Ceremony Flowers

Since I was old enough to start thinking about having a wedding, I knew that I wanted to be married in my beautiful church. Knowing this made the first steps of wedding planning very easy. I'll be the first to say that there are many gorgeous, unique wedding venues around Georgia. I'm very fond of many of the ones that I have visited. However, I think there is something romantic and special, not to mention traditional, about a church wedding. When you have a church as beautiful as mine, it's a no brainer that it is the perfect backdrop for a lovely wedding.

When making decisions for decorating and flower decisions for the church, we decided to let the structural beauty of the church speak for itself and to keep our decor to a minimum. Therefore, we chose to do 3 large impact flower arrangements in the front of the church rather than multiple flower arrangements, candles, etc. all over the church. James and the JFI team did such a great job! We all know how opinionated I am and that I don't do well giving up control (I'll admit it!). James was so patient with me as a "demanding" bride and listened to me express my "visions" for him to bring to life. 

For the altar table, we used a few white hydrangeas in 3 silver julep cups. Simple elegance! 

For the pew markers, we used a few green hydrangeas with magnolia leaves. The large arrangements in the front were a combination of white hydrangeas, eucalyptus, white roses, and agarista.

Stay tuned for my favorite part of the flowers - the bouquets and boutonnieres!!

Wedding Flowers

A couple of weeks ago, we at James Farmer Inc. worked on the flowers for a lovely fall wedding in Perry. The wedding was beautiful, and the bride was glowing! I especially love when our work week at JFI includes weddings and flowers. It's my thing! I just love weddings! Working on this wedding got me anxious to share about the fabo flower selection from my wedding.

My wedding was also a "James Farmer Designs" floral masterpiece. Considering he is my boss, it made it hard for him to turn me down when I asked him to design the flowers for my wedding! I chose all of my wedding vendors very carefully, and I am sooo glad I had James on my team. Since my day job is business manager at JFI, I did most of the planing and prep, hoping this would ease the pain of the job for James (I'm not sure that it did)! James and the rest of our team executed my wishes spectacularly! I'm so grateful for their hard work! I couldn't have been happier with the end result.

I put a lot of time into researching different looks (or you could say "browsing Pinterest"), planning the overall theme for my wedding, and selecting my flower designs. Even though Pinterest is a fabulous tool for wedding planning, I liked having a physical inspiration board to stare at too. Therefore, I made the board below and kept it in my living room for the duration of our engagement.

With the rustic chic decor that we chose for the reception, I wanted to stick with simple flowers in the natural realm of greens, accented with white and just a touch of peach. We stuck with a simple selection of white hydrangeas, eucalyptus, queen anne's lace, amaranthus, dahlias and david austin roses. 

These beauties were at the entryway to the barn greeting guests upon arrival.

James did a great job on the buffet centerpiece. The wooden keg and galvanized pale blended the rustic decor with the barn setting.

For the table centerpieces, we used a mixture of old glass candy jars, tall mason jars, willow jar vases and lanterns. The flowers were placed on top of cut oak disks. I loved that the centerpieces all matched, but none were identical.

On the guest book table, James incorporated peach dahlias and david austin roses into the floral display. More details on our guest book later!

Probably my favorite floral design at the reception was the cake display. I chose a very simple tiered cake with a horizontal whipped icing design. We created the perfect "pop" with accent florals on the cake. Here's a picture of our "inspiration" cake and our executed design.

For the cake display, I used my family's old farm table, which my siblings and I dined at every day as little children. If only that table could tell stories! My grandmother provided the crocheted lace overlay to go on the table. We framed the table with large iron candelabras and lots of bouquets. It was a gorgeous vignette!

Tomorrow I'll share the flowers from our beautiful wedding ceremony in the church!

Our Rehearsal Dinner on {Style Me Pretty} Blog!

I was so excited to be surprised by our rehearsal dinner on the Style Me Pretty Blog today!! My amazingly talented sister-in-law, Maggie Griffin, and mother-in-law, Joni Coody, created the most amazing ambiance for our evening. I'm so blessed to be married into this party loving family! Every single detail of the rehearsal dinner was so beautiful and simply southern. I loved every bit of the evening, from the decor to the food, to the family and friends and their heartfelt toasts. We were also so lucky to have the fabulous Ashlee Culverhouse in attendance to take photos. I'm so excited to share this event with all of you - enough of my babbling, go check out the awesome recap on Style Me Pretty!

http://www.stylemepretty.com/georgia-weddings/2013/10/11/rehearsal-dinner-from-maggie-griffin-design-ashlee-culverhouse-photography/

I'll post more pictures soon that were not included on Style Me Pretty. A special thank you to Maggie  for all of her planning and effort that went into this lovely evening and to Mr. Randy and Mrs. Joni for being gracious hosts for the event. Also, thank you to Ashlee for capturing every sweet detail!

Our Honeymoon

After the wedding of a lifetime, Brince and I headed off to enjoy our dreamy honeymoon in {Antigua!!} We had such an incredible time. We had a very interesting night of travel after our wedding. Our flight for the trip departed at 6:40 A.M. the morning after our wedding! Whew - talk about early! So, we jumped in the limo after our reception and headed for Atlanta (we enjoyed some wedding cake on the way!). We got to our hotel by the airport at about 2:30 AM. Once we got check in, changed clothes, prepared our carry-ons, we had about 30 minutes of shut eye before heading back to the lobby for the airport shuttle. 4:20 AM - sharp! We were headed to the airport. Although we were like zombies, we didn't care. We knew it would all be worth it when we landed in AnTiGuA!

I mean, can you believe this view? We woke up every day to this gorgeous scenery from the balcony of our hillside hut. It was breathtaking! The weather was perfect all week.

That was our hut - the second from the top. Any time that we wanted to go to and from our hut, a cart chauffeur would pick us up on a golf cart and deliver us to our destination.

The resort was gorgeous and the service was ah-mazing! The staff members were so nice and fun to talk to. We spent most of our time relaxing in our personal plunge pool and on the beautiful beach.

The food was absolutely incredible!! So tasty! The menu changed daily so we never got tired of the dinner options. Our favorite was the lobster!

During our stay, we decided to take a fishing trip one day. Our boat came and picked us up right in front of the resort. We had the charter to ourselves, which was so fun! This was my first time deep sea fishing - I did a "fair" job with the motion of the ocean. The captain took us about 7 miles out from the Antigua coast line. We were slow starting out, but soon enough, we couldn't keep the fish off the hooks! We caught a handful of barracudas and three bluefin tuna.

The chef at the resort told us that anything we caught on our trip, he would cook for us that night. That evening, the chef hosted a cooking demonstration for guests and we donated our tuna for the demonstration. So, here we are delivering our catch!

He prepared the tuna sushi-style in an espresso marinade. It was absolutely delicious!!

The rest of the week, we took full advantage of being catered to. We enjoyed breakfast overlooking the gorgeous bay, cocktails on the beach and tons of R & R.

Our week was so incredible! We loved every minute! We hope to one day go back and visit our friends at Hermitage Bay and enjoy Antigua again!

Looking for a good wedding gift?

If you are anything like the Coodys (us!), you know TONS of people getting married this year! Sometimes I struggle with trying to find a fun, unique gift that the bride and groom will appreciate. As a recent bride, I've enjoyed discovering new things through gifts from other people. If you are in need of a cool wedding gift, we've started using one gift that has sent us head over heels!

First let me say, we were so blessed to receive so many awesome gifts from friends and family - and we love them all! Boy do we feel lucky?! Although we haven't gotten around to using all of them, we will in due time!

This week, we decided to test out a Wilton Armetale Gourmet Grillware bowl that we received, and it is {amazing}! This bowl sits on the grill for cooking vegetables, sides, etc. When we got this gift, we didn't realize it would be life changing! Dinner in the new Coody house has taken a major turn!

Using this grill dish is very simple. You lightly coat the pan with oil and add your vegetables. Then, drizzle oil on your veggies and sprinkle with salt and pepper. 

Then it's grill time - cook over medium to high heat. It's as simple as that!

(Handsome Grillmaster not included.)

We are both loving this new addition to our cookware, and the taste it creates is great! This dish has changed the dinner-making dynamic in the new Coody house immensely - and there are no complaints from this wifey!! 

This gift came from Flint River Pottery in Cordele and is not only a great wedding gift, but a great gift for any occasion. To all my wives and girlfriends out there, if you'd like to throw dinner responsibilities back on your manly man every now and then, I highly recommend picking up one of these pans or bowls for your next gift!

Any great wedding gifts that you've discovered lately? Let's hear about them!