Garden weddings aren’t always tied to garden venues. They can fit in quite nicely with a waterfront affair. Captured by Swanky Fine Art Weddings, this celebration by the sea is ripe with pastel hues and loads of summer flowers woven throughout. It dances the line between garden, tent and seaside and it’s all incredibly lovely. Have a look here for more and be sure to check out the film of the day shot by Wedit below.
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From the Bride… Matt and I have always loved spending summers on any of the Michigan lakes, there are so many to choose from. In fact, we hope to one day own a house on a lake. That being said, there was no other choice than the Village at Bay Harbor when it came to choosing where to get married. The Village is a relatively new establishment overlooking Little Traverse Bay off Lake Michigan with countless beauty to offer. Our choice of location for our outdoor ceremony and tented reception was on the Marina Lawn Panel that featured gorgeous yachts docked in the Harbor. The owners of a few of these breath-taking yachts were even kind enough to congratulate us with the honk of their horns at the end of our ceremony.
The Village at Bay Harbor is tailored for convenient wedding planning as it offers on-site wedding planning, photography, salon, and catering services. In addition, there are hotel rooms located above the shops that only give amazing views of the surrounding scenery. One of the great features about having our wedding at the Village at Bay Harbor is that it gave us the freedom to choose any vendors we’d like, which helped us keep to our budget. However, we did choose their on-site catering company called Galley Gourmet and we were not disappointed! The food was outstanding!
Growing up looking at my parents’ wedding photos, I always loved my mother’s dress. Knowing she had it preserved after her wedding, I asked if I could wear it for my wedding. After an excited “yes” from her, the only tailoring that needed to be done was making it a bit bigger and it was ready for it’s second debut. And as if it could not get any more special, my 92 year old grandmother made me a custom veil out of my mother’s old veil and let me borrow her beautiful vintage pearl earrings! But because I needed to fill my requirement for “something new” I bought some adorable vintage feel customs made flats off Esty.com made by Katie Klein from the shop BeholdenBridal.
The wedding decor and flowers (all done by a close family friend) followed theme with the dress and had a vintage feel to it. Our color palette involved lots of pale pinks, grays and green glass scattered around table in the reception tent. Following suit, pearls were draped over the centerpieces and various other decorations. There were a few DIY projects done for the wedding including the seating assignment name board. I took my inspiration for this from Pintrest of course and simply covered a large pinboard with fabric and framed it. Then, I had my cousin with beautiful handwriting scribe all the names on the tags and they were hung with a pearl tipped pin. Another DIY project we did was for the picture display. For this we actually just painted a wooden dog gate silver/gray and hung individual picture frames of us, our parents and grandparents to the gate. Scattered ivy, pink flowers and pearls were added for the finishing touches. One other special DIY project that was done for us by the mother of the groom. She framed an old topography map in one of their old vintage windows she saved from Matt’s childhood home with a small cross placed over Bay Harbor. She then had a small plaque engraved with our names and date of the wedding. It was a beautiful key decor piece at the wedding and is now hanging in our home. All of our flowers were fresh and were arranged by our close family friend. Another great idea we did for the wedding were gift baskets for all the guests made by the mother of the groom. She compiled all Michigan themed products including cherry candies, instant coffee, soup, chocolate, cherry salsa and more. We also had custom wine labels made with our picture and a thank you note placed on the wine we gave to our guests in the gift basket. The wine, supplied by another close family friend, was from Black Star Farms vineyard located in Suttons Bay, MI.
To help our budget, instead of videographer, we used Wedit Videos, a compnay based out of Detroit, MI. Wedit supplied five handheld cameras to record videos mailed to me three days before the wedding. Then anyone of your guests can use these cameras to shoot different perspectives of the wedding events. Once the wedding is over you simply mail back the cameras in the pre-paid box and all the video footage is uploaded on-line to your Wedit account. After that, you may choose to pay a little extra and have Wedit put together a video for you or what I did was I downloaded all the footage to my computer and made my own personal highlights reel video using iMovie and also a ceremony video. It was so awesome and simple. It really gave a cool and personal feel to the videos through our guests eyes. We are so happy we went with Wedit, especially because our wedding events included a whole weekend of events.
Overall, the whole wedding weekend was a dream. We were blessed with the perfect weather for an outdoor, Northern Michigan wedding. With our smaller 100 guest group, many people were able to make a mini vaca out of it, especially since it was Labor Day weekend. After the rehearsal dinner in downtown Petoskey (about 5 min away) friday night, we had an on-site bon fire on the public beach in between the Village at Bay Harbor and the Inn at Bay Harbor. We provided pizza and beverages for our guests there and it gave us another way to be able to spend time with our close friends and family. The wedding took place on Saturday and then to end the weekend we also had a goodbye brunch for all the guests at the Original House of Pancakes located on-site at the Village at Bay Harbor on Sunday morning. Many of our guests stayed at the on-site hotels at the Village at Bay Harbor including us and the rooms were wonderful. Megan and Melinda were two of the main people that work at The Village and helped us with many details of the wedding. They were amazing! Both were very helpful and more than happy to answer all our questions and concerns. If I had to do it all over, I wouldn’t change a thing. It was perfect.
Photography: Swanky Fine Art Weddings | Videography: Wedit | Flowers: Sharon Konop (close family friend) | Caterer: Galley Gourmet | DJ: Mike Staff Productions | Ceremony & Reception: The Village at Bay Harbor | Marina: The Village at Bay Harbor