Planning an Out-of-State Wedding
In honor of FINALLY getting the rest of my thank you notes in the mail, I thought it would be a great time to share photos and details from our Maryland wedding in April ❤️
Bruno and I had been engaged since February 2021, but put off wedding planning until our son was a little older. I always knew that I wanted to get married in my home-state of Maryland, so in July on 2022 we toured a few venues in the area. That September, we signed with my dream and first choice venue, Chesapeake Bay Beach Club, for a Saturday in April 2023.
The Beach Club wowed me before I even toured it, and seeing it in person made my heart skip a bit. It was gorgeous. And since we were planning our wedding from California, we loved that the venue included quality amenities like catering, a day-of-coordinator, hotel on-site, hair & makeup team on-site and planning assistance. It was a little over our initial budget, but we were sold, and my family just loved it. I don’t regret going over budget.
The Budget
I guess we should touch on that real quick, we spent A LOT more than I expected. Full transparency: we wanted to keep it between $55,000-$60,000 and ended up spending over $70,000 at the end of the day (including stationary, gifts, rehearsal dinner for 80+ guests and travel for our family of 3). My parents helped out significantly and my in-laws covered the costs for the rehearsal dinner.
It sounds like an INSANE amount of money, but I was surprised to find out that’s pretty average for a wedding in 2023. Despite spending so much, I made a lot of things on my own and cut corners in areas that were less important to us. Our main priorities were a great photographer, good food, and convenience for our out-of-town guests.
Our Vendors
Selecting vendors that matched our style, budget and were available for our date was a bit of a struggle for me but I am so glad I persevered to find this amazing team of vendors. We stayed as close to our budget as possible, but ultimately went over what we expected.
Photographer
The first vendor we booked was our photographer, Sarah Brookhart. As I mentioned, this was my first priority vendor-wise so we spent the most on her. I had interviewed another photographer as well, who’s work I loved, but after a few pros and cons lists, we went with Sarah. We loved that she had little kids, so we knew she’d be able to photograph them well and go with the flow. She also had a trip to SoCal planned that upcoming January, so we were able to do our engagement session in our own home with Atticus! I love that we were able to get photos taken on both coasts. But I think the main reason we went with Sarah (besides her undeniable skill) was how organized and prepared she was! She set us up with an online portal where we answered questionnaires and provided extra details. She asked questions I never even thought about and have started asking my own couples for the weddings I photograph. After booking, she sent us a printed magazine with tons of tips and FAQs about the wedding day and engagement shoot. It was super helpful!
Music
We hired Darian Granger from District Remix to DJ our ceremony and reception. District Remix was such a dream to work with from the very beginning! Their online presence really stood out to me compared to other DJs in the area so I reached out to get more info. Talking to Jason (co-founder) on the phone got me SO excited about the possibilities of our wedding music. I nearly had to turn them down because the quote they sent me was over $1,000 more than another option, but after being transparent with them via email, they offered to take off $500. Everything about that process totally sold me on them, I knew that it would be worth it for us to pay a little more for an experience we trusted 100%.
Florist
Our florist was the hardest to find, but I kept searching and was so grateful to find April & Taylor at Arrow Bella Weddings. I reached out to so many local florists but many were unavailable (we got married the day before Easter) and those who were, had shop minimums that were way out of our price range. I had a very particular vision too, and I didn’t want to trust a florist that didn’t specialize in weddings. I got so desperate at one point, I considered doing my own florals, but I did not want to deal with the stress of practicing a new art form amidst everything else. I came across Arrow Bella randomly on Instagram one day and saw they offered al a carte packages so I immediately reached out and we booked within the week. After discussing my ideas, she sent over a floral mood board that helped me design the rest of my wedding decor.
I could gush about this company forever because it was such a great experience working with them. They went above and beyond, even doing a venue walkthrough the day before the wedding to work out final details. They accommodated our little preferences and delivered the most amazing florals I could have imagined. My bouquet!!! I am still obsessed. I caught a little glimpse of them setting up during the morning and it felt like I was seeing old friends.
The Design
My keywords: elegant, whimsical, fun, intentional, timeless.
We had classic black tuxedos and bridesmaid dresses, garden inspired white florals with whimsical, structural shapes, pops of green and blue from the venue. Everything came together exactly as I had planned, despite not hiring a planner. I will say that forgoing a partial wedding planner is one of my slight regrets, because some of my decor was not set up exactly how I wanted and I wish there was “another me” to do set up, but none of it was enough for me to think about twice during the actual wedding.
Most of the decor was DIY, but that’s kind of my specialty, so I want to share some of my favorite projects that I worked on.
Invitations
Ok there are a lot of good projects in this flatlay. Starting with our photostrip save the date cards (bottom left corner). Bruno and I took these pics in our kitchen with my camera and tripod one night after Atticus went to sleep. I edited our three favorites together with the info for our wedding, printed 200 and hand cut them all. We ordered these magnetic sleeves for photostrips and sent them to our guests as a magnet (bonus: we had a photobooth at our rehearsal dinner and guests could reuse the magnetic strip for their own pics!)
I also did the invitations myself, based off a simple design I saw on Minted. I recreated my own design in Illustrator and had them printed and cut to size at FedEx. I would have loved to get fully custom stationary with all the bits and bobs, but I needed to keep this as cost effective as possible. To make them look a little more special, I cut belly bands out of vellum and made circle magnets with our initials. The magnet was strong enough to hold both the invite and details card on the fridge, but light enough to not require additional postage!
I made the sunglasses with a pair of white, heart-shaped glasses for $5 and beads I already had at home. The pearls were half spheres with a flat back so they were nice and easy to hot glue onto my shades. I wore these for my bridal shower and for dancing at the end of my reception.
The Newlywed Post
The newspaper ended up being one of my favorite projects of the entire event, and it wasn’t even really for the wedding. We had a lot of guests coming in from out of town, so I designed this as an insert for our welcome bags to share fun facts and things to do around town. In true Eden fashion, this quick project became a time-intensive custom layout, printed on real newsprint with photos, information a crossword puzzle.
This ended up being such a hit amongst everyone. Even my hairstylist was blown away! At the last minute, I decided to display the remaining newspapers during our reception. I didn’t get many pictures, but at one point at the end of the night, I stepped away to go to the bridal suite and saw 3 of my guests, sitting on a bench, reading my little newspaper. It was such a cute moment for me.
Table Design
I had a lot of fun designing the tables for our reception too! Since we had 16 tables at our wedding, we saved some money by not doing any floral centerpieces. I picked out these gorgeous pillar candles from Yummi Candles in the shade “Hint of Mauve”. It was a great deal for the candles and hurricane vases and they made such a big impact on the tables and throughout the venue. I was actually able to make a little of my mohey back by selling them to my florist after the event (of course I kept a couple sets for my house, but there is no way I could have 40+ candles in my apartment.)
All the stationary for the wedding was DIY, including the menus, table numbers, and seating chart. I selected two fonts to use across every element to keep them all cohesive. For the table numbers, I did a simple line drawing of some buildings/ locations that are integral to our relationship like where we first met, our first date, favorite vacations and date spots, etc.
These illustrations turned out so cute, I ended up including them in the welcome newspaper as a visual timeline of our relationship.
I designed the menus to match our invitation and had them printed at FedEx. I then used my Cricut to make each name card on black cardstock paper. This was the first time I used my Cricut to write and I am obsessed. It cut the circles and wrote the names in one go! Amazing. It took awhile to make so many but totally worth it. I love that it adds another layer to the menu card and a handwritten feel. When I got into Maryland before the wedding, I assembled each menu and place card with a small sprig of babies breath and a mini acrylic clip.
Also on the table were these two-sided photo sharing cards I made. Now, disclaimer: I actually messed up the photo sharing element and my link was broken. That’s probably one of my biggest regrets from the wedding (so minuscule, but I definitely was bummed when I realized after the fact). The goal was for our guests to upload photos and videos from the night to a big shared folder! I had a bunch of prompts on the back too. Of course, after the wedding I discovered there are actually apps that will do this for you, but it is what it is.
The table numbers and QR code signs were displayed upright in white wood card holders from Amazon.
Coloring Book
Years ago before I was even engaged, I saw a post on Reddit from a girl making her own coloring book for her wedding and I never stopped thinking about it! My dads side of the family is also notorious for having coloring books during big events, so this idea just seemed so fitting. Most of the pages were hand drawn in Procreate on my Ipad, then I added a few Barbie wedding coloring pages and a custom word search on the back. Honestly, printing the pages side by side and back to back in the right orientation to make the book was the most difficult part of this process for me. Once I got them all assembled, I bound them with a white satin ribbon. Then I took it up a notch and made crayon bundles, wrapped in the same white satin ribbon and a little pearl bead (leftover from my sunglasses project.) So cute.
I didn’t know if I would even need as many as I made since I only had a handful of kids coming, but these coloring books were fun for all ages.
The Love that Came Before Us
We collected our families wedding photos as far back as we could find and had them displayed in frames in the hallway outside our reception. I am so glad we ended up doing this — it got difficult trying to track some down, but it really was so worth it. I labeled each photo with the year and location of their wedding, which was so interesting too. Our families are from all over the place ❤️
Overall, planning this wedding from another coast was a lot of work, but so, so worth it. I love all how all the little details came together in the end, and we really had the best day ever ❤️ Apparently, I love planning an event. 10/10 would do it again.
