Featured Wedding of the Week: Old Fashioned Seaside Elegance

It's Saturday, which means one thing. It's another edition of Inspiring Pretty's featured weddings! As always, if you'd like to have your wedding showcased, please submit it to us here. Now, onto the prettiness.

This week we'll be exploring the classic beauty of a simple, old fashioned seaside affair. This wedding is beaming with natural themes and simple traditions from years ago. Notice the bird decorations and small, simple flower arrangements. There's also gorgeous streamers and feathers, traditions dating back centuries to celebrate the couple as they leave the church. Like a classic event, nuptials took place in the church, and also dating back centuries, the wedding party marched in public to the reception celebrating the marriage. The rest of the gorgeous and down-to-earth party can be seen even greater in the photos!

pictures courtesy of Stylemepretty

Featured Wedding of the Week

We are so excited to begin this new weekly post! Weddings are one of those things that add beauty to lives. By sharing how some have made their precious day perfect, you can inspire others to create a special day all their own. What we will be doing is highlighting a different wedding every Saturday. For now, we will be scouting the web for weddings that tug at our heart but we would eventually love to share yours! So, whether you were married last week, last year or 50 years ago we would love for you to share your day with us so we can share it with our Inspiring Pretty readers. Simply submit your wedding here and we'll check it out!

For now, here is a wedding I found at Love and Lavender. It is actually the wedding of the creator of the site Aileen and her husband Ben at the Beau Lodge an hour and half north of Seattle. What caught my eye was the simplicity and down-right old fashioned backyard wedding feel it has. And that's exactly why I chose it.

Starting with the floral arrangements. These bouquets - made by the bride, bridesmaids and mother of the bride - hold simply white roses, pink ranunculus and those sweet yellow billy balls. So backyard bushel, yet colorful and elegant.

I think that fun bridal party photos are the best! Since these two had a croquet area set up, it's fantastic that they took advantage of it. They didn't try to create an elaborate backdrop, but just used the clearing and gorgeous greenery to make a memory that lasts a lifetime.

The guestbook is where people can take all kinds of liberties and be as creative as possible. Aileen and Ben decided to have people write on notecards giving advice, well-wishes or their own memories of the couple. This is a great way for your guests to feel like they'll have some impact in your future. My favorite parts are the wooden sign and the roses sitting pretty in a glass jar. Effortlessly delightful.

Held in this gorgeously vintage suitcase are wedding programs, made by the bride and groom themselves. The pinwheels were also. These two are rather crafty....

The ceremony has no floral arrangements, no trellis. The focus is completely on what's happening at the end of the aisle. No one will be able to take their eyes off the glowing couple.

The table decorations make me squeal out in excitement. Again, we find these wildflowerish arrangements inside glass jars and milk bottles, but the key to this set up is the colorful array of books which lend, ever-so-slightly, to the backyard barbeque feel.

Congratulations to Aileen and Ben for an old-fashioned meets weathered-chic wedding. Oh yeah ..... and for getting married!

Wedding Trends: Ceremony Designs

Before I tire you out on the subject of wedding attire, let's move onto something different. The ceremony is truly what the wedding is all about. There's not much room to differ from the tradition in this part of the wedding, though. The only thing that really can be altered is the exchange of the vows. The set up of the ceremony though, can go any way you wish :) The main trends I have noticed are again a return to simplicity, elegance and the outdoors.

Most weddings are now occurring outdoors. It's as if people are rejecting expensive wedding halls for the raw and simply beauty of nature. I personally like this fad, especially weddings that take place far away from the city. These basic, rustic ceremonies seem to outshine those performed in expensive places, such as a country club or upscale hotel. Basically it sums up to: indoor is out and outdoor is in.

Like other details of the wedding, people are refraining from modern motifs and opting for more quaint, old-fashioned, intricate designs. For the ceremony, one defining detail of this is the aisle itself. What can be laid on the ground of the aisle in a wedding? That's kind of a difficult question to be answered for any outdoor wedding. Sometimes the grass needs to covered so heels don't puncture the ground. A classic and elegant solution (with many options) is to use rugs. You can truly make the style completely your own, giving off so much of your personality in the ceremony. If you want an aisle with only grass, add touches to it with flowers. This could mean sprinkling petal all over, creating a design with petals or lining the aisle with small bushes. Your theme will determine what the best option is.

The aisle is one of the two main portions of the ceremony design. The other is the altar. There is no true trend for this, because it changes with each individual couple. It also does greatly depend on your faith. Jewish altars will be quite different from a Catholic altar. Whatever you may choose, be sure to have it's colors and details match the aisle and other ceremony details.

Lastly, complimenting details around the ceremonial area are becoming quite important. This may be a flower on the back of the chair or ribbons on bushes near the guests' seating. One major trend is the seats themselves. For a traditional feel, some choose pews. It's a whimsical touch to have seats usually only used in a church outdoors. Some also grab several different types of chairs giving a casual ambiance to the ceremony. Or, you can go very old-fashioned and simply use hay for rows. No matter which choice, it's sure to be a return to an antique and overall olden motif.

It may seem that the wedding ceremony does not have much room for deviation from the common method of operation, but you can change it more than you think possible. For an outdoor wedding, the possibilities are almost limitless. Look at other weddings to see the return to old-fashionedness and see if these ideas breaking away from the ordinary work for you.