Beyond Something Borrowed, Something Blue: Customizing Our Daughter’s Dream Wedding
We would like to say a huge thank-you to everyone for your congratulations, well wishes, and patience as we prepared for and celebrated our daughter’s wedding the last weekend of July.
And of course, congratulations to Alex and her new husband, Schyler! A few days later, we’re all tired but beyond happy with the celebration uniting these two beautiful hearts.
Michelle and Alex spent a lot of time creating, customizing, and personalizing to fill the outdoor wedding at a family residence in Ohio with many unique touches true to the couple.
After all, when your mom is a professional maker descended from makers, a cookie-cutter wedding just won’t do.
“My kids have grown up with me always customizing something,” Michelle said. “They know whatever is in their head can possibly happen. They can pour out their dreams and ideas to me, and I can work with them to create that to make them come true.”
“It’s not just me taking over,” she added. “It’s me teaching them how to do it. It’s our time together.”
Michelle is a great planner and organizer who kept an eye on every detail of the event, down to putting out Leather Valet Trays to hold cocktail napkins at the bar. She even made sure there were toothpicks for Jevon Cheney, a client and friend who built his own smoker and provided the fantastic food to serve 170 guests. (Thank you, Jevon!)
Customizing Everything, With Style
Michelle, who handcrafts Leather By Dragonfly’s Master Custom Workplace Leather Aprons and other premium leather items, is skilled in many areas, including hairstyling, flower arranging, cake decorating, and of course, sewing.
Michelle hemmed and customized Alex’s dress by creating a bustle — something not usually done with a beaded dress — by adding buttons and loops so Alex could have a little bit of a train for the ceremony and bustle it up afterward.
Mother and daughter also customized a crown they had purchased on Etsy for Alex to wear as a headpiece, painting blue gemstones black and adding small medallions from a necklace Michelle owned.
Michelle styled Alex’s hair — practicing an updo and a down-the-shoulders look to be prepared for potentially hot or cooler weather — as well as her own, and gave Patrick and Michelle’s father fresh haircuts the night before the ceremony.
When it came to the flowers, Michelle created all of the arrangements, from bouquets to table centerpieces, and even a chandelier. Plus she made a backdrop for the ceremony.
Michelle and Alex made 50 chocolate, lemon, and white cupcakes and lemon truffles for Alex’s bridal shower, plus a small, stacked cake and 190 cupcakes for the wedding reception.
Remembering Grandma
Alex also desired cookies she had seen on Pinterest: heart-shaped crinkle-edge lemon shortbread cookies with lavender and rose petals. Michelle realized she had the perfect tool to make six dozen of the cookies for the wedding: a large heart-shaped cookie cutter that had been her own mother’s.
Michelle’s mother — our Donna Marie Tote is named in her memory — also was a maker and owned her own craft and gift store. Alex was very close to her grandmother, who passed away when Alex was 12.
The shortbread cookies weren’t the only way Donna’s presence was felt during the celebration and the preparations. There also were the dimes, and the hidden note.
When Michelle’s mother died at the hospital, Michelle found a dime at her car door that had not been there.
Years later, as Alex’s wedding was approaching, Michelle pulled her mother’s wedding dress out of its box so that Alex could try it on. After putting it back in its box, Michelle noticed a dime on the floor. She picked it up and taped it to the box.
Alex opted not to wear her grandmother’s dress but wanted a piece of the dress with her during her ceremony. Michelle took some lace from the dress and a piece of the veil that Donna Marie had made Michelle to wear at her wedding, put the dime from the box between the two pieces of material and sewed the items inside Alex’s dress.
For Alex’s shower, they planned to decorate with tulling and flower petals. Michelle had a bolt of tulling among craft items she had inherited from her mother. When she unrolled the fabric off the cardboard, she discovered a note in her mother’s handwriting, recording that this was the tulling she had used to make Michelle’s wedding veil.
Afterward, Michelle went out to her car and found a dime balanced on the door jamb on the driver’s side, while Alex found a dime next to her feet on the floor of her car. “So Grandma was there,” Michelle said. “All this time, we were wishing Grandma could be making all these things with us.”
Customizing Our Son’s Wedding
This was the second wedding in our family within a year. Our son, Jordan, married Alyssa in August 2020, on a beach in Florida. Michelle’s hands were very much in that wedding, too.
Michelle made the shower cake and the wedding cake and created the mothers’ corsages, all of the boutonnieres, the ceremony garland and a photo backdrop of greenery. She also altered Jordan’s dress shirt so he could wear cufflinks that were a gift from Alyssa, hemmed Alex’s dress and her own dress, and hemmed Patrick’s pants.
We’re Not Done Celebrating Yet
We’ve got one more celebration coming, at the end of this August, when Jordan and Alyssa will celebrate their one-year anniversary with an open house.
Michelle will be making the cake.