decor: wedding wall

This is one of my favorite spots in our house. It's a collection of family wedding photos, all candid shots. It has all of our favorite people -- parents, grandparents, siblings -- on the happiest days of their lives. I've been scanning and printing old wedding photos over the past several months, and last week I finally got the last photo I needed of my grandparents.

The vows were one of my favorite parts of our wedding. There was something very powerful about standing in front of all of the people in the world who love us and reciting the same words that my parents, my grandparents, aunts, uncles said decades earlier when they started their marriages. I felt like I was becoming a part of a tradition, something bigger than myself. 

I promise to be true to you, in good time and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.

I have those same feelings about tradition when I look at this wedding wall. These photos were taken decades and decades apart, but it's comforting to see they were cutting tiered wedding cakes in 1955 and throwing rice in 1978 and doing the you-may-kiss-the-bride thing in 2011. 

Here's a closeup shot of my beautiful grandma and my handsome papa (who never lost any of that hair, by the way), cutting their wedding cake: 

And the first dance for Tony's grandparents: 

Don't they look so happy? I'm glad I chose candid shots for the wall because the emotions are so much more genuine than in posed wedding portraits. 

I got the inspiration for the shelf from this blog post last year. I loved the sleek and modern look. I had my dad make the shelf for me, which was fairly easy. I measured it to be the exact length of my dresser (which is a Hemnes dresser from Ikea), and I painted it to match. We borrowed the bloggers' idea to create a lip on the shelf, which serves the double purposes of (1) ensuring the photos don't slide off, and (2) providing support so the long board doesn't warp over time. 

I had intended to fasten the shelf to the wall with invisible brackets, like the DIYers in the blog post, but then my dad found these gorgeous iron brackets at a flea market, so of course my plans changed. 

Another shot: 

As for styling the shelf, I used all different shapes and thicknesses of frames to put the photos in, which adds visual interest. But I kept the look uniform by using only black frames. Bonus: mismatched photo frames are abundant at thrift stores, and if they're not black, a little paint will do the trick.

<3

From the archives: 

decor: window shades and sheers