Low-key Oregon Coast Wedding

How to introduce Amanda of Peony :: Love, hilarious wedding blogger, nose-picker, blower-of-sunshine-up-my-ass*? She's much more than that, I feel certain.

Anyhoo, here's what Amanda had to say about her May wedding:

When Nick and I first got engaged our instinct was to run for the hills and elope. We are fairly hermit-like and my association with weddings always included vast amounts of tulle and stress. It wasn't until after some firm prodding from family that we decided to do the whole wedding thing. We chose the little town of Manzanita, OR. It's on the beach about an hour and a half outside of our hometown Portland. If our wedding had a theme it would definitely be "low-key." We wanted to embrace the small town feel of the place and keep vendors to a minimum. We rented out the local community hall for the reception. My good friend got ordained online to perform our simple beach-side ceremony. No wedding party. A local restaurant owner (and friend of my parents) catered our hors d'oeuvres buffet (we gave her free reign over the menu and were pleased with what she came up with). Since everything was centrally located we chose to forgo transportation and just walk to the ceremony, reception, and back home to our beach house at the end of the night.




Editor's note: Aren't these expired-film polaroids Amanda's little sister took fucking fabulous? Esp with the short dress and that vintage car in the background....

Some wedding highlights: overflowing glasses of pink vodka lemonade. My sister-in-law doing my hair and makeup. All of Chelsea's DIY planning help. (There was a point about halfway through wedding planning when I had a meltdown over the beige paneling lining the walls of our reception venue. She brought me back down to reality and worked out the logistics of the decor for me. Amen for garland and white chairs!) My aunt and uncle made our cakes. Grandma sewed our custom napkins. I fell in love with two dresses so I got them both. I find solace in knowing no organs were sold in order to do so. It was totally worth it. My mother-in-law made my bouquet and Nick's boutonniere the morning of the wedding. One of our friends brought in some custom pink Voodoo Doughnuts from Portland to go with our cakes.


The night before the wedding a bunch of family met up at the reception location to do flowers. We used an array of milk glass vases that my mom and I had carefully thrifted over the past year. There were buckets of peonies scattered about and I said, "Go at it. Do whatever you want!" No two arrangements looked alike, and I loved it.


We spent hours and hours on a playlist and when the wedding day came we couldn't figure out how to hook up the sound system at the reception venue. My mom busted out her trusty ipod dock. In the end it didn't really matter since most of our guests drifted home after not too long. Instead, Nick and I headed back to the beach house with some family to get drunk off champagne and toast marshmallows over a bonfire.



(Photos by Joey Bloom, Kim and Amber)

*I'm glad you guys went with the tie in the end, Amanda. The paisley is so great with Nick's tat sleeve.