Southern Weddings

Thank you so much, Janey, of {Mary Jane Photography} for sharing this beautiful wedding with us!  Be sure to visit Janey’s {BLOG} for more.  And check back shortly for a very special Friday post…

Describe your wedding cake:  Nick:  Delicious!!  Emily: To elaborate on Nick’s point a bit, we had 2 flavors of wedding cake- the first was chocolate cake with raspberry mousse and the second was lemon chiffon cake with white chocolate mousse and blackberry preserves.  In terms of design, the cake was covered with white fondant and had textured “ribbons” (made of fondant) around each tier with fondant buttons as well as blue Hydrangea blossoms placed at various places along the ribbon.  The top tier of the cake was covered with blue Hydrangea blossoms with pearl accents.  
What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome while planning your wedding? Probably the biggest challenge we had to overcome while planning our wedding was making the majority of our decisions long-distance. We had to “jump in” and put a lot of trust and faith in our vendors.  However, our wedding planner did an amazing job of recommending vendors and in guiding us throughout the process, and our vendors really listened to our ideas and visions for each aspect of our wedding and brought them to fruition perfectly. 
What advice would you give to someone planning their wedding? Emily: Hire a wedding planner, if only just for the day of coordination- it really reduces the stress level and lets you fully enjoy every aspect of the planning process and wedding day. Also, people always say that your wedding goes by so quickly- and it truly does.  So make sure to stop, take a breath, and take a few moments to just look around you and take in your surroundings- look at all that has been done by all of your vendors to create your perfect day, look at all of the friends and family who are there to support you, and, most importantly, steal away for a few minutes alone with your spouse to really let all the emotion and events of the day soak in.  Nick: Agreed, wedding planner is worth his/her weight in gold.  It allows you to focus on making important decisions, not haggling w/ vendors and stressing the day of.  Get a wedding planner, and take it out of your budget if you have to- it’s so worth it.  The day of, relax and realize the monumental moments that are taking place in front of you and try your best to enjoy them.  Take time to yourself- it won’t feel like you did… it will still feel like a blur… but giving yourself a few moments to enjoy the scene will help you capture your memories for the rest of your life.  
Why do you love your husband?  There are a lot of tangible things that I love about him: his confidence, his sense of humor and playfulness, his ambition, his intelligence, his strength of character, his ability to listen, and the fact that we can do the most mundane, “boring” things and always have so much fun and laughter together.   There are also other intangibles as well – it’s hard to describe, but I just feel like a better, more secure person when I’m with him. 
Why do you love your wife?  It is everything about her from her sense of humor to her cute insecurities.  Emily is a perfect angel in every way.  We are absolutely best friends and I enjoy every single minute that we spend together.  Words really don’t even come close to describing how happy Emily makes me feel.  
A date we went on that we’ll always remember:  Nick: We went to an amazing fondue place in downtown Chicago while Emily was living there for grad school.  The date is so memorable because in addition to a great meal, and a romantic ambiance, we will never forget the fact that we had a little too much to drink.  We didn’t realize it until we had a member of the wait staff ask us to quiet down.  Definitely memorable.  Emily: Agreed- it was definitely a night that I’m sure we won’t forget any time in the near future!
Other fun details:  We really wanted to show our guests how much we appreciated their making the trip out to California to celebrate our wedding with us.  One way we did that was by giving our guests welcome bags – in them were a welcome note Nick and I wrote up, a bottle of wine from a local Santa Barbara vineyard, a Carolina coffee mug, candles, sunscreen, and Kona coffee (from Hawaii, where we were going for our honeymoon). Some other things that we added to our wedding to make it unique and fun were a fresh sushi station during cocktail hour, an ice luge, and a Marble Slab ice cream station for dessert.  Also, to tie in some more Carolina-themed elements, our signature drink was a blueberry mojito and, rather than using traditional table numbers, we named them after various UNC/Chapel Hill streets and landmarks that were meaningful to us.
What’s next for you as a couple? What are you looking forward to in the future? Nick:  Puppies! Emily: To add to Nick’s comment, we definitely want to just enjoy being married- we kind of felt like a married couple already, so not a lot will change in the near future… but we just want to continue to spend lots of quality time together. Although, we’d definitely like to take advantage of our time as just a 2-person family by doing some traveling.  And, yes- a puppy is also in our not-too-distant future!

Congrats to Emily + Nick!  We wish you a lifetime of joy and happiness!