In the eight years since we were married {and the six years before that}, Scott and I have built a wonderful life that now includes two amazing little boys. Since we’ve become parents, I’m sure it would come as no surprise that our walls and shelves are filled with endless precious baby, toddler and family photos. But I’ve also made a concerted effort to ensure that we’ve continued to surround ourselves with photos and mementos of our relationship as couple outside of parenthood – including from our wedding and our honeymoon.
There are many common ways to preserve and display your wedding memories, including scrapbooks to framed photos, but, over the years, I’ve gotten creative and found a dozen more ways to incorporate our wedding and honeymoon mementos in to our daily lives through the decor of our home! By surrounding ourselves with these daily reminders of our relationship, I find it easier to let go of the stresses of everyday life and to focus on the bigger picture.
Our wedding was incredibly special, filled with family and friends and so, so many memories! But what I most want to remember from that day are the promises we made to one another. That’s why, for our first anniversary, I created a canvas print for Scott to document our vows.
Our wedding venue was once the Midwest Steel and Ironworks building where large ship parts were built for the Navy in the early 1900’s. We loved the industrial feel of the large, open space, and as a result, we kept the ceremony decorations very minimal. The focal point of the ceremony was the custom, 47” wide black aisle runner with our names and wedding date printed in white script. I wanted to find a way to repurpose the aisle runner, and after years of considering different options, I finally decided to turn the runner into a decorative pillow for our bed.
When I redecorated our master bedroom last fall, I created a large gallery wall around our television to make the tv feel like less of a focal point in the room. Since we have photos of our two sons throughout the house, I decided that this master bedroom gallery wall should be about just the two of us.
At our wedding, right as we were getting ready to leave in my dad’s T-Bird at the end of the reception, we suddenly realized that we failed to have the photographer take a single photo of our rings. Instead, we asked a friend with a camera to take a quick photo of us before we drove away – sticking our hands in the air to show off our rings.
Many of our wedding ring selfies have ended up in frames all around our house, and they never fail to make me smile! I love that these photos not only document our adventures together, they are also reminders of the promises that those rings represent.
If you are interested, you can see lots more photos of our rings all around the world, and our rings’ most recent travels through South Africa.
While traveling around the island of Santorini, we came across a small art market, and we purchased a gorgeous, three-dimensional painting of Gree. We carried it home very carefully, then framed it and hung it in a prominent location in the guest room. The white orchids on the tray below this painting also hold special meaning, because not only were orchids featured throughout the decor of our inspiration hotel, they were also the flowers that made up my wedding bouquet!
The Greek islands are so picturesque that it’s almost impossible to visit and not come home with postcard quality photos. It was too hard to choose just one or two photos to frame, so I instead created a large gallery wall of Santorini photos in the guest bedroom. Click here to see more photos of our honeymoon inspired guest room.
The design of the attached guest bathroom was also inspired by our hotel stay in the Greek islands. In particular, the hotel had a large quote running floor to ceiling in the lounge, which I recreated on the wall of the bathroom.
