The park we were married in is beautiful. Rolling hills and unpaved trails, babbling creeks with bridges and waterfalls, wildlife everywhere and flowers taller than me in the hot rush of spring into summer. We were a little sneaky and hosted our ceremony on a lovely peninsula that stretched out into the center of a lake, surrounded on all sides by rising verdant hills with a perfect cooling breeze coming off the water. Technically this wasn't the part of the park we'd had permission to rent, and we had a little scuffle with the parks department the day before the festivities when an unhappy bureaucrat told us we couldn't put a bunch of people on blankets and say our vows there. Happily, that woman had a much nicer boss, and the combination of a crying bride and a tough as nails mother-in-law-to-be (by tough I mean the woman was once involved in an armed government standoff but still manages to make her point in just a few well chosen words) can be very convincing. Not much to worry about when mother nature hands you magnificent surroundings right out of the gate, so I can't take too much credit for the perfect setting in the first half of the day.
The pavilion where we were expected to host our reception, however, was a different story. Why anyone thought to enter this veritable Garden of Eden and plunk an aging 70's style pavilion down in the middle of it will forever escape my understanding, but there it was: a relatively cleared field (lacking the thick trees, tall grass, and paths that filled the rest of the park) boasting a large L-shaped concrete slab, topped off by a rusting giant metal roof, and sandwiching in between 20 long and slightly depressed looking pic-nic tables. It was what we were stuck with, and it needed some work.
Over months of hikes back to this bleak spot (the fact that we were planning during winter didn't help), Josh and I slowly began to find a shared vision for what this place could be, and when early spring washed its way in, we began creating our space.
Starting from the ground up, we again laid out sheets and blankets for our guests to lounge on, both inside the pavilion and out along the grounds. We used the same collection from the ceremony, which was carried up and redistributed by our "blanket crew." What we wanted our guests to stumble into after a long ceremony of sitting still was a sort of wonderland-y garden party where one was free to roam from one activity to another and encouraged to interact with nature and other people as they went. The blankets again created a relaxed atmosphere for just such rambling, and on blankets and tables we scattered games of Scrabble, Giant Checkers, and Tiddly Winks. Outside of the blankets a game of croquet was set up to play around the guests, a game of horse shoes beckoned on one side of the lawn, and lawn darts called players on the other. I even made some giant muslin bags for the more adventurous who might be drawn to sack racing. One extra gift the pavilion did provide-- a fabulous sand volleyball pit and net, where I tore a nice sized hole in my dress diving for a ball as the sun set later that night. And yes, I got the ball.
Above ground level there were those saggy peeling tables to contend with, where people would no doubt want to lounge and partake of what turned out to be quite a feast. These were no problem at all, as no table is a match for my trusty bolts of discount muslin! I just love muslin so much, it's so crisp, clean, and simple, it brightens up everything it touches, and it hearkens back to a time I love, where fabric itself was a valuable thing, without all the added bells and whistles. So with muslin tossed over every tired old surface, we had a perfect light blank canvas on which to build, and it was an easy next step to fill the spaces with the things we found most beautiful.
While planning my own wedding, I watched a lot of those wedding shows about how other women orchestrate theirs (and then how they harshly judge each other for it!). I noticed a LOT of attention seemed to be paid to the table centerpieces, and a LOT of money seemed to be spent on them, and I found this phenomenon strange. There is just so much that goes into a big event, if there were anywhere I'd drop the ball, I thought it would be at the point of spending hundreds of dollars on centerpieces for tables I hoped my guests wouldn't stick to all day! Also, I couldn't help feeling that most of the centerpieces I saw were ugly, and that they would likely just go in the trash at the end of the day. What a waste! Atop our tables we placed mason jars from our home (we'd been saving them up) filled with grass and flowers cut from the roadsides that morning,and tied up with a pretty ribbon. On one table our cake rested, decorated with flowering tree branches, topped with birds in a nest, and standing atop a cedar trunk that Josh had cut for the occasion. On another was our haul of wedding gifts, and on another were our gifts to our guests, all tied up in brown paper bags with colorful satin bows. Easy, just about free, and pretty as a picture.
Atop our heads loomed that hulking giant of a metal roof yawning down at us with its cavernous shadowy space. Transforming this was my favorite! First I made about 2 miles of triangle shaped fabric garland, which we strung from post to tree to roof to ground, back and forth so many times the whole pavilion and field looked like it was hosting a free for all gypsie circus. Then I made 20 paper circle mobiles which we hung from the roof beams and which fluttered gaily in the breeze all day, making themselves well worth the effort. Next I painted messages on index cards and strung them from red ribbons (proclaiming things like "Josh loves Jesse" and "Happily Ever After") which were tied between the roof posts and also did a little sunshine dance throughout the afternoon.
So much motion and color above, below, and around us, really brought the pushed back nature back in to the celebration, and made the concrete and metal recede so much into the background that they ended up blending in nicely and feeling like they belonged. It took some doing, but a --fabulous-beautiful-everything-you've-ever-wanted--space can be created anywhere if you just give it a little time to speak to you, work with what you have, and incorporate the things that you love best.
