Rules Of Engagement

For our Real Weddings feature, Katie and Joey have been chosen to share their beautiful fall wedding pictures and the story behind them so we can get a glimpse into their big day. I just love all the personal touches that display their heritage and special memories. It’s so neat how she wore her mother’s veil and displayed a doll figurine that was her grandmother’s on the dessert table. Read on as we hear from the bride herself on the inspiration behind their unique and intimate details.

From the bride:

My dad made our dance floor for us.  We had priced having a dance floor rented along with everything else we had rented and the cost of a big enough dance floor seemed outrageous.  My dad is quite a handyman and he loved the idea of being able to make it himself, so he priced the lumber and paint and made it himself (for significantly less than the rental cost).  When I went to my parents house to see it, my dad couldn’t wait to show us his home-made dance floor along with the stenciled K & J that he had put in the middle piece.  We were later able to use our dance floor boards as shelving in our basement!

I had the bride robe wrap made specifically with our wedding colors.  I wanted mine to be white, where as the other girls were black with black and white polka-dot ribbon trim.  My mom’s “MOB” robe was a lime green color.

Obviously most of our wedding color scheme was black and white, some with black/white polka-dots with splashes of hot pink and lime green thrown in.  I wanted the programs to be very simple but also allow our guests to get to know the bridal party.  In past weddings that I have been to, I loved reading about the people in the wedding party and the significance of them to the bride/groom so I knew for us this was a must!

I have been fortunate enough to have LOTS of great girlfriends and have been in many weddings, and luckily most of my friends have been gracious enough to find reasonably priced dresses/accessories so I wanted to be able to give the same to them.  I had no idea what I wanted my bridesmaids to wear and had been all over trying to find something fairly reasonable, cute, AND be something that the girls would be able to and want to wear again.  I had been to various bridal shops and was sick of the cookie cutter bridesmaids dress so I began to look elsewhere, especially in large dept. stores.  I eventually found the dresses at Macy’s and was able to place orders through other stores to get enough dresses! The final cost per dress came to $90.

I love the Staunton trolley and the idea of our bridal party all being able to ride to the reception together.  We were able to rent the trolley for several hours, fit everyone onto it (including grandparents, parents, flower girls/ring bearers and bridal party) and it worked out wonderful.  We also had lots of out of town guests and were able to have the trolley make two runs to the hotel to pick up guests for the wedding and then bring them to the reception site when the ceremony was over.

We used “Grow Old Along With Me” by Mary Chapin Carpenter, “Forever” by, Ben Harper and “In This Very Room” during our ceremony.  It took us a long time to come up with the songs that we wanted to be sung and finally decided on those.  I have loved Ben Harper’s “Forever” for a long time and thought it was a great fit for us.  “In this very room” was an important choice for us since we had several grandparents/loved one that had passed away or couldn’t make it to the wedding.  We knew that although some of those folks couldn’t be there with us in person, they were there in spirit.

I have always wanted an outdoor/tented reception.  We had originally planned to have the reception at my brother’s house on his land but then decided we would use the Staunton country club.  My parents live there so it was super convenient to have everything so close and to be able to run up there anytime we wanted to measure, check sizes and shapes of things or just to envision what the reception would look like. We wanted the entrance of the tent to stand out and have lots of great plants (from Shreckhise Shrubbery) and also got a vinyl banner printed.  I absolutely loved the way the entrance of the reception turned out and wouldn’t change a thing about it.

My parents have a house at Smith Mt. Lake that we have been going to for years.  As long as I can remember my dad has been making his ‘famous’ Gin & Tonics there.  As the years have gone by and more of my friends, my parents’ friends and family have been there, everyone has fallen in love with his Gin & Tonics.  I loved the idea of having a signature drink and there couldn’t have been a better fit for us than my dad’s Smith Mt. Lake Gin & Tonic!

My mom’s side of the family is from Hungary and we had lots of Hungarian relatives flying in from all over the country.  It was important for me to be able to show others a glimpse of the Hungarian heritage by offering drinks, cheeses, peppers and sausages along with a picture of the patriarchs of our family – my Nagymama and Nagypapa (Great Grandparents).

Joe’s family is from Southwest, Va and we wanted to be able to offer folks some of his favorite things growing up there.  We had samples of pound cakes, roasted pecans, cowboy beans, beef/deer jerky for people to sample.

My mom saw the idea for the kid’s table and we ran with it. I immediately loved it.  I gained six nieces and nephews and they were all in the wedding. We also knew that there would be lots of kids there around the same age group and thought that it would be fun for them to have their own special table to sit.  We had the pinwheels made with coordinating colors out of scrapbook paper and placed them in lime green buckets filled with sand and huge lollipops.  The kids had plastic plates, paper napkins and a cupcake at each of their seats with their names printed.  We had also gotten all of the kids at the table plastic fun cups with lids in case of any spills.  The table really seemed to be a huge hit with the kids there!

Our main goal with the wedding was to have lots of personal touches; we wanted it to reflect our personalities and us as a couple.  The Cigar/Bourbon bar area was a last minute idea.  Our neighbors had these beautiful twig benches that we were able to borrow, we had ordered lots of cigars, bought a couple of different cans of skoal/dip and had a shot table with decanters of Bourbon.  This area was such a hit that I didn’t think we would ever get people away from the corner to come and dance.

I am not a huge cake fan but LOVE homemade cinnamon rolls so I decided that I didn’t have to be traditional and use a cake for dessert for everyone sand instead went with the idea and had someone make homemade cinnamon rolls.  For the groom’s favorite dessert we used Chewy Charlies, since those are Joe’s favorite.  We went with the idea of having a dessert bar with different things for people to choose from so we had cupcakes, Chewy Charlies, cinnamon rolls and a small cake that Joe and I used to cut.

We used lottery tickets as favors for the guests with all of the donations going to the Hope Cancer Center at Augusta Health.  My mom was diagnosed with colon cancer a couple of years ago and was able to beat it with the help of the wonderful people at the Hope Center.   We had such a great experience there and really wanted to be able to give something back, thus, the idea of the lottery tickets came into play.  We had a friend come up with the poem and then bought 300 lottery tickets to place on card stock with a shiny penny and the poem.  This was by far the most tedious wedding task!!!!!  It was definitely well worth it since we were able to raise about $300 for the center!

During the wedding process I had an obsession with anything monogrammed (and still probably do).  I really didn’t want to use glass mugs or cups for the beer at the wedding so we ordered the cups at American Stationery.  I still have tons of them and love to use them when we have parties at the house!  Who doesn’t love drinking out of a plastic cup?!

The  intimate bride and groom table.

We ordered the sparklers online at Sparklers Online. It is such a cute website with great ideas!  My mom found the website and the minute we saw the long sparklers that they offered we fell in love with the idea!

Since we had our reception on a golf course we decided that we would need a source of transportation to get some of our older guests easily to the site.  We rented the golf cart from a place in Harrisonburg, VA and paid someone for the night to be in charge of picking up and dropping off guests.  The hotel where most of our guests stayed was less than a mile away from the reception site.  Those folks were able to ride the trolley to the reception and then just be dropped back at the hotel when they were ready by the golf cart.  Most of our guests didn’t have to drive to any of the wedding events!  This was a huge plus for our older guests and made us feel safer without having our guests drive after a long night of wedding festivities!

Thank you Katie and Joey and Dominique Attaway for sharing these beautiful images and details with our readers!

~Priscilla

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