Laura & Morgan's DIY wedding ♥

Last year I featured Laura and Morgan’s engagement shoot;  ‘All you need is love’. It’s still one of my favorites engagement stories I’ve ever posted. I love the way this couple are a little quirky, and so deeply in love with each other. I think it’s a little obvious from the their smiling faces that this is true love. I must admit, I got rather excited when I saw the email from Laura saying “Hi Joelle… guess what, I’m now married”. These little phases wouldn’t excite the average blogger, but to me, these words give me an instant smile.
Laura & Morgan Carlson had a small wedding of 65 guests, and married on the 9th August 2013 in Estonia. Their guests gathered at the viewing platform in Tallin Old Town for the wedding ceremony, which was followed with a party at Cafe Klaus.

Planning the wedding…
We planned the wedding in 6 months. The first month I did nothing but Pinterest a bunch of things so maybe more like 5 months then. I had a lot of help from my bridesmaids who went to see the venues and helped us brainstorm cool places to fit our criteria. What we were looking for was a venue with the right feeling and character and we knew everything after that will fall into place. The ceremony had to be outdoors,  as the Old Town is just stunning that was straight away our first choice. Finding the party venue took a while but we ended up with something that was so ‘us’… we wouldn’t have changed it for the world. Actually, the photographer was one of the first things we booked as she is my favorite photographer in the whole world, and we had to have her at the wedding. I got to Estonia 6 weeks before the wedding and the majority was done then. We had a little “wedding factory” at a friend’s garage where we would craft the nights away. That was my favorite part of the planning process. Having my friends help me build my dream wedding- from the arch to handwritten posters to 80 spray-painted jars for candles.


Groom’s threads…
Morgans suit was made by Knot Standard in Dubai.

The Dress &  wedding accessories…
My wedding dress was from J.Crew and my veil was made by an Estonian designer called Kristina Viirpalu.  I picked up my shoes at Badgley Mischka. Later those got changed into Converse as I knew there will be some serious dancing involved.
My sister makes the most amazing jewelry; her brand is called New Vintage by Kriss. I chose my own rose quartz stones and she made them into earrings and a necklace for me.

Finding my wedding dress…
I have to say I had a bit of a dress drama. I had my eye on a dress that got sold out before I could commit to ordering it. By that time it was 3 months to the wedding. I booked a time to one of the highly recommended tailors in Dubai who told me straight up that there is no way she has time to make my dress on 3 months. This of course got me into a full on freak out and was followed with a sobbing call to my sister in Estonia. She spoke to a few tailors in Estonia who calmed me down. They told me they could easily make my dress when in 6 weeks. So I calmed down and soon after that I came stumbled upon a simple dress on J.Crew online store that had potential to be just perfect. And it was : )

My lovely bridesmaids…
My beautiful bridesmaids are all such different characters and have very different styles. I never for a second considered putting them all in same dress,  I wanted them to choose their own dress. The dresses had to be a pastel shade and have no pattern.  They all chose perfect dresses and looked beautiful.
The bridesmaid & their talents…
We had no readings but one of my bridesmaids is a great singer and she sang 2 songs at the ceremony. Another bridesmaid is an amazing DJ, so she put together a playlist for the ceremony and a friend DJd at the party. The song I wanted to walk down the aisle to Morgan was always going to be ‘Natalie Cole- This Will Be (An Everlasting Love)’. I knew it would always be this song.

My Flowers…
I don’t know the English names of any of the flowers. Hope its enough if I just say I LOVED my flowers and wish I could carry them around daily. They were stunning! For the party venue we used the flowers the guests had gifted us.

Advice for other couples…
Make it your own! There is no right or wrong and if there is something that you don’t like don’t do it! For example I knew will not enjoy doing seating plans, so we just didn’t do it. Just make sure the day is about you two and don’t stress about anything! Also if you can then hire help, then do it. I would of never of been as ‘happy go lucky’ if I didn’t trust my wedding planner. She was great.
 
Memorable moments
Its really hard to bring out moments… the whole days was soo perfect and full of love that thinking about it makes me smile for hours. For example, my bridesmaids organized a flash mob for us, they sent a video with some dance moves out to everyone so my mom, Morgan’s grandmother, everyone was dancing for us. It was amazing!

The little details & décor…
One of my close friends is a super talented graphic designer so as a wedding present she helped me with everything from Save The Dates and invitations to hand written posters and amazing 3d initials made out of cardboard. Another friend helped us build the portable wedding arch out of the most random things (think cable covers and furniture legs). I had friends helping to fan out the 100+ pom poms and fold hundreds of paper planes. I spray painted the bubble makers and 80 jars through different pieces of lace. My mom lent me her amazing silver jugs to use for flowers. As my husband is Swedish we did a Swedish candy bar and his family came with a whole suitcase of candy with them. It was such a team effort and I am soo blessed to have friends like that. I also had the most amazing wedding planner who set everything up on the day, so all I had to do was enjoy.
Our wedding cake..
The be honest the one thing I just didn’t have energy for was how the cake looked. It just was not important for us. We had a tasting and knew it tasted amazing (Morgan ate about 4 slices of the tasting cake) and I found this cool handmade cake topper from Etsy. So I just told the catering that the colors of the wedding are pastels and I really don’t need anything fancy.



Credit for suppliers & friends…
Photographer- Sandra Palm Photography
Videographer –Chiq Film
Wedding planner- Katre Relve
Venue/catering- Café Klaus
And our out of this world amazing friends- there is no way we could have done it without them! Best wedding present was that they traveled all to Estonia to be with us.
Back later today with their amazing wedding on film. xx