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As a proud University of Texas alum, I cringe a little admitting this, but some of the sweetest people I know went to Texas A&M. While I don’t know today’s bride and groom, Alex and Connor, personally, I can only imagine that if I did, I’d be able to say that same thing about them! From their adorable meet-cute in Aggieland to their prayerful wedding at Chandelier Grove, they’ve approached every step of their relationship with joy and intentionality. Y’all won’t want to miss Alex’s emotional walk down the aisle, their charming, rustic reception, or their meeting and proposal stories below!

Thanks so much to Mustard Seed Photography for sharing this special day with us!

Prayer was a big part of our entire wedding day. As we were getting ready, my bridesmaids prayed around me and Connor’s groomsmen prayed around him. Right before the ceremony, he and I prayed together, and we prayed numerous times during the ceremony. My dad gave a great welcome speech and prayer before dinner. Right before our sparkler exit, Connor’s parents and my parents got together and we all prayed together. God brought us together, so it was really neat to thank Him and feel His presence so often throughout our wedding day!

Tell us about finding your wedding dress. I found Claire Pettibone’s Chantilly gown online through Pinterest before I was engaged. Once we got engaged, I knew immediately that Chantilly would be my dress. I found out that Claire Pettibone was having a trunk show just a few hours away from me, and my wonderful parents came with me so I could try it on. The second I put it on, it just confirmed what I had been thinking: this was my dress.

Did you decide to do a first look? Why or why not? We did not do a first look. I really wanted to see his reaction when he saw me for the first time walking down the aisle. We did want to pray together before the ceremony, so we stood on opposite sides of the house where we got ready and held hands. I am so glad we did that, because standing there, hearing his voice, and holding his hand really brought me a sense of peace. I had been so anxious and nervous all day, and it helped me calm down and focus on how sure I was that Connor was the perfect man for me.

For me, the most memorable moment is hands down the moment the barn doors opened and I started walking down the aisle. Just about everyone we know and love was standing right in front of me, but I could only see Connor, who was crying. It was so incredibly sweet seeing him so overcome with emotion at seeing me.

What readings, if any, did you have at your ceremony? We had a dear friend of mine hold a wooden plank with three strands tied to it. While our pastor read from Ecclesiastes 4, we braided the strands together. It was a really special moment in our ceremony that symbolized mine and Connor’s lives intertwining, while making sure to keep God in the center of our relationship.

We had our ceremony and reception at the same venue–a private farm called Chandelier Grove. When we first visited the property, it was still very much under construction, but we could see a clear and gorgeous vision everywhere we looked. The more we talked to Stacey, the owner, the more we could feel God pushing us in her direction. The family who owns the farm are some of the kindest people we have met. Stacey did pretty much all of the remodeling herself, and even buried her husband’s Bible in the foundation of the barn! God just made it clear to both of us that Chandelier Grove was the place we were meant to get married.

What Southern details or traditions did you include in your celebration? What was Southern about your wedding? Our wedding had a Southern vibe through and through. From the pecan orchard ceremony setting to the rustic barn where we held the reception, we wanted the beauty of nature to be highlighted in our wedding. We’re both born and raised Texans, so it was important to us that our wedding reflected our backgrounds.

For the flowers, I wanted very neutral colors and lots of greenery, because I wanted the flowers to enhance the beauty of the barn without overpowering it. Our florist did a phenomenal job! The only guidance I gave her was a picture of what I wanted my bouquet to look like and the colors I was going for, and then I just let her do her thing! We were very pleased with what she delivered.

What advice do you have for folks currently planning a wedding? Don’t let it stress you out! There were times when I would get really stressed out about something, and I had to just take a step back from what I was working on, breathe, and remind myself that this was just a party. The truly important thing is what comes after the wedding–our marriage! When either of us was feeling stressed, we would just put aside all the wedding stuff and watch a movie or go to a nice dinner. It felt really good to occasionally put off wedding planning and focus on each other.

How did y’all meet? Tell us your love story. We were both students at Texas A&M University. At the start of our junior year, Connor moved into the house across the street from the one I was living in. His roommates thought my roommates were cute and brought them Skittles. My roommates thought his roommates were cute and asked me to bake some brownies we could take over to them. I did, and that is when Connor and I met for the first time. We hit it off instantly and saw each other every day for the next three weeks, spending hours staying up late and talking. He asked me to be his girlfriend by cooking me dinner, serving it as a candlelit picnic on the roof of his house, and showing me his backyard. He had carved out “Date me?” in pumpkins! Nine days after that, Connor told me he was going to marry me someday, and I knew he was right.
Tell us all about the proposal! He totally surprised me! He showed up at my house one afternoon totally unexpectedly and had me come out to the driveway. He had borrowed a friend’s Corvette and parked it in front of my house. When I got closer, I saw that he had picked out a dress for me and draped it over the passenger seat. While I changed, he packed a bag for me, and then we were off! I had no idea where we were going–each stop was a total surprise. First, he took me to get my nails done, and then he took me to a nice dinner. After dinner, we drove for over an hour, and when we finally arrived at our destination, my jaw hit the floor. He had brought me to the sister vineyard of the one we had gone to on our first date! He led me to a cottage he had rented on the property and took me out onto the back porch, which was decorated with candles, roses, and a bottle of champagne. That’s when he got down on his knee and asked me to marry him! I said, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” His best friend was hiding in the backyard taking pictures of us–it was all totally magical! We then spent the whole weekend touring various wineries in the area.
When did y’all get married? May 23, 2015
How many friends, family members, and loved ones attended your wedding? 180
Did you write your own vows? If so, what was your favorite phrase, verse or line? We used traditional vows. The pastor who married us has very close ties to my family–he actually married my parents 27 years ago! That meant a lot to Connor and I, as my parents and their marriage are our role models.
Tell us about some of the songs you used throughout your wedding and why you chose them. “Yellow” by Coldplay is my all-time favorite song, and when I heard Vitamin String Quartet’s version of it, I couldn’t imagine anything more beautiful to walk down the aisle to. For walking back up the aisle, we played “Shut Up and Dance” because it was time to celebrate! Our first dance song was “Duet” by Penny and Sparrow. It’s an extremely moving and tender song that was shown to us by a sweet friend, and the first time we heard it, we just knew we needed to have our first married dance to it!
Describe your wedding cake. We wanted our cake to be simply decorated with flowers. I found mugs to spell out LOVE and filled those with flowers to arrange around the cake. Connor and his dad actually made the wooden cake stand from a cut tree we found in our neighborhood! Our main wedding cake flavor was Italian creme and it was absolutely delicious! I’m not really a big cake fan, but it was so good that we totally devoured the top tier in our hotel room after the wedding!
How did you plan for your marriage while planning your wedding? We met with a sweet couple at my family’s church and had a weekend-long marriage preparation class. I can’t recommend the book we used enough! We worked our way through Dennis Rainey’s “Preparing for Marriage” and learned so much about each other and ourselves. We really grew closer during the process. We also had numerous discussions about our expectations going into marriage.
If you are comfortable responding, what range did your wedding budget fall into? $25,000-$50,000
What’s next for you as a couple? What memories are you looking forward to making together? We just finished moving to a new state and setting up our life together here. We adopted the sweetest little kitten, and we are looking forward to traveling together and watching the progress of the house we are in the process of building!

Photographer: Kat Theis of Mustard Seed Photography / Videographer: Jeff Richards of Green Leaf Films / Planner: Tracy Flaherty Events / Venue: Chandelier Grove / Florist: Cornelius Florist / Cake Baker: Virginia’s Cakes / Caterer: Master Chef Catering / Rentals: House of Hough / Bride’s Gown: “Chantilly” by Claire Pettibone / Bride’s Accessories: The Honey Comb / Hair and Makeup: Adorne Artistry / Bride’s Shoes: Betsey Johnson / Bridesmaids’ Dresses: “8514” by Watters / Menswear: Jos. A. Bank

lisa Written with love by Lisa
3 Comments
  1. avatar Victoria reply

    I love the romance in the shabby chic theme and the blush color palette. Very pretty.

  2. avatar Dana reply

    love so many details in this wedding! and that first date…please. so sweet!

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For Britt and Travis’ friends and family, this wedding was fifteen years in the making. After growing up together, their decade and a half of friendship culminated with the most overwhelming (in a great way!) experience of their lives–their vows! Britt and Travis chose to devote their lives to each other through personal vows built from pieces of their favorite parts of friends’ ceremonies. Such a neat way to incorporate loved ones into a wedding day! We could not support Britt and Travis’ sentiments on their wedding more: while the details are nice, the most important thing was the people around them and the covenant that they made.

Big hugs to Sara & Rocky for sharing this sweet day with us!

Finding my wedding dress was a lot more challenging than I had expected. I wanted to feel like a bride, and for some reason, I just didn’t in anything I tried on. My youngest sister lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas and her roommate had suggested a store called Low’s in Brinkley. My mom and I decided to make a fun trip out of it and flew out to Little Rock one weekend. When we drove into Brinkley, I was a bit apprehensive, because it felt like we were in a ghost town. This three-story dress shop was just about the only thing still open, but it was well worth the drive! The Allure gown that I chose was exactly what I was looking for–I just felt like a bride in it. The combination of lace and tulle with some very subtle beaded accents fit my personality perfectly!

Did you decide to do a “first look”? Why or why not? This was a really hard decision for us. As someone who has photographed weddings, I understand how sweet and special a first look can be, but I wanted to experience all of the emotions and excitement that comes with not seeing your future husband until walking down the aisle. I also wanted the time before our ceremony to be spent with our individual families and wedding parties. I knew that if we had a first look, I would fill the time with pictures and tasks that I needed to let go of. I’m so grateful that we went that route, because it allowed us to enjoy sweet time with family and friends that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

Over the past five years, I’ve been to and photographed a lot of weddings, and for some reason, I had decided to write down parts of the vows that I really loved and remembered. I went back and asked several of those friends if I could borrow parts of their vows, and we put them together to come up with our own version of vows. Our favorite phrase was the very end, and it said: “Letting nothing divide us for we are made new; all our days forward, you are my beloved and I am yours.” We intentionally chose the words “letting nothing divide us” because we believe that it’s our responsibility to fight for our marriage, and that it is a choice to let nothing divide the covenant that we have made both with the Lord and with each other.

What was your most memorable moment about your wedding day? Saying our vows to one another was pretty surreal. To think back on 15 years of friendship and see all that the Lord had done to get us to that exact moment was easily one of the most overwhelming experiences of our lives.

Long before we got engaged, a family friend purchased an organic pecan farm in our hometown that they invited us to come and see. They shared with us their vision of hosting gatherings of all types, providing education about organic farming to students, and creating community, with the ultimate goal of serving the Lord through this gift. Once Travis proposed, I didn’t even think twice about where I wanted our wedding to be. When we got engaged, Chandelier Grove was simply a farm house and the pecan grove, and that was more than I had ever dreamed of. Over the course of our 11 month engagement, they purchased two 200-year-old barns from an Amish family in Canada and had them resurrected on the property. One of my favorite parts of the property is the 2000 wood slats that Stacey hand stained for the barn and chapel. As she stained the ceiling, she prayed over the property. Each time a verse would come to mind, she would carve the verse into the wood, so if you look up, you can faintly see the carvings of scripture all over the barn and chapel. There are literally thousands of little details like this on the property–it’s incredible!

Describe your wedding flowers. My sweet friend, Stacey Crowe, who owns Cornelius in Tomball, Texas, went above and beyond to make sure that every little detail was beautiful! I knew that I wanted lots of beautiful earth tones and textures that would complement the property, so we used things like brunia nodiflora, curly willow, pampas grass, thistle, seeded eucalyptus, scabies, plumosa, lotus pods, privet berry, apricot stock, and tuberose, as well as some of the magnolia off of the property. I wanted the colors to be a mixture of soft and rich tones, so we went with blush tones in protea and garden roses, combined with the rich colors coming from blackberries, garden roses and dahlias. After our wedding, Stacey went to my parents’ house, picked all of the extra flowers up, rearranged all of them, and took them to local nursing homes. If that doesn’t speak volumes about her character and her heart for people, I don’t know what does!

Describe your wedding cake or dessert. I grew up going to The Whistle Stop in Tomball. They are known for their great desserts, so I decided to ask them if they might be up for attempting a dessert bar for our wedding. They made a three-tiered Italian cream wedding cake with cream cheese and pecan icing, a triple layered chocolate cake for the groom’s cake, samoa and heath bar pretzel rods, butter banana rum cupcakes with pecan penuche icing, pineapple carrot cake, key lime pie, and hummingbird cake. I don’t think there was a single thing left from the dessert bar at the end of the wedding. They did an amazing job!

Our engagement season came with a lot of trying life circumstances at home. If there was a challenge that could happen–job change, moving, terminal illness–you name it, it happened. But in all of that, there was this very real, very constant reminder of how fragile and special life is. It kept us grounded, and forced us to really consider what is important. Don’t get me wrong–I love the details and all of the pretty things, but at the end of the day, those things had absolutely no bearing on the purpose of our wedding day. Rather, it was the people around us and the covenant that we made that mattered most.

How did y’all meet? Tell us your love story. Travis and I met in 7th grade in Tomball, Texas. We became part of the same friend group fairly quickly and spent most of the last 15 years as really close friends. My parents and siblings have always loved Travis, and joked about how they were going to find a way to make him part of our family–my sisters even made him sign an “adoption contract” to ensure that he wasn’t going anywhere regardless of who he married! Clearly, we weren’t getting the hint! In the summer of 2012, I took a job in Missouri, which meant that we were 12 hours away from one another. About two weeks after I moved, I got a phone call from Travis asking if he could come visit me one weekend. I honestly didn’t think a thing about it! We spent the entire weekend hanging out with my sister, hiking the Ozarks, and catching up on life, and then he went home. I figured that I would see him again at Christmas or the following summer when I was home, but two weeks later, he came back to visit again, and this persisted every few weeks for months! A couple months into his visits, he sat me down and told me that when I was ready, he would like the chance to pursue me. It took me awhile to come around, but I finally agreed to go on one date. We dated for a year and got married in October 2013. I think that everyone we know had been asking when this would happen since we were 12!
Tell us all about the proposal! In October 2013, we had gone up to Austin, Texas to see Travis’ dad for the weekend. Travis told me before we left that his cousin was running a marathon in Austin and wanted to see us while we were in town. I had my suspicions that something was up because he told me that we had to get breakfast with them and would need to leave super early to get there. Last I checked, no one finishes a marathon before 7 a.m., but who was I to question what the athlete had deemed a reasonable time? I noticed pretty quickly that we were not headed to a restaurant when Travis pulled over on the side of the road by Zilker Park. He walked me through the woods and down a trail to Town Lake, where a canoe was waiting at the edge of the water. From there, we paddled down the lake to a dock that was lit up by candles, with breakfast and coffee waiting. One of our favorite times of the day is breakfast, so he knew that it would mean a lot to me to have a sunrise proposal. I only finished about half of my cup of coffee because I was so nervous, but Travis kept encouraging me to finish it. Finally, he got impatient and told me that if I wasn’t going to drink the coffee, I should just throw it into the lake. What I didn’t know was that at the bottom of the coffee cup, he had written “Marry me, Britt?” When I finally saw it, he got down on one knee and asked me to spend the rest of my life with him. Before I knew it, all of my siblings and parents came out of the woods where they had been videotaping and photographing that moment. I had always told Travis that I wanted my family to be there, so he flew all of my siblings in from California, Colorado, and Arkansas to make sure that they were part of the day. Then, to top it off, he had scheduled time for my mom and sisters to go look at wedding dresses with me, since we all lived in different states. It was a pretty incredible day that I will never, ever forget!
When did y’all get married? October 4, 2014
How many friends, family members, and loved ones attended your wedding? 230
What was one way you saved money or cut costs at your wedding? I’m a big believer in small business. Every business has to start somewhere, and that means that someone has to take a chance on them. I chose to work with a lot of creatives who had never actually executed a wedding because they didn’t have the demand that a lot of well-known vendors do, so they were more reasonably priced. It was exciting to work with people who were so eager to have the opportunity, and who paid such close attention to details. They all did a phenomenal job!
What’s next for you as a couple? What are you most looking forward to about married life? We just purchased a 1928 craftsman-style house in the heart of Fort Worth, Texas. We are so excited to make it a home and start hosting our own gatherings. We LOVE community, and we look forward to seeing what the Lord will do with this gift.

Photographer: Sara & Rocky Photography / Videographer: Brittan Pittman / Planner: Britt Latz Visuals / Ceremony and Venue: Chandelier Grove / Florist: Stacey Crowe / Dessert Baker: The Whistle Stop / Catering: Black Walnut / Rentals: Any Occasion Rental / DJ: Michael Green / Bride’s Gown: Allure Bridals / Bride’s Jewelry: Christine Elise / Bride’s Hair and Makeup: Sarah Roark / Bridal Party Hair and Makeup: Makeup Texas / Bride’s Shoes: Ann Taylor / Bridesmaids’ Dresses: Em and Lee / Menswear: Jos. A. Bank

marissa Written with love by Marissa
19 Comments
  1. avatar Loverly reply

    We are swooning over the lush floral arrangements throughout this entire wedding! So gorgeous!

  2. avatar Sara Garza reply

    Thanks SO much for the feature today!! It looks absolutely stunning. We are grateful for you guys and our couples like Brittany and Travis.

  3. avatar Brittany + Travis | sara & rocky reply

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  4. avatar Mindy Reich reply

    Beautiful Wedding! My daughter just got engaged and they would like to look at Chandler Grove. Would you be able to provide us with contact information. My daughter and her fiance are both very strong Christians. Thank you! Mindy

  5. avatar Barbara Powell reply

    I am interested in looking at this venue for my daughters wedding reception and we live in Tomball. I have driven to the place and done multiple online searches but cannot find a telephone number or email address for Chandelier Grove. Could you please forward one to me? Thanks.

    • avatar Maria reply

      Beautiful Whimsical Wedding. I am recently engaged and grew up in the area. I was hoping you could provide us with the Chandler Grove contact information. I would love to check it out, but had no luck looking online.

  6. avatar Natasha reply

    Loved the blog.I was wondering if you could give the contact info for The Chandelier Grove. I cannot seem to find anything online.

    Thank you,
    Natasha

  7. avatar Candice Garner reply

    This wedding is so beautiful! I have been searching for a place like this. I can not seem to find the contact information anywhere either. Has anyone had any luck?

    Thank you so much,
    Candice

  8. avatar Kelley reply

    My fiancé and I have been trying to reach out to Chandalier Grove to see their venue. The place and photos just speaks to us both and the story above completely overwhelmed me with the huge Christian base of this place. Could you please provide us with contact information so we could reach out? Thank you so much

  9. avatar Teresa reply

    Hello,

    Do you happen to have the contact information of the venue Chandelier Grove?

    Thank you

  10. avatar Catherine reply

    I love hearing about this venue!! Would you be able to send me their contact info? I can’t find it anywhere. Thank you so much!!

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  12. avatar Jennifer reply

    I love everything about this post! Could I receive the contact information for chandelier grove? I can’t seem to find anything online, and I’d like to have my wedding here!

  13. avatar Tori reply

    This place is beautiful! Could anyone provide me with the contact information? Thanks so much! :)

    • avatar Marissa reply

      Hi Tori! Thanks for your comment, it sure is a beautiful space. We looked around, but unfortunately cannot locate their contact information. We believe it might be a private property. We do have some great venues in the Blue Ribbon Vendor Directory! https://southernweddings.com /vendor-category/venue/ Hope you find the perfect place. xo! Marissa

    • avatar Stacey reply

      Hello Tori,

      This is Stacey, I’m the owner of the farm above. You’re welcome to contact me via [email protected].

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