Wedding Gallery Wall

My friend Kathryn and her lovely husband Ben joined Ryan & I for Thanksgiving this year. Kathyn & Ben live in a beautiful town in Wyoming, but unfortunately for them, there are very limited retail options. So when they visited, we took them Black Friday shopping (it was their first time!)

On our trip to Target, Kathryn stocked up on a bunch of white frames for a gallery wall she had in mind. When she posted a photo of said gallery wall to Facebook a few weeks ago, I fell in love! She'd dedicated the frames to showcasing her beautiful wedding with Ben! (Seriously gorgeous--hands down the best venue I've ever been too.) and I KNEW had to replicate it. I decided the best spot for my own wedding gallery wall would be our hallway, especially since I love the hallway galleries of Young House Love.

 {via}

Thus, I set about collecting my own white frames. I hit up Target and Walmart to get a little variety and bought many sizes. When our wedding photos arrived at last in the mail last week, I sorted through them, selected my favorites, ordered prints from Costco (they have the best photo pricing, seriously! $2.99 for an 11x14?!?! Yes please!) and patiently waited a whole DAY (did I mention they're speedy, too?) to pick them up and pop them in their frames before starting the process of arranging our gallery wall.

Now, I love a good gallery wall (I mean, we have three in our apartment now!), but I am not an expert by any means. For the first two, I just kinda randomly arranged the frames on the walls, so there are some extra nail holes and some random spacing (which I don't mind). But I wanted this gallery to be a little less random. So I cleared a space on the floor and laid out the frames. I used Amanda's (Our Humble Abowed) wisdom and started by putting the larger frames in the center, then working upward, downward, and outward and filling in with the smaller frames. I wanted a variety of pictures, some with just Ryan & I, some with our families, some with me & friends, some featuring objects/documents like my bouquet, our Save the Date, and our marriage certificate. So if two "object/document" frames were too close together, I moved them to keep the variety. Same with if two family pictures were neighbors, or two pictures of just Ryan and I. And here's the arrangement I came up with! 

Then I made templates the same size of all my frames and marked the nail holes on them. I taped the templates up in the gallery arrangement I'd laid out, then hammered right through the marks, and hung up each frame. I started at the middle and worked my way out.

After hammer time, I stood back and surveyed my work, and I was HAPPY :) I absolutely LOVE how it turned out! (It's basically impossible to get a head-on shot of the wall because there's not enough space in the hallway to step back and take it all in, so here are some side shots).

Here's what we have going on, working from left to right:

Our lovely Save the Date (designed by the aforementioned Kathryn of Lovebird Paper), a group shot of my whole family in front of the altar, a shot of Ryan & I outside prior to the ceremony, a shot of my bridesmaids and I, and a picture of our first dance.

Our first kiss, me with my best friends from high school (all bridesmaids), and my bouquet.

 Our marriage certificate and one of my favorite shots from the wedding--us and our wedding party holding "Just Married" bunting!

Two shots of my mother and I and a head-on picture of my favorite photo.

A photo strip of Ryan & I, a framed peacock feather, and Ryan with his groomsmen.

Me with my best friends (and sorority sisters!) from college, Ryan and I with his parents, and Ryan & I with my sister/MOH and her husband.

My sister/MOH and I, Ryan's parents with Father Healy, and Ryan & I with Father Healy. Yes, the same Father that married Ryan's parents also married us :)

The mixture of frame styles and sizes makes the wall look eclectic but mostly uniform, and the variety of photos and documents/object pictures gives the wall some visual interest.

I also have some crafting plans--I want to make a shadowbox, a vertical 8x10 white canvas with our initials & wedding date, and an 8x10 canvas full of the mini pinwheels we made for the wedding. Plus I figure we'll intersperse some photos from our honeymoon in the gallery, too. I can't work on some of the projects until we're home for the summer (no good space for spray painting here, all of the pinwheels are back in MO, and we're honeymooning in May), so I made a little mock-up to remind myself of the ideas:

What do you think? Inspired to add a hallway gallery wall of your own?