Colourful Camping Trip Wedding with only 15 Guests!

Colourful Camping Trip Wedding with only 15 Guests!

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Kat and Brent were married in July after a five and a half year engagement and nine years together! They wanted their wedding to be family focused and relaxed. "Our wedding was a family camping trip with a wedding thrown in the middle of it", explained Kat. "It was a Wes Anderson picnic meets garden party meets Oregonian wedding. We are not religious, nor traditional, or even that young (I'm 31 and Brent is 34). I guess our main theme was 'us'. We didn't do anything in the wedding that didn't feel 100% right for us."

"Our biggest inspiration for the wedding was having our family all together in one place. To just have one weekend that there wasn't any drama and we all could think back on and remember how much fun we all had. As for the decorations, the inspiration was my dress. Brent and I were walking through the mall one day right after we picked the date. We both stopped dead in our tracks and said 'yep... that's THE dress'. It had so many fun colours in it that we decided to decorate with all of them."

"We only invited our parents and siblings (and our two nieces) to the wedding. We reserved camp spots for everyone, and we all camped all weekend. However, even planning a wedding for just 15 people (including the photographers) was still a crazy amount of planning!"

The bride's favourite part of the day was their ceremony. "For the ceremony my dad walked me down the wooded path to the shore of the lake where everyone was waiting. Brent and I said our vows and that was it! Just the two of us talking to each other. No scriptures were read, no 'do you take this man blah blah blah.' Just the two of us telling each other how lucky we feel to have found our soulmates and how we look forward to growing old together. Then we kissed each other, hugged our family and started the party! It sound's cheesy but marrying my best friend was definitely my favourite part of the day. We have been through more than most at our age and finally taking this next step feels like starting the next book in a series."

"However, it didn't all run as smoothly as we had hoped: The day before the wedding we found out that our venue was double-booked and the other bride went full bridezilla on me! In the end we asked if Sunday was available and it was, so we switched days. We were disappointed but it was better than having to change location. We ended up touring Astoria with the whole group on Saturday and having the wedding Sunday. We kept our wedding date as the 16th because everything I made had that date and it became an inside joke with the family. Now we have two days to celebrate every year. It rained on the other bride's day and it was a perfectly sunny and warm on ours. Karma is awesome!"

The couple decided to make a lot of things themselves for the wedding. "We bought our invites and save the dates online, but I designed, wrote and drew the camper's guidebook myself. The goal was for everyone to know what they were getting into before they arrived. It worked! It included the camp rules (no drama, no cell phones, no social media posts, etc), things to do, and even a campsite assignment for everyone. We gave one to each guest, along with a lantern, in boxes with their last names wood burned onto the gift tags. Brent's sister (and my maid of honour) Amber helped me make all the fabric decorations. I had seen a photo online of a wedding with a similar idea and I knew it was perfect. Brent and I also made the letters and the giant dominoes, and the signs we placed at each families' campsite. However our biggest DIY was our 1957 Airstream Bubble trailer that we have been restoring for 5 years. We finally finished it so we could use it for our honeymoon suite!"

"Our biggest expense was our photographer because we wanted to be sure we could look back at the photos and see the day, not the photos. They were also important because we wanted to be able to share the day with everyone who wasn't there (99.98% of the people in our lives) and make them feel as though they were. Brie did not disappoint. The photos instantly transport us back to that magical day."

"We saved money on our venue which was only $50! It was ours from sunrise to sunset and it was so magical (except for the mosquitoes!) We didn't see another soul the entire time. The cake was only $100 and it was amazing. The flowers were from a local farmer's market vendor and $90 got us more than we could even use. Oh and my dress was just $450. The best thing we did was bring everything with us from home. It was a nearly 4 hour drive and my amazing in-laws brought the cake and food and flowers up with them."

"Our advice for future brides and grooms is make sure that you have the day you want and don't listen to the people who 'don't get it'. People will either understand your choices or they won't. But really it doesn't matter. It is your day. Oh, and it's totally OK to not be super sexy and romantic on your wedding night! To be completely honest, we crawled into bed with our two dogs and fell asleep watching The Goonies. Not sexy, but totally perfect."

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