The Amazing Nickersons

It is about time that I wrote about our photographers, Sarah and Graeme, otherwise known as, The Nickersons. They are a husband and wife team that have an AMAZING talent for capturing pure emotion with their cameras.

I first discovered them while going through a friend's wedding photos on facebook. Then a few months later, I saw another friend's wedding on facebook that the Nickersons had done. Their style was classic and fresh. The genuineness in each picture was moving and absolutely breath taking.

And I wanted them for our wedding!

They made the process SO easy. I contacted Sarah just from their website and I heard back from her within the hour.  We set up a skype date (because we were in Edmonton and they were in Vancouver) and Travis and I had an hour and a half conversation with them talking about what kind of wedding we were imagining... but more importantly, they were wanting to get to know us so that we were all comfortable on the wedding day.

After we said the big "YES", without hesitation, they sent us little letters and care packages saying how excited they were for our wedding as well as reminders to relax. This made us feel SO unbelievable special.

Aren't they WONDERFUL? This package came at impeccable timing!

Now, we have walked out of our wedding having made 2 very talented friends that we are very fond of who are MORE then welcome to come to Edmonton and hang out with us! (Teehee)

I wanted to share just some of my favorite photos of the day. You can see more photos of our day on Sarah and Graeme's blog HERE. And you can see our engagement photo session that they did for us HERE.

  These are the bridesmaid dresses hanging up with my wedding dress. Sarah and Graeme may not have known this, but this was a tree that my brother, Kevin, and I climbed as kids.

 From left to right: Great Grandma Mac's wedding dress, Grammie Mac's wedding dress, my Mom's wedding dress and mine. After Grammie passed away, my Auntie Joan had both my Grammie and Grandma Mac's wedding dresses, so I NEEDED to get this shot. It is so nice to have this photo.

 The pearl necklace was my Grammie's and the pearl earrings are my Mom's. Again, very special to wear these pieces of jewelery.

 This was my Opa's German Bible. My Mom kept it and I asked if we could use it for the ring bearer to bring the rings down. The top left photo is of my Oma and Opa, and the bottom right photo is of my Grammie and Grampie.

 

 This is my brother, Kevin, our AMAZING MC, and our ring bearer, Caleb, whom I have known since he was just a baby. They said that they looked the same and Graeme asked if he could take a photo of them. This is the final product, and I'm in love.

 Caleb was SO great! My Auntie Sherry (my Mom's Maid of Honor), and my Auntie Rita (my Mom's younger sister), made the boutonnieres the day of the wedding out of babies breath and other leaves from our back yard garden. 

 

 This is my handsome husband getting all ready to go.

 My Maid of Honor, Clara, and my Mom helping me getting dressed.

 And these are my wonderful bridesmaids and my Mom, surrounding me in prayer. These are the ladies that continually encourage me, support me, love me and show me the love of God. This was extremely special... and I wish I had a recording of this prayer.

This is my Dad putting on my Grammie's (his Mom's) pearl necklace.

 This is Travis and I praying before the ceremony. We did not see each other until I walked down the aisle. We almost did not have time for this, but Sarah knew that I really wanted to pray with Travis before hand and she really wanted to capture the moment. Thank you Sarah!

I love my Dad.

This is it... we are getting married!

An amazing shot of where we had our ceremony. Thank you Lord for the beautiful weather!

Travis's Mom and Dad with our little flower girl and niece, Isla. She is going to be a big sister soon which means we are going to have another niece or nephew... we are thrilled!

My beautiful Mom and Dad. 

The man that married us is like our second father. Art is Caleb's (the Best Man) Father. Travis grew up with them and always wanted Art to marry him to his future wife. It was so special for us to have him join us on our day to make us Man and Wife.

 This is Kathy and Mike. You may recognize them from our engagement HERE. They have been such a blessing to our lives and we are so lucky to call them our friends. Mike is the director of the Quest Bible program I did at CBC and his wife, Kathy, is my spiritual mentor. We had them present communion to us as well as pray a blessing over our marriage. The cup we used for communion was my Grammie's as well. This moment was so special to us.

 We are MARRIED!!!

This was one of our first photos after we got married. The Nickerson's are amazing and catch so much raw emotion through all of their photos. I am IN LOVE with this photo.

 Our ADORABLE niece, Isla, the flower girl.

And our handsome ring bearer, Caleb.

 

My LOVELY bridesmaids who stood up for me. This photo of us is one of my favorites. They all looked amazingly stunning!

 And the extremely dapper groomsmen. They all looked so good in their outfits.

 This was our entire bridal party... and they were all wonderful!

 Caleb and Clara were the Best Man and Maid of Honor. They were also the friends that set us up. We love our best friends so much.

 The above photos are some of our favorites. Even the one with our backs showing, I love that you can see Travis's new ring.

 The cake was made by my good friend Liana. We are actually 3rd cousins... something like that, but she made the cake to have a lemon coconut top tier with a chocolate coffee bottom tier. It was AMAZING! We were HUGE fans and so in love with this cake. Doesn't it look DIVINE?

 My brother was the wonderful MC for our reception. He did an amazing job and was unbelievably hysterical.

 One of the games we played at the reception was "Guess the Groomsmens Bums"... yes, I have felt all of the groomsmens butts, against my own will. However, it was one of the funniest parts of our reception. My brother knows how to make me blush.

 The bridesmaids put us up to a kissing challenge...

 This was also a kissing challenge... we needed to pull of a Spider Man kiss... this is probably one of my favorite photos from our entire day. It is just TOO funny!

 Dancing with the man of my dreams. I'm so blessed I get to spend EVERYDAY with him.

 Dancing with another amazing man... my Dad.

 And this is Travis and his beautiful Mother dancing together. It almost looks like he's singing to her. I love it.

 Isla dancing with her cousin Oliver. I love having nieces and nephews.

I love this picture so much. This is Travis's Grandma. We just lost Grandpa about a month or so before the wedding... and Grandma especially has been through a lot. But to see her ripping it up on the dance floor was AWESOME!

 I love how my Mom goes crazy dancing... here is exhibit #1.

And exhibit #2. She is a DANCING MACHINE!

These photos have captured blessed memories for us, and now all we want to do is share them with people because they are beautiful photos from our day.

Sarah and Graeme want to travel worldwide for their photography. I highly recommend these 2 to ANYONE who is looking for a photographer. They are amazing and are always making sure that they understand your style. They want you to have photos that you can be proud of... ones that will make you re-live your wedding day. They certainly did that for us. I'm IN LOVE with this couple. 

Thank you Sarah and Graeme. We love you guys and cannot WAIT to see what the Lord has in store for the two of you. You have been such a blessing to us. We love you!

Save Money on Cute Lanterns DIY

Simple, easy and cheap... that's what I'm all about.

I love lanterns... they are just so cute. Fortunately, I found cute black lanterns at the dollar store for $2.00 each. They were metal and had glass windows that could be removed. PERFECT. I didn't really like the black, so I decided to spray paint them white, and it worked out REALLY well!

Prepping for spray painting. I bought a matte spray paint from Home Depot HERE.

All prepped and ready to spray. Just grab a drop sheet/newspaper and set up in a ventilated space and spray away. It's best to do 2 coats... spray once, let it dry, then spray. If you spray to close, the paint can run and it will look like the paint is melting. I recommend testing spray distances on your first lantern (or other object) before spraying the rest of them. Also, make sure to cover the ENTIRE lantern.

There were 2 different styles of lanterns as well. One was cylindrical, and the other, rectangular.

I'm definitely blessed to have such an amazing man in my life. He helps me out with my crafty things and is really great with his hands. He helped out whenever he could with wedding DIY's. God has blessed me RICHLY with Travis.

 After you let it dry and assemble the glass pieces again, this easy project is DONE! Just light a tea candle (IKEA always has cheap tea lights), close the door and enjoy your lantern.

We put our lanterns on our head table to decorate it up a little bit more because we had a lot of decorations on the guests tables. It was great to have such an lovely decoration at the wedding without breaking the bank.

I hope you enjoyed a little piece of what we put into the wedding!

Chalk Board Signs DIY

Hello again friends,

I had a new obsession for our wedding... and I guess it has been quite the FAD for a while, but I have fallen in love with CHALK BOARD PAINT!

Photo Cred: Kelsey Siemens, my lovely bridesmaid, of PS: Heart

It has become very popular for brides who want the rustic/simple/vintage style... and I was that bride. So, I had my crack at it... and still continue to adore this look!

First, the signs below were found at the dollar store... $2.00 each! My bridesmaid Jordan and I sanded down the signs and then stained them.

We then painted chalk board paint in the center of the signs...

I bought the chalk board paint from the Home Depot HERE. It is really easy but, I would recommend doing 2 coats.

We then used one of the signs as a sign for our videographer, Jordyn Siemens. (HERE is a quick preview of the beauty she captured of our day! I'm so excited to see what she is going to do with the rest of our day. She is also a talented member of PS: Heart)

Photo Cred: Jordyn Siemens

For the bigger signs, I used leftover ply wood from the palette stage that my amazing man built (I will do a post about this later). 

I then stained it with Minwax stain from the Home Depot. 

And yes, I did you that little sponge brush to stain the wood... it took a little while, but I was eager to get this project going at the time and used what I could at home.

After it dried, we taped the edges so that the boards would have a nice straight boarder.

This is my Maid of Honour, Clara (also of PS: Heart), taping away.

(Ok, I just got to say, I was EXTREMELY blessed by the PS: Heart ladies. They are SO creative and extremely talented and I was blessed enough to have them ALL involved in the wedding. They are amazing friends to me!)

Then, we painted the inside of the board.

Finally, Clara used her amazing fonts to create the finishing touches on the chalk boards.

Photo Cred: Jordyn Siemens

I loved how easy and simple it was to make these. They turned out so beautifully and I ended up keeping them. Maybe I could use them when I become a teacher... you never know!