what you want the feel or theme of your wedding to be (it can be as simple as a few adjectives and colours) and it echoes the couple then the ideas of how to portray this start to flow and you have something to measure all your decisions up to.
Awesome advice, Julie! I totally agree :)
