This rustic beauty is all kinds of enchanting but, really, would you expect anything less from KT Merry? Her photographs are always such a dream and this city meets country chic wedding just sparkles in front of her lens. Of course, this is not your average rustic backyard wedding. It is a little glam, a little girly, a little country, a little DIY and all kinds of sensational. A little DIY is an understatement. This bride and groom transformed the bride’s family’s riding arena into a magical outdoor ballroom. It’s hard to believe this luxe affair was a DIY labor of love by the sweet couple and their families. Check out all the gorgeous details in the full gallery!
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From the Bride…Our wedding was pretty much a complete DIY project – other than the catering, photography and some rentals we did everything ourselves. From the beginning we knew that we wanted to do a city meets country theme since I’m originally from the city and Randy grew up half an hour outside of Kamloops on a working cattle ranch. We wanted the feel of our wedding to be fun and comfortable but also with a bit of formality and glitz where people could dress up and be in beautiful surroundings. I got a lot of my ideas from looking online on the Knot wedding website at their real wedding photos. We saw the bright green and hot pink colour theme on there and it was perfect because I love hot pink and Randy coincidentally really likes bright green. I spent hours and hours on the computer looking through pictures of other weddings to get some ideas of how to transform our riding arena and to see what would be plausible for us.
We decided on doing our wedding at my parents’ acreage because it is a beautiful property where we love to spend free time but a big incentive was that the riding arena provided the perfect venue for us with lots of space, light and acoustics. It also gave us the opportunity to create the feel of a surprise outdoor ballroom because we knew people would not be expecting to find what we had in mind inside a riding arena so we were excited to be able to surprise our guests with our plans. To create more of a roomy feel in the arena Randy had to build walls as we weren’t utilizing all the space. He also dug in the dance floor and then we suspended a light feature above the dance floor – we got the inspiration for the light feature from the movie Twilight. We also had to lay the turf in there with the help of six of our friends to create the ‘outdoorsy’ feel. Two more of our friends were kind enough to volunteer to paint our head table ‘feature’ wall black while I was preoccupied with sewing sleeves on each end of 88 organza fabric panels that we suspended from the light feature and connected to the walls to create a romantic canopy. I love the gauzy look! I also sewed together the green satin panels that were behind our head table to fancy it up a bit. With the help of a lot of our friends we picked up the rentals and got the place decorated in the two days before our wedding.
My aunt used to be a florist and she was kind enough to do our flowers and decorate the arbor that we were married in front of (which Randy also built and stained along with our beautiful speech podium). For our table centrepieces we knew that we wanted to use wheat grass because it provided the bright green to go against the pink table cloths in a more casual manner that went with the country aspect of the theme. To accomplish that look, Randy even helped mill the wood that he later used to make the wheat grass centre piece containers, which we also stained ourselves. We even grew our own wheat grass in the two weeks before the wedding after doing a couple test runs in the early part of the year – I don’t have the best green thumb. I made all of the individual guest menus, table seating display, table number placards and “Meet the Maids and Gents” cards all in the two weeks before the wedding. With the help of my bridesmaids, we tacked up pictures of us and our guests so that they could write any messages or well wishes on a picture of their choosing instead of doing the traditional guest book. Our friends also helped us with the finishing touches on the yard by laying the bark mulch trails, mowing all the grass and helping Randy build the two trellises in front of the riding arena a couple days before the wedding. The whole experience of planning and getting ready for our wedding was lots of fun and I had a great time letting my imagination take me away in the whole romance of the day.
Wedding Photography: KT Merry / Catering: At Your Service Catering / Rentals: Rogers Rentals + Magical Moments / Bridesmaid Dresses: Sophia Tolli via The Wedding Bell / Groom’s Suit: Zegna via Harry Rosen’s / Hair + Make-up: Sukhi Dhaliwal