With wedding season around the corner, couples are opting for both classic love ballads and romance-filled party anthems for their wedding music choice according to data from Spotify. If you’re not familiar, Spotify is a digital music service that you can use on your computer or mobile device– there is a free version with advertisements or you can pay for the Premium ad-free version for only $9.99 per month.
Out of almost 66,000 wedding playlists created on Spotify in the U.S., the top 10 wedding tracks indicate that romance and celebration tracks rule the dance floor with LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem coming in at #1. See the full list above! Are you planning to bust a move to any of these songs on your wedding day?
This J.Crew inspired wedding made me SO very happy that I couldn’t wait to share it with you! I could go on and on about just the flowers from this wedding- they are SO gorgeous! And amazingly enough, the bride and her bridesmaids did all of the flowers for the day- didn’t they do a fantastic job? This whole event just oozes happiness, including the darling couple, Kiersten and Bradley!It has so much clever, quirky personality- I especially love the banner with the quote from The Princess Bride. Definitely make sure to read the details about their table ‘numbers’ and the special cake cutting ceremony that they did with each of their parents– SO sweet! This might be one of my favorite featured weddings, ever. Hope you enjoy it as much as I do! xoxo-Jessica
Kiersten + Bradley
May 28, 2011
Poway + San Diego, CA
What was your budget? If you are able, give us a rough breakdown of how you spent your budget.
We started out with a 10-12,000 dollar range, but after meeting with Shari at Swann Soiress we realized a day of coordinator was a must. I think our wedding was around $13,000 total.
Bradley is from Tennessee and I’m from Maryland and we met and fell in love in Los Angeles, and got engaged in San Francisco. We decided before he proposed we would defiantly get married in LA, but after getting engaged I really loved the idea of having the priest who married my parents also marry us. He was in San Diego, and after realizing many of our wedding party and guests would be flying across the country anyway, we decided to make it a destination of sorts in San Diego.
How many guests did you have?
120
What creative or personal aspects did you include in your wedding?
They were only three ideas I went into wedding planning with: I didn’t want a pouffy, princess dress, I wanted white lights in the trees and finally I wanted my favorite cake: a Baskin Robbins mint chocolate chip ice cream cake. My husband and I come from amazing families with strong marriages. We knew that our wedding was just one day, but the marriage is a lifetime. With that being said, we also knew we wanted the wedding to be one big celebration of a weekend that was truly and uniquely us.
I poured over so many blogs, falling in love with a whimsical, j.crew feel to our wedding. We decided on gray tones and fresh green with splashes of spring pastels. It was really important that our wedding was completely us, but also celebrating all those who had gotten us to this very important day. We started to call the day “Fantastical Marryment” and it just stuck and became our theme of sorts.
I don’t like matchy-matchy, so each of my bridesmaids chose their own grey dress. I gave them inspiration pictures and they them bought in a range of prices. It was great to have each one in a different tone, cut and silhouette. My twin sisters were the only ones who wore the same one from anthropologie.com. I found the girls shoes on gojane.com. They were the perfect color! I gave them each a small rose gold locket necklace by DianaWarnerStudio.com. She’s a childhood friend of my husband and new sister-in-law. In fact the lockets inspired me to choose a rose gold wedding band.
We wanted the groomsmen to have the same fresh, whimsy look. They chose their own gray pants and brown shoes. My husband gave each of them green gingham skinny ties, designed by our friend Matthew, to celebrate the weekend. Bradley wanted a little more dressed up look and wore grey pants and vest from jcrew.com. I loved the way the wedding party turned out!
What was the biggest thing you did to save money?
I decided about halfway through the engagement I was gonna do all our flowers. The quotes we were getting were so high, and honestly my taste was too much for my budget. So early Thursday morning before heading down to San Diego, my twin sisters and best friend all drove down to the LA Flower Mart and bought peonies, ranunculus, baby’s breath and so much more. I watched video after video on how to make arrangements. And so Friday morning my bridesmaids and girls all had a flower party, we- in freezing hotel rooms because we had to crank the AC up- made 10 bouquets, 12 boutonnieres, 6 corsages and so much more! Many of my girls had just met each other the night before at dinner, so it was great for everyone to hang out and get to know each other.
What’s the best advice you have for planning your wedding now that you’re on the other side?
I think the best advice I got was from my best friend who’s an event and wedding planner. She said, “Just know someone’s gonna get upset. Someone’s not going to be happy with the place you’ve chosen, the dress you chose, who is in your bridal party, etc. It’s your day to celebrate each other and also celebrate everyone who’ve gotten you to this day.” That gave me so much freedom to not please everyone all the time. We of course made decisions with others in mind, but at the end of the day truly had the wedding we wanted, the wedding we chose.
What was your biggest splurge?
Honestly, having a day of coordinator wasn’t in our plans at all, but it was the best wedding decision we made.
What was your favorite detail?
Bradley and I are both actors and met in an improv class. It roughly took three “meetings” and three years to actually find each other. The first time we met, I thought he was too nice and didn’t call him back after our date. The second time we met, I felt bad for breaking his heart and I later found out he didn’t even remember me. The third time, he was still incredibly nice, but I also realized he was witty, funny and incredibly caring. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love. A few months into us dating, I noticed all of our text messages backed up to his email. I asked him to start saving all those emails in a folder, but didn’t tell him why…
The DIY reception decor was probably my favorite thing about the wedding itself! I finally told Bradley why I wanted him to save the texts… to go on each table. Instead of numbering the tables, each one had a handmade flag with a tea towel calendar cut out with a heart around the date and labeled with the event. Then on each table was a hand painted frame with texts from that day. From our first date, to the first time we met each other’s parents, to our engagement, each table was a little part of our relationship. Guests could go around and read some silly, or sweet texts we had sent each other. These took FOREVER to go through but we had a blast doing it and so many guests walked around to each table during the sangria hour.
What is the most memorable moment of your day?
I think there are two. Honestly the whole weekend was wonderful, but these are the two that we always talk about.
The first was our rehearsal dinner. It was so incredibly special. We had about 50 people in the back room at The Hamburger Factory and Bradley and I had the idea to give each of parents a little cake with their own handmade wooden cake toppers to celebrate their 35 and 34 years of marriage respectively. Each couple had a little cake cutting ceremony, where we got to make a little speech and thank them for everything they’ve done to get us ready to this point. The rest of the night was filled with our family and friends telling funny and sweet stories to toast– and honestly who doesn’t love great things being said about them for hours
The second was at our reception. A friend of mine asked our friend who was DJing if he had any Disney songs. I was a Disney princess for 5 years for kids’ parties and I’ve just always loved Disney. She dedicated, “A Whole New World” to us and Bradley and I started to lip sync and dance the whole song. Being that we’re both actors and comedians we fell right into an improved performance. We both pretended to be on a flying carpet and just randomly dipped and swerved at the same time. It was hysterical and many of friends couldn’t believe it was just random. It was truly this fun moment that solidified how truly matched we are for each other.
Eric was a groomsman in a wedding last summer, and a month before the wedding the Bride mailed a physical copy of an itinerary to everyone. When we arrived at the Iowa wedding weeks later, a lot of the wedding party appeared to even have theirs with them. Me being me, I thought this was a great idea!
As part of my valiant attempt to stay organized, I’ve put together a ridiculous itinerary that’s been emailed to basically everyone. With the bulk being from out of town, I broke things down by day & time (we have things spanning Thursday-Saturday), I also noted who needed to be there, the full address (for GPS) and a link to a Google map if the individual wanted to print one. I noted separately any times for the usher, flower girls, etc., and even threw out a disclaimer/threat to any of the groomsmen who thought it necessary to “over-indulge” before ceremony time. I made notes and instructions where I felt necessary, and I think I probably appear borderline psychotic to the outside world. To offset this, I tried to add in a little humor and sarcasm (as expected) as to not come off as bossy (or cray-cray). That’s really okay, as long as everyone is where they need to be, when they need to be.
One of my bridesmaids that got married in October suggested that I turn my cell phone OFF the day of the wedding. She said she was unpleasantly surprised on the morning of their wedding when everyone under the sun was calling to ask ridiculous questions, most of which were clearly listed on the invitation itself. She ended up buried alive with unnecessary details, and floored by the whole thing. To try to help with this, I listed our wedding coordinator’s phone number and email address on our itinerary and asked that if anyone has trouble with details, to just please please call Jill instead of Eric or myself. Fingers crossed that it actually works!
Next, to tackle logistics, and organizing the family helpers….
My first thing to attack was a date. We went through three of them. Nate has a huge family, unfortunately all of them aren’t that far apart in age and 4 of them have weddings this year. Our first date, sometime in October was to close to one, the second date, a September one, was to close to another, and the third one, November 3, was just right. Finally.
Next, the fun part. The colors, the dress, the decorations, the flowers, the place. Nate and I knew where we wanted the reception before we were even engaged, an old civil war barn in a small town not far from where I live. Luckily it was available and so was the nearby Catholic Church. Now, the colors. Nate and I are both outdoorsy and laid back, we wanted something that represented that. My poor fiancé was probably so sick of my talking about which colors go with, I think he would have agreed to anything. One day while browsing pinterest I found a grey and yellow wedding I fell in love with, it was all history after that. From that point on everything fell together, our inspiration board was on its way!
Our reception Barn
Our wedding plan is rustic, vintage, and has a modern twist. Hopefully it will come together like it has in my head. Here’s a sneak peak!
Click on the image to follow to my pinterest page!
Hello everyone,
Sorry for my disappearance over the last few weeks. The weeks leading up to the wedding were crazy and tiring to say the least. I thought I would say a quick hello and leave you with a few photos from my pre-wedding shoot to enjoy as a tease to our wedding photos.
Since I was spending the money on hair and makeup trials already, I decided to do a mini photoshoot with my photographer in my Indian outfit. I was only wearing it for a short time at our reception, so I wanted to have some photos in it still to have. So without further adieu…
{all data recorded by Spotify}
