Our Wedding Part One

Hi everyone, yesterday my husband and I celebrated our one year anniversary. It has easily got to be one of the best years ever, so easy & fun. So far I'm liking married life! I thought it would be fun to do a little mini recap of our wedding and a little bit more about me, him and our son. Before I get into all the fun of planning Wedding, I wanted to share our story. I met my now husband when we were teenagers 16 to be exact. We fell in love at a young age and had our son at a young age when we 20. My husband Hasani, you know him better as Mr. CLH was just month shy of his 20th birthday. The stress of being a young couple with a baby was very hard on our relationship and we actually ended our relationship just before Tabari was one years old. 

Anyone who's had a child (children) knows how hard it can be to raise a child while  maintaining a relationship is a lot of work especially when you young! We co-parented our son for seven long years and lived our own lives, until one day in February 2007 we had a conversation about past hurts and misunderstanding and US. We decided to give our relationship another chance! For the next year and half we grew closer and bonded as a family, moved with each other, went on vacations and started looking for a home to buy and of course I fell deeply in love with him, more so then I ever could have imagined when we were young.

We got engaged the day after Thanksgiving 2008, and quickly set a  wedding date 9/19/09. Yes, we only gave our selves 10 months to plan our big day) Now back to all things planning & prepping


We decided to have a small intimate wedding of 50 with our close family and friends. And of course are wedding was a DIY affair on a budget, just like our fixing up our 1950's rancher has been! We decided to have a garden wedding ceremony and have a cocktail reception at our home and keep the whole day special and low key & fun! Along with wedding DIY projects we had plenty of home DIY projects to tackle around the house to make our home reception ready.  We painted our house, installed a sprinkler system and rolled sod out added a ton of curb appeal all before our big day! Here's a engagement picture of Hasani & I right in front ceremony spot at Old Rose Garden Capitol Park. 

We wanted our Save the Dates to be fun and reflect our personalty ( and make people smile) My sister Shannon acted as a photographer, and we took our pictures at a local school on the playground (my nephews school!)

Another paper project I couldn't wait to tackle for our big day was our wedding invitations. Since I love hydrangeas and those are my wedding flowers, I wanted to include them in our invitations. I contacted an Etsy graphic designer had her custom make me a graphic Hydrangea flowers and a sweet little butterfly. I was able to turn this graphic and turn into invitations, Reception Cards, Rsvp Cards and our Thank You cards. Which save a lot of money!

Here the invitations, I used Publisher to create the wedding invitation suite and printed them at home on our HP Printer. Instead of sending the invitations off with regular old stamps, I used ___ stamps from our local Post Office. Its little touches like these that make me smile. I also lined envelopes (including the RSVP) with lavender paper. Since we were doing a small quantity of invitations, I purchased the envelopes from Paper Source, where I also bought envelope liners - they I still use. I'll share our wedding invitations in Part Three :)



You all know how much I love Craigslist, right? Well not only is it a good place to find a steal on furniture its also where I found our wedding Photographer! Yep, CL has a whole section of  business ads, I looked under the 'Services' section under 'Creative' and searched for a photographer. I talked with a few photographers saw their websites and still wasn't sure, until I came across DMG Photography and we met with Darwin Garza and instantly clicked. I knew right away he & his wife would be able to capture our special day in the mix we wanted, portrait and photojournalist style. If your in the Northern California area ( SF Bay Area though Sacramento ) and looking for amazing team of photographers to capture your day or event please visit thier wedsite http://www.dmgphoto.com/

Here a few pictures from our engagment session with Darwin taken around the City we call home.

Was your wedding a DIY affair, or will it be? I would love to hear details