Handmade, with love: DIY details add to an elegant affair

Some DIY weddings can turn embarrassing, with an overwhelming amount of detail or disjointed aesthetic choices or—yikes!—décor slowly unraveling and coming unglued. This is none such wedding, thanks to the clear vision of the grooms, who from the start decided on a visual theme, which was simple and elegant, and committed to planning their big day on their own.

“The wedding was meant to embrace the outdoors, with the touches of white, some blues and wood accents. Earthy,” says Drake. Charles did most of the heavy lifting (“Drake supervised,” he offers) over the course of a few months—arrival kit, wedding programs, wine glass wedding favors included. The couple even handled the flowers, a mix of light blue and white hydrangeas with some white roses.

“We had 500 million boxes of flowers delivered to our hotel room,” says Drake, “which we arranged ourselves (with the help of family).”

Of course, they couldn’t control everything, and while the saying goes that April showers bring May flowers, the days leading up to their mid-May day were quite rainy, and on the Friday before the wedding, part of the road to their venue was flooded. Luckily, an hour before the ceremony, the sun came out and the outdoor wedding was clear. “We feel very lucky,” says Drake. In more ways than one, we’d imagine.