Remember this adorable couple? Well they’ve since gone and got married and their wedding is just AMAZING. Completely handmade, one of a kind, and set in a super awesome offbeat Northern Virginia wedding venue – a coffee shop!! Clarendon dwellers and other NoVa folk alike will instantly recognize their venue – it’s Northside Social, but all readers will be able to appreciate the time and thought this couple put into their wedding day! It was really no wonder that Green Wedding Shoes picked it up first, and we are happy to share it again with you all.
Thanks to Love By Serena and the lovely couple, we have a TON of details and information to share on this truly unique wedding and make sure you make it to the end to see their seriously rad wedding highlight video from Caravan. It’s one of the BEST highlight reels I have seen. Like ever.
Chris & Misato’s Handmade, Creative Virginia Wedding at a Coffee Shop
Vendors:
Photography: Love By Serena | Bride’s Gown: LM Collection at Bloomingdales | Bridesmaids Dresses: Anthropologie | Catering: Northside Social | Cake: Sophie Camp with Northside Social | Favors/Centerpieces/Decorations: DIY | Flowers: Potomac Floral Wholesale & DIY | Hair: Keiko Goto from Ozuki Salon | Makeup: Akea from Sephora | Jewelry: Anthropologie | Men’s Attire: Banana Republic, Express & Topman | Music: DIY Playlist | Shoes: Nine West | Stationery: DIY | Wedding Rings: Designed by Bride, handmade for each other | Videography: Caravan | Submitted via Two Bright Lights
Misato is originally from Japan and has been in living in the U.S. for the past 10 years. She has background in Fine Arts (focus: metal working and jewelry making). She currently works as a Display Coordinator for Anthropologie. Chris grew up in the Northern Virginia area and currently works in the culinary field at a delicious restaurant in Arlington, VA (Lyon Hall). Misato and Chris had their wedding celebration this past August, but were officially married for about 2 years before the celebration (her entire family flew in from Japan for the event).
From Misato, the bride:
As many couples do, we went through lots and lots of wedding website and pictures trying to come up with ideas, but we realized that we wanted the wedding to be simple and easy going, just like who we are (and we were running out of time!). We love blue, yellow, green, rustic neutral, and animals so we used that as our theme.
I LOVE this detail about their handmade wedding rings ^
Our wedding bands are made by each other with the casting of Red string. In some Asian countries, it is believed that people who are meant to be together are connected by red string. So when we got married summer of 2010, we tied a red string on each others ring finger. We used that string to make our wedding bands to be connected by red string forever.
But before the dress, decor, music, guest list, flower and so on, our first priority was the food! Northside Social and its sister restaurant Lyon Hall and Liberty Tavern make cheeses, sausages, and charcuteries in house and they are one of our favorite restaurant in the DC area.
Click inside for SO MUCH MORE of this super awesome, alternative & handmade Virginia wedding!
Many of the details were handmade and “DIY”. Misato painted each of the animal escort “cards” white. The red string that is shown with their rings is the string that was used to tie bows on their fingers from their actual wedding. Since their wedding color was blue, they used similar string/yarn and made bows on every single place setting to symbolize that.
We did DIY with many things in our wedding since we both happened to be crafty! The wedding favors were the sake glasses that we hand wrote our initials, which we were also used for the toast during the reception. Misato’s mother brought coasters made out of Kimono fabric from Japan for everyone to take home as well!
A super alternative/awesome “guestbook idea” – using wasabi tape to make a tree!
The message/photo tree was put together by friends using washi tape, leaf shape sticky notes and Polaroid pictures.
In love with the escort cards – spray painted animal figures with a “What Kind of Party Animal Are You?” sign! hah!
We used little animal figures (dollar store purchase and spray painted) as guests’ name cards and a pair of elephants (it was slat and pepper shaker that we bought online, filled the holes and spray painted) as the cake topper. Christopher’s last name is Horton, so we have embraced Horton the Elephant!
The lace center piece on our sweet table was hand made by Misato’s aunt (took almost a year!), Christopher made vases out of wine bottles, the flowers were put together by Chris, Misato and family members.
We were very lucky to have creative, crafty and supportive family members and friends who helped us so much to put our wedding together and we could not have done any of this without them, especially having to change the location of the ceremony due to the weather on the day of!
Congratulations Misato & Chris! Your wedding was seriously awesome and I can’t thank you enough for sharing it and all your details with us! A special thanks again to Love By Serena & Two Bright Lights for making this handmade, Virginia wedding feature possible.
And now that AWESOME wedding video you were promised from Caravan! Check THIS out:
Misato & Chris | Arlington, VA from Caravan on Vimeo.
3 comments
So cute! Love the table settings and the bridesmaid dresses! What a wonderful wedding band idea!
Thanks so much for featuring Misato & Chris’ super-fun wedding celebration! Their wedding is still one of our favorites to date and it was truly an amazing time!