Philadelphia Wedding with Multi-Cultural Style
There is just something about this wedding. It’s love, true love. And the fact that it was all done by the beautiful bride and her friends & family…well, swoon central. Click here to see more.
{click here to see full wedding} / photography by Peter Van Beever
I loved how my wedding turned out– we diy-ed a gazillion details, incorporated both a traditional Western AND Korean ceremony, and incorporated some funky details (10 bridesmaids in all different dresses) while keeping to a sweet garden theme. Our photographer, Peter Van Beever, was AMAZING and he was much more affordable for his quality of pictures than most of the photogs I inquired with.
We planned the wedding with a lot of specific details and a general theme of “garden romantic” in mind. My friends and family have a ton of awesome talents and we DIYed so much of the wedding. My sister created all the invitations using paper from old sketchbooks and we had several “button parties” to cover plastic button hearts with yellow tissue paper. We got them printed at Kinkos and hand cut them, and they turned out beautiful and unique. I had 10 bridesmaids, and almost all of them each contributed a special DIY something– one hand-sewed signs for the ceremony, one decorated our getaway car, one handpainted wood signs, one made me 3 cake platters using vintage cups and plates, one played a violin solo during the ceremony, and we all worked the day before to handmake our programs and favors (individual succulents and cacti). There was so much that everyone contributed that it’s hard to describe it all here!
My colors were yellow and green, and it was really important to me that everyone look like themselves and could BE themselves. I had each of my 10 bridesmaids (I know that’s huge, but I had 5 family members and 5 best friends from college) choose their own dress, in either green or yellow. We pulled it together by all wearing a white rose in our hair. We weren’t sure how it would turn out but everyone looked beautiful! The groomsmen all wore grey suits (we bought them as the groomsmens’ gifts) with yellow or green ties and my husband stood out by wearing a plaid tie (he is Scottish, so the plaid was his family tartan). My own dress was a Vera Wang Atelier — retailing for $5000 and I got it for $800 at a sample sale!
For the ceremony, my favorite elements were my readings– we did one scripture reading and one reading from The Little Prince (my favorite passage with the fox who tells the little prince that he must forever be responsible for what he has tamed). We had them printed in our programs in both English and Korean for everyone to follow along. We did the same with our hymns and it was wonderful to hear the guests celebrating with us in both languages. My mother-in-law also wore a traditional Korean dress, which Korean mothers wear to weddings, and it meant so much to me to have my new family embrace my own, and my culture.
Right after our wedding ceremony, during cocktail hour, we had another traditional Korean ceremony to welcome the family. This was awesome– it is a bowing ceremony, where my husband and I bowed to our parents, grandparents, and families and they gave us advice, wisdom, and blessings. We also did some games like feeding each other dates and chestnuts and he gave me a piggy back ride to demonstrate his strength and commitment! 
For the reception, we set up each table with a collection of jars filled with flowers, yellow and green glass votive jam jars, large metal table numbers, and a special reading. We are both great readers, so we had a different reading printed in a white frame for each table. So much of our own sweat and tears went into all of these details!! I collected old jam jars and pasta sauce jars for 9 months (along with all my bridesmaids), and my sister printed all the readings on the same sketchbook paper (and we found the frames at flea markets in Brooklyn).
I was also pretty proud of our floral arrangements– we kept to a $1000 budget on flowers which included arrangements for 16 dinner tables, 4 cocktail tables, 10 bridesmaids bouquets, a bridal bouquet, boutenierres, corsages, AND our succulent favors for 150 guests! We were able to stay on budget by using more affordable flowers like babys breath, mini roses, and wildflowers but it all coordinated perfectly with our theme. We also had our florist arrange the big bouquets, but we also just bought a ton of loose flowers and my bridesmaids arranged the ceremony flowers, cocktail tables, and more, to help keep costs down. We also did all of our music using a laptop!! My brother acted as a DJ and everything went off without a hitch. I felt like we were able to do a good job in splurging in a few areas (venue/catering) and diy-ing in others (stationery, flowers, decor, music, and extras like the photobooth and cocktail food).
The best part of the wedding, however, was that we were able to enjoy it along with our guests! We had a photobooth set up for guests to take pictures with fun props like balloons and moustaches, and we had a great mix of music for young and old… it all just felt really fun and the entire day flew by. It was also particularly meaningful for me as my husband and I are both from different cultural backgrounds, and the event just felt like both of us, and not one or the other. To me, I never viewed it as being “my” wedding but it was always a family wedding that I was trying to plan… and I felt like we were able to accomplish it!
Dress: Vera Wang Atelier / Groom’s Suit: Jones NY (Men’s Wearhouse) / Caterer: Jeffrey Miller Catering / Flowers: Nature’s Gallery Florists, Philadelphia / Photographer: Peter Van Beever (DE) / Stationery/Invites: Annie Yi (sister) / Venue: Historic Waynesborough in Paoli, PA
20 Comments about “Philadelphia Wedding with Multi-Cultural Style”
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What a gorgeous wedding! Everything is so beautiful and elegant. Big fan of yellow, so those dresses really caught my eye. The lemonade, the outdoor setting...perfect!
I just adore that all of the bridesmaids dresses were different - kudos to a bride who wants her friends to be themselves! And I love the groom's tie...and the hand-sewn banner...and the jars of lemon-cucumber water (I think?!)...and the succulents....
WOW! every detail is so amazing and beautiful. Great idea to include the cultural ceremony; it made the event that much richer, symbolically and aesthetically. so jealous
how inspiring and refreshing this diy wedding is! it is refreshing to see what a bride and her loved ones can create ;) thanks for the looooovely post!
What a beautiful wedding....love the fun pics!
love the details and colors! Beautiful wedding!
What a beautiful, unique wedding. And I can't believe it -- Waynesborough on SMP! I'm getting married there this August! :)
omg. i am korean and this is very similar to how i envision my may 2011 wedding. *gorgeous!
I love your wedding! I'm having a multicultural wedding in August and have been looking for Asian room dividers - yours are gorgeous! So colorful, so unique, so perfect! Can you tell me where you found them? Thank you so much and congrats on such a beautiful wedding!!!
This venue is classic Pennsylvania, love it! Great job and congratulations!
Okay, this wedding was gorgeous! However, I want to comment on the apparent new trend of using fake mustache props. I'm sorry, but I just don't get it. Is it just me?
It's so weird to see this because my boyfriend of four years is Laotian and I am white and I have been gathering information for our wedding. We aren't engaged yet, but might as well be. We're just waiting until we can afford a ring that is of a decent price but that we'll love forever. I was thinking of going with an outdoor wedding, grey tuxedos, bright happy colors, wildflowers, and we were planning on doing a Lao ceremony some how in addition to the Christian ceremony. This wedding just seems to go so well with what I've been picturing!
I love the "easyness" of this wedding, nothing forced, just natural and beautiful. Inspiring!
adore the invites! and what fun to have pre-poured drinks in the jelly jars!
I absolutely love the bridesmaid dresses!!! Can anyone share where they're from?? What a gorgeous wedding!!!
Thank you for featuring a Philadelphia wedding!!!
thanks so much guys!! our vendors were so great and our friends and family carried us through the entire thing. we couldn't have done it on our own.
@linda the wall divider was borrowed from a friend, so sorry to not be of much help there. if you have asian friends/family, usually someone's mother or aunt or friend usually has one somewhere...
@ bernice lau also the bridesmaids all picked their own dresses and they were from a huge range of places... some were designer and some were from h and m! everyone looked gorgeous. if you want to know a specific one from the pictures, let me know and i can email you.
@ashley: i laughed when i saw your comment bc... i dont' really get it either, but it was fun! :) and made for some cute pics.
This is such a unique and beautiful wedding! I can't believe how much patience, work and creativity Joanne put in all the DIY projects. Lucky her, she has amazingly creative friends and relatives too. This wedding proves that it's possible to have beatiful and unique floral arrangements for a large wedding and still stick to a budget!
Great idea to use the air balloons for pictures!
Beautiful photos !! a gorgeous wedding......and i love her dress :)