~Winter Wedding Decor~

Sarah Walker with Amy Savin

I have to admit, planning a winter wedding was an absolute blast! Growing up, I always thought that for sure I would get married in the summer. I was planning on doing a vibrant Sun-flower themed wedding with lots of bright yellows and pinks. I never would have thought that I'd actually be getting married in December! This changed everything for me! Initially I was feeling overwhelmed at the challenge ahead of me to find a location to host the reception (since having one outside was definitely out of the question), and also to find decorations that would not suggest "Christmas". I definitely tried to avoid the colour red at all costs. After much pondering and long hours of searching the web, I decided to do a very cozy theme of roses, pinecones, lanterns, and candles. Below are some of the details that made this day so special!

Bride's Flowers:

Sarah Walker, a talented artist and great friend of mine, put together the most gorgeous winter bouquet for me. I told her to just be creative as long as there were roses and pinecones. Sarah blew me away. She tied together cream roses, silver brunia, evergreen, and of course the pinecones. The final product was brilliant. To see more of Sarah's work, please see her incredible website: TheCuratedHouse.com

Bridesmaid's Flowers:

I had another great friend of mine, Tanya Tomic make the bridesmaids bouquets (seen in the photo with the cake). All the bouquets were made of synthetic materials from Bowring and Micheals Craft Store. 

Amy Savin Wedding (December 2012) ~ Photography by Leslie Ghag

Centerpieces:

As you can see in the above photos, we used two different centre pieces: 

1) Brown lanterns ( with Candles, Pinecones, fake snow) 
2)  Glass bowls (with water, cellophane, candles, fake snow). 

We placed each of the centre-pieces on gold chargers and used little tiny white plastic beads (from the dollar store) to imitate fluffy snow. Thanks to Beverly Campbell for all the ideas! To get the snow-look on the pinecones, we just dipped the pinecones in icing sugar, and then coarse (large crystal) sugar to get the sparkling effect. You'll also notice around the centerpieces little pinches of baby's breath, for a more dainty, snowy look. 

Cake: 

Tanya also make my cake. It was all completely vanilla (the most deliciously moist cake I've ever had) with icicles lining the entire cake! Tanya dipped the pinecones in icing and sugar (the same way the centrepieces were done) and used chocolate sticks in between the pinecones. As a cake plate, I ordered a wooden birch tree slab from save-on-crafts.com. The only problem is that the website said I was getting a 11-15 inch, but when it came in the mail, it was only 9 inches which was not big enough. So, Tanya creatively made her own plate 12-15 inch I believe, and we layered the two cake stands together. It turned out beautifully :)

All Photography by Leslie Ghag