Cyndie & Mike’s Quirky “Love Birds”, Virginia Wedding

Cyndie & Mike made a few key decisions for their Virginia wedding early on and it became the basis for their entire, quirky, DIY wedding. Mike loves the color green – so their wedding colors became 2 shades of green and from their they decided to include a forest theme, as they both love hiking AND the forest, at the top of a mountain hike, is where Mike asked Cyndie to be his wife. :)

Cyndie’s mom and some family friends took on the “labor of love” for this wedding, hand-crafting the flowers, wooden coasters, centerpieces AND decorations for the wedding! Check out the entire wedding below, submitted by Softbox Media Photography via Two Bright Lights.

Cyndie & Mike’s Quirky “Love Birds” Wedding at the Reston Sheraton in Virginia

Vendors:

Cyndie and Mike are filled with love in their touching Catholic ceremony at Cyndie’s childhood church and reception at the Reston Sheraton. They’re a quirky, offbeat couple that loves to be silly and loves to love. They even put “lovebirds” (a Jaybird and Hokiebird) atop their cake as homage to their alma maters.

My mother probably did more to put things together than Mike and I combined. She was our hero who took our vision and helped make it a reality. She never pushed her own vision but was always happy to give advice if I didn’t know the direction to go.

My mom is an amazing gardener and her lily of the valley was always my favorite. The bouquet was very fragrant and smelled beautiful throughout the ceremony.

i LOVE these black lace bridesmaids dresses with the light green sashes – so stylish, modern and flattering!

Click inside for the rest of Cyndie & Mike’s forest-themed Virginia wedding!

The florist did a beautiful job bringing the idea of the forest floor to life in the corsages and flowergirl’s baskets. The trees were represented in the men’s boutonnieres.

We drove to the reception in my dad’s car because the first time Mike ever drove with my father in it, he accidentally spilled a cup all over the console. It brought it full circle that now he trusted him with his car and his daughter.

The venue was the church I grew up in, which also happened to have a beautiful stained glass backdrop into the woods behind the church.

It was our deacon’s first wedding he ever performed, so we felt special and that he would always remember us, he gave an amazing homily.

My mother works for the local park authority and one of her amazing naturalist/interpreter friends created the centerpieces and decorations for us from that vision.

An amazing family friend Justine Remington is a professional graphic designer and she put together the invitations, program, and all the other gorgeous paper products for us.

Laura, my mother in law is very crafty and put together the coaster favors.

The birds on top of the wedding cake were Red and Blue (Mike is a Jayhawk out of KU) and Maroon and Orange (Cyndie is a Hokie) sitting in the “tree” of our cake.

And though I don’t have any pictures of this, I just had to share this tidbit from Cyndie about their super fun garter alternative:

Mike came up with the idea of taking things out from under my dress that were *not* the garter. At first we thought a watermelon would be fun but then it became clear we should use a “can’t elope” ;)

Congratulations Mike & Cyndie! Thank you for sharing your awesome, forest themed, Virginia wedding with us! A special thanks again to Softbox Media Photography & Two Bright Lights as well.