The feel of our wedding is super important to Jesse and me. I am trying Really hard not to use the word theme while describing our aesthetic (and also am trying not to use words like aesthetic but am going to for this post) because "theme" makes it feel a little cheesy. And I don't think it would if the theme was less abstract, like Vintage Paris or Rustic Glamour, but since our aesthetics are derived from our attraction to science, nature, and the amazing discoveries that happened toward the end of the 19th century, it's a little harder to describe.
We were first inspired by this theme/aesthetic after watching the latest Sherlock Holmes movie. We loved the alchemy scenes with test tubes and copper and raw machinery. Juliane James also seems to have a rustic pioneer essence to it that we can't ignore. I had never used the words Steampunk or Machine Age prior to researching the items that comprise that look but they capture the essence properly. The issue is that those words convey less to those I am communicating with than saying we are having a Turn of the Century Science and Wonder influenced wedding.
Elements of Steampunk and the Machine Age are popping up in weddings. Many people are using typewriters as their guests books, and we plan to incorporate the use of a typewriter into our wedding too.
I have seen a few weddings that have a similar essence in the last four months or so of researching weddings. This wedding, detailed on MarthaStewartWeddings.com and found through a link from the fantastic, San Francisco-based letterpress company Hello!Lucky, prompted me to try describing our wedding as if it were like a World's Fair. I'm still working on how to articulate that idea without it seeming too Carnivalesque, which we aren't too into since this is the first same-sex wedding most of the guests will have gone to. In fact, it's actually the first one either of us will have gone too. Not that I don't Love a good Carnival-inspired wedding. And not that World's Fairs have all that much in common with Carnivals. We just don't want to risk any misunderstanding.
The bride stated the following on MarthaStewartWeddings.com about the feel for their wedding that was held at a Fine Arts museum: "Modern medicine was emerging at the turn of the century, which inspired the general population to regard scientific fields with inspired wonder. This, combined with the World's Fair and other events displaying ideas about the fantastical future, made it quite a glamorous moment in intellectual history. It was easy to imagine curating an event that reminded people of that moment in time."
The images from this wedding and the bride's eloquence in describing it helped me solidify some details for and ways to describe our wedding. I am so into the idea of using DIY specimens as decorations but the reception booklets are My Favorite. They included museum information and a map, a dance card, and paper for drawing the bride and groom, along with a frame to put them in. Pencils were attached to the top of the booklets to draw with. They are amazing and I absolutely want to incorporate something like this into our reception.
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| The couple created Specimens that they used for table markers. |
