Southern Weddings

We are so excited to feature a real Chapel Hill bride today… this one truly hits close to home.  In fact, much to my surprise, I went to high school with one of the bridesmaids!  It sure is a small world.  {Joey Seawell} is a wonderful photographer in the area and we are so glad he sent this wedding our way.  Wedding planning by Cara Zeulkhe of {A Southern Soiree}.  I really enjoyed reading over Whitney’s thoughts below.  Their Big Day was packed full of heartfelt traditions that southern weddings are all about!  You MUST read about Whitney’s most memorable moment at the bottom of the page.  Goosebumps galore!  Love it.

How did
the two of you meet?
I was a rising senior at UNC-Chapel Hill, moving into my new house on campus
with my roommate.  Because we were
impatient and didn’t want to wait for our parents to come to Chapel Hill to
help us move our furniture in, we decided to try it ourselves.  As I was trying to shimmy the mattress to my
bed out of the back of a truck, this tall dark and handsome man came across the
street to ask if I needed help with it. 
The tall dark and handsome man turned out to be Steve who had just
finished at Carolina Law School and was in the midst of studying for the bar
exam.  He helped me move in the
furniture, and the rest is history.

Describe
the proposal:
We were at Holden Beach, staying at his parent’s beach house.  It was the only tropical storm of the summer
of 2007.  I was upstairs getting ready to
go out to dinner.  Steve kept telling me
that he wanted to go outside and have a drink by the ocean.  When I got downstairs, he insisted that we go
out by the ocean and have a glass of wine under a gazebo they have at the end
of the walkway.  I looked at him like he
was crazy, I had just finished getting ready for dinner and there was a
tropical storm going on outside!  I
asked, “Can’t we just stand in the doorway and pretend we’re outside?”  He said no, and said “come on, I’m going out
to make sure it’s still raining.”  “Still
raining?!” I said, “The rain is beating against the house!”  However, after he started to walk out, I
decided he might be up to something and that maybe I should follow him.  So I followed him out to the gazebo, glass of
wine in hand, and being beaten by the wind and the rain.  We stood under the gazebo and he started
telling me that I was his best friend, how much he loved me, and other sweet
things, when I realized, “oh my gosh, he’s going to propose!”  I quickly realized I had my wine glass in
hand and how could he ever put a ring on my finger with a glass in my
hand.  So I sat the glass down and Steve
looked at me like “what are you doing?! I’m just trying to talk to you”.  So feeling silly, I stood there and talked to
him, and then thought, “Maybe if I look away towards the ocean he’ll get down
on one knee.”  So I looked away, and
looked back, and he was STILL there! 
Finally, after what seemed like forever, but was probably only a few
seconds, Steve got down on his knee and asked me to marry him!  Of course I said yes!!

What
attracted me to my husband was: his drive, his height (I’m 5’11”, so I
appreciate him being 6’3”), his heart, his love of the Lord, his love of
children, his overall sweetness

Why do you love your husband? He is that guy
that does the selfless things for people, and does it anonymously so that he
doesn’t receive the credit.  He makes me
smile every single morning I get up.  He
says silly things out of no where! 

What
attracted me to my wife was: her sweetness followed very closely by her beauty

A date
we went on that we’ll always remember: Drinks at sunset at the Southernmost point
in Key West Florida.  We had been scuba
diving in Key Largo with my scuba class from UNC.  I got a little nervous going down on the dive,
so Steve held my hand all the way down and during the dive to make sure I made
it.  However, half way through the dive,
I scrapped my leg on a piece of coral. 
That deep in the water, the colors are distorted so the scrape looked
black to Steve.  I pointed to the scrape
on my leg, and, because Steve saw black and thought it was dirt, he rubbed it
really hard not once, not twice, but three times!  Because I had my oxygen line in my mouth, I
couldn’t tell him that it was blood and not dirt!  After we surfaced and got back on the boat,
we laughed about the fact that he literally “rubbed salt (water) in my
wound”.  Later that night, we headed to
Key West and had drinks by the sunset.

What was
your most memorable moment about your wedding day? There’s two:  My Dad and I are very close.  I’m definitely what you’d call a Daddy’s
girl.  Needless to say, anticipating
walking down the isle with my dad was a scary thought.  All I could imagine was mascara flowing down
my face and dad sniffing his tears away. 
So in hopes of alleviating that, I arranged for a surprise the morning
of my wedding.  I ran to Mom and Dad’s
room at 8 AM just as Mom was leaving.  I
jumped onto Dad’s bed and sat down beside him. 
He wasn’t very excited, as he is not a big fan of surprises.  About five minutes later a man from the
Carolina Inn rolled in a flat screen tv and dvd player.  There was a knock on the door and another man
brought in our breakfast to enjoy.  I
pushed play on the dvd player, and there Dad and I sat for the next hour and a
half watching Father of the Bride together. 
It was wonderfully sad.  We both
cried for most of the movie – tears of joy of course – but tears none the less.  It was the most memorable time I can ever
recall with Dad, and definitely the perfect way to start such a wonderful
day.  In case you were wondering, it did
the trick!  Neither of us shed one tear
walking down the aisle – I don’t think we had any left after the movie.  The
second moment I’ll never forget is the moment we walked into the reception area
and were tucked away in a closed room before being announced.  There we sat, just the two of us – for the
first time all weekend – we were alone! 
We sat there on the pink couches, eating a bite of each of our foods and
celebrating with a glass of champagne. 
It was such a special time, just taking in the fact that we had just
gotten married!

Check in later for Part II of Whitney + Steve’s Chapel Hill wedding!