When Porch.com asked me to participate in their #LoveYourHome series, I immediately knew that I wanted to talk about all the ways that we surround ourselves with love in our home by filling it with photos and memories of the love we share! Over the years, I've found lots of creative ways to decorate our home using mementos from our wedding and honeymoon... And what better day to share that story than on my 8th wedding anniversary?!
I love pretty things, but I believe a home should be a reflection of the family that lives there, and not just a collection of "stuff"! My husband and I share many common loves - art, music, photography, travel - and you'll see each of those interests reflected throughout our home. But I also strive to make our home a more literal reflection of us by filling it with photos and memories of our lives together.
In the eight years since we were married {and the six years before that}, Scott and I have built a wonderful life that now includes two amazing little boys. Since we've become parents, I'm sure it would come as no surprise that our walls and shelves are filled with endless precious baby, toddler and family photos. But I've also made a concerted effort to ensure that we've continued to surround ourselves with photos and mementos of our relationship as couple outside of parenthood - including from our wedding and our honeymoon.
There are many common ways to preserve and display your wedding memories, including scrapbooks to framed photos, but, over the years, I've gotten creative and found a dozen more ways to incorporate our wedding and honeymoon mementos in to our daily lives through the decor of our home! By surrounding ourselves with these daily reminders of our relationship, I find it easier to let go of the stresses of everyday life and to focus on the bigger picture.
Our wedding was incredibly special, filled with family and friends and so, so many memories! But what I most want to remember from that day are the promises we made to one another. That's why, for our first anniversary, I created a canvas print for Scott to document our vows.
I started with one of my favorite photos of Scott and I saying our vows to one another, converted it to black and white, and then used Photoshop to create a black border around the photo that I overlaid with the text of those vows.
The framed canvas hangs just outside of our bedroom, where it serves as a daily reminder of our beautiful wedding day and the promises made. You can read more here about how I created, printed, and framed this canvas.
Our wedding venue was once the Midwest Steel and Ironworks building where large ship parts were built for the Navy in the early 1900’s. We loved the industrial feel of the large, open space, and as a result, we kept the ceremony decorations very minimal. The focal point of the ceremony was the custom, 47” wide black aisle runner with our names and wedding date printed in white script. I wanted to find a way to repurpose the aisle runner, and after years of considering different options, I finally decided to turn the runner into a decorative pillow for our bed.
This pillow is such a special item that it {almost} motivates me to make the bed every day.
You can read more about our aisle runner turned pillow in this post.
When I redecorated our master bedroom last fall, I created a large gallery wall around our television to make the tv feel like less of a focal point in the room. Since we have photos of our two sons throughout the house, I decided that this master bedroom gallery wall should be about just the two of us.
I filled the gallery wall frames with photos from our engagement, our wedding, and our travels, and I even incorporated our wedding invitation and the personalized photo stamps from our wedding stationery into the gallery.
I spent a lot of time designing all of our wedding stationery, from the Save the Date Cards to the Thank You notes, and everything in between. Our invitations were a simple black with white text, but to dress them up, I wrapped a blue ribbon around each and affixed an engagement photo to the ribbon. When the photo was in place, all that could be seen of the invitation was the text at the top and bottom reading “The Wedding” and “Angela & Scott.” But once the ribbon and photo were removed, the remainder of the invitation text was visible.
I wanted to find a way to display our invitation, both with and without the photo, I opted for a sleek and cool double sided magnetic frame. One side of the frame displays the invitation with the photo in place, and the other side displays the invitation with the text visible. Click here to read all about this double sided frame.
This framed invitation sits on the dresser in our bedroom, where we see it every day.
When I got married back in 2007, personalized photo stamps were very popular. We ordered different stamps for each type of wedding stationery. I've had a bunch of extra of the stamps laying around in a drawer forever, and I finally got around to framing them for the new master bedroom gallery wall.
To make the stamps look more interesting in the frame, I created a faux postmark. You can read the details here.
At our wedding, right as we were getting ready to leave in my dad's T-Bird at the end of the reception, we suddenly realized that we failed to have the photographer take a single photo of our rings. Instead, we asked a friend with a camera to take a quick photo of us before we drove away - sticking our hands in the air to show off our rings.
This snapshot has not only become one of my favorite photos from our wedding day {which I display on the floating photo shelves in our living room}, it was also the start of what has become a really fun tradition... wedding ring selfies! We now take photos of our rings to document all of our travels, as well as major milestones - like my pregnancies and the births of our babies.
Many of our wedding ring selfies have ended up in frames all around our house, and they never fail to make me smile! I love that these photos not only document our adventures together, they are also reminders of the promises that those rings represent.
If you are interested, you can see lots more photos of our rings all around the world, and our rings' most recent travels through South Africa.
Shortly after we were married, I purchased a gorgeous nickel plated brass keepsake box from Red Envelope, which is embossed with the word “VOWS.” The box is perfect for holding precious wedding mementos, including a copy of our invitation and save the date card, our wedding program, my garter, one of our table numbers, our marriage license, the menu from our rehearsal dinner, and a letter my dad wrote to my husband right after we were engaged with advice for a happy marriage.
I purchased the VOWS box from Red Envelope, but unfortunately it is no longer available. However, if you want to create a memory box like this, you can certainly find a beautiful box that fits your style - just make sure your memory box is archival quality {acid free} so that any papers and photos inside are not damaged over time.
In the past, I have displayed our VOWS box on a console table in our living room, right on top of the stack of our wedding photo books. I love having these items prominently displayed in a spot that prompts me to look at them on a regular basis!
Speaking of our wedding photo books, let me tell you a bit about ours. Rather than simply creating one photo album to hold all of the photos of formal portraits from our wedding day, I put together a set of photo books to capture every special moment from the proposal through the honeymoon. I designed a unique cover for each book, and filled the books with photos as well as text.
Scott's proposal to me was pretty incredible, so I decided it deserved its very own book! The proposal was really a day long event, as Scott sent me on a scavenger hunt all around the city. Armed with a disposable camera {this was way back before cell phone cameras}, I made my way to destinations that spanned each of the phases of our relationship and involved many of our family and friends. I wanted to be sure to document the entire process {including the riddles that I had to solve at each stop}, so I put all of the photos of my day-long adventure into a photo book, together with the riddles and their solutions.
We were lucky to have a friend take all of our engagement photos in downtown Denver, and the photo shoot was so much fun! A few of the photos have made their way into frames around the house, but I didn't want to let all of the other photos collect virtual dust on our computer hard drive, so I gave them their very own book.
The photo book dedicated to our engagement photos even has a special section at the back just for all of the goofy “outtake” photos that still make me laugh to this day!
We decided to forgo a formal wedding album in favor of a photo book that captures all of the details of the day. Our book starts with photos of us getting ready with our bridesmaids and groomsmen, and includes the wedding party and family portraits, the venue and decor, the ceremony and reception, the cake cutting, the bouquet and garter toss, group shots of our guests at their assigned tables, and candids of our family and friends dancing the night away.
Our wedding photo book was also the perfect place to document the officiants words and the readings that we so carefully selected. I also noted, within the pages of our book, the songs that were played at special moments throughout the ceremony and reception. Photos are wonderful, but as the years go by, I don’t want to forget any of those other details that made the day so special.
Finally, I decided that our honeymoon in Greece also deserved a photo book all its own! I even used our wedding ring selfies from Athens, Mykonos, and Santorini to design faux postage stamps for the cover of the book.
I chose to organize our honeymoon pictures in chronological order, and I added small bits of text here and there to identify locations and monuments.
Incorporating mementos of our wedding into our home decor has been a wonderful way to preserve the memories of the event, and to keep every present the promises we made that day. And the same goes for our honeymoon!
Our honeymoon was an incredibly special time, and one that I'd love to relieve over and over. While I enjoy flipping through our honeymoon photo book, I also wanted to find a way to make our honeymoon memories more present in our daily lives. Since we can't dash off to the Greek islands at a moments notice, we instead found a way to recreate a little slice of Greece right in our own home.
I can best describe our time in the Greek islands as pure bliss, so we drew upon our travels in order to create a relaxing and inviting guest bedroom and bathroom. Just stepping into that room brings back wonderful memories. Not only do our guests get to enjoy a taste of Greece when they stay with us, we also have a nice little retreat when we want to escape without leaving home!
The design of our guest suite was influenced by the sights and colors of the Greek islands, and specifically by the style of one particular hotel that we stayed at on the island of Mykonos. You can read all about the design inspirations for the guest suite in this post, which includes lots of gorgeous photos of the islands.
The hotel in Mykonos that inspired our guest room design featured a large, backlit photo above the bed. We wanted to recreate this element in our space, so a few years ago for our anniversary we framed one of our favorite honeymoon photos in a large, custom backlit frame. This photo looks good during the day, but it is really jaw-dropping when you it glowing in the dark room at night. You can read about the backlit frame and where we bought it in this post.
While traveling around the island of Santorini, we came across a small art market, and we purchased a gorgeous, three-dimensional painting of Gree. We carried it home very carefully, then framed it and hung it in a prominent location in the guest room. The white orchids on the tray below this painting also hold special meaning, because not only were orchids featured throughout the decor of our inspiration hotel, they were also the flowers that made up my wedding bouquet!
The Greek islands are so picturesque that it's almost impossible to visit and not come home with postcard quality photos. It was too hard to choose just one or two photos to frame, so I instead created a large gallery wall of Santorini photos in the guest bedroom. Click here to see more photos of our honeymoon inspired guest room.
The design of the attached guest bathroom was also inspired by our hotel stay in the Greek islands. In particular, the hotel had a large quote running floor to ceiling in the lounge, which I recreated on the wall of the bathroom.
To add some interest to the bathroom water closet, I framed four more photos {this time from the island of Mykonos} and hung them floor to ceiling along on the narrow wall. Click here to see more photos of our honeymoon inspired guest bathroom.
So, now you've seen how we LOVE our home by incorporating mementos of our wedding and honeymoon all throughout our decor. I would definitely encourage you to visit Porch.com to read some of the other entries in their #LoveYourHome series!
While you are over at Porch.com, be sure to check out all of the amazing resources they offer! Porch is a wealth of inspiration and advice regarding home improvement and home maintenance, and it also provides access to a network of trusted professionals in your area that can help you complete any project you have in mind!
Now it's your turn to tell us how you LOVE your home! Share your favorite memories, sentimental items in your home, or the space that make your home your "happy place"! Tag your photos and stories on social media using the #LoveYourHome hashtag.
And if you have any unique ways of displaying your wedding mementos, I'd love to see those too!
Let's get social!