We have a beautiful, DIY, nautical-inspired wedding for you today from a photographer new to EAD, the amazing Meg Perotti!

Lori and Lee were married in Tiburon, CA at the beautiful Old St. Hilary’s Church.  Their reception was held at the Tiburon Peninsula Club.  They planned their entire event in just four months!

Lori’s story:

It all happened so fast… We were engaged on May 25th, and planning a wedding for August 16th.

Of course lots of people asked why we were marrying so fast? And there were a number of reasons. For one, we both lived in different countries, so timing and location was big for us. Second, I always dreamed of a simple beach wedding in the summer, so it was either this year or next year. Third, my best friend needed the wedding to be during the summer as well seeing she is a teacher. And fourth, we both shared the christian beliefs that we would not live together until we were married. With this said, we really wanted to marry this year. We decided that if I could lock down the location within a couple of weeks of our engagement, then we would get married this year. If not, then it would be next year. Luckily we were able to do it, which was great because we couldn’t wait for our lives to start as one. When you know, you just know, and that is how we felt.

We had about 6 weeks to plan, seeing I was out of the country for the remainder of our engagement, and we also had a tight budget to stick to. So how did we do it? How did we plan our wedding so quickly, and stick to our tight budget at the same time?

To start we didn’t have the funds for a wedding planner, so we got to plan our entire wedding with the help of friends and family. We stuck to the basics, and focused on the most important things first, and slowly worked our way down to everything else.

First, we found locations that fit our style; that were laid back with a nautical vibe, and that were already naturally beautiful. Because of this, we didn’t really have to do too much on our wedding day. After this was set, the only things that we really had to put effort in to, were the small things, such as our favors and flowers. Also, our reception hall did everything for us, from setting up to cleaning up. I do have to add, that if it wasn’t for my Mom being persistant with the Reception Hall & guaranteeing our reservation, our wedding could have been a catastrophe.

Second, we were able to locate a photographer that had the same style as us. Finding a photographer was “the” most important thing to me. It’s one of the most important days of your life, and I wanted to always be able to look back at this day through our photos. Because it was so important, we did a split day, ceremony in the AM and Reception in the late afternoon. This allowed our guests, which most were from out of town, to tour Tiburon/San Francisco, while we took photos! It worked out great! Our photographer was able to capture every moment and then some. We are so happy that we found her!!

And last, all the other things, our flowers, favors, goody bags (the bags we handed out during the break), signs around town, etc. just fell into place.

{All stationery created by the bride, using materials from Paper Source}

{Flowers all created by the bride and helpers!}

{Lemon on Lemon cupcakes from Icing on the Cake}

There were times we joked about how we should have married in the Caribbean with just parents and our best friends, but at the end of it all, it was worth every minute. We truly had the wedding of our dreams! It was intimate and tasteful, relaxed and picturesque, and shared with our close friends and family.

Overall, we were able to plan the entire wedding on time with a few bumps along the way. We did go a little over budget, but it was the cheapest it could have been, and was still very inexpensive. And one more quick thing to add, I always wanted a beach wedding as mentioned above. And although we didn’t have a Beach wedding, the church we ended up marrying in was at the end of Beach Street. We thought that was funny!

Lori and Lee, you are truly an inspirational couple and we are so impressed with how beautifully you pulled together your practical, fun, and personal wedding!

As always, I will close with my favorite photo from the day – such talent Meg, I love this!!!

Meg, thank you so much for sharing this wedding with us and Lori, thank you for sharing your story!

E.

PS – Since this wedding is in the DIY spirit, I thought I’d take the opportunity to remind you to send in your projects for our DIY contest in November – we are going to be publishing each and every project we receive so email yours now!  The more projects we receive the more inspiration we can give.  :)