Weddingbee Blog

Cinnamum came out to visit about a month after I got engaged. She lives only an hour and a half’s flight away, but about a 18-hour drive/ferry, so we don’t visit too often. So, we planned a good long weekend of dress-shopping and talking non-stop about wedding things.

Mum doesn’t live near an IKEA—the nearest one is a ferry ride and a drive away. I, on the other hand, live 20 minutes from an IKEA (on a semi-related note, the IKEA is next door to ‘my’ Michaels), so we planned a trip there as well, for the morning of the day she was leaving.

At that point, we still had no idea of theme or colours or anything that we wanted.

I had “English-garden-party-bunting-vintage-rustic” in my head at the time. We were wandering around the store, we’d finished on the show floor, and were then in my favourite part: the marketplace. Cheap organizers = my type of heaven. Then we saw IT:

Nice to meet you, Hampen. Do you know Billy from upstairs? Photo taken with my iPhone

You have to understand that I love this shade of green. I own shirts this colour, and all my prized silicone kitchen utensils (flipper, big spoon, measuring cups, measuring spoons, spatula, spaghetti scoop) are this colour. I proudly display them in all their apple-ness, even in my rented, terracotta-tiled kitchen. A hile-pile rug this colour looks just like a little grassy field, although not as much as this rug does:

Land Carpet! By Florian Pucher

Mum and I turned that corner and were both instantly drawn to the green rug. She suggested we could get the feeling of being outdoors, indoors, by putting this out and having it delineate our ceremony ‘area’. Our venue is a gorgeous, but vast and empty building and I did know we needed something. I liked the grass-carpet idea, but would Cinnamon Buns? He was out of town and at work, so I couldn’t call, and it was hard to explain anyway. I thought about waiting until he and I could talk, but Cinnamum convinced me to buy it (well, convinced me to let her buy would be more accurate). If nothing else, it is a carpet I like!

Then as I was lugging the carpet in the direction of the checkouts, I saw a long box of little candles. Four of the candles were the same green. Four were dark teal, and four were  a lighter teal.

Vaghult, meet Hampen. Photo by Ikea

And then I knew. I like blue. Cinnamon Buns likes blue. I love this green. Cinnamon Buns…puts up with the green? Likes it? It doesn’t matter, there’s blue! And then, with that box of candles, we had a colour scheme. It was very nice of IKEA to put my favourite green with some other pretty colours so I would know how they looked together. We bought the box of candles, too. I honestly don’t think they’ll get used, but it is very nice to have something to wave at people when I’m explaining our colours. It’s even more fun because the box is a couple feet long!

After mum left, I was browsing Winners one day on my lunch break and met these beauties:

Green birdcages, all in a row.

I took this iPhone photo to text to Cinnamon Buns to see what he thought. He thought I should buy them! I went back after work to do that—I might have been able to get away with bringing these into a theatre, but knew I’d get funny looks from the security guard at City Hall, where I worked for the summer. I bought one large one and one small one. They even nest in each other for easy storage!

So, boom, boom, boom—our colour scheme jumped out at me, and the universe fed me other things the same colour. Our theme has evolved since then, as  Cinnamon Buns was never a fan of the ‘vintage-rustic-picnic-garden’ vibe I was having at the time, which is fine. We’re still going to work these pieces in, though. The big birdcage will be for cards, with its little friend wired to the top:

Mr. Darcy Bird by CottonBirdDesigns

I still want to use the rug. I think it is fun and silly, “…but without being disrespectful!” Cinnamum says. I’m not sure who I’d be disrespecting by getting married on a green shag rug, but oh well. I’m still not sure about birdcage #2, but we’ll find something to do with it, I’m sure. I could put books in it?

So, so far in our wedding we have combined our favourite things: books, along with my favourite colour: apple green. Also, we’ve added in whimsy and silliness in the form of a shag/grass rug. We’re doing pretty well! Weddings should be about your favourite things, shouldn’t they? And I’m sure people have found wedding inspiration in weirder places than IKEA!

Have you been inspired anywhere strange?