On June 28, I was so fortunate to marry the love of my life surrounded by my dear family and friends. I was also so fortunate that my dream of using pink Fiestaware at our wedding came true!!
My mom has collected Fiestaware dishes for many years, and I started my own Fiesta collection in 2005. I started with first quality dishes and dishes I picked up at antique stores and yard sales (my absolute favorite is Sea Mist Green), then in 2010 when my mother and I were in Pittsburgh for the Antiques Roadshow (we made it on the show… at the very end you can see our backs! haha!) we decided to make the trek to Newell, WV for the outlet. So much fun! Justin and I returned again 6 months later when we were up that way snowboarding (our car looked ridiculous both trips; the first time it was an antique table and chair and lots of dishes, the next time it was snowboards, boots, coats, and a ton of dishes!).
Justin and I love our Fiesta dishes, and so do our families – both of our parents use Fiesta dishes! – so I thought it would be so fun to use pink Fiesta dishes to add some color to our tables and share something important to us with our guests. While we talked about it for years, we didn’t think we could afford to do it; even driving to the outlet and buying the dishes would be costly with gas, a hotel, and time off (for the almost 6 hour drive each way!). But in early December, Justin had to go to Pittsburgh for work, so I contacted the outlet to let them know what our plan was, then we drove up to Pittsburgh on a Thursday night. Early Friday morning we jumped in the car and drove the 50 minutes to the Fiesta Outlet in Newell, WV! We got there 15 minutes before it opened and sat in the car, eagerly awaiting the opening (ok – I was eager – Justin was checking work emails on his phone). When the store opened, we rushed in and started grabbing Flamingo Pink dishes… and suddenly we had all of the pink plates we could easily get to – which amounted to only 21!
The Fiesta Outlet has TALL stacks of plates, layered 2-3 rows deep in these massive wooden bins. We started going through each bin, slowly rearranging each pile to get to plates at the bottom. Justin was meticulous! After about fourty-five minutes, we had 29 plates – still far from the 100 we had hoped for! I debated buying the luncheon plates (which are a bit smaller) and mixing those with the full-size dinner plates, but worried they wouldn’t be large enough for dinner. (I also debating buying all of those for our salads, but Justin quickly nixed that idea!). So I started looking for Turquoise plates; I decided I could mix and match them with the Flamingo (they look great together!). But there were only about 35 Turquoise plates – so we were still short! During that time, an employee asked if I needed help, and we explained what we were hoping to find. She went through each bin and managed to find another five plates for us, then she kindly offered to see if there were more in the warehouse!
Meanwhile, Justin and I kept scouring the bins, looking for plates. The Scarlett plates looked deceptively like Flamingo Pink when buried at the bottom of a pile! We discovered we could use the flashlight tool on our iPhones to shine light down at the plates and see what was hidden. A little over thirty minutes later, two men arrived from the warehouse with a hand truck loaded with boxes of… Flamingo Pink Fiesta! I was thrilled! (So much so that I hugged them!). While they went back to get another load of plates, we counted what they had just brought, and combined with what we had already found and every last Flamingo plate they brought from the warehouse, we had 98 plates! Yippee!
We bought every single one (and a few other things!) and then loaded up the SUV (it was PACKED!). Everyone at the Fiesta Factory was so helpful and nice, and we were so thankful that they helped us find enough dinner plates for our wedding! The Flamingo Pink colored was retired at the end of 2013, so we were so fortunate to get as many plates as we did for our wedding. We literally bought every last one at the warehouse!
Once we got the plates home, I unpacked them and ran them all through the dishwasher, then repacked them. It surprisingly did not take too long; I discovered I could fit 22 plates in the bottom rack of my dishwasher (and other misc dishes for the wedding in the top rack). The week before the wedding, I unpacked them and reran them through the dishwasher, then packed each with a styrofoam plate between them to protect the plates for the trip to our venue. The boxes of plates were REALLY heavy, but miraculously, every single plate made it to the venue and back home undamaged! My mother washed them all after the wedding (thank you mom!) in her much faster and more efficient dishwasher. We have yet to finish packing them back up though!
Buying our own plates for the wedding certainly wasn’t easy (or cheap), but we were so happy to have this special touch at our wedding :) Enjoy a few photos of our wedding day reception tables that our wonderful photographer captured!
Our food! We served three vegetarian dishes, all prepared using fresh, natural, and local ingredients by Laurrapin Grille in Havre de Grace. I had the risotto, on the left, but wish I could have tried all three! Don’t they look lovely on our Fiestaware plates?
The favors were mismatched teacups with plants, plus a donation to a few of our favorite animal rescues. The tables were lined with mason jars and flowers, as well as sets of books (since we are both English majors). Bread plates were mismatched plates my mom and I collected.
Our table runners were burlap and lace; we bought the burlap at Joann’s and cut it into long strips for the runners. I ordered the wide lace online and love it!
The plates were wrapped with hemstitch napkins that I embroidered in a shade that matched our Flamingo Pink plates! (The thread color is called Ellen Rose).
I loved all of the pink!
And a few photos from our trip :)
These were all taken from the car – outside of the Fiesta Factory, outside of the Panera I go to every time we find ourselves in Pittsburgh, and in downtown Pittsburgh (shot through the windshield with a super wide angle lens).
These are all our boxes of plates!
And us on our wedding day!
All wedding day photos by Katelyn James!