The Downey coat of arms, from a book published in 1931
We really love genealogy. If you've ever brought up ancestry with either of us, we've probably gone on a five-minute tangent about DNA tests and Ancestry.com and Neanderthal percentages (don't bring up this last topic with Ryan).
We've both gotten our DNA tested, established that we aren't remotely related (not that we were concerned?), and have had a fun time tracing various paths of our family trees as far back as the 1400s.
The Downie clan
The Downie tartan
Although Ryan is ethnically Ashkenazi Jewish (Schwarz), he has a huge chunk of Irish from his father's side. "Downey" stems from the Irish and Western Scottish surname "Downie," which was an anglicized form of "O'Dunadhaigh" -- literally, a person identified with a fort (dun). It stems from an old Galway family. In Northern Ireland (Ulster) in particular, "McDowney" or "Downey" stem from the Gaelic "Mac Giolla Domhnaigh" -- "son of the servant of the Lord (Sunday)."
Luckily for us, the Downeys also had a beautiful tartan to go with the family history.
The Boddfford clan
If you couldn't tell from approximately everything about her pale gingerness, Jess is more British than the average person living in Britain (i.e., 72%, a vast majority of which is Scottish).
So meanwhile, we have the Boddffords of Boddfford, Wales. We know a lot less about this particular family, which isn't helped by the fact that there are only 172 documented people with the last name "Bodford" in the world (a ratio of 1: 1,862,036). It seems like Boddfford branched off to become the much more common Bedford, but also formed smaller branches including Boddiford, Bodiford, and O'Bodiford, most of which were centered in Suffolk. Jessica's father's side owes thanks to Green O'Bodiford, who originally moved to America from Ireland, dropped the O' prefix, and went by Green O. Bodiford.
Boddfford/Bodiford is one of the oldest Anglo-Saxon names in Britain, and was originally a name for someone who worked as a coppersmith or a dealer in baterie (beaten copper or brassware). The term stems from the Old French "bateor."
Fun fact: Half of the Bodfords in Jessica's family started going by Bodsford within the last century. You know, just because.
We don't know as much about the original Boddfford tartan, but we do know that it involved "ross green," "bottle green," "sage green," and "bright scarlet."
Creating a color palette
Our final color palette
We combined our two tartans -- or what we knew of them -- to create a five-color suite. The two darkest colors come from the Downie tartan, which Ryan thought were too dark for a summer wedding; so the three lighter shades of green and creme come from the Boddfford tartan.
Luckily for us, these colors match well with most succulents that will be featured at the wedding (courtesy of The Wildflower AZ).