The Big Reveal: The Venue, The Cochrane Ranche House

* All photographs by Mark Shannon of Mark 11 Photography

Note: I used the words “Cochrane Ranche House” a LOT because when I was researching the venue, I couldn’t find any fugging photos of it and so I want this post to actually COME UP if some bride is trying get a better feel for the venue.

We were lucky. We got married at the Cochrane Ranche House – a stunning venue north of Calgary. It used to be a working ranch back in the day but now the town of Cochrane runs it. It’s funny – people would always ask me “Oh, is that the so-and-so’s Ranche?” as if I am all the sudden the librarian in charge of the history of the place. How should I know? I would always answer “Maybe, but now it’s run by the Town of Cochrane”, trying to change the subject, which inevitably would get a  “Oh, well ya the so-and-so’s Ranche.” Sure. It’s the Cochrane Ranche House. Cochrane. Ranche. House.

ANYWAYS RANTING ASIDE >

Here it is! I can’t write a glowing enough review of it – the pictures will have to speak my thousand words.

Here is our ceremony site, in the courtyard at the Cochrane Ranche House, pre-show obviously. They have a gorgeous back up ceremony location inside but of course – this was ideal.

That my friends, is the rolling foothills of Alberta. So much love for it, it makes my tongue thick and fuzzy.

Obv – in the heat of the moment. But look at that view! This is about 140 people.

And a closer view of the view – and Abby, our amazeballs officiant.

Here are a few pics to give you a good idea of the full spectrum of the Cochrane Ranche House courtyard…

So this little project was actually a last minute RobBob – Alix Special. We had no idea what to use as a stand in alter. Obviously – an arch would not do. It would block the view – THE VIEW! So RobBob found a photo she liked and of course, it was now our mission to find it or recreate it or build with our bare hands.

Naturally first emailed Gracey at Special Event Rentals who found me somewhat incoherent and an unusual state of panic as it was 2 days before the wedding. Not hearing back from her within 5 minutes sent me into a further tail spin and off RobBob and I went trying to recreate it. This is what we came up with.

LOVE IT. The bench was a bargain – $150 at some random garden store out by Cross Iron Mills. It was a) the nicest thing they had there b) the bench their workman ate their lunch on and c) because it had no price tag, I haggled with them and yay! The plants are flower bushes, very pretty and we wrapped extra burlap around them with ribbon.  Total cost” $300.

As you may have seen in my other post – this is the INSIDE of the Cochrane Ranche House reception hall, I forget what it’s called. As you can see, I opted not to have my chairs covered. Why? Because chair covers only look good for this one photograph – the one where no one is sitting in the chairs. Dollas in ma pocket, peeps.

Here is the Cochrane Ranche House reception hall with 140 people in it – barely even notice the chairs, eh?

There was plenty of room for our long head table – 12 of us in total. Lots of light. And it’s another good view of the burlap table runners!

This is the Hall of Vision, is the smaller room at the Cochrane Ranche House that we used for the dance. PERFECT for a dance – lots of room for tables and for cutting a rug! As I obviously did. Look at the gorgeous stone work, beam work and then log wall work in the photos with the band. Beaut!

The Big Reveal: Crafts

So here is how some of my crafts came out…

Coffee filter centre pieces

These came out basically exactly as I envisioned them. I, along with many friends, spent months perfecting them and then on the day of, realized that the “perfect” dye colour did not matter unless you were an centimetre away from it – that no one would have noticed if one centre piece had a brighter pink than another. REGARDLESS – they were just as envisioned.

The lanterns I used as bases were exactly right – we actually originally used them for a Gala at my work, and they came in cream. I bought the remaining lanterns off work (of which there were roughly 75) and spray painted the outside a champagne colour and the inside glass was a creamy pink. They looked great. They were also a really great base for the blooms.

We ended up not using tea lights in the lanterns because the tea lights we got had quite an orange LED bulb to it, so the blooms just were glowing orange orbs. It looked really neat but was not the effect I was looking for. At all.

I also realized that we kept the lights on in the venue the whole time soooooo ya. We didn’t really need them to also play nightlight.

 

We used the lanterns both in the reception room, as well as the cocktail room/foyer. Here’s a picture of The Cpt standing beside one sitting on a cocktail table. This one looks like one of Shinobu’s, who made the best blooms out of ALL of us.

Here’s one sitting beside the basket of flip flops that were one of my most popular – and you may remember it being incredibly rash – decisions.

We had 9 of the jumbo ones in total – 8 were used in the reception room and the one that I messed up and that was shaped like a strawberry we hung in the dance room as a disco ball substitution. See them hanging from the beams there? The room was so big – they didn’t actually have tons of impact but it was still great.

The Escort Board

I didn’t even teach you how to make my escort cards yet – FUG. Or did I? I can’t remember. But the escort cards cost me $30 in total and took about 2 hours. They were little brown envelopes, filled with lavender. I bought a shape cutter from Michaels, a Martha Stewart one, and cut out the cream parts out of stock scrapbooking paper. I took a bronze pen and wrote everyone’s names on. By hand. Like my seating cards. FML that took a long time.

But here is the Escort Board in ALL of it’s glory. I think it turned out great!

I ended up spray painting the clothes pins with a creamy colour spray paint so it matched hunky dory.

 

Below is a better shot of the actual colours of the board. Just LOOK at that handwriting.

A clothes up of the pins, the fabric, the ribbons and der, the rings.

The Aisle Markers

Ooooooooh the aisle markers.  First off, they were adorable. Just adorable. However – I couldn’t smell any lavender walking down the aisle. Not that I would have noticed even if I did. I was too busy thinking about how goofy my smile must have looked. But they served their purpose and I think they looked pretty cute.

 

The Burlap Table Runners

That burlap was one of the best decisions I made. It came in QUITE handy in a few last minute projects. I think it looked great – and now I’m turning the burlap into window dressing as a matter o’fact.

The Bouquets

The bouquets were parfait. No one could tell the difference. In fact, some people thought I had roses dyed to my colours. Other people thought that the flowers were made of coffee filters. BAM. None of them were right – they were the silk flowers from Chintz that I wrapped in coffee filters. BAM.  I can’t remember where I put the bouquets after the wedding. They are in someone’s garage probably.

The Big Reveal

So the wedding photos are in our hot little hands, finally. The truth is I almost forgot about the entire rest of the disk after I saw the sneak peaks. But voila! It’s meow time for the big reveal on what some of my crafting projects actually looked like on the day of.

We’ll do this diddy in three posts – crafts, venue and ensembles! Buckle up, kids. It’s go time.