Kirsten and Dave's Lilac + Grey Wedding...

Kirsten and Dave's awesome wedding, captured by Photobolic, is full of adorable and fun details! Tin can centerpieces, honey jar favors, and a guestbook made up of sweet little postcards and polaroid pictures are just the tip of the iceberg. With so much goodness, it's hard to pick my favorite thing. If I had to though, it would probably be Kirsten's dress. It's amazing!!! Can you believe this flirty little number only cost $500?! I was seriously shocked when I heard that. Just proof that you can find great deals out there for your wedding. It just takes a little searching:)

More from Kirsten:

Dave and I got engaged on a trip to Vegas in September with friends. I’d been bugging him the night before that we should just hit a wedding chapel and take the plunge and he kept saying no, no, no. I was actually only being half-hearted because although I wanted to get married to Dave, I wanted it to be a celebration with our friends and family instead of a run away. As it turned out, he proposed to me the very next night as we were giggling and goofing around in bed (my friends and I call it the lazy proposal J) and it was an instant yes.

I am more into shoes than dresses so ended up purchasing three pairs of shoes – I wore two of them and just decided the day of which for the ceremony and which for the reception.



I bought my wedding dress in Palm Springs while visiting my parents after an LA trip. For some reason, the dress was really low on my priority list. This actually didn’t happen until the middle of February which I think was too late to order a dress and so I was looking at getting something off the rack. I also for some reason thought that wedding dress shopping would be horrible and that nothing would look good on me. My initial thoughts were that I wanted lace and sort of that trumpet, body-conscious look and of course got the exact opposite!



I also picked out a few different pieces of jewelry and just wore what was right – some Fiona Paxton earrings and a silver cocktail ring.



Deep down Dave is a bit of a traditionalist (just a bit) and really wanted to get married in a church. I on the other hand wanted to have an outdoor ceremony, but truly just wanted to get married so acquiesced to Dave on that one. I figured this would let me off the hook on a few of my own wishes too and our ceremony turned out absolutely beautiful!



We didn’t really have a theme. Originally the colors of our wedding were going to be grey and yellow but that got switched to grey, lilac and white based on a tie Dave had bought (although that tie ended up getting returned).



We more wanted to have a casual, fun, party-party-party vibe going on verses getting to caught up in an actual theme like circus, Hollywood, etc.



I really loved the planning process as far as ideas went. I loved looking at blogs (mainly), magazines and anything wedding related. I even dragged my sister and best friend to a wedding show (which for me was not very helpful – way too traditional and surprisingly 80s). I had a really strong vision of how I wanted the wedding to look. I’ve done corporate event planning in my past and work in a communications field so a lot of the details were pretty important to me.



I obsessed a bit about centre-pieces – by a bit, I mean a lot. I’m not sure why but the tablescapes meant a lot to me. I pictured having the tables littered with flowers. As such, my bridesmaids, parents and myself saved all our tin cans for months – which meant a lot of eating soup, beans and tomatoes. I spray painted the largest tins lilac, the medium tins silver and the smallest tins in two shades of grey. They were gorgeous, charming and saved a ton on having to get 130 vases or so. The largest ones were filled with Hydrangea, medium with peonies and the smallest with spider mums – all white!



We made our own honey jar favors with bulk honey, bulk jars, twine, 2 different patterns of lilac gingham and ordered little “Spread the Love” tags from an Etsy seller.



We had a wedding activity and coloring book (found a template on the internet) for our kids table along with crayons, big puzzles and flash cards to play with. We had almost 20 kids at our wedding in a “fancy” restaurant and they were awesome. When they weren’t dancing, they had so much to keep them busy that there were no meltdowns, etc.



Our signature cocktail was the dark and stormy – hopefully not a harbinger of what is too come (just kidding) but because we fell in love with the drink while we were in Bermuda and wanted to share it with our family and friends.




Instead of buying material for table runners and having them sewn, I saw lots of different ideas such as using wall paper or wrapping paper but I could never find anything that I thought would work. My mom ended up tracking down a bunch of rolls of ribbon grey, grey with white polka dots and white that had been reduced to clear and I think it fit our look perfectly!



I bought some used hurricane vases as well as some extra vases and glass bowls from Wal-Mart for our candy buffet. All the candy for it came from Wal-Mart, grocery and drug stores and Costco. (It was actually pretty difficult to find white, silver and purple candies – especially the purple but we scoured around and it came out beautifully).



The little owl paper banner said “so happy together” and was made by an Etsy seller. It was really cute!



We purchased a lot of cheap white planting pots from IKEA, along with some white and red heart material for our photo booth backdrop which Dave built with his groomsmen and brothers. We hooked up our camera to an old TV and got a remote for it so people could take their own pictures. We also had a Fuji Instax camera during cocktail hours in which we had a friend photographing couples, groups, etc.

Our guest book was little postcards (another Etsy seller) and once people had filled one out, they had their photo snapped and everything was hung on twine over top of the candy buffet.



Etsy was actually such a huge resource as well – I loved scouring it and our cake topper was from the seller EmilieFriday.

A few times during the planning, Dave was a bit regretful that he didn’t take me up on the Vegas elopement but a few times that night he told me that he wouldn’t have had it any other way and it was the best day of his life – I feel the exact same way! I think we concentrated on the things that make a good party, let other things fall to the wayside and just had fun!

Wedding Vendors:

Photographer: Photobolic
Ceremony Venue: St. Joseph Church, Calgary, Alberta
Reception Venue : Teatro, Calgary, Alberta
Florist: Michelle at Blue Hydrangea, Calgary
Hairstylist: Hedkandi Salon, Bankers Hall, Calgary, Alberta
Makeup Artist: Bobbi Brown, Laura at Holt Renfrew, Calgary

Dress: Oleg Cassini, David’s Bridal
Earrings: Fiona Paxton
Groom’s Suit: Prada, Holt Renfrew

DJ: Andy@Weird Andy Karaoke World

Stirsticks and Labels: Miss Pickles Press
Postcard Wishes: Cut the Cake Designs
Cake Topper: Emilie Friday
Papel Picado - Owl paper banners: Aymujer
Photobooth Props: Glasses and Mustaches by MaroDesigns + chalkboard thought bubbles by dzns4ubyme

Congratulations to Kirsten + Dave, and a big thank you to Wei from Photobolic!