When I decided to get married at the beach, it was very important to me to keep my original color scheme: Eggplant, ivory, champagne and maybe a splash of celadon here or there for fun. I didn't want to be the white and ocean blue bride everyone has seen a thousand times, and most importantly I did NOT want a beach theme. No flip-flops, no sea shells scattered on the tables, no lounge chair place card holders and no sand dollars in a tray of sand as escort cards. It's not that I think it's ugly, so please don't be offended if you've done these things, it's just not in my vision for my wedding. What I did want was to acknowledge the fact that we're getting married at the beach in a few understated aspects of the decor since we're not having a typical barefoot ceremony on the shore, but a formal church ceremony instead.
And it was hard to find a balance. When I originally met with my florist, I said I wanted small square vases with fluffy hydrangeas and limes or lemons in the bases. I mean, why not? Citrus come from Florida - that works, and it doesn't scream BEACH. But then, I started thinking about it, and how well did that fit with my overall design? It felt like I was unsuccessfully merging the formalness I wanted with the tropical location of the wedding. All of a sudden, I was dealing with a hodge-podge of great ideas that didn't really work together.
Thank goodness for my fmil!! It all started with a trip to Michael's and a few little understated beach items. Then, we headed to Marshall's for more big apothecary jars for candy, and she pointed out these beautiful vases. There were three, and they were perfect. But I needed 12. So we bought them and decided to try and few other TJ Maxx and Marshall's stores. Here's what we ended up with.
The vases are champagne, ivory, mother of pearl-ish, a bit of sea glass and a few hints of swirled purple. We plan to use a dark plum ribbon around them (i just threw some on there to show the effect) and still use the fluffy cream hydrangeas. Each table will have one or two vases since some of our tables seat 8 and others only 4, and we found 12 of them on our hunt for around $80 total. I love how they are all different shapes! The two big sea shells are kind of jobless right now, but I thought one would look nice on the "gift" table with a small card in front that tells people to leave greeting cards inside.
We also purchased a few of these little spheres covered with tiny shells to scatter on the candy bar table.
And last but not least, I found 10 of these amazing plum hued lanterns on mega sale at West Elm. We'll be hanging them from a tree with a candle inside. The photo didn't really capture the color well.
I finally feel like there's a cohesiveness to my entire look, and it's light and beachy but also has my purple accents and shows off how beautiful my color palette is! I'm so excited that what I originally envisioned as rich and Autumnal has transitioned so well into fresh and airy!
Have you guys had to go back and revise any of your plans that kind of just got out of control and disjointed? How did you get your design back on track?
