This post has been a long time coming, but we're stoked to finally share it - our before and after bedroom makeover! First, let's take a little trip down memory lane. This is what our primary bedroom looked like when we moved into the house.
Basically just an empty, white room with bad trim. Our plans for the space were resurfacing and painting the walls, swapping out the trim, framing and trimming the windows and closet, swapping out the door, reconfiguring the closet, furnishing, and decorating.
You may remember that we finished the bedroom door several months ago. In fact, the majority of the room has been complete for months, but we had some final tasks to finish up before it was ready to share. Now it's all complete, and she's lookin' good.
The showstopper of the room is definitely the blue swirl wallpaper from Milton & King x Poppytalk. We actually won this wallpaper in a giveaway and were so excited to use it in our room. It just looks perfect behind our navy bed, doesn't it? This is real wallpaper (meaning it has to be applied with paste), so we were a little hesitant to hang it ourselves. Luckily we were only doing one wall and it's a pretty forgiving pattern (no continual pattern between sheets), so it was worth it for us to DIY instead of hiring it out.
I feel like a real adult having sconces for our bedside lights. We decided to get plug-in sconces rather than hardwired though, just in case we ever decide to switch up the layout of the room (not likely considering this is a small bedroom but who knows.) They're the Crosby Swing Arm sconce from Target and we dig them a lot. We did have an electrician install outlets on each side of the bed (where the sconces are plugged in), and they have USB ports (!!!) for our phones, which we love.
To the left of the bed, you'll find some pieces from our old apartment - our salvaged ladder and our copper pipe plant stand (that fern is faux, btw!) Next to them is my "desk", but really it's more of my vanity. I keep my laptop here, but mostly just so it has a home. This is where I do my makeup in the morning, in front of this awesome hanging mirror we grabbed on clearance from Target a couple years ago.
In the gallery above my desk we have a 'do-not-disturb' door tag from Ace Hotel Pittsburgh, where we got married. It was a wedding gift from a friend and a lovely reminder of our wedding day. We also have an art print from Minted (seen in this post) and a print from Juniper Print Shop. The blue mobile/hanging is from Urban Outfitters, many years ago. The desk itself is from Amazon, and my chair is a spare that we didn't need at our dining room table.
You may or may not remember the closet system we installed in our guest bedroom last year. Both of our dressers and closets are continuing to live in the guest bedroom, and it really works out great for us. The primary bedroom is small (only 9.5' x 12.5') and we just wouldn't have the room to house our clothes/dressers in there. With that said, we decided to turn the closet in the primary bedroom into a linen closet. We were really lacking space for towels, extra sheets, blankets, pillows, etc. and knew this would be the perfect space. The shelves are pine and turned out beautifully - Nick built them and they're holding up great. We added simple bifold doors from Lowe's that we dressed up with trim, just like our bedroom door.
So that's our bedroom! This room is definitely my favorite in the house. I'm by no means an interior designer, but I'm proud of how I decorated and styled this room. To me it's beautiful, cohesive, and calming. It's truly the first room in our house that is done 100% (not even the music room is done done) and that feels really freaking good after 2.5 years in our house. We hope you enjoy it as much as we do.
I have a full source list for you below, but if there's anything you have questions on, be sure to leave us a comment!
October is finally here and we are in full-blown Halloween mode. It's no secret that we love fall and Halloween, and this year we're especially excited because it's our 10th Halloween together! So in the spirit of the best season of the year, we thought we we'd take a trip down memory lane and share our couples costumes through the years.
With 10 years together, there have been quite a few couples costumes. There's a few years missing where we flew solo, and in fact, this year we're not coupling up (I've had my costume in mind for awhile and there's not a good pair for it!) While I'm a little sad to not have a costume partner, looking back at all of these couples costumes is getting me inspired for next year's looks.
So without further ado, here are some classic Surznick couples costumes. Let us know which is your favorite in the comments below!
2009 (Our first Halloween!) - Bill and Sookie from True Blood
- We bought bottles of True Blood from the HBO shop. It was a delicious blood orange soda.
- I still have this Merlotte's shirt and wear it regularly!
2011 - Danny and Sandy from Grease
- It's not uncommon to find us dancing to the Grease soundtrack in the car. This costume was a natural fit for us!
2014 - Margot and Richie Tenenbaum
- "I think we're just gonna to have to be secretly in love with each other and leave it at that, Richie."
2015 - Spaghetti and Parmesan Cheese
- Nick was spaghetti the first year we met in college (and were not yet dating.) I have always LOVED this costume, so I new I had to make a pair for it!
- We shared a tutorial for this here.
2016 - Agatha and Zero from Grand Budapest Hotel
- Back on the Wes Anderson theme! You can see more this about costume here.
2017 - Paul Bunyan and Babe the Blue Ox
- With all of the wedding planning going on last year, we didn't really do anything for Halloween, but we dressed up to hand out candy!
- Nick (not surprisingly) bought nothing for his costume. The lumberjack attire is pretty normal.
Happy (almost) Halloween!
Sarah & Nick
x
What better time to talk about our wedding than... 4 and a half months after it happened? Yeah, we're a little behind over here, but we are SO excited to finally share our wedding with you today. It was the best day we could have hoped for and we're thrilled to relive it with you guys! There are a bunch of photos below, but we wanted to give you some details first. This post is going to be a doozy, buckle up!
When: January 6, 2018 (our 9 year dating anniversary)
Where: Ace Hotel Pittsburgh - Ballroom. Getting married in the middle of winter certainly limits your venue options, but we wouldn't have wanted to get married anywhere else. Working with the event team at the Ace made our planning process so easy and we are so grateful to them for their guidance and help!
How Many Attended: About 80 guests
What Sarah Wore: My dress was a ModCloth/BHLDN hybrid. I did not picture myself wedding dress shopping in person with a bunch of people voting yes/no. Instead, I drank a bunch of wine one night and looked at ModCloth's bridal section online. I found a dress that was cute and on sale for about $70 - it's no longer available, but this is what it looked like originally.
Later I found this beautiful lace topper from BHLDN - I'm still so in love with it. My mom cut the lace top off of the ModCloth dress and I wore the dress with the BHLDN topper instead. All in, my dress was under $300. I wore dark green velvet Mary Janes, which were super comfortable - I kept them on all night.
I decided to do my own makeup and kept it pretty much the same as what I normally wear (winged eyeliner will be my legacy.) I had no idea what to do with my hair, and I rarely get it cut so I don't have a go-to stylist. Luckily my friend Jessica offered to do my hair for me, which was a huge stress reliever, and I love how it turned out (thank you, Jess!) The only jewelry I wore besides my rings were rose gold lotus earrings from Etsy.
What Nick Wore: (Hey, it's Nick!) I wore a custom suit from Men's Wearhouse. It even had my name stitched inside! It doesn't matter what your thoughts are on Men's Wearhouse, or any other clothing store, a custom suit is worth its weight in gold. You feel like a million bucks and look amazing. If you're getting married, make sure you get a tailored suit. (And pro tip: it turns out Men's Wearhouse is basically ALWAYS having some form of a mega sale. No matter the time of year, you can get a sweet deal.)
Food: Since our wedding was at the Ace Hotel, all of the food/drink was from their in-house restaurant, Whitfield. The food was INCREDIBLE. If you've ever been to the Whitfield, you know that their food is amazing (both the chef and pastry chef were recently nominated for James Beard awards!) and we couldn't have been happier with the menu.
Nick and I were adamant about having an all-vegetarian wedding, and we are so thankful to the Whitfield for coming up with the most fantastic off-menu dishes for us. The food was served family style, so we didn't need to get meal preferences from guests beforehand, which was really nice. We actually tried to kept the menu a secret (not everyone is as excited about vegetarian food as we are), but all of our guests loved the dishes.
We had a beet salad and a mixed greens salad to start. For the main courses there was a parmesan risotto with roasted cauliflower, shaved Brussels sprouts, and tomato butter, as well as roasted squash with rice cakes, kale, harissa, and lentil salad. Dessert was a bourbon pecan bread pudding and a vegan chocolate fudge (made with avocado!) There was also a cheese plate during the cocktail hour, and of course - open bar (this is a Surznick wedding, after all.)
We didn't have a cake for the wedding ceremony, but our friend Annie made us a wedding cake that we could share with guests at our house the day after the wedding. The cake was so beautiful and so delicious. If you are local and need a cake (vegan options available!) please reach out to Annie!
We had our rehearsal dinner at Apteka, a local all-vegan Polish restaurant (pierogies!) We highly recommend visiting if you haven't been before!
DIYs and Decor: The ballroom at the Ace is so beautiful on its own that we didn't really want to overdecorate. We made two backdrops - one for us to stand in front of on the stage during the ceremony, and one for photos during the reception. The paper chain backdrop is a DIY by The House that Lars Built. For our centerpieces, we used caterpillar bud vases we got on clearance from a local shop and filled them with moss and faux flower buds from JoAnn Fabric. A big thank you to our friends Jamie, Jessica, and Geoff for helping us put together the centerpieces and backdrop!
Guest Book: Our friend, Steve, helped us design the best wedding guest book ever. I knew I wanted to do something unique and I was inspired by a photo that I saw on Instagram years ago and had saved on my phone. Our guests each had a card to fill out with their name, how they know the bride or groom, favorite memories, where they traveled from to attend, and some special wishes for us. Our favorite feature was that they had to draw a photo of themselves (which made for an excellent read-through of the cards the next day). We plan to have them all bound into a book that we can look back on for years to come. Thank you, Steve!
Favors: We went back and forth over favors for a LONG time until we finally decided to scrap the idea. I don't remember ever receiving a wedding favor that I've loved and kept forever, and we figured our guests probably felt the same. Instead, we used the money we would have spent on favors to make a donation to Community Human Services, a local organization with the following mission: "To empower individuals and families to live in stable housing, connect to community resources, build relationships, and access quality food." The Ace Hotel Pittsburgh is in the former YMCA building in East Liberty, a neighborhood that has seen its fair share of gentrification over the past several years (and is ongoing.) While it's a modest donation, we hope it makes a small difference in our community.
Officiated By: Our friend, Jordan! I've known Jordan since 1st grade and he and Nick have become close over the past few years. We wouldn't have wanted anyone else to marry us! He traveled all the way from Austin, TX to legally bind us and we're stoked to travel to Austin to see him soon.
I think the other song highlights of the night were Country Roads (a Mr. Nick classic) and Sugar, We're Goin' Down (EVERYONE sang along.)
First Dance: Pretty much right when we got engaged, I decided that I wanted to do a choreographed routine for our first dance. Nick was game, but we didn't even pick songs or start practicing until about a month before the wedding.
My lovely friend, Bethany, captured a video of the dance for us - you can watch it below!
Photography: Our wedding was shot by Alyssa Florentine of For Rue Photography, along with her 2nd shooter, Michael. We're sharing some photos below, but it was very hard to narrow down. We love them so much and will cherish them forever. Thank you, Alyssa and Michael!
If you made it this far, thank you for reading! Our wedding was a long time coming, but truly the best day. If you have any questions, be sure to let us know in the comments below and we'd be happy to share. If you missed any of our other wedding-related posts, you can catch them below.
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