Expert tips and inspiration for planning a fall wedding. Embrace the beauty of autumn with our best planning tips for your dream celebration.
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Today, I’m thrilled to finally be sharing all the details of my daughter’s fall wedding. It was a beautiful celebration at the peak of fall and everything about the day was perfect and one of the happiest days for our family. Hopefully, this post can give you some inspiration and tips for planning a fall wedding.
The Wedding Colors and Decorations
From the elegant table settings to stunning floral arrangements, find inspiration for creating a dreamy and cohesive atmosphere that reflects the colors of the season. My daughter wanted to have pink as the main color with shades of blue, green, and mulberry but with more of a fall color palette. I was able to find the perfect combination of colors that made this such a beautiful wedding.
The Invitations and Other Printables
I designed the invitations using an Etsy template that I will link here. We invited about 150 guests to the ceremony and dinner and then about 250 more guests were invited to the reception. We sent out two separate invites that were so easy to make and have printed. We used a local printer in Utah called Pleasant Grove Printers but you can have the invitations printed anywhere.
Here is the link for the copper sign stand we used. We painted ours gold with spray paint and used ribbon to tie the printed sign onto the stand.
Here is the invitation. We downloaded it from Etsy and customized it. The details were printed on the back. This was truly such an easy tip for planning a fall wedding.
We also had the welcome sign, menu cards, and table numbers printed in the same place. All were available in the same template. This was super affordable and easy to customize. The Etsy shop I purchased this template from has closed down but I’ll link another similar one here. Search Etsy for more styles if you want to find something like this template.
The Wedding and Bridesmaid Dresses
We bought my daughter’s wedding dress from a local bridal store in Utah called Pritchett Bridal.
I bought my dress from Nordstrom and the designer is Mac Duggal. Here is the link to mine but it may be sold out.
Sequin Floral Cocktail Midi Dress
Maddy wanted to do a “first look” with her dad and it was such a sweet and tender moment. She is our only daughter and let’s just say dad had a little bit of a hard time letting his baby girl go. I love that they had this special moment together.
My brother Brad performed the wedding ceremony and I love that he walked me down the aisle. He is one of my favorite people on this planet! We are 17 months apart and have always been close.
The Grooms Parents
The Groom and the couple’s dog, Crew.
My second son Jordan and his wife Hannah looked so cute together!
My oldest son Britton and his wife Aubree also looked so cute!
The groom’s brother Gray and little sister Kiko are so darling. I love this photo of them!
My third son Cameron was able to get leave from pilot training in the USAF and made it home in time for the wedding. He walked the groom’s sister Berkley down the aisle.
My darling granddaughters were the flower girls. Here is the link to their dresses. We chose the white dresses and added some velvet ribbon to the waistlines.
Our grandson was the ring bearer! Can you handle the cuteness? He played his part perfectly! Here is the link to the ring case. It even has an earpiece that goes in the ear, kind of like the Secret Service guys wear. So adorable!
The Bridesmaid dresses are from Bohme. Here is the link for them. They are flattering on every body type. Baltic Born is another great resource to find bridesmaid dresses as well as other occasion dresses. Here is a link to a similar dress and color from Baltic Born.
My dear friend Shannon DeHart, helped me make all the bouquets with fresh flowers. Shannon made Maddy’s bouquet and it was so beautiful. She then helped me make the thirteen bridesmaid bouquets. Can you believe we did this in 2.5 hours? Shannon owns Chatuea Monette Flower Farm in Payson Utah and she is amazing! Check out her farm here!
The grooms suit and the groomsmen’s clothing are from H&M. Maddy and Hudson both worked at H&M and that is also their initials so it’s fitting that this is where they got their suits and pants!
The Venue
Finding a good venue can be so hard when planning a fall wedding, and Riverbridge Event Center is an amazing venue. The couple wanted the ceremony outdoors in the pavilion and the reception to be indoors. Luckily the weather cooperated and we couldn’t have had a more perfect day weather-wise! The venue is affordable as well as beautiful and we opted to add the floral hoop chandelier and the lights and draperies to the ceiling.
Choosing the right venue sets the tone for the entire celebration. We are so glad we chose to have the wedding at River Bridge Events Center in Spanish Fork, Utah. It’s a newer venue that had options indoor and out for the ceremony and reception.
We used these wood backdrops that I had made for our oldest son’s wedding seven years ago and they worked perfectly for the bride and groom table area. We decided to do a picture wall and used the custom neon sign we had made with their last name. Here is the link to the neon sign.
My daughter and her fiancé wanted an outdoor ceremony and indoor reception and dinner. We prayed for the weather to be perfect and our prayers were answered! Mid-October in Utah can be a perfect seventy degrees, or it can be cold and windy or possibly snowing! The temperature at the time of the ceremony was 72 degrees! This was the perfect location that complemented the fall season and provided a picturesque backdrop for the festivities.
I did all the decorating and planning, and I love that I was able to do this! My daughter didn’t want anyone else doing it and although it was a little stressful doing the fall wedding planning and decorating, I was able to make my daughter’s wishes come true. I also have some amazing friends and family who showed up the day before to help me decorate and set up everything.
The floral hoop was quite a challenge and used a lot of flowers and greenery. Luckily, I was able to use all the fall florals from my home decor shop, EvolutionHomeDecor.com and it turned out better than I could have imagined. Here is an Instagram reel of how I did this with the help of my daughter.
Foral Hoop Chandelier Decorating Video
I made all of the centerpieces ahead of time using the same florals in the floral hoop chandelier. The flowers I used were all artificial and high quality. Many people thought they were fresh flowers and wondered how I kept them all from dying without water! That’s when you know faux florals have come a long way! All these florals and greenery can be found in my online shop as mentioned and linked above.
I used the floral arrangements on the round tables and for the long tables, I ordered premade fresh eucalyptus garlands from a local wholesale flower supplier. This made the table decorating so much faster. I had all the floral arrangements done so all we had to do was place them on the round tables and then add the 6′ eucalyptus garlands to the long tables. I also added some of the faux florals to each of the garlands to carry over the flowers to those tables to make the decorations more cohesive. We rented the table linens that the venue recommended for the round tables and used pink sheer table runners for the longer tables. The tablecloths and napkins were all pale pink which complimented the other decorations.
The Wedding Cake was very simple with fresh flowers. My favorite bakery in Utah is The Chocolate and the owner is a friend of mine. It was not only beautiful, it was so good!
The venue also catered the dinner and food for the reception. Everything was so delicious. We had a grazing board, butter board, and drink station, and the dinner was served buffet style. For the reception, the kids really wanted a queso fountain so we had that along with other food and desserts.
We also had an artist come and do a live watercolor painting during the wedding dinner and reception. The artist arrived in time for the ceremony, snapped some photos of the couple, and then went to work painting. I am so glad we chose to do this! A few days after the wedding, the artist delivered the finished painting to us! It is something we will always treasure!
The artist is Drew Harris and his Instagram is @livewatercolor
For the send-off, my daughter changed dresses and shoes and we laid out luminaries on the path where they would walk out. My husband is from New Mexico and the luminaries are a New Mexico tradition that they do around Christmas. I thought it would be cute to do luminaries with hearts cut out of them and it turned out so cute! We also had the large sparklers that everyone lit as they were coming out along with a sparkler machine.
I hope you found some fall wedding planning ideas and inspiration from this post! I will share more details in the next few weeks but feel free to send me an email with any questions about all the things I did to make this a beautiful day for my daughter and her husband! I’ll add more of the links that I have below.
Nancy Brantley says
I commend you on decorating a Beautiful Wedding for your daughter and future son-in-law!! I would recommend you for Wedding Planning. Thanks for sharing pictures of that Special Day.
Christin Cieslarski says
Thank you so much!!