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Southern Weddings

Monthly Archives: February 2015

We love introducing y’all to a new set of Blue Ribbon Vendors each month, because I just know any one of them would be a joy if you choose to work together! This time around, we’re introducing you to a few of them through their answers to some of our favorite BRV interview questions. Click through to their listings to find out more about them!

Name: Aaron Lane Entertainment
Where you call home: Lafayette, LA
Favorite thing about weddings in the South? The attitude of brides in the South can’t be beat. They know what they want, and they want their friends and families to experience that vision.

Name: Big Events Inc.
Where you call home: Nashville
Favorite thing about weddings in the South? Southern brides appreciate tradition, but love to try new twists on old ideas.

Name: Christine Zeiler, declare photography
Where you call home: Fort Worth, TX
Favorite thing about weddings in the South? I love that Southern weddings are meaningful celebrations where family and friends come together, where friends are the musicians, where grandmother’s veil is passed down, where couples write their own vows, and homemade pies often adorn the reception. It’s pretty special not only to document one of the most significant days in my couples’ lives, but to hear the stories behind the thoughtful details.

Name: James Bryan, Eventful Furniture
Where you call home: Wilmington, NC
How I got into weddings: We started out renting a few cool items as photo props and for trade show public spaces. We quickly realized the market and look of weddings was going through a huge transition and that no one offered modern, design-driven furniture.

Name: Rhiannon Bosse, Hey Gorgeous Events
Where you call home: Michigan (but she’s traveled all over the South for weddings!)
Favorite part of a wedding day? Arriving to the venue in the wee hours of the morning to a blank slate about to be completely transformed, handing over a bouquet of blooms that I spent hours working on to my sweet and excited bride, high-fiving my hard working staff when we send our bride off down the aisle so seamlessly, lighting that final candle before eager guests tumble into the tent, wrapping my couples up in sweaty, happy and totally tear-filled emotional hugs before they head off at the end of the evening into marital bliss – it’s all the best. Truly.

Name: Jacqui Cole
Where you call home: Tampa, FL
Favorite thing about weddings in the South? My favorite thing has to be the wonderful clients and Southern mums! Having grown up my whole life in London, there’s a certain charm to Southern weddings that makes me very nostalgic and reminds me of my home across the pond.

Name: Julie Flury, Jewel Hair Design
Where you call home: Virginia
Favorite Southern city? I need to travel to more so I can have a fave! Pick me for your wedding in a Southern city, and I will love every minute of the experience!

Name: Kati Mallory
Where you call home: Little Rock, Arkansas
Favorite part of a wedding day? I honestly adore the first look. During all the chaos of a wedding day, it’s a pause to remember what it’s all about. I love being able to see in the bride and groom’s eyes how excited they are that they are about to spend the rest of their lives together.

Name: Caitlin Bristow, Lettered Life
Where you call home: Charlotte, North Carolina
Favorite part of a wedding day? When the music builds, the doors swing open, and the bride steps out with her father. It such a captivating moment as the bride and groom see each other from down the aisle. My heart melts and my eyes tear up every time!

Name: Alyssa DiCicco, Liberty Party Rental
Where you call home: Nashville, TN
Favorite part of a wedding day? We love seeing the groom’s face the first time he sees his bride walking down the aisle. What a special moment! Also, since we work in the rental business, it’s fun to see what colors and styles brides bring into their weddings. Each wedding has a unique touch that really speaks to what the couple is like.

Check out all of our favorite vendors in the Blue Ribbon Vendor Directory! I also wanted to mention that we’re working particularly hard to expand some of our areas of slim pickings – namely, Kentucky, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and West Virginia. If you would like to recommend someone (or nominate yourself!) for any of these states, please email emily at southernweddings.com!

emily Written with love by Emily
1 Comment
  1. avatar Rhiannon reply

    So happy to be a part of the Southern Weddings family :)

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If you’re not familiar with Stephanie Wilson, I have to warn you–don’t click over to her blog until you’re home from work, because it is a little bit addicting! Stephanie is the author of the newly released The Lipstick Gospel and blogger at Stephanie May Wilson, where she shares encouragement, stories, and advice. She radiates with joy and friendliness, and we were so happy when she and her husband, Carl, agreed to share their five favorite date ideas with us! My favorite thing about her ideas is that they’re so, so doable–they’re all inexpensive, fun, easy, and all around great ways to spend quality time together. We hope they inspire you to make some weekend plans with your beau!

Thanks so much to Kailey of Kaileyography for capturing Stephanie and Carl’s date in Nashville’s 12South neighborhood!

By day: Stephanie and Carl live in Nashville, where Stephanie is a full-time writer and Carl owns a branding and marketing company called Anthem Workshop.
How they met: About a year apart, Carl and I both decided to leave home and everything familiar behind to go on an 11-month mission trip to 11 countries around the world. When Carl got back, he moved to Georgia to work at the parent organization that puts on the trip. When I got back to the states a year later, I moved to Georgia to work there too. It took us about a month to start dating, but once we did, we quickly knew we’d met someone special.

Their wedding: It was at an old hotel in Marietta, Georgia–big and white and perfectly Southern, with a garden on the property. Our wedding was on July 5, and so we had our friends and family come in a few days before and celebrate the holiday weekend with us. Our rehearsal dinner was a big party that ended with an incredible fireworks display! It felt like the whole country was celebrating with us. Our wedding was outdoors in the garden, and it was a cool day (for Georgia in July). The reception felt like one big toast of champagne–bubbly and perfectly candlelit, under a canopy of twinkle lights, with a life band performing late into the night. It couldn’t have been better.

Stephanie and Carl’s top five favorite date ideas:

1. Being a tourist in your own city: We’ve noticed that locals rarely do the things a town is known for, so we started becoming a tourist in our own town. We look online for the top five things everyone should do when visiting, and we do those things! There are often really great walking tours, historical sites we never knew were there, and restaurants that we never knew about!
2. Fast, casual, and romantic: This may not be true for all newlyweds, but many newly married couples don’t have a lot of cash for expensive, elaborate dates. This can be daunting, and it has been for us. How do we make sure to go on dates when we’re trying to stick to a strict budget? Then we realized that the restaurant isn’t what makes dates special. It’s the time together, the uninterrupted conversation, the chance to sit at a table across from each other, enjoying a meal together. Now, our most frequent dates are to Chipotle, Noodles & Co., or even Chick Fil A. It may not sound romantic, but it really is. Carl holds my door for me, we’re extra sweet to each other, and we make it a date because we say it is! It doesn’t matter what kind of food you’re gathering over, as long as you’re spending that time together.
3. Man night: Carl is a big football fan, as am I, and something we’ve started doing together is what I affectionately call “man nights.” We go to a sports bar, drink beer together, and eat bar food while watching a game. It’s one of my favorite things to do together, because not only does Carl enjoy it, I do too. It’s such a fun, casual way to play and unwind together, and it’s a great excuse to eat really fantastic, greasy food.
4. Cooking together: I have to admit, Carl is a much better cook than I am. I’m not good in the kitchen, but I’m learning, so cooking has become one of our favorite things to do together. We decide what kind of food we want and then we make it together, with Carl teaching me tricks, tips, and the origins of the food or techniques we’re cooking with as we go. It’s an even better date with some great music in the background and a glass of wine to keep things festive.
5. As lazy as can be: My favorite thing about marriage is that you get to do together what you used to do alone. For most of us, our idea of true relaxation is curling up on the couch in our comfiest pair of sweats, ordering takeout, and indulging in a Netflix marathon. It’s not glamorous, but it’s decadent, especially after a long week. That is mine and Carl’s most frequent date, and the one we enjoy the most these days. The beauty of marriage is that you get to curl up together at the end of a long week, and that in your most unguarded, unfiltered moments, you get to be together. That’s the best date of all.

Thanks so much to Stephanie and Carl for sharing these fun date ideas with us! Keep up with them on Stephanie’s blog and Instagram and Carl’s Instagram.

A little reminder: we’d love to hear from you! Our hope is to feature REAL couples in the South – not just folks who write blogs (though we love them, too!), but also your inspiring friend, super talented cousin, or neighbor with the cutest house – the kind of person everyone would love to “e-meet.” If that sounds like you or someone you know, take a peek at our Southern Newlywed submission page and shoot us an email!

lisa Written with love by Lisa
2 Comments
  1. avatar Jessica B reply

    My husband and I love spending time with friends, and it seems we always have something (or many things!) planned on a given weekend, on top of the usual household chores. A few weeks back I declared a moratorium, and we spent two days doing absolutely nothing. It was heavenly!! Afterwards, we declared that it would be a regular occurrence. Your last date suggestion reminded me of our experience, and so I wanted to voice my support of the idea! We highly recommend it. Thanks for these other great suggestions.

  2. avatar The Loveliest Things: I want to hear from you! reply

    […] If you are looking for a bit of lovely in the meantime, head on over to Southern Weddings! They did a feature of Carl and I today where we share our 5 favorite Nashville date ideas! […]

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When planning an outdoor wedding in the South, the weather is always a tad worrisome–we even have a tradition for keeping Mother Nature at bay! Cara and Jerrit managed to throw a Southern soirée in perfect weather, but what they hadn’t thought of was airplanes flying overhead during their ceremony. Good thing most Southerners have never met a stranger, because a family friend in attendance was married to an air traffic controller. When that first plane flew overhead, he sneakily called the air traffic control tower near the venue and requested that all planes due to fly over Robert E. Lee Park in the next half hour be diverted! Talk about Southern hospitality, y’all!

P.S. You have to see Jerrit’s “groomal,” as he coined it. I love when couples have fun with tradition!

Thanks to Ryan Price for sharing this beautiful day with us!

I spent a lot of time with the ladies at Stems of Dallas figuring out how to mesh my understated old world romance vision with Jerrit’s rustic aesthetic. In a mock arrangement Stems created for us, the girls included a few little foliage twigs, which Jerrit had pointed out, saying “I like these sticks.” That ended up being a running joke with the girls at Stems, but it also ended up being the idea that tied everything together. At our ceremony, they weaved floral-dotted greenery through four of the support columns and across the top to frame the area that would be our altar. I think the ceremony flowers were my most favorite decorative aspect of the entire wedding. Jerrit, being a beer-loving Southern boy, decided he really wanted hops boutonnieres. The dried hops had a beautiful golden color, so the girls at Stems added some to my bouquet as well, which was was a gorgeous and a personal detail that I loved!

Tell us about finding your wedding dress. I LOVED wedding dress shopping! I was only in Dallas for the weekend, so we had many appointments booked at various Dallas-area bridal boutiques. At the first salon, I tried on a few lovely dresses, and then put on a stunning La Sposa gown. Once the woman helping me fanned out the double-layered chantilly lace train and handed me a mirror, the tears began to well up. I kept all of my other appointments and certainly found other dresses that I thought were beautiful, but the La Sposa gown was still in my mind. That salon was closed on my final day in Dallas and I had to fly back to New York the next morning, so my dad found another salon that carried La Sposa gowns. He called the store, and convinced them to squeeze me in, last minute, to try on the dress. I knew it was the one the second I walked out of the dressing room when both of my parents and I started to cry.

Our favorite detail of the wedding was: Though getting married outside is beautiful, you can’t control all of the elements, and one element we failed to realize could be an issue on our wedding day was airplanes. I never really noticed them until our rehearsal, when over the course of an hour, about 20 planes flew overhead, leaving or landing at Love Field, and it was surprisingly loud. I prayed that night that we would magically not have any airplanes fly over Lee Park between 5:30 and 6 on our wedding day. At the ceremony, right after I took my place next to Jerrit, a plane flew overhead and I thought, “Oh God, please no.” Literally, not one more plane after that! The next day, I found out that one of my mom’s best friends from college is married to an air traffic controller. When that first plane flew overhead, he very discreetly called the air traffic control tower at Love Field and requested that all planes due to fly over Lee Park for the next half hour be DIVERTED! I couldn’t believe it…apparently we have friends in high places!

We wrote our own vows and they were stunning. We were amazed that even without writing them together or seeing each other’s vows prior to the ceremony, we somehow wrote vows that were perfectly in sync. We both mentioned how silly we had felt starting online dating profiles, and referenced our sub-par Mexican dinner first date. In the earlier part of our relationship, Jerrit told me that his youth pastor (who officiated our wedding) gave him some of the best advice he had ever gotten: if you love a woman, you have to work to make her fall in love with you again every day. In his vows, Jerrit promised me would do just that. Jerrit also regularly tells me that I’m his favorite, so he concluded his vows with, “You’re my favorite today, tomorrow, and all the days of our lives.”

What made you choose your ceremony and reception venues? Did they have any special significance to you? Our main goal in choosing a venue was to have ceremony, cocktails, and reception at one location. With the majority of our friends being from out of town, we figured it would be easiest for everyone involved. We chose Arlington Hall because it matched us, our personalities, and our vision. I love antiques, and we are fairly laid back as a couple, so we wanted a venue that felt home-y. We also wanted to get married outside. Arlington Hall is beautiful and elegant without being overdone or super formal. Jerrit particularly loved the idea of bringing all our New York friends to Robert E. Lee Park in Dallas.

I think there are a lot of elements to weddings in the South that we don’t even realize are Southern traditions–Jerrit and I were shocked how many times we had to explain the concept of a bridal portrait to folks up here in New York! I did, in fact, have a bridal portrait taken and displayed at the reception. Jerrit also decided that in the interest of equality, if I got a bridal portrait, then he was entitled to a groom’s portrait, or “groomal” as it is now coined. He took his buddy and fellow photographer, Jon, out to a stable in Hudson Valley, wore his wedding suit, put his old tobacco pipe in his mouth, and took a rather majestic (and silly) photo on horseback. It was a highly anticipated detail amongst our vendors and a true testament to our silly personalities.

Along with our delicious wedding cake by Frosted Art Bakery, we had mini pies, as an homage to my grandmothers, both of whom are deceased, as our wedding favor. I have such vivid memories of both grandmothers baking, and wanted to pay a tribute to their memory and the true Southern value of expressing love and hospitality through food. We had four different flavors: cherry, pecan, lemon chess, and chocolate, which were the four main flavors my grandmothers used to bake. My mom’s mom, Grandma Moeller, made cherry pie every time we visited her house because it was mine and my brother’s favorite, and she often baked pecan pie with the pecans from the tree in her front yard. Lemon Chess is my dad’s favorite, so we often got that from his mother, Granny Massey. My favorite story is chocolate pie, which was a staple at any family gathering where Granny Massey was present. Granny Massey was never able to get the recipe proportions quite right, so the pie filling never fully set. It tasted delicious, but was also always runny. Every time Granny made the pie, she would exclaim, “Well, I just don’t know what happened–it’s just never done this before!” That pie has remained a little family joke for as long as I can remember, garnering the nickname “Chocolate Soup Pie.”

Before you go, take a peek at Cara and Jerrit’s wedding film by Candelight Films!

How did y’all meet? Tell us your love story. Jerrit and I met in New York City four years ago on OKCupid, though neither of us were actually expecting to meet someone there. Jerrit was sick with the flu when he joined, and I heard from a girlfriend that she was going on a lot of dates and getting a lot of delicious meals, so I thought, “What the heck?” A few weeks later, I was dating Jerrit, and we ceremonially deleted our online profiles together. After a couple of messages back and forth, Jerrit and I discovered we grew up less than 10 miles from each other in Dallas and agreed to meet for Mexican food in the city. By our third date, I was totally falling for him. A couple months later, Jerrit was trying to teach me to drive a stick shift, and ended up stalling the car in the middle of an intersection. I threw a fit, gave up, and refused to continue driving, so Jerrit drove me home. He made a little joke, which I took seriously, and, again, got all pouty. Jerrit laughed and said “Oh, I’m just joking! It’s not that big of a deal. I love you.” We both froze, jaws on the ground, and seconds later, after he had pulled it together, he said “Well, I do.” It took me far too long to say it back, because I was still trying to catch my breath, but once I finally got the words out, I knew I was going to marry the boy who had just accidentally told me he loved me.
Tell us all about the proposal! Jerrit is a wedding photographer and he has shared his love of photography with me over the course of our relationship. I find that since we both enjoy taking beautiful photos, we never remember to actually take photos of the two of us doing stuff together; something I complain about. For Christmas 2012, I was on tour with “Billy Elliot: The Musical,” so Jerrit gave me a gift certificate for my favorite vineyard on Long Island and said it was “something for us to look forward to when I got home”. Six months later, when I finally got to return to NYC, Jerrit and I planned a day trip out to Duckwalk Vineyard on the North Fork. He suggested we buy a few glasses of wine and some cheese and crackers and set up a little picnic. Jerrit set up a tripod and camera so he could appease my lack-of-photo complaints. After his glass of wine (which he downed rather quickly, I noticed), Jerrit asked if I could focus the camera for our photo shoot. I leaned over to look through the view finder, and I saw the beautiful vineyard, Jerrit on bended knee, and the words “Marry Me” written in the sky. I burst into tears, and somehow, I managed to squeak out a “yes.” Jerrit then took me back to the restaurant where we had shared a romantic dinner the first time we had visited the vineyard. Jerrit had made a series of audio and video recordings telling me the details of all his steps in the process and how he was feeling during each of those milestones, which was super romantic and heartfelt memento to remember that special time in our lives.
When did y’all get married? October 18, 2014
How many friends, family members, and loved ones attended your wedding? 150
How did you plan for your marriage while planning your wedding? Jerrit and I did some pre-marital counseling with our officiating pastor before the wedding. He had us do this questionnaire that he calls the “pre-marital SAT,” which was super interesting and a great guide to our future union. We each had to answer the hundreds of questions separately, and both sets of answers were then compared and broken down into areas of agreement or disagreement. Through a series of skype sessions (since we’re in NYC and Mark is in Florida), we talked through each and every topic/question we disagreed on, or if one of our answers stuck out as maybe needing to be discussed. It was an awesome platform to identify and begin discussion in areas where we might not see eye to eye, as well as a safe way to have what could be very difficult and vulnerable conversations. Jerrit and I also started working with a financial planner during our engagement so that we would have a plan for how to approach finances once married. Combining bank accounts and incomes was certainly something neither of us had even come close to before, so working with someone who is not only a financial advisor, but also a friend, was a great way to start those discussions.
If you are comfortable responding, what range did your wedding budget fall into? $50,000-$75,000
What’s next for you as a couple? What are you most looking forward to about married life? Married life is so much fun! After just a few months, we already feel like we know one another so much better. We laugh often and talk about pretty much everything, so we are most excited about continuing to deepen our friendship and love for one another. We’ve also talked about starting a wedding planning/photography company together, so it could be exciting to build a family and a family business.

Photographer: Ryan Price / Videographer: Candlelight Films / Planner: Kay Watson / Ceremony Venue: Lee Park / Reception Venue: Arlington Hall / Florist: Stems of Dallas / Dessert Baker: Frosted Art Bakery / Caterer: Food Glorious Food / Lighting: Beyond Lighting / Band: IDT / Paper Products: Southern Fried Paper / Bride’s Gown: “Denia” by La Sposa / Bridal Salon and Veil Bridal Boutique of Lewisville / Hair Stylist: James DeFrange / Makeup Artist: Jacqueline Barnett / Bride’s Shoes: Emmy Shoes of London / Bridesmaids’ Dresses: Monique Lhuillier / Groom’s Attire: J. Crew / Groomsmen Attire: Men’s Wearhouse / Transportation: Premier Transportation String Trio: Serenata Strings

marissa Written with love by Marissa
2 Comments
  1. avatar Ryan Price reply

    I sure do love this couple… such an amazing wedding to be part of. Thanks for featuring it!

  2. avatar Arlington Hall Dallas Wedding | Ryan Price Photography reply

    […] See more of the Southern Weddings feature! […]

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