One of the most fun parts of wedding planning for me was figuring out all of the individual details that would bring our day to life! Now that I have finished recapping the flow of our wedding day (getting ready, ceremony and reception), I wanted to share a dedicated blog post with information about all of the smaller wedding details. In this post you'll find all the info about our beautiful custom invitation suite, all things bridal party, details about my something old, new, borrowed and blue, and much more! And for the first time on my blog, I'm opening up a little bit about the biggest disappointment from our wedding day, which had to do with a wedding detail that was very important to me.
Let's get into all of our wedding details!
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First and foremost, let's chat about our wedding color scheme. When we first got engaged, I originally want to go with a very bold color scheme for our wedding day! But once we selected our wedding ceremony and reception venues and I knew for certain what those would look like, I started envisioning a lighter color palette. Light blue and white became my two central colors, with accents of hot pink, kelly green, gold and peach as secondary colors. I wanted my wedding to reflect a cheerful spring color palette, despite the fact that it was a late fall wedding in November!
I wrote a detailed blog post about engagement ring shopping at local jewelry store Adele Diamond, which you can read HERE. Our wedding bands also were from Adele, as we'd had such a great experience with the engagement ring that we wanted to shop there again. I still highly recommend Adele Diamond for the best selection of engagement and wedding rings in Hampton Roads!
The light blue ring box pictured below was an affordable find that was perfect for wedding day detail photography shots.
Nice invitation suites for weddings can be costly, and they're often one of the first things someone cuts back on when trying to save money on a wedding. But my view has always been that nice wedding invitiations and other stationery set the tone of your day! What a wonderful way to make a good first impression about your wedding wtih guests when they open them. I didn't want to spend thousands on our invitation suite, but also did want something beautiful and high quality that I would be proud of.
My wonderful friend Bri designed a custom wedding crest for us (read about that process HERE), and she also ended up designing a fully custom invitation suite to go along with it! Bri created our invitation and all of the enclosure cards from scratch for us, and she did a phenomenal job. I printed everything at Virginia Beach Printing & Stationery, a wonderful local print shop. I ordered the light blue pre-addressed envelopes HERE, and I purchased the light blue bow envelope liners HERE. The bow envelope liners were a splurge, technically they cost more than my wedding dress since I got my dress so cheaply at a sample sale! But they were 100% worth it. I'm so pleased with how our custom inviation suite came together.
Next let's chat about my Something Old, New Borrowed and Blue for the wedding day! For Something Old, I had the idea to honor both of my grandmothers with jewelry. My mom's mom passed away in August 2025, just a few months before our wedding. When I was in middle school, my parents, my grandma and myself spent Christmas one year in New York City. My grandma had wanted to go jewelry shopping on that trip, as she loved fine jewelry and had quite a collection. She ended up purchasing a citrine and diamond flower cocktail ring. She gifted it to me as an adult a few years before her passing. Citrine happens to be the November birthstone, and we got married in November! I knew I wanted to wear this ring on my right hand on our wedding day.
My dad's mom passed away before I was born, so I never got to meet her. Several years ago I was passed down a unique gold "Y" bracelet of hers. Since my other grandmother's ring was yellow gold, I thought I would wear my dad's mom's bracelet on my right hand as well on the wedding day. I loved having a meaningful and stylish little tribute to both of my grandmothers on our wedding day.
My Something New were my white floral bridal earrings from Dareth Colburn. My wedding dress was very traditional and conservative looking (honestly more-so than what I ever imagined for myself). Because of that, I wanted my earrings to be a bit fun and modern, vs. wearing a very traditional or dainty pair. My mom was actually the one who spotted these beautiful earrings when we were out veil shopping last spring! Since I bought my wedding dress unexpectedly at a sample sale, my mom wasn't with me when I purchased it. It was so nice to have her there for veil shopping, and very special she found these earrings. I loved the style, and they were exactly what I was looking for! They were also very lightweight.
Even more special is that a couple months after I got these, I had the chance to do an Instsagram collaboration with Dareth Colburn to style some of their other wedding jewelry! A very full circle moment.
My Something Borrowed was special for two reasons! If you know me, you know that I love David Yurman bracelets. I wear them every single day, and they've truly become such a part of my personal style. I bought my first one as a gift to myself in 2021 when I hit a big career milestone. Ryan gave me my second bracelet last year for my 30th birthday, and my third as my wedding gift last year as well. The David Yurman bracelet that I borrowed for the wedding day belonged to my bridesmaid and sorority sister Perrin. Hers is the silver and yellow gold one pictured below on the right. I wore Perrin's bracelet as my third one, and she wore my brand-new one from Ryan that was my wedding gift! We swapped bracelets at the reception later that evening.
I thought this was full circle for two reasons. First, I loved knowing already that I'd be wearing a bracelet that I bought myself as a single woman and also one from Ryan on the wedding day. And I loved that I contributed to Perrin's something borrowed on her wedding day years ago, and now she would be helping with mine! She got married in 2017, and for her something borrowed she put the Alpha Delta Pi sorority pins from myself and two other sorority sisters in her bridal party on her bouquet.
And finally, what I had for Something Blue! I had a few things, although one ended up being an epic fail which I'll get to. 😆 Ryan doesn't like garter tosses at weddings and didn't want us to do one, but I still wanted to wear a garter, even if I was the only one who knew it was there! I found this darling and affordable light blue and white garter which perfectly matched our wedding vibe, and I wore it on the wedding day. The David Yurman bracelet that Ryan gave me for my birthday had blue topaz as the stone, so there was a little bit of blue in that as well.
The fail portion of this is that I had my toenails painted light blue as well... and the nail salon I went to gave me the worst pedicure of all-time! I think they were using nail polish that was chunk and way too old. By the time I realized how poorly it had been applied and how smudged it was, I didn't have time to go back to the salon with all going on during the wedding week (and I had gone to an inconvenient salon at the opposite part of town- first mistake). Fortunately no one could even see my toes with a long wedding dress on, but I knew about it and was so frustrated! I should've just painted my toenails myself for the wedding, especially since I did my press-on nails myself for my wedding day nails!
My wedding day perfume was Romance by Ralph Lauren. I had owned had this perfume for a few years, but never really wore it, as I had other scents I gravitated towards for everyday where. It has such a nice scent which felt perfect for a wedding day, and now it's extra special to me!
In true Annaliese fashion, I did my wedding nails myself! I wore ImPRESS press-on nails in ColorFX shade Pop Star. They were the perfect light sparkly pink! Since I am the queen of press-on nails, I couldn't imagine doing my wedding nails any other way.
I opted to wear a small and dainty yellow gold and diamond necklace that Ryan had given me for my 30th birthday. I knew he wouldn't expect me to wear this on our wedding day and I thought it would make him happy to see (and it did!), but in hindsight I wish I hadn't worn this. The diamond chip is so small and lightweight that it's very easy for the necklace to get turned around, and it kept doing so all day on the wedding day. It's also such a small necklace that it's not super noticeable in pictures, it almost looks like a hair got stuck on my neck in some of the photos. But it did warm my heart to see Ryan happy that I wore it.
I thought my wedding shoes were so cute and coordinated well with my dress, but they were not comfortable! They're from Ann Taylor, and I got such a great deal on them when I got them last fall. The fact I got them at such a good price made me extra happy since I'd also gotten such a good deal on my wedding dress at a sample sale. Unfortunately the reason that they were so cheap on sale is probably because they were so uncomfortable! I'm hoping to wear them for our anniversaries in the future, but honestly not sure if it would be worth it- ha!
I was and still am obsessed with my getting ready outfit. The chemise and bathrobe are both from my favorite-ever pajama brand, Bedhead Pajamas. The champagne bottles in the design all said Mrs. on them!!
The last part of my wedding day outfit was this adorable beaded Mrs. clutch! This was gifted to me by my friend Kathryn, who had used it for her own wedding festivities. At first I was only planning to pack it for the honeymoon, but then I ended up taking it on the wedding day to hold my phone, lipstick and other necessities! Our wedding coordinator held onto it during our ceremony, and then it was at our sweetheart table at the reception for me that evening.
Now for Ryan's wedding day details! If I had my way, Ryan and the groomsmen would've worn black tuxedos. But Ryan was adament from the start of wedding planning that he wanted himself and the guys to wear navy suits. It is his day too! So navy suits it was.
His suit, the groomsmen's suits and all of their shoes were rented from Men's Wearhouse. The groomsmen did ties and Ryan wore a bowtie. Ryan also wore his favorite brown watch (not sure the brand or when he got it, he's had it for a long time!).
His wedding day cologne was Gentleman by Givenchy. I bought this for Ryan's 30th birthday a few years ago! I thought it was sweet we each incorporated some of the 30th birthday gifts we gave each other into our wedding day.
Let's chat about all things bridal party! You can read about how I asked my bridal party to be in the wedding HERE. My biggest gift to each of them was covering the full cost for their hair to be professionally styled on the wedding day! I don't believe that professional hair (or professional makeup if a bride is doing that as well) should be something the bridal party is forced to pay for themselves. It should be gifted to them if it is required by the bride, and I feel very strongly about this! So I covered the cost of their hair, and my mom and mother-in-law's hair, as well as my own. I did my own wedding makeup and had my bridal party all do their own makeup as well. Everyone's makeup looked fantastic and all individual to them.
I bought them all matching blue and white striped pajamas that I had found at Nordstrom Rack, blue and white statement earrings to wear with their dresses, and ring pops just for fun. 😊 My best friend from high school was sadly was not able to be in the wedding, but she is a very skilled seamstress and she kindly sewed some floral keychains for me to give to the bridal party with their other gifts, which was so thoughtful! And last but certainly not least, I made them all blue hydrangea prosecco bottles!
Here is my bridal party wearing the blue and white striped pajamas I got them! I honestly had a really tough time picking out getting ready outfits for the bridal party, much harder than for myself. I was so excited though when I found these pajama sets in-store at Nordstrom Rack, and they just happened to have everyone's exact sizes!
Let's chat bridesmaids dresses! I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do for bridesmaids dresses until I found my own wedding dress. I feel like bridesmaids dresses should be a compliment and not a clash to the style of wedding dress that a bride has. I should also say that I love all three bridesmaid dress options: all matching in the same dress, different styles with the same color/fabric, and totally mismatched dresses in different colors. All three of these are great options and can look amazing! But I trusted that once I found my own dress, I'd have good intuition about what to do for the bridal party.
Since my dress was a very classic and timeless style, I wanted to go the more traditional route and have everyone in the same dress, MOH included. I also wanted a style that felt equally classic and timeless. A lot of bridesmaid dress styles feel very trendy and like they could be outdated soon (things like off-the-shoulder styles, etc). I wanted something as classic as my dress, and something that also wasn't too expensive for everyone.
I found exactly what I was looking for with the Azazie Hainsly dress in the color Sky Blue! I do feel a bit badly for the girls because most of them had sizing and fit issues and needed to return and re-order a couple times, plus heavy alterations. It sounded like the dress was just very oddly proportioned in its natural state. As stressful as it was for the girls needing to do returns and alterations, I was so happy with how they looked on everyone on the wedding day. I thought this style couldn't have complimented my dress better!
And here's Ryan and the guys in their Men's Wearhouse outfits. Ryan didn't do any gifts for the guys during the wedding weekend, but he did send groomsmen proposal boxes from this shop when he asked all of them to be in the wedding, and they were a hit!
I can't remember if I have spoken about this in a past Wedding Wednesday blog post or not, but we had an uneven wedding party. I was supposed to have six girls and ended up with five, and Ryan always had four from the start. I don't understand why even numbers on both sides is such a dealbreaker to some brides! For me- I couldn't have cared less!
The biggest disappointment of our wedding was the flowers. I have wanted to share about this online for months, but had to continue to keep my thoughts to myself because I was still so upset. I thought about writing a whole dedicated blog post on this, but I thought that would honestly just perpetuate my negativity on this. 😐 I might make a TikTok about it with more details at some point, for today just mentioning it in this post will suffice.
My original florist cancelled on our wedding day three weeks before, due to a non-emergency reason. This behavior was very shocking, as she was a well-known local florist who had been doing weddings for years, and she also had the endorsement of our wedding coordinator. She did arrange for another well-known local florist to takeover on her behalf, but somewhere along the way, things got very messed up. My bridal bouquet was supposed to have blue hydrangeas as the main flower, with pops of hot pink and white flowers, and a few peach accents. What I got from the replacement florist was a bridal bouquet with one blue hydrangea (that was buried by the other flowers), and 80% bright orange flowers. Orange was never supposed to even be one of my flower colors! The guys' boutonnieres were supposed to be white roses with a little bit of blue delphinium. What did they end up being? Neon orange! I have a signed floral contract outlining all of this, and either the original florist ordered completely the wrong flowers, or the replacement florist messed up the arranging and used other ones.
I was able to get a 10% refund back from the original florist in exchange for agreeing to not post negative reviews online mentioning her name and the replacement florist's name. I will honor my end of the bargain and not name either of them publicly. But I do want to acknowledge how upset I was to see my wedding flowers on the big day. I teared up a bit when I saw my bouquet for the first time because it looked so different from what I wanted. Every time I see my wedding flowers in a photo, I still feel so much disappointment about the situation. I think they looked horrible and not at all what I wanted.
Two days after the wedding, I brought a couple of the bouquets to friends who lived close to me, and I donated the rest of my wedding flowers to a local nursing home. It was really bumming me out to see them around the apartment in the days leading up to our honeymoon, and I hoped that instead they could bless others who might enjoy them and not have bad feelings towards them.
I will say- so many people have complimented our flowers! Both wedding guests and IG followers over the past year. I am glad others liked them? But the truth stands that I hated our wedding flowers, I hate seeing photos of them still, and it's something that I've just had to accept I'll never be at peace with. I was told when engaged that something always goes wrong with a wedding, for mine it was the flowers!
Back to other details of the wedding day! One of the main reasons that I wanted a church ceremony is because the church we got married in was so naturally beautiful, and needed few decorations. We did add some bunches of greenery with light blue ribbons to some of the front pews in the church, and one large flower arrangement on the altar. (Notice how many blue hydrangeas made it into the church arrangement?! Those are all the ones that were supposed to be in my bouquet! But I digress.)
We did a receiving line with photos after the ceremony, which felt so classic to me! I purchased a few bubble guns and mini packs of bubbles for everyone to use as we walked down. The bubble guns were such a hit that two of my bridesmaids used them in their entrance at the reception, and they were also spotted on the dance floor later on!
Similarly to our ceremony, we didn't do too much cocktail hour decor. I did bring a few framed photos of us in our childhoods and as a couple that we displayed on on of the bars!
My second "something borrowed" was the cards box from my friend Emily's wedding earlier in the year. 😊 My mother-in-law got us a little cards and gifts sign to go on that table as well. We had two guest book options: a traditional guest book, and a custom photo mat frame with our wedding crest on it.
I also had custom napkins ordered with our wedding crest for cocktail hour. You can read about all of the items we put our wedding crest on HERE!
We kept the reception tablescapes minimal to cut costs! Five of the tables used the bridal party bouquets as their centerpiece, and the rest of them had flowers arranged in these mismatched bud vases. (The table centerpiece flowers were also supposed to mainly be blue and hot pink... and much like my bridal bouquet ended up being mostly orange and peach... woof! But for what it's worth we did get a lot of compliments from guests.)
I created table number signs myself using our wedding crest design, and then bought these gold table number sign holders to prop each one up.
We did a sweetheart table instead of a head table at the reception. Our table's decor was my bridal bouquet in a bed of greenery. I didn't like my bouquet at all, but I will say that the greenery bed helped me dislike it less. 😊
As a last minute decision the week of the wedding, I brought koozies from home for Ryan and I for our table! A Washington Commanders koozie for him, and Lilly Pulitzer for me. A fun little touch I'm glad I did!
We used two different special champagne flute sets during our wedding! On our sweetheart table we used a personalized set that had our names and wedding date engraved on them. They were a surprise wedding gift from a very kind blog reader! (These are also the ones we used to toast on the day we closed on our house a couple months ago!)
We had these adorable blue dot champagne flutes on our cake table! They were a sweet wedding registry gift from my friend Bri. I think they're absolutely darling, and they truly couldn't have matched our wedding cake and overall theme any better!
One of my favorite parts of our wedding day was our beautiful cake! Whatever disappointment I had with our wedding flowers was made up for with this amazing cake. My friend Bri (yes- same one who did our crest and invitations!) is a professional cake baker for her job, and it was a no brainer that Ryan and I would hire her to do our wedding cake. She created this blue and white bow masterpiece! The giant bow on the front was technically edible- how cool is that?!
We did three flavors of cake: almond with almond filling, chocolate with oreo filling and strawberry with cream cheese filling. All three were delicious! I am such a dessert person, so having a wedding cake that not only looked beautiful but tasted great was so important to me.
I also ordered some gluten free/dairy free cupcakes from Bri for our guests with dietary restrictions. Similarly to how I think bridal parties shouldn't have to pay themselves for professional hair or makeup, another wedding pet peeve I have is couples who don't think of guests with dietary restrictions when planning wedding dessert. I feel like it's fairly common these days for GF/ DF dinner meals to be offered, but what about dessert? No one wants to feel left out! I know that our GF/DF guests were extremely grateful that there was an option they could eat. 😊
Another dear friend of mine also contributed an important detail for our wedding! My friend Dana started her own calligraphy business a couple of years ago, and it was an absolute honor to have her do the calligraphy of our table placecards for our reception!
I chose these colorful bow placecards and I ordered them in three colors. Each color designated a different entree that the guest had ordered for dinner: blue was beef, pink was seafood and green was vegetarian. I thought designating by color was such a clever way to indicate meal choice! I had all of them shipped to Dana, and she got to work creating them, and then shipped them back to me just in time for the big day. Such an extra special touch to have Dana's beautiful writing as part of our day!
For favors, we did scratch-off lottery tickets! It was easy and affordable. I found cute lottery ticket envelopes and put all of them in those with a coin for scratching. I don't think anyone won big sadly, but a few people did win $10-20!
We did a sparkler exit leaving our wedding reception! I added a faux fur stole over. my reception dress. A classmate of mine in broadcasting school many years ago had given me this stole- she said with my sense of fashion she figured I could put it to good use someday. I found it in my closet a few months before the wedding and thought that our exit would be the perfect time to wear it!
Past Wedding Wednesday Posts:
Before the Wedding: Our Proposal Story // My Ring Shopping Experience // Local vs. Destination Wedding // My Wedding Dress Shopping Story // 9 Months Out Checklist + Early Wedding Planning Q&A // How Ryan and I Met // Our Engagement Photos // Virginia Beach Wedding Guest Lodging with Transcendent Stays // Our Engagement Party // 6 Months Out Checklist + Q&A // How I Asked My Bridesmaids // My First Bridal Shower // 3 Months Out Checklist + Q&A // My Second Bridal Shower // My Bachelorette Party // Doing My Own Wedding Day Makeup // Wedding Week Reflections
God Bless,
xoxo Annaliese
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