Friday, April 27, 2012

Wedding

What do you do when your daughter decides in mid October to get married five days before Christmas?  You quickly plan a wedding.  Actually here in Utah Valley a two month engagement is a very common occurrence.
Before my daughter decided to get married my year had been full of tennis and other things that didn't involve any creativity.  I hadn't done anything creative for months.  The challenge of taking a church cultural hall with ugly burlap looking walls and basketball hoops and transforming it into something beautiful got my creative juices flowing again.

We chose to have the wedding reception at our church because it was just blocks from our home and within two miles of 80% of the people who would be coming to the reception.  We realized that five days before Christmas nobody wants to travel more than a few miles from home.


So how do you transform a church gym into a place for a wedding reception?  Well thank goodness for Pinterest.  That is where I got most of my ideas.  We hung lights across the ceiling and then hung paper lanterns, all different sizes from the lights.


Costco had the flameless candles on sale right before Christmas so I bought boxes and boxes of them and placed the candles all over the tables.



We brought a few pieces of furniture and a rug from home to provide different seating.


Earlier in the year I made a wreath from rolled up flowers made from book pages.  I took that idea and made rolled up flowers from sheet music and art paper and set them on the tables.  We also used burlap on the tables to tie in the burlap looking walls.  We Made a beautiful backdrop with Christmas lights, sheer drapery panels, PVC pipe and burlap.


I'm Sherri the one in the middle.  I'm from Orem, Utah the mother of five.  I love Art, baking and tennis.  My favorite kind of art to do is colored pencils, photography and mixed media.

14 comments:

  1. Sherri,

    I can't believe what you did with the space; it is gorgeous. I love all the little twinkle lights, and the color scheme. I can only imagine your surprise when she pulled that on you. We all need an emergency wedding kit.
    Love ya

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  2. Sherri, you just jumped in and got your act together with neutrals, really love it.
    My son got married dec. 17, years ago, glad it was SON not a daughter! Dec. weddings are so beautiful and a good time for families to get together.

    thanks for sharing, the three of you are beautiful.!

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  3. Sherri what an amazing job you did with such a short amount of time. Truly it was beautiful. I love everything you did!
    xo

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  4. What a stunning wedding in such a bland looking space! You did an amazing decorating job!
    Xoxo, Shannon

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  5. I love the flowers - what a sweet touch! What a beautiful wedding and a great memory!

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  6. Sherri.. where did you find those hanging lights and lanterns? I need them for my daughters wedding..

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    1. Terri, the lights we got at a sprinkler supply place, turned christmas light place. We only bought them because we have four daughters, but you can rent them at most wedding rental places. The lanterns I got at justartifacts.com, lunabazaar.com is a good place to get them also.

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  7. Sherri I've never seen a gym look so swanky!! Wow girl! You did such a great job. Those flowers make my blood pressure too high (hee hee)

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  8. Sherri! What an awesome transformation! And of course, because I have a wedding coming in just 2 1/2 months, I'm especially interested!!! That room is flooded with ambiance -- GREAT job! :)

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  9. Thanks so much for all your sweet comments. It actually was alot of fun to plan and put it all together.

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  10. Oh Oh - You did such an amazing job - pretty sure the neighbors will be asking you for help with their weddings! I had no idea that was a ward gym until I read your post. Very well done - absolutely beautiful! And congratulations :)

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  11. Sherri, this looks better than the ones planned MONTHS in advance!
    -Marilyn

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  12. It was soo beautiful! Very inspiring! I will need that hopefully in ten years or.so....

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  13. Wow! The wedding reception turned out amazing. You should be a wedding planner/decorator! How awesome that your daughter has such a creative mom to make such a memorable reception. Thanks so much for sharing your fun creativity! Hugs.

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