A gorgeous celebration of love and family, this garden soiree captured by Joseph + Jaime couldn’t be more lovely if it tried. It’s the type of wedding that wraps you up in love from the very first moment and squeezes you tight until the very last. It will leave you feeling all warm and fuzzy inside, so trust me when I say getting lost in this gallery is one fabulous way to spend your day.
From the Bride… I can’t count how many times during the planning process someone told me “it’s your day.” Although it’s a lovely sentiment, Kirk and I saw it differently. For us, the wedding wasn’t only about celebrating our love for each other, but our love and respect for all the people who had supported us along the way. So ultimately, the vision for the wedding didn’t start with a theme or a colour palette – it started with a feeling. “Intimate, honest”.
Since Kirk is in law school and I work for a non-profit we were short on time and money, and neither of us had the stomach for a long engagement. We set a date eight months down the line and got to work planning. The mantra was to keep it simple and trust our guts. We booked the first venue we looked at because it felt right, and decided to have the ceremony in Kirk’s grandparents stunning English garden. After those two big decisions, everything else came together with minimal fuss or tears and, in the end, we couldn’t be happier with the vendors we chose.
Predictably, by the time the wedding day came around I was a ball of nerves, but to quote my brother “the wedding went off like gangbusters.” Our friends and family literally made our wedding day. They arranged reception flowers, baked the cake, designed our invitations, set up sound equipment, balanced precariously on ladders to tie up twinkle lights, and even drove me around at 7am the morning of the wedding, trying to find an ATM open so I could pay the make-up artist.
It meant so much to us that our favourite people were involved, adding their own special touches, and becoming an integral part of the day, the way we had hoped.
Some of our favourite details:
The gold gilded frames my brother turned into whimsical works of art, the vintage apothecary bottles we dug out of Kirk’s farmhouse attic, the best man playing me down the aisle to Pachelbel’s Canon in D on acoustic guitar, my oldest brother delivering a beautiful, soul shaking reading of a “letter from John Stienbeck to his son,” laughing uncontrollably during our first dance (The Zombies, This Will Be Our Year), the heartfelt speeches from our parents, and calling my dad the next morning to find out he had lost his voice from singing and dancing the night before!
The wedding was so special and we feel blessed to have this day full of incredible memories and stunning photos to look back on for the rest of our lives. In the end, we actually had to kick people out and we departed with a convoy of our friends in their wedding finery, laughing and marching down the empty country roads to the Inn for an after party.
Photography: Joseph Jaime | Floral Design: Sweet Woodruff | Wedding Dress: Dessy Collection By Vivian Diamond | Invitations: Cameron North | Reception Venue: Alton Mill | Bride's Shoes: Gap | Bridesmaids' Dresses: Dessy Collection By Vivian Diamond | Catering: Gourmandissimo | Hair + Makeup: BlushPretty | Groom's Attire: Got Style | Groom's Shoes: Johnston & Murphy