My simple rustic wedding – our outfits and decorations

Omg, it’s been over a year since I got married! Our first anniversary was on September 15th. 🎉
Can’t believe it’s been a whole year already, time is crazy! Both of us had been travelling for work and felt tired of going out, so we spent the day just chilling at home with a nice bottle of wine and some movies.

It’s funny how getting married resets the relationship count. Markus and I have been together for 13 years at this point, but only married for 1 so… It’s like starting over. 😛

I haven’t blogged very much about the wedding, so now I want to talk about it some more. Since we did things a bit differently I figured it would be fun to share how and where we got our clothes and decor.

Also, still not sponsored.
In case you’re wondering. I’m not about that.

Deciding on a style

At first, we toyed with the idea of having a fantasy theme. Like, go full geek and have medieval outfits and everything – but we quickly binned that.

You can’t half-ass something like that. You have to do it 100% or else it will just look weird. And organizing a complete medieval/fantasy wedding + party sounded like way too much work. Especially considering the guests. How do you ask everyone to dress in fantasy costumes without looking like an entitled douche? Not everyone we know is into LARPing and dressing up so for many it would just be a huge inconvenience.

Instead, we dropped the idea of a theme and went with our own style. Nordic, rustic, alternative. A bit pagan, a bit bohemian, and very casual.

We wanted everyone to be allowed to be themselves, so we opted for no dress code at all for the guests. Some had fancy suits and dresses, some had jeans and flannel shirts, and they were all perfect. 🥰

My dress

I knew from day 1 that I would have to buy my dress online. Our small town doesn’t have a very wide selection of shops, so it’s difficult finding anything outside of the most common and basic. There is one bridal shop, but they only carry the standard white dresses you see everywhere.

I actually ended up commissioning a custom dress!

When searching for “alternative” wedding dresses I came across the Etsy shop RAWRAGS by PK.
The shop owner is a Danish lady making beautiful bohemian clothes from bits of different fabrics, every single one handmade and one-of-a-kind.

I sent her a brief description of what the dress was for (outdoor wedding, autumn, Scandinavian countryside), a colour palette to give her a general idea of what I wanted, and my measurements. A few weeks later this pretty thing showed up in my mailbox:

I still LOVE my dress! <3 It turned out so beautiful and fits me perfectly. Now I just wish it was socially acceptable to wear things like that all the time.

Because of the relatively cold weather, I also had a little hooded cape during the ceremony. It’s from a nice Irish Etsy shop called Celtic Fusion. They also made the shirt Markus was wearing.

I was going to buy a pair of shoes but couldn’t find any that looked how I wanted them to. And shoes are one of those things I don’t dare buy online because they never ever fit. After not finding anything I liked I gave up and searched through my own wardrobe instead. That’s when I decided my old knee-high leather boots actually looked perfect.
My mum was somewhat horrified because they look as old as they are, haha! But I was happy. Worn old shoes go wonderfully with a dress made from rags, don’t you think? 😁

Wedding bouquet

Up until the day before the wedding I wasn’t sure if I should even have a bouquet. Or if I should just hold a single branch? Or a candle or something?

But dad has a big rowan tree growing by the old barn, and when I saw the huge clusters of red berries I decided to make a bouquet of them.
After cutting a few branches from the rowan tree, I spent an hour scavenging around dad’s house and ended up with a beautiful natural bouquet. Some rowan branches with berries, some grey dead branches with lichen on them, and some fir twigs.

My dress was shipped with a small bag of extra “strips” of fabric (in case something broke I assume, so thoughtful!) so I took one piece of fabric and tied it all together.

Markus’s outfit

I’m biased since I’m in love with him and everything, but Markus was so handsome. He looked like he could be an extra on HBO’s Vikings. 😍

He got a pair of green cotton pants and the brown leather boots from EMP and a white linen shirt from the same Etsy shop as I got my cape from.
The symbol on the shirt is a Vegvísir, and Icelandic symbol that makes sure the bearer from ever losing their path or getting lost.

He’s also wearing a little leather pouch he got several years ago at Medieval Week on Gotland. And a knife he bought during the summer.

“Wedding knives” aren’t a thing, but we do come from the countryside where it’s quite common for people to carry small knives and other tools on them on a daily basis. So when he found this pretty knife he thought it would look good next to the leather pouch.

Our rings

When I proposed to him I had purchased simple (and very cheap) steel rings for us, and we wanted to replace them with something nicer and more “us” now that we were getting married.

The rings are also from Etsy. From Anna Rei Jewellery, a goldsmith in Wales. They’re oxidized silver splattered with 18k gold. My ring also has a small stone set in a blob of gold.

Decorations

The perk of getting married in a naturally beautiful place is that there’s no need for extravagant decorations.

The wedding ceremony took place on a small wooden stage by the river (I’ve posted about that here). We talked about getting flowers or one of those arcs that are so popular, but we decided to skip all that. That stage was surrounded by rock formations and the autumn forest – what could we possibly add that would make it better than it already is? Flowers and ribbons and shit would just be a distraction.

So we only decorated the community house where the party was held. Since we were already picking branches and leaves for my bouquet, we gathered some for the house as well.

Outside the venue, we put two big ceramic pots filled with different types of branches and even some mushrooms! I don’t have any photos of them outside the house, because nobody thought to photograph that. 😅 But I do have pictures of them from the day before when we put them together outside my parents’ house.

Inside, we put jars and small vases with branches too. Some pinecones and heavy bunches of rowan berries were just laid out directly on the tables. Instead of confetti, we had little decorative stones.

Of course, we also added some candles. On the head table, in front of Markus and I, we had two candleholders made from reindeer antlers. They were made by a local who I know of from work. She makes all sorts of beautiful designs with antlers, so we got two candleholders. I have them in my house now. 😊

We didn’t bother with any other decorations. The white tablecloths were already at the venue, and so were the green chairs.

The room we were in also has a huge mural on one of the walls, so that already made the room pop. Only thing I didn’t like was the zebra curtains (who thought they were a good idea?) in the windows, but I couldn’t be bothered to change them. Not for one evening. And at least they were black and white and not some clashing colour.

So, this was a pretty simple wedding. Honestly pretty cheap too. We only spent half of what we had budgeted for, mostly because our parents cooked all the food and because we used nature to our advantage. By picking leaves and stones instead of going to a florist we saved a lot. Also, the more we planned the more we realised how little we cared about most of the traditional wedding stuff.

What we wanted was to celebrate with our friends and have a fun party – things like the colour of the napkins or how fancy the cake looked honestly didn’t seem very important. Our biggest concerns were about having enough food, a computer to play music on, and making sure everyone could get there and have somewhere to sleep. Once that was taken care of the rest was just fun extras.

The party was great and everyone had fun, so I say our wedding was a success! And I learned I’m basically an anti-bridezilla, haha! 😅