I wanted a wedding that was outdoors, fairly laid back, beautiful, and fun. I'm really not into traditional weddings with lengthy church services and receptions that follow the same formula - boring and not funny speeches, a set schedule of events that MUST be adhered to, and an air of stiff formality. To be fair, there are probably lots of weddings that have church services and traditional receptions that aren't overly formal or boring, and I have been to some like that, but the overwhelming majority unfortunately weren't.

I looked through tons of bridal magazines for ideas on reception decor, table settings, ceremony venues, etc. I cut out all the pictures I really liked and kept them in a folder to show our wedding planner, Christina.

I saw several things I really liked the look of. Some of the outdoor weddings just looked lovely on beautiful green lawns with white marquee tents and lots of gorgeous flowers. One table setting in particular caught my eye, it wasn't set outdoors, but I loved the blue colour and the lovely ivory and white flowers with hints of yellow. So it was from this table setting that I decided on the colour scheme of aqua blue, white and yellow.

One of my favourite flowers is frangipanis aka plumerias. I grew up in Papua New Guinea where these flowers are abundant, and many associate them with the tropical paradise that is Hawaii. They are white with a large splash of yellow in the centre, which matched the inspiration picture above perfectly. So I decided I wanted to have a theme of frangipanis, but a more subtle theme, where frangipanis would be used quite sparingly, but would still appear throughout our wedding.

For the wedding ceremony, I loved one particular outdoor setup I saw, which I am hoping to emulate (with different flowers though, and using our colour scheme):

For the reception, we are having a white marquee tent with draping, and one really long table for our 40 guests. The table linens are a crisp clean white, with an aqua blue table runner. There will also be tall vases of flowers alternating with shorter vases of flowers running down the length of the table. It turns out that fresh frangipanis are not the best flowers to use at a wedding as they brown very quickly once cut. So frangipanis in my bouquet and table centrepieces were out. I opted for ivory roses and other flowers with yellow throats such as white orchids and lilies. We are using a really amazing florist, Yvonne Design, here are the sample tall and short centrepieces she made up for us (the aqua blue table runner in the picture is the same as the ones we'll be using for our reception):

The frangipanis are to put in an appearance on the table as part of the favour box decorations. The favour boxes are going to be in the aqua blue of our theme with white ribbon tied around it (very Tiffanys!), and a fake frangipani on the top made out of foam latex. These fake frangipanis are really realistic looking, unlike silk ones.

The foam latex frangipanis also put in an appearance on the exterior of the pocketfold for our wedding invitations, which I designed by borrowing bits and pieces from other invitations and making something I liked. It was put together by Bradley & Lily Fine Stationary in Hawaii. Here is the outside of the invitations:

The invitation itself and the insert cards were designed by a really lovely and talented stationary designer, Stacey from Bradley & Lily. She used our aqua blue, yellow and white colour scheme and a double frangipani motif for all our stationary. Here is the inside of the pocketfold of our frangipani invitations:

The invitations turned out amazing, and I was so thrilled with them. Almost all of our guests complimented us on them, saying they were the most beautiful wedding invitations they'd ever seen :)

Let's hope the actual wedding is just as breathtaking!