Real Wedding: Sarah + Jaime& Fun Modern Wedding

This wedding today is modern, fun, intimate and has lots of diy details- all favorites of mine! Jennifer + CJ - The Nichols - are a husband and wife photography team from Austin whose work I've been following for a few months, so I was super excited when Jennifer sent me this wedding. From Jennifer, Sarah + Jaime did such a fantastic job of bringing Mercury Hall to life through their use of vibrant color, balloons, and small touches that truly reflected their personalities and great sense of style and design. Congrats Sarah + Jaime!

Sarah’s grandmother surprised her with this adorable doll and had even re-created Sarah’s wedding-day details down to the feather-motif necklace that she wore. How sweet is that!? The shoes are J Crew and were bought on ebay.

Bouquets of Austin did a beautiful job with all of the vibrant floral arrangements and bouquets!



Love the bird motif!





Sarah + Jaime collected all the vintage books in shades of blue to use for the centerpieces.





They also had a fun photo booth at the reception! Love the creative backdrop.

Sarah was also sweet enough to share some thoughts from the day with us. Thanks so much Sarah!

Favorite Memory of the Day: It's hard to pick just one. The whole day was such a whirlwind of awesomeness! There are two things that stand out to me now. The first is standing there in front of everyone, listening to our officiant and gripping Jaime's hand SO TIGHTLY! He was then and will always be the only thing that can keep me standing upright when all I want to do is pass right out! The second thing came a few days after the wedding when I was talking to my dad, who's been married and divorced several times. When I first told him we were getting married, he said, "why?" in this sort of confused manner. But after the wedding, he told me that at this point in his life, he thinks of weddings and marriage as this contract of do's and dont's, of thou shalts and thou shalt nots, and that after our wedding he realized that the day wasn't about do's and dont's, that it was about love, and I thought YES! Finally! Someone else understands that it's not about cutting a cake or taking a pretty picture or throwing a bouquet or whatever other "traditions" everyone says you MUST do. It is about love above all.

Theme/inspiration for the Day: We like to think of life and love as one big adventure. We've been together for so long now (we got married right around our 10-year anniversary), so we looked at the wedding and at married life as another new adventure for us. The bird theme sort of came about from that, as we hope to take many adventures together and fly around the world every chance we get. Also, the birds tattooed on my back carry over to Jaime's arm, and I have "birds of a feather flock together" tattooed on my feet as a symbol of us sticking together through life.

Any advice for those planning now? You can do it!! We had a small budget, but didn't want to skimp on things, so we had to get creative. We had the wedding on a Thursday, which helped out tremendously with venue costs and keeping the guest list small. And whenever I encountered something I wanted but couldn't afford, I just figured out a way to do it myself. For instance, I really wanted a short dress, but the ones I loved (stephanie james, for instance) were so far out of my budget. After stopping in to a local fabric store and asking for seamstress recommendations, I found a local seamstress who worked with me to make my dress for about half what a designer one would cost. I also learned to trust my vendors. I picked them because I liked their taste and style, so there was no reason not to let them have some creative freedom, and that was the best decision I could have made! Everything turned out better than I could have expected had I gone in and said I want exactly x, y, and z.

Vendors
Venue- Mercury Hall
Coordinator- Aimee Villa with Lizze Belle Event Planning

Florist- Bouquets of Austin
Catering- Ecstatic Cuisine
Dress & bolero: handmade by Linda O'Krent (Austin seamstress)
Veil and Corsages- Jessica Leavitt (stemsandgems@gmail.com)
Cupcakes- Sugar Mama’s Bakeshop

Cake Toppers- Naked Peggies from Etsy

Check out more from this wedding (and while you're there check out some of their other amazing photos!) on The Nichols Blog. Thanks again Jennifer + CJ for sharing your work with us today!