Long before Meghan got engaged to Andrew, she started collecting issues of Ottawa Wedding Magazine. That’s “part of how I managed to plan and execute a DIY wedding,” this lovely bride explains. As you can see from the photos, she crushed it!
August 16, 2025, exactly a year from the day of their engagement and a day before Meghan’s 30th birthday, she and Andrew tied the knot—with loads of eye-catching personal style—in Merrickville.
It was an extended celebration, with accommodations snapped up so that 35 of the couple’s nearest and dearest could spend the whole weekend, “like The Big Chill.” Maple and Rose, a red-brick Victorian “whole-home rental” property, was the centre of festivities. And while the setting was full of character and appeal, the bride says that to get the “charming luxury” look she wanted “on a tiny budget (less than $15K),” the wedding was a DIY project.
For starters? “I baked and served the three-tier cake myself, and my mom made dozens of gumpaste flowers by hand to cover the cake. For the favours, we made jams to match the three cake flavours: carrot cake with whisky-orange old-fashioned frosting, pistachio cake with cardamom honey frosting and lemon cake with lavender pear frosting.”
Fresh lemons and pears decorated the tables and Meghan created clay place cards, moulded and painted to look like lemon wedges, with each person’s name stamped in. Not only did she make all the signage—bar menu, welcome sign, cards box, directions and favours—by stenciling paint onto cloth and wood, she even embroidered the seating chart.
Using Canva, she design the guestbook as a yearbook, featuring photos with guests over the years. “I made the menu cards and invitations on Canva as well,” she notes, “with a sketch of the venue and illustrations of the ingredients in each dinner dish, which I digitally sketched myself.”
Her mother and father got crafty, too. Premixed cocktails “named after our favourite neighbourhood cats” were placed in a cedar beer cooler built by Meghan’s dad and she says he “also made a six-foot-long wooden serving board for the appetizers and a set of corn hole boards, which I hand-painted with small flowers in shades of yellow and blue.”
There’s more: “My mom sewed metres and metres of bunting from thrifted fabric and we did all of the florals ourselves using flowers grown in our garden, plus extras from the grocery store.” The only exception was Meghan’s bouquet. That was dreamed up by the photographer, Lauren Boucher, who also works as a florist.
There were also plenty of sentimental touches. Meghan wore her grandmother’s 1950s wedding dress and carried the silk purse from her mom’s wedding, while her bridesmaids carried baskets from her aunt’s wedding. Then after exchanging vows, she gave Andrew her great-grandfather’s ring and he gave her his grandmother’s ring. “All of this created a timeless ambiance with layers of old and new pieces thoughtfully arranged for a fresh but textured, simple look,” she explains.
Even after the wedding, the personal touch continued: “I pressed and dried the flowers from the wedding to make all of the thank-you cards.”
Now that the fresh blooms, lemons and jams are a happy memory, the bride recalls those moments in time as “an intimate, thoughtful and joyous celebration of everyone who had shaped us and loved alongside us over the course of our lives.”
The Details:
Venue: Maple and Rose, Merrickville
Photographer: Lauren Boucher
Officiant: Dale Delahunt
Bride’s Look: Grandmother’s dress, altered by a family friend; Veil from Etsy; Purse from mother’s wedding ensemble; Dinner dress: Sharleez Bridal
Groom’s Attire: Suit: Moores; Kilt: Bride’s family tartan
Appetizers and Dinner: Chef Kent Van Dyk, On the Fork Catering
Tables, Dishes, Linens: Rental Village
Bride’s Bouquet: Lauren Boucher, Mood Moss Flowers
