Elegant Garden Wedding at the Twin Oaks Garden Estate
Yisel and Vicente found the picture perfect wedding venue for their special day - Twin Oaks Garden Estate. The beautiful gardens were the ideal setting for their elegant outdoor wedding ceremony, which was followed by an equally enchanting reception in Twin Oak's Tented Pavilion. Vintage furniture, chalkboard and Scrabble signs, fresh florals and burlap and lace decor added the personal touches that really made this wedding special.
Continue reading to hear so much more from Yisel about their special day, including what they splurged and saved on and what she wishes they had done differently. Still looking for more ideas for your own elegant garden wedding? You can view more of the amazing photos Desiree Shuey captured of Yisel and Vicente's wedding in the full gallery here!
From Desiree Shuey:My jaw dropped when I walked into the Twin Oaks bridal room. I think I’m still in shock! Everything…literally everything was beyond perfect. Vicente and Yisel couldn’t have chosen a better place for their wedding. It was just perfect, ALL of it. The venue and the theme for their wedding flowed beautifully, you could tell it was meant to be.From the Bride:We wanted our wedding to feel cozy, vintage and romantic. We couldn’t have found a more perfect place than Twin Oaks to achieve our “feel.” This venue was originally a school house, in the late 1800s. The adorable bridal parlor/school house still has chalkboard all around the walls. Outside there is a beautiful garden with a gazebo and next to it is a tented pavilion complete with gorgeous draping and beautiful chandeliers. At night there are twinkle lights everywhere! It was just the way we wanted our wedding to feel!
I LOVED how the programs turned out! I wanted them printed in newspaper or newsletter style. We wanted to have our wedding party, our thank yous, a crossword puzzle and a Scavenger Hunt/CapsuleCam for guests to work on. The night we met, Vicente and I were part of a Scavenger Hunt and we thought it would be cool to have our guests take part in a scavenger hunt that day. Plus, it would help us gather tons of fun pictures from their point of view. We have SO MANY fun pics uploaded onto that site! I mentioned to my friend Lily what I had in mind and that I didn’t know where to get them printed. She offered to make them for us and made them even better than I had imagined.
We found a tiny kiddie table and bought Ring Pops, Pixie Stix, paper crowns and hearts, crayons and glow in the dark toys and set them up for the kids to have fun! I loved that Vicente grabbed one of the paper hearts to right his vows on… swoon…
We wanted to hand out hankies as one of our favors. We found a great deal and I bought 50 of them to give away. I printed a Thank You note on the same type of stock paper used for the programs, made a tag that read “For Tears of Joy” and tied them together with twine. Half were in English and half in Spanish. We set our hankies on an antique whiskey cabinet we’d bought a few weeks back along with another chalkboard sign I made that read “For tears of Joy” this ceremony welcome table was done! I was so proud to offer this little gift to our guests.
We really wanted to be involved in as many of the details as possible. Our favorite projects were the signs used down the aisle and at the entrance, our table runners and the Scrabble table names. I wanted to have signs with the bible verse from 1 Corinthians 13:4-8 displayed down the aisle to remind us of what love should be like. I originally wanted to buy these, but at the end, Vicente, my sister Adriana (MOH) and I ended up making these. These signs were definitely a big project to work on - we had to figure out every part of putting them together - and I wouldn’t trade the time we spent making them. They turned out WAY better than what we imagined, plus we had fun making them together!!
We also built a directional sign for the entrance to the venue. He cut, sanded and painted the wood and I stenciled in the lettering. The day before the wedding, we dropped off our signs and Vicente ran into the gardener who was working on the flowers around the venue. He asked for a few flowers and stuck them into the pot and made it even more adorable! The best part of these projects is that now we have them as keepsakes to reuse, gift or pass down to our family!
We also wanted our wedding to feel like us, so it had to be filled with our favorite things. We managed to squeeze in details from the moving UP, classic Coca Colas in glass bottles, Scrabble pieces, lace, little green army men toys, my cowboy boots, prime rib and a lot of dancing time with our favorite people! We even managed to place a few of our favorite treats and personal care items in the Girls’ and Boys’ restrooms so that our guests could freshen up before heading back to the dance floor. There was even a kiddie pic of Vicente in the boys’ restroom since he’s my favorite, and a kiddie pic of me in the girls’ restroom, since I am his favorite too.
It was important to me to have lace in the wedding, because lace reminds me of my Nana, who is no longer with us. I wanted to make runners for every table at the reception. I found material that looked like burlap but is way nicer, more of a gold color, and I also found beautiful lace to place down the center of it. I borrowed a sewing machine and started making these, but couldn’t keep the lines straight! My aunt stepped in and helped to make these PERFECT!
Since we LOVE playing Scrabble, we had to also incorporate that into our table design, so for each table name, I glued Scrabble tiles to holders. I loved this detail too!
I had so many ideas for DIY projects and touches that, towards the end, I was very overwhelmed and exhausted – and many of the details were still not done! I relied on sisters, sisters-in-law, aunts and friends that literally helped me finish all the details that were floating around in my head and in my heart. We were humbled by the willingness and love shown to us during those last weeks prior to the wedding. I truly believe that the day was so overwhelmingly beautiful because of all the love put into every detail by EVERYONE! Everyone put a little bit of their heart into making it what it was - absolutely stunning and perfect!! Definitely take the help offered to you! It will not only help you to finish up your projects, but it will give your loved ones the chance to pour their love on you guys and on this special day.
We really wanted to have a send-off Toss Bar at the end of the night. We made ribbon banners and made cones out of paper doilies to be filled with petals and used for our send off. Our guests lined up in front of the schoolhouse, right next to the huge tree adorned with thousands of twinkle lights, and sent us off under a love tunnel with petals falling and ribbons waving us off. A couple of our groomsmen had even decorated our getaway car! We didn’t expect so many of our loved ones to have stayed until the end of the night to celebrate with us! It was all so magical…
Another of my favorite moments was when I surprised my groom with my version of “I wanna grow old with you” on the ukulele during our reception. He actually cried, and I am so glad I didn’t chicken out! Hehe
Read on to learn some of the things Yisel and Vicente splurged on as well as ways they saved and to hear what Yisel would have done differently.
From the Bride:We found great deals on certain things, handmade many of the special details and decided to splurge on the things most important to us. While we feel that it was worth every penny, we are not proud of the fact that we went so over budget. Our budget was originally $25K, not including a honeymoon, which we are currently saving for. We went way over and are a little embarrassed to put it all out there.
One of my big splurges were my invitations. I love stationery, wrapping paper, etc., and this was important to me. I hired Custom Invitations by Cindy Matistic to make my invitations, menus, table names, bar menu and a few other signs. She was willing to work with me totally open to taking my ideas and requests. And the invitations? BEAUTIFUL!! The table names? Gorgeous! Definitely worth every penny.
Our other splurge? Our photo booth… this.was.a.blast!! Let me tell you, our photo booth was a hit! Even our aunties that we didn’t imagine being silly, got in on the costume action at the booth.. We got copies of all the photo strips too and they are PRICELESS!What the Bride would have done differently:Our day turned out so beautiful that I almost don't want to admit that there were a few things I would have done differently.
First, in the beginning of our planning I really wanted to hire a wedding planner. I contacted her during the off-season and she offered an amazing deal, but we decided not go with her due to our budget. We also thought that since the venue offered us day-of-coordinators we may not need it. Wrong! The planner would have helped us so much leading up to the day of! We had no idea how much detail and planning would go into the wedding. The last two months were waaaay more stressful than they should have been. At one point during those last weeks, Vicente and I looked at each other, and almost at the same time said 'we should've gone with the planner'. We lucked out because our super creative sisters and friends helped us pull it together. However, I know if we had a planner we could've enjoyed those last couple of months before the wedding, instead of feeling so overwhelmed. It would have been the best money we spent!
Second, we worked hard on and were proud of the favors and details that we prepared for our guests - the Hankies/Thank You Cards, the candy table goodies, the Programs, photo booth pictures. I REALLY wish we had made it a point to separate some of these goodies for our court and parents. They didn't grab hankies, programs or candy. They were busy being in the wedding and didn't have a chance to enjoy that stuff. Specifically, I really wish we had made time to take pictures with our entire court at the Photo Booth. We received copies of all our guests' photo booth pics and they are hilarious! The photo booth was such a hit and our guests had so much fun with it, that we look back and wish we had taken 15 minutes on our own with our court to just be silly and have fun in that area.
The day was pretty perfect, but those are a couple of things I would change.
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- Candy Table, Banners & Table Design: Savvy Celebrations
- Cinematography: George Street Photo & Video
- DJ: My DJ's
- Flowers: Jerri Disney
- Hair: Hair by Bethaney
- Phot0 Booth: Flashbooth Photography
- Photographer: Desiree Shuey
- Shoes: Badgley Mischka
- Stationery: Custom Invitations by Cindy Matistic | Makeup: Yesenia Napoles
- Wedding Films: Prince Weddings