our wedding

Gina Dreher Photography

Mr. Pihl and I were engaged in April of 2013 and were married on November 9, 2013.  By today's (nutso) standards, that's a crazy-short engagement!

I'm going to let you in on a little secret.

Come closer...

No, really.

Okay.  Our shindig was almost completely planned online!  (Planned, not executed mind you.  We put the D-I-Y in DIY wedding.)

So, in an effort to share the wealth, we're willing to share our secrets.  And show off a few photos in the process.

So sit back, relax, and enjoy browsing!  If I'm unclear about anything or if you have additional questions, feel free to contact me and I'll holler back as soon as I can!


                                                                                                                                                                   

The Nitty-Gritty

I've enjoyed detailing our online planning adventures below (complete with corny humor and photos) but if you're looking for quick access, here ya go!

These are links and information to the main gang of vendors we used:

DJ and Lighting: Absolute Sound
Videographer: The Brickhouse Studios
Our Completed Wedding Video: By The Brickhouse Studios on Vimeo
Location: Warehouse on private Pihl family property
Flowers - Wedding Party: Family Dried Flowers on Etsy.com
Flowers - Reception: Curious Country Creations (Ordered in bulk and arranged by Amy)
Caterer: DIY by the Pihl family
Disposable Utensils: Smarty had a Party
Linen-Like Tablecloths: Wrap With Us
Hair and Makeup: Pin Ups Hair
Cakes: Made by a small army of Amy's contacts
Amy's Wedding Pinterest Board: Wed - #MrMrsPihl


Planning - Getting Started

We returned from our Disney engagement trip in April and were greeted by two straight weeks of insanity.

We knew that we didn't want a long engagement, and based upon approximately 13,742 pieces of criteria, November 9th seemed like our most plausible date.  First things first, we wanted to set a budget, gather up a guest list, and nail down the big things we wanted to focus our investment on:
  1. Location
  2. DJ
  3. Photographer
  4. Enough food and booze for 350ish guests
Mr. Pihl's family was about to start building another warehouse on their private property, and they were amazing/gracious/compassionate/kind/generous enough to build it in time for us to use it as our reception hall for the wedding.

Score 1!

Ryan Funck at Absolute Sound is a Wichita based DJ and he is incredible.  The moment Mr. Pihl and I sat down for our interview/consultation with Ryan, we knew he was our guy.  One of the first things he said was that he "was all about atmosphere."  We knew we had found our party soul mate.

Score 2!

Mr. Pihl's amazing sister provided us with a list of photographers she had wrangled up for her own wedding planning process a few years previous, and for that I'm eternally grateful.  Wichita photographer Gina Dreher was among the list of links in her email to me, and the instant I clicked the link to Gina's page I was sold. Luckily Gina was available for our date, and after meeting with Mrs. Dreher, Mr. Pihl and I were counting the days until our engagement session with her in June.

Score 3!

She featured our engagement session on her blog, and it was every bit as hot and muggy and buggy as she describes.  She's a trooper.

And she takes incredible photos!

Gina Dreher Photography
If you're looking for a photographer in the central Kansas region, I highly recommend Gina.


Planning - Team Effort

To start things off, I live 1,400 miles away from my hometown.  That means I'm 1,400 miles away from my momma and my baby sister (and 1,400 miles away -- in the opposite direction-- from my bff in NYC... what are the chances?!).  Planning a wedding is typically a highly momma + sister + bff involved process, so in an effort to promote inclusion and participation, SO MUCH of our pre-wedding cahoots went down on the web.

It was awesome.

My greatest decision?  Using Pinterest's "secret pin board" option and having one just for me (all-things bridal), one to be shared between my mom, sister, Jac, and myself (to create inclusion when planning a wedding 1,400 miles apart from one another), and one strictly for my "bridal brigade" (known to normal folks as bridesmaids).  I also had a publicly viewable "Wed" pinboard for general DIY ideas and inspiration.

Hey, so I'm a little organized?  Where's the harm in that?!

I asked five lovely ladies to be involved in the big day.  One lived in New Jersey, one in Kansas City, one in New York City, one in Santa Barbara, CA, and one in Germany.  Asking my gals to Starbucks for coffee to spring the questions on them was not an option.  I sent out a PDF (full of corny humor, of course!) to the gals to ask them to be part of my crew, and it was inspired by this genius bride.

Four of my rock stars made it while my homegirl in Germany celebrated from afar (but she was with us in spirit!).  The bridal brigade was given each a $100 Visa gift card to help with the cost of their dresses, a color palate, and very general guidelines (fabric, style, length, NO showers, NO gifts, more corny humor).  I couldn't be happier with the marvelous results...

Gina Dreher Photography
... despite the sassy look on my face.  Here's a better one.

Gina Dreher Photography
Love these gals.

Just for the sake of equal representation, here's Mr. Pihl and his bros.

Gina Dreher Photography
My groom is seriously handsome.  

I know that planning sites like the Knot.com can be a great resource for some folks, but for me it seemed like I was seeing too much of the same weddings over and over again.  Also, when I searched for Kansas-based vendors on the Knot, 94.57362% of my results were in Kansas City.   That wasn't going to do me much good out here in the center of Kansas.

We used the Knot's "My Budgeter" to plug in things like our budget amount, our guest tally, and the number of our rock stars (attendants), and the budget maker created a guideline based upon the wedding norm.

At that point I headed over to the greatest wedding planning website in the world...
It's called A Practical Wedding, and they saved my sanity more than once.  The site's creator (Meg Keene) is my hero and has even published a book by the same title as her site.  Anyhow, Meg provides various (and very helpful) wedding planning spreadsheet templates.  I downloaded them, added them to Google drive, combined them into one spreadsheet (but divided them by using tabs/sheets along the bottom), personalized them with our own line-items, and then plugged in the Knot's projected budget, allowing for generously personalized tweaks here and there.  This was my life-saver.  Not only was my guest list, budget, rehearsal list, thank-you's, and vendor contact information all in one place, but thanks to the magic of Google Drive, I could share access and editing privileges with Mr. Pihl and our moms.

(Note: The sharing with the moms thing is totally up to you.  If I had it again to differently, there are aspects I would have altered.)

Lastly, I did decide to get a little snazzy when asking my flower girl if she would be, well, a flower girl.


These photos have been winding their way through Pinterest for awhile as individual snapshots from my Instagram account, but now they're tied together with a figurative little bow for you!

My flower girl loved this by the way.  I brought fresh flowers, this book, and a card over to her house (along with ice cream with her mom's permission) and told miss-thing that I had a gift for her, but that he had to open the card first.

She proceeded to read aloud, got to the end, and shouted, "YES!!!  I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO BE A FLOWER GIRL!"

Bless her beautiful heart.


Planning - Stationary and Our Website

Since we had a shorter engagement, our Save-the-Dates had to go out almost immediately upon our return from our April Disney World Engagement Adventure.

As such, we used a photo from our trip to announce the news.


We chose Save-the-Date magnets from A Giftful Heart.  They were a breeze to work with, and the most economically sound choice when it came to magnets (which were on Mr. Pihl's list of "wants").

We then set up our wedding website through the dreaded Knot.  Hey, they have a great template!

Since our website offered the option to add things like directions, guest information (read: preferred attire), and registry links, we opted to have simple invitations and point guests to the website (rather than have 17 million costly inserts).  We're thrifty.

amybpihl on Instagram
Our invitations, RSVPs, website cards, programs, and thank-you's were all designed by Rachel at the Fine & Dandy Paperie on Etsy.com.  

Rachel was a dream and worked with me a TON in order to perfect the autumn color scheme we wanted.  The original colors I initially sent to her were just plain not good, and she was amazing at helping me pick three better suited colors AND allowed me to lighten one of them up a bit.  We ended up with Bamboo, Gold, and a lighter version than Light Gold.  Her palettes are on her product pages, and we went with her gorgeous "Old Fashioned" design for the whole shebang.

We printed them on bright white linen paper and had them cut in bulk at a local office supply store.  I hand-addressed 170+ envelopes using a metallic gold liquid paint Sharpie.  Shortly thereafter I feared that I would never regain full use of my hands.

Hey, it was a DIY wedding.  Just keeping it real.

Going the printable route was very hands-on, but it also saved a chunk of change when it came down to it.  I'd do it again in a heartbeat.


Decor + Affordability =  My DIY Heaven 

This was where the magic happened.  Decor puts me in my happy place, especially when I can create what I envision within budget-friendly parameters.

After scouring Pinterest for a week straight, I finally settled on using glass bottles and jars for the centerpieces.  Then I remembered that we'd invited nearly 400 folks to this shindig, which would translate into 40+ tables.

About the time that I composed myself (after breathing into a brown paper bag) I remembered that it takes a village.

I sent out a plea on Facebook to our friends, family and colleagues for their trash.  Okay, their recyclables.  For months I would collect a completely random array of glass jars and bottles from some very awesome peeps, scrub the labels off (boiling the labels off and scrubbing the residual goo with a Brillo pad was my most successful avenue), and set them in boxes to await their filling.

The few gnarly ones that proved too big a challenge for me were were wrapped with burlap and twine.

Voila!  My guess is that we ended up with a 70% bare to 30% burlap-or-twine-adorned jar ratio (and around 300 jars total).  The glass ranged from mini glass bottles of wine, to BIG bottles of wine, from baby food jars to spaghetti sauce jars.

I didn't discriminate.

Our flowers?  100% dried.  Such a good decision!

The flowers were ordered in bulk from Curious Country Creations and arranged in our freshly scrubbed jars over a period of several movie nights.  It was so easy to stick whole, totally arranged jars and bottles onto tables.  Definitely recommend the dried flower route.

Other elements of the centerpieces included wood circles cut from my father-in-law's woodpile, dried moss from a craft store, an 18 inch square of kraft paper, and a small wood chunk to hold our social media signage.

Gina Dreher Photography
Using kraft paper was a great decision.  I got an 18 inch x 1200 foot roll from Staples.com and we used the heck out of that thing.  Centerpieces were just the beginning for that roll.  We wrapped the live potted plants that Mr. Pihl's uncle loaned to us from his nursery (Smoky Valley Nursery in McPherson, Kansas...Thanks again, Jeff!) in kraft paper (shown at our head table below). We used it to make signs, used it as table runners for all rectangular tables, used it to cover the edge of our DIY riser, and we even wrapped our gigantic trash cans in the paper, making everything tie in.  Yes... even the trash cans!  

 My attention to detail is astounding.  My attention to that state of my desk at work, not so much.

Gina Dreher Photography
Mr. Pihl's cousins loaned us their bar for the night (thanks, guys!), and my father-in-law built the riser we were on.

In fact, my in-laws were key to this whole budget DIY thing.  They're awesome.  They had these beauties laying in their scrap pile:

amybpihl on Instagram
Which Mr. Pihl and his pops turned into these magnificent beauties you see in the distance:

Gina Dreher Photography

See that circle chandelier thingy?  Yup.  That's them.  Mr. Pihl and his dad suspended two of them from the ceiling with chains and attached these lights from Target with zip ties.  We also used the same lights above the dance floor.

Here's a fun idea... See the tables in the photo above?  In the interest of preserving space we actually served up our BBQ buffet ON the dance floor and our helping hands took it down after folks were stuffed.  It was open and ready for our first dance in a jiffy!

I made all necessary wedding-day-signage on Google Drive's document and presentation options. Seriously!

Gina Dreher Photography
Also, in an effort to engage our guests we asked them to share their photos of the day on Instagram while tagging them with #MrMrsPihl.

Gina Dreher Photography

Signs were created and stuck on each table, I created a wood-burned sign for our head table, and Mr. Pihl arranged with our DJ to have a projector screen set up with OUR GUESTS' OWN PHOTOS being shown through Evenstagr.am.

It was totally rad.

I asked our mommas to wrangle up old wedding photos of past generations to make a visual family tree of sorts.  It turned out to be lovely, and folks were enchanted by the collection of old photographs.

Gina Dreher Photography
Sigh.  Look at all that history.

I made our cake toppers, though they actually didn't make it on top of our cake until we were about to cut into the dagumned thing.

Whoopsie.

But it's okay.  They're adorable if I do say so myself.

Gina Dreher Photography
I was pretty proud of our cake situation.  I asked a gal from my church to make sheet cakes to feed the masses, had a coworker design the amazingly beautiful Chiefs groom's cake, and found a local woman to make a small single layer cake for us to cut into.  All of the cakes were amazing, but the carrot sheet cake is the BEST carrot cake I've ever had.  Like, ever.  Mmmmm.....

Gina Dreher Photography
Here's something original...

It's become Pihl tradition to use the bed of Grandpa Pihl's vintage truck as a cooler for beer.  In order to keep the party inside and away from chilly November nights we parked Ol' Wally in the corner of the building and flanked the corner walls with corn stalks.

Gina Dreher Photography

Lastly, while we focused our time, cash flow, and energy primarily on the reception, we did bundle up wheat from the Pihl family farms into twelve pieces of awesomely simple aisle decor.

Gina Dreher Photography


Girly Details

Gina Dreher Photography
My dress was by Sincerity (Style 3663) and I found it at The White Dress in Wichita, Kansas.  It was a sample (meaning about as cheap as I could get it) and came as-is (which was excellent condition).  As you can tell by looking at the style link, I had some major work done to the dress.  I found a wedding gown alterations gal who is a saint and a miracle worker.  And a family-friend to boot!

My earrings were from a cute little shop on Etsy.

My shoes were Betsey Johnson's Dance Flat in silver.  The sole of the shoe was blue.  Hello, something blue!

My garter was also from Etsy.  I elected to NOT do the traditional groom-awkwardly-sticks-his-skull-up-the-bride's-gown-and-fishes-said-garter-with-his-teeth display, so I didn't see the point in buying a toss garter as well.

Our rings were from Vernon Jewelers in Salina, Kansas.

The memorial charm of my precious Oma was from the shop Bouquet Photo Charms on Etsy.com (Note: The shop owner at Bouquet Photo Charms was wonderful and loved my Oma's photo so much that she asked to feature it on her shop.  Here is a link to my beautiful grandmother's charm).

The flower girl's dress was from the Etsy shop Everything Ruffles, and was tailor made for her.  It was lovely. If you go this (or a similar) route, be sure to order well in advance so that you'll be certain to receive it on time.  

Gina Dreher Photography
Hair and makeup were done for myself and all of the girls at Pin-Ups Hair Salon in Salina, Kansas.

My veil was actually my "something borrowed" from one of my bridal brigade.


The Big Day

We got married at Salemsborg Lutheran Church in Smolan, Kansas on the prettiest day in November 2013.

Gina Dreher Photography
We felt incredibly blessed.

We got a first look:

Gina Dreher Photography
We got to assemble and take home a Unity Cross to actually have up in our house (as opposed to candles or sand that end up being shoved into the nether-regions of closets):

Gina Dreher Photography
We had our favorite people around us:

Gina Dreher Photography
We got to ride off into the sunset on a hay rack:

Photos taken by our rock stars and shared on Instagram
And even had our grand entrance interrupted by our pastor to play a game of flip cup!

Gina Dreher Photography
The boys won by a landslide. 

Jerks.

But let's not dwell on the past.

After all, we got the dance party we wanted!


Wrapping it up...

Online wedding planning seems to have become 100% percent about the details and the photos.  Seriously!  Who doesn't dream of having their wedding photos featured on the most popular wedding blogs?!

Is that just me?  Guys?  Crickets...

 Anyhow, at the end of the day, you'll be married, and that's what counts.

But some of us like to go a little nuts.

If you have the time and caffeine, DIY is totally doable.  Not only is it doable, it can be done your way.  No, that's not clearance to be bossy.  What I mean is that using the Internet as a wedding springboard can be both illuminating and incredibly intimidating at the same time.

You know what I'm talking about.  Pinterest can cause inferiority complexes in the best of us (my hand is raised as guilty!).  Pick what you like + what you and your peeps can accomplish, and = you'll create the atmosphere you've been striving for.

If I could give any advice to brides-to-be out there, it would be:
  1. It takes a village.  Ask around for resources.  Folks are usually willing to lend their things and a helping hand when they can.  
  2. Set a date to stop going onto Pinterest.  And stick to it!  Enjoy the pursuing process and pin like crazy, but get to a point where you STOP adding, clean out your so/so pins, and like what you've collected.  Know what you like, and stick to it. If you're a visual learner like me, just look for a moment at what you've created.  And it will be good.
  3. People tell you that something will inevitably go wrong. And the sad truth is that they're probably right.  We had decided to use floor-length linen-like disposable table cloths for our 45 tables.  We only received six.  So, instead of freaking out I channeled my inner student of A Practical Wedding and yelled, "Screw it!  Nobody will remember the dagumned tablecloths!  ...And if they do, then they need another beer from the bed of the truck!" In the end, we changed our order to the scrawny the 84 inch ones instead.  Oh, and I also fell down the stairs on our wedding day--- while I was in my wedding gown.  It was like a big satin slip and slide for my tailbone.  But that story is for another day...  Or maybe never.
  4. Stay together.  This was the best piece of advice we received.  At the reception stay together.  You and your Mr./Mrs. are hitched for life, but that doesn't mean that you should have two different sets of memories.  The day whizzes by in a flash, so enjoy each other as much as possible.  There will be so much joy and love in the room (all directed at the two of YOU, by the way), and it's something to cherish.
Now, go forth and rock on!

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions, comments, or just want to say "howdy"!

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