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Natalie + Shobie’s wedding is a wonderful example of bringing the South to wherever you are. Though their wedding took place in Colorado, Shobie is a tried and true Southern gent and their wedding boasted details from home like cowboy boots, antiques, lace and mason jars — all appropriate additions since it was Shobie’s Southern drawl that won Natalie over when they first met! Y’all know I can’t let my favorite string lights go unmentioned. N + S made it their own by hanging adorable tin cans with heart shapes punched through them. It was the perfect way to light up the gorgeous barn they said “I do” in front of and celebrated in.

The Southern Weddings Gals are sending big hugs to Cassidy Brooke for sharing this wedding with us!

Describe your wedding flowers: Simple. I loved all the flowers because it they were so personal. My mother arranged all of them. As a little girl she worked in her father’s flower shop for years and since he passed away last year, it was an honor to have my mother create these beauties in his honor.

Tell us about finding your wedding dress: My friends kept telling me that I would find my dress at the first shop that I went to. I didn’t believe them. After trying on so many dresses, we were literally walking out the door when I saw it in the window. I walked back to the counter and asked if I could try just one more on. When I put that dress on, I knew it was the one!

We did a first look because we wanted to be able to be in awe of each other and tell each other how great we looked. We also wanted to pray and have a moment before God before we set out on this new adventure. It was also really convenient with pictures!

Did you write your own vows? We did our vows in a unique way. We wanted to respect the tradition of vows and we wanted to make our own, so we did both! My favorite thing about writing our vows was that it was so personal. We have this saying, “I promise, promise.” We know that a lot of people say that they promise but then never follow through, so we know when we really mean it we say it twice just for good measure.

What was your most memorable moment about your wedding day? There are too many to count! I do remember that, while we were taking photos, Cassidy would stop me and tell me to just sit in the moment and soak it all in. I really appreciated that she helped not only to capture the great pictures, but great moments!

What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome while planning your wedding? Procrastination
What range did your wedding budget fall into? Less than $10,000
What is the one thing you are most happy you splurged on? My dress, photography and food!
What advice do you have for folks currently planning a wedding? Pace yourself and get a DJ.

Describe your wedding cake or dessert: Amazing!! My sister is a chef and she made our cake! It was raspberry with cream cheese frosting. We also had chocolate and vanilla cupcakes for everyone.

How did the two of you meet? Tell us your story. We meet at a progressive dinner party through friends. I was washing the dishes and Shobie came up and asked, “Can I dry your dishes” with that sweet country mouth. I was hooked.
Describe the proposal. It was so amazing and it became even more amazing after he popped the question! It was actually on our one-year anniversary. Shobie picked me up with white roses from my house and then we headed to our favorite Italian restaurant, Paravicini’s in Old Colorado City. I had no clue that it was coming! We had an amazing time eating great food and reminiscing on the past year and how crazy it was. Just after we ordered dessert, he said “I really love you.” I replied with “and I love you,” thinking nothing of it (because he reminds me so often). Then he started to slide toward the edge of the booth. I thought, “Oh, he is heading to the bathroom after a comment like that? Weird.” Then he proceeded to say, “So I talked to your dad a while ago and I was wondering if you would be my wife?” Of course I said yes!! When I started crying he told me to stop! All of our friends were waiting outside to greet us and take pictures with us! After, we celebrated with our friends we headed to my parents’ house and told the whole family. There was just one more thing he planned to top the night off. We drove far out into the Colorado Mountains at a secret place we love to watch the stars from. As we were setting up all the blankets in the back of the truck, he told me to come and sit on the edge of the truck. Then, asked me to take my shoes off. He proceeded to pour warm water from a thermos in to a big pot and washed my feet and told me that he wanted to love me like Jesus. We read scripture, prayed and started dreaming about our life to come!
In what month did you get married? September
How many guests attended your wedding? 200 people
What Southern details or traditions did you include in your celebration? What was Southern about your wedding? We got married in front of a barn! My husband always wears boots, so the whole bridal party wore boots that day. There were also a lot of antiques everywhere.

nicoleyang Written with love by Nicole
17 Comments
  1. avatar Natalie & Shobie Featured on Southern Weddings! » Cassidy Brooke Blog | Fine Art Film Photography reply

    […] lovely couple’s wedding is featured on Southern Weddings today! Happy […]

  2. avatar Ashley Summers reply

    Love, love, love this wedding! Cassidy is ahh-mazing….every photo makes my heart smile!

  3. avatar Ashleigh reply

    Seriously love this. Everything about it is so perfect & rustic-chic! Happily pinning away now!

  4. avatar karen @ paperfancy.com reply

    Absolutely love the rustic barn wedding!

  5. avatar Lisa reply

    These pictures are so gorgeous. I love the sweet, prayerful first look, the gorgeous bridal party, and their beautiful bouquets!

  6. avatar Hayley reply

    WOW!!! This may be my favorite wedding featured yet! So beautiful and you can see the love radiating off the page!

  7. avatar Sukey (Dress For The Wedding) reply

    So beautiful! I love the bride’s boots and the picture of them both doing a little jump/kick! Rustic wedding done with amazing elegance – those grays and muted hues are perfect!

  8. avatar Amy | Fly Away Bride reply

    Love the dusky blue bridesmaid dresses and rustic details, so pretty!

  9. avatar wedding in cocoa beach florida reply

    I love everything about this wedding , but the boots rule…

  10. avatar Meagan Keller-Fowler reply

    My favorite is the Vows Print in Pool Blue! Y’all are just about the sweetest things! I do appreciate the joy and love y’all spread around!

  11. avatar The NotWedding reply

    The color combo is great and the venue is a perfect match for the wedding theme!

  12. avatar Morgan Atkinson reply

    GORGEOUS wedding. Mad props to the photographer, love love love it!

  13. avatar Natalie & Shobie Rustic Barn Wedding » Cassidy Brooke Blog | Fine Art Film Photography reply

    […] Brooke / Catering: Bob Campbell / Flowers: Arranged by Mother of the bride / Bride’s Dress: En Vogue / Groom’s […]

    • avatar buffy reply

      Natalie & Shobie Rustic Barn Wedding » Cassidy Brooke Blog | Fine Art Film Photography:

      can you please tell me where these bridesmaids dresses came from? I’m looking for this exact color and can find it anywhere

  14. avatar Top 10 Colors for Bridesmaid Dresses | TulleandChantilly.com reply

    […] photo credits: 1/2/3 […]

  15. avatar Top 10 Colors for Bridesmaid Dresses | Smart Bride-to-bes reply

    […] photo credits: 1/2/3/4/5/6 […]

  16. avatar Taylor reply

    Where in Colorado is this venue?

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I almost wish I could reverse this post and show you the photos from Loft Photographie from end to beginning. You’ll just have to be patient and scroll through Paige + Brian’s sweet ceremony and pretty pink details before you about fall over and swoon over the last amazing photograph in their wedding. I promise, the suspense will be worth it. Just imagine you’re scrolling through their images to the soundtrack of P + B’s ceremony, which Paige spent much (worthwhile) time perfecting, building emotions and crescendos until her debut at the top of the aisle.

Describe your wedding flowers: My flowers we perfect! They were pink roses and white hydrangea and peonies. It was the perfect balance of white and pink. My bridesmaids wore pink and had all-white bouquets to keep the contrast. I loved it!

Did you decide to do a “first look”? Yes and no! I wanted to spend some time with Brian before the ceremony and have a chance to pray together and just say “I love you” before everything happened, but I still didn’t want him to see me in my dress before I walked down the aisle. It was really important to me that have that moment and get to see him reaction of seeing me walking with my dad. Brian was blind folded and we got to have a moment before the ceremony started.

Tell us about finding your wedding dress: I went shopping with my mom a week after the proposal. I found my dress at Brickhouse Bridal in The Woodlands, TX. Once I saw all of the dresses, I had no idea what I wanted. Pronovias was having a trunk show that weekend and it was perfect for me. I ended up trying on five of their dresses, and the one I choose was the second dress I tried on. I tried on different styles but I kept thinking about the second dress that made me really feel like a bride! It was the one and I accessorized in the store with a short veil and vintage lace sash.

Before walking down the aisle, we came up with a playlist of some of our favorite love songs, which built up until I walked down the aisle. The last song before the ceremony started was Boyce Avenue’s “On My Way.” Brian walked out with the Pastor as the last line of the song played, “I’ll be there the moment that you walk down in white.” I walked down the aisle to Ingrid Michaels’ “I Can’t Help Falling in Love with You,” the Elvis cover. I chose this song mainly just because I love it, I feel like it fit perfectly into our wedding theme and our story as a couple. We took communion during our ceremony and while we did this and Brian prayed over our new marriage, the Kari Jobe song, “My Beloved” played. It was perfect to me for this part of our wedding because I felt like it mirrored the love God has for us and the love that a husband should have for his wife. We walked back down the aisle to an instrumental version on the Plain White T’s “1, 2, 3, 4.”

Our favorite detail of the wedding was: At the ceremony, I would say it was the music and how it set the tone for the emotions that I was feeling leading up to being Brian’s wife, and just getting to be up there in front of everyone, showing the world my love for him. At the reception, it was the decorations. It was the ideal vintage-chic wedding that was exactly what I dreamed of! It was more than I could have imagined. My mom made most of it and she did an amazing job!


From the food to the decorations, I feel like without even trying we pulled together a simple and sweet Southern wedding. We served lavender lemonade, golden Yukon mashed potatoes and decadent cake balls. Our wedding reception was in a beautiful red barn strung with white twinkling lights. One of my main decorations was milk glass vases. I knew from the beginning that I wanted my wedding to have them as them. They worked perfectly with the burlap details, hydrangeas and pink touches. Outside, we had a monogrammed bean bag toss homemade by my mom and brother, a photo booth with an old door to hold the pictures and a quilt to be signed by our guests.

What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome while planning your wedding? Invites, definitely! One mistake that we made was sending out invitations without knowing the exact number we were inviting. We over-invited and it got very stressful very fast! Dealing with catering, chairs, and the ranch capacity was most overwhelming as we tried to get our numbers right!

My wedding cake was a gift from a family friend who makes wonderful cakes! It was the perfect moist white cake with vanilla buttercream icing. I wanted it to be simple, tied with burlap on each tier and topped with chalkboard signs that said “Mr. and Mrs.” We paired the cake with pink iced cake balls, which are one of my favorite sweet things! The groom’s cake was a cookie cake, Brian’s favorite. It sat on top of a vintage suitcase and was surrounded by a cookie bar. We had paper bags with our initials on them for our gets to take home as a favor or eat in the moment. It was such a big hit. Not a single cookie or slice of cookie cake was left over and everyone talked about how good it was.

Y’all, isn’t this photo the best? It’s sweet, indeed, but it’s also just dripping with pure joy. It put a smile on my face immediately, so I know Paige + Brian must love looking back on that moment.

How did the two of you meet?  Tell us your story.  I met Brian at Cru, which is a College Ministry that he used to play the drums at. I met him and instantly had a strong connection. He added me on Facebook not long after, but we never talked. I was friends with his friends and for a year, would secretly hope that every time I would hang out with them that I would get the chance to see Brian. But it never happened. Over a year after we met the first time (which Brian doesn’t remember) we both ended up at our friend Ruben’s Labor Day cookout. When he walked in, my heart skipped a beat. I couldn’t believe he was actually there, and I found out that he lived at the same apartment complex as I did. After the cookout, we both stayed around to watch a movie with some of our friends. We watched Michael Jackson’s Movie (which wouldn’t have been my first choice in movies but I stayed because Brian did). The entire time I noticed that Brian and I kept looking at each other across the living room, and I couldn’t stop smiling. We left at the same time and Brian reintroduced himself to me. For the next couple of weeks, we would run into each other around the Outpost, the bus, and at Ruben’s. Finally he got my number and we starting hanging out and we went on our first official date on October 16, 2010. We have been in love and inseparable ever since.
Describe the proposal. On Friday November 18, Brian asked me out on a date. We had been going on a lot of dates lately, and I knew he had the ring, so every date I got ready and wanted to look my best in case that night was THE night. But this particular Friday I wasn’t feeling well and didn’t even want to go out. Brian took me to the new food trailers in San Marcos and we ate outside under the tree lights. After we ate, Brian asked me what I wanted to do. I just wanted to Red Box a movie and hang out on the couch, but on the way home Brian asked if we could stop at this spot in town where the Christmas Festival always is. We starting walking around and he told me that he was looking for the band from church that was going to play there. I was starting to get annoyed. It was getting cold, I didn’t have a jacket and Brian was texting someone and taking a long time. I didn’t know he was texting his friends who were helping him out. We started to go over this bridge and Brian stopped me. He had told me before that if he ever told me to close my eyes, it meant he was about to propose. So when Brian told me to close my eyes, I knew it was it! I started shaking and crying. I looked up and Brian was on his knee, with his friends coming from the other side of the bridge holding signs that said “Will You Marry” and Brian was holding a sign that said “Me?” Of course I said yes! He prayed over our relationship and the next day we had a surprise engagement party with our closest friends and family!!
In what month did you get married? July
How many guests attended your wedding? 200
What range did your wedding budget fall into? $25,000-$50,000
What is the one thing you are most happy you splurged on? Photography! I loved our pictures and what they captured will help to keep our memories alive forever! I would tell anyone that no matter what, make sure you love your photography team!
What was your most memorable moment about your wedding day? The entire getting-ready process, with the jitters and anticipation building up and having my dad put on my garter and my mom put on my jewelry. I have always dreamed of getting ready for my day and to have both my parents be a part of it was perfect and so sweet. We are a very close family and I wanted them to be a part of every step!
What advice do you have for folks currently planning a wedding? Be comfortable with the budget you have set, and make sure that you know who is contributing before you start planning.  I also kept worrying that we were doing too much, but I am so happy we did everything that we did. Less is not always more when it comes to decorating your wedding or adding in your personal touches. Those are what really make you wedding stand out!
What’s next for you as a couple?  What are you looking forward to in the future?  We just moved to Georgia and Brian got a great job doing media at a church. I am looking forward to pursuing teaching and seeing where God is going to take our family!

nicoleyang Written with love by Nicole
11 Comments
  1. avatar Zoe Alexander reply

    Stunning photography! Weddings are so special! They are so happy! Many thanks Nicole!
    Zoe xxx

  2. avatar Bridget reply

    It seems like it was such a meaningful wedding. Best wishes to the adorable couple!

  3. avatar published | southern weddings | Austin Wedding Photographers | Loft Photographie LLC | Texas Hill Country Wedding Photographers reply

    […] are thrilled to have Paige & Brian’s summertime wedding featured on Southern Weddings today. We hope you’ll mosey on over to their lovely blog and check out the […]

  4. avatar Kat reply

    Oh I love that button monogram!!! Her soft color palette and vintage details are so sweet!

  5. avatar Belinda Damerow reply

    Amazing couple…Spectacular wedding!!! Love to both of you.

  6. avatar NC Wedding Planner – Orangerie Events reply

    I love every little thing! The color palette worked great and tied things together nicely! The fun personality of the couple was definitley shown through all the great details. Thank you for sharing!

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  8. avatar Maggie Goodell reply

    Gorgeous wedding, the flowers were my favorite.

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    […] sé por qué he puesto fotos de flores (1, 2, 3 y 4) pero me las pedía el cuerpo. Estoy con el rosa […]

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Y’all, I could read Caroline + Chaz’s wedding interview over and over again. I don’t believe there is a single part of their wedding that wasn’t inspired by their relationship, their past or their shared loves. The best part is that my first impression of this wedding (pure fun and sweet love) is one that hasn’t been dulled by time. If C + C’s wedding morning kickball game doesn’t convince you of that, nothing will! “One thing that we both wanted was to spend as much time as possible together on our wedding day,” said Caroline. “We also had many people from out of town that we wanted to spend time with, so Chaz’s proposed that we play kickball the morning of our wedding. I can’t tell you how many people asked me ‘Are you crazy?!’ Yes, definitely. But we had a crazy fun time!”

Don’t forget to scroll down and read about how C + C found their wedding rings! It makes me cry every time. Giant hugs for Jamie Clayton who shot this wedding!

Briefly describe your wedding flowers: I was planning on ordering all of the flowers wholesale and then putting together the bouquets and boutonnieres the day of. My sister interned with a floral and design company in Knoxville during her time at the University of Tennessee and she keeps up with the owner. One day they were on the phone and Leah, the florist, was saying that she really needed some graphic design work done and would love to get in the Nashville market. Kristen told her that I’m a graphic designer and still need a florist. We ended up chatting and bartering our services! It was such a wonderful arrangement! We stuck with the color scheme of mustard and white for the flowers. I loved our florist, and I basically left it up to her! She used lots of herbs, daisies and billy balls (which I LOVE!). Since we got married in the garden, there was hardly a need for flowers or decoration. There were about one hundred blooming historical white hydrangea bushes surrounding us. We put hanging mason jars lining the aisle with the same white and yellow flowers. My bouquet was very lush and full of stock, ranunculus, yellow garden roses, billy balls, chamomile, Queen Anne’s lace, and lisianthus. The stems were partly covered in burlap and then a vintage-inspired cream ribbon tied in a bow. One special part of the boutonnieres is that I made paper flowers out of an old Bible we had and my grandmother’s antique buttons. I chose to use pages from the book of Acts because it is Chaz’s favorite book of the Bible, so what better way to adorn his best friends? It was also made up of herbs and billy balls.

Tell me all the basics of your wedding! We got married at half past six on June 16, 2012 in the historic town of Franklin, Tennessee, just south of Nashville. Our venue was Carnton Plantation. It is special to us because we knew we wanted to get married in Nashville because that’s where I’m from, and I’ve always envisioned getting married close to home. To us, time with each other and the people we love was most important to us, so we looked for a venue that could host both the wedding and reception so we wouldn’t lose time with travel in between venues. More than anything, we wanted our wedding to reflect our personalities and who we are as a couple. When we went to Carnton, I knew it was the perfect place because the door and shutters were the exact same deep muted sea foam! It was meant to be! The plantation home and gardens at Carnton Plantation are so beautiful that we hardly had to add any decorations at all. It was a laidback and Southern atmosphere that perfectly reflected us!
Three adjectives that describe the day are: Authentic, spirited, and adventurous.
How many guests attended your wedding? We had a little over two hundred people at the wedding.
What was the design inspiration for your wedding? We didn’t really look at many places for inspiration. We wanted the design to reflect each of our personalities and our joint personality as a couple. We’re pretty laid back, casual, and eclectic, and we tried to reflect that.

Tell us about finding your wedding dress. Finding my wedding dress was such a special experience. It was the very first thing we did in planning the wedding. We picked a weekend in May that Chaz’s mom and grandmother could come up and go shopping with us. I had three pictures on my phone to show examples of what I was looking for. I tried on a lot of different dresses, and then finally I found one I really liked. I wasn’t entirely sold, mainly because it was stark white, but it was definitely my favorite dress I tried on at this first store. When I got back to my phone, we realized it was the dress I showed the woman helping me! It was meant to be! We went to another bridal shop in Nashville and yet again, I tried on a bunch of dresses. We found the favorite from the other store, but this time the sample dress was in ivory. We spruced it up with accessories and I came out and stood on the pedestal. When I noticed that there were pockets, I was sold! For the rehearsal, I got the opportunity of doing something special for my mom. While we were looking for dresses, my mom kept telling me, “Caroline, my dress looks a lot like this….” All I could think about was this one wedding picture of theirs where the lace came all the way up to her neck and she had enormous puff sleeves. I mean, it was the 80’s! I disregarded her comments and bought my beautiful dress. Later, mom brought out her dress just to see it again. She showed it to me, and we realized that with some manipulation this could really be perfect! I tried it on, and it surprisingly fit like a glove! I took off the puff sleeves and sewed the lace onto the bodice. I loved this new dress! Since we already bought my dress, I decided it would be so special to wear this to the rehearsal. I was waiting by the altar when Chaz walked up with his eyes closed. He opened, and he was SO surprised and happy I could wear my mom’s dress. I’m so glad I got to do something that was so meaningful to her and my dad.

Matching yellow bow ties all around! I love it.

My absolute favorite design element of our big day was the bunting. While sitting there and tracing the triangles, cutting them out, cutting holes, and stringing it wasn’t the most fun thing my mom and I have ever done, I LOVED the way it turned out! We decided to have it behind the altar, and I love the way the pictures of our ceremony look! We put the bunting so many places: behind the guest book table, around the cake table, behind the biscuit bar table. I think it looked so great and it reminds me of our fun, casual personalities!

Tell me a bit about the wedding ceremony. We had a pretty typical wedding ceremony. We knew we wanted it to be short and sweet. We loved how well our pastor made connections between a wedding ceremony and the Gospel. One of my good friends, Clark read scripture that’s typical of a wedding, 1 Corinthians 13, but it meant so much to me and my family because we memorized that chapter as a family when I was little.
Who participated in your ceremony? Since I’m a musician, I knew that I had to have someone I really trusted to do the music. I led worship at a church in Athens, Georgia with a good friend who also produced my album, Paul Reeves. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that he had to sing and play. The most emotional song he played was when I came down the aisle. It was “You’re Beautiful” by Phil Whickham. Paul’s precious little boy Thatcher was the ring bearer and his daughter Peyton was the flower girl. They walked in at the beginning of the song, and I was totally composed, surprisingly. But then they did SUCH a great job! I was so proud of them that I lost it! It didn’t help that I walked down the aisle to the most beautiful, emotional lyrics of the song “When we arrive at eternity’s shore, where death is just a memory and tears are no more. We’ll enter in as the wedding bells ring. Your bride will come together and we’ll sing… You’re beautiful.” Also, we had our wedding party pray over us during the wedding, which was really special.

How did the two of you meet? Tell us your story. In the summer of 2009, I was spending my summer at home working at J. Crew. We had a mutual friend in town that was doing work with a non-profit in town, so when Chaz was driving through Nashville to help with a Young Life camp, we all got together for dinner. Neither of us thought anything of it, other than “Hmm, s/he’s pretty cute…” Fast forward to early that fall semester. We both, by chance, went to some mutual friends’ housewarming party. It was an older crowd, so I was introducing myself to those I didn’t know. Chaz was sitting next to me, and he stood up politely when it was his turn. We shook hands and he said “Wait, aren’t you supposed to be in Costa Rica?” He mistook me for a girl he met once who was, in fact, studying abroad in Costa Rica. After about 10 minutes of trying to figure out how we knew each other, and realizing we did none of the same things, we remembered that summer dinner. We talked while Chaz flipped burgers for the crowd (ironic now because we’re both vegetarians). Yet again, we each left and didn’t think much more of it. In fact, I had just sworn off boys forever. My thought was “the next guy that comes in my life is going to have to knock down my door to get me.” Well, that worked for about a week, and that’s exactly what he did.
Describe the proposal: One weekend, we headed to his grandmother’s house for a late lunch. His Nana is notorious for her cooking, so we had a huge meal. I knew Chaz had planned for us to go back to Athens and eat at one of our favorite restaurants there, Farm 255, but I obviously had no idea that we had specific reservations, or that anything sneaky was going on. We were taking our sweet time enjoying the food and family, and his Nana kept saying things like “Well, y’all might need to go, you wouldn’t want to be late.” I continued to reassure her that we had nothing special to get back to. We made the trek back to Athens, enjoyed a delicious and fresh meal at Farm 255 and then Chaz took me to Memorial Park, a place that was special to us because it was the first place we held hands. We walked over to the bridge, and I immediately knew this was it because I could hear Chaz’s heart beating harder than I ever had in my entire life. We sat down at a bench, and he began the speech. He told me how much he loved me, and how he loved growing so close to me while we were dating and how he can’t wait to see how the Lord continues to bring us closer together in marriage. Then he got down on one knee and opened that little Italian box I had waited for over a year to see. My response? “I KNEW IT!!!” I about tackled him and hugged him around the neck, and then he stood up and swung me around as I said “YES! YES! YES!!!” He was so sweet and told everyone in Athens that day to come to my house for an engagement party that night, so we got to celebrate with all of those that were closest to us. It was absolutely a dream come true!
Tell us about your beautiful engagement ring. The story of my engagement ring is one of our funnier stories. I studied abroad in Cortona, Italy in the summer of 2010. At this point, even though we had only been dating about nine months, Chaz and I knew this was it. An important precursor to this story: I’ve never liked engagement rings. They are always so fitting of the person, but I’ve never found one that fits me (not literally, although my 3.25 ring size is a challenge). On one of our day trips to Sienna, I was walking by a jewelry store called “Platinum,” and I just stopped in my tracks. My friends, who didn’t even notice me stop, came back to see why I was just staring in the stop window. They stood and stared at the hundreds of items in the window, and somehow they both were staring at the same ring I was. They simultaneously said “Caroline. You HAVE to get that ring.” Since the owner was on Siesta, I rang the doorbell, got his card, and figured I would never see the ring again. I showed Chaz a picture of the ring, on Skype, of course, and he loved it just as much as I did. He sent the owner an email, and I got my Italian friend to call, but no luck. We had almost given up, but then I showed my Mom and Dad a picture of the ring, and my mom said “Caroline, you HAVE to go back and get it!” Three train rides later with my sweet friend Missy, we arrived at Platinum. She helped me barter in Italian, a language neither of us knew very well at the time. Finally, it was mine! Since I wasn’t engaged, and this wasn’t the typical engagement ring process, Missy allowed me to look at the ring a measly three times that day. We had a beautiful celebratory dinner in Sienna and then took a train back to Cortona in complete bliss. The night I came back to the states I handed Chaz the ring and never saw it until over a year later when he proposed. We’re so glad to have this ring because Italy has been such a special place to my family, and then me, and represents to us fun travels as a married couple in our future. While the groom’s ring usually doesn’t have a unique story, Chaz’s ring is possibly has an even sweeter story than mine. I knew finding a ring for Chaz would be a struggle because he hates male jewelry, and we’re also concerned with the environment, so the whole mining for metal thing concerns him. That left me the option of antique jewelry. After going to many an antique store, I realized that because the price for gold is so high, many pawn and antique shop owners are melting down any gold that comes in their store for the sheer value. Either that, or the price of a simple gold ring was exorbitant. Luckily, I found an alternative. I asked my parents if they had any gold that they weren’t using anymore. My dad so kindly offered me his University of Kentucky class ring, a ring that I remember him wearing everyday for my entire life. I knew it meant so much to him, so his sacrifice deeply touched me, and I knew it would mean the world to Chaz. I took it to some jewelry shops, but even using our own metal cost so much for labor. Then I realized that one of my best friends Vasilisa has been taking lots of jewelry and metals classes, even in Cortona the summer after I was there. I asked her if she would be able to fashion a ring for Chaz out of my dad’s ring. She said she would be delighted! It was a hard and rigorous process, but she did a wonderful job. More than that, she gave it to us as our wedding present. We felt so honored to receive such a wonderful gift! I presented Chaz with the ring because I knew it would be an emotional experience for both of us. My father and Vasilisa’s sacrifice and gift to us brought him to tears. I know that his ring is absolutely the perfect ring for him, and nothing else could have sufficed!
Groom’s favorite detail of the wedding: After the ceremony and family pictures, our wedding planner Jennifer took us to a private room where we had the chance to sit in private and reflect on what we had just accomplished together.  It was very important to me that Caroline and I had a chance to process our day and the huge step in life we had just taken together so Jennifer made sure to give us that opportunity.  We sat together for about 30 minutes without any distractions talking about our favorite details of the day and sharing our excitement for the future.  It was a wonderful and sweet time that I will cherish for the rest of our lives.
What was the most memorable or touching moment about your wedding day? Right before our pastor was about to announce us as man and wife, right at sunset, there were hot air balloons flying along the horizon. It was so absolutely special. It was as if God wanted to let us know that He was blessing our marriage.

nicoleyang Written with love by Nicole
26 Comments
  1. avatar Charissa reply

    What a super cute wedding. Love the bow tie necklaces.

  2. avatar Jamie reply

    Theres not enough shrimp and grits in all of Charleston to try and show my love that I have for you lovely ladies.

  3. avatar Morgan reply

    Such a great story about both rings – wish there was a ring shot!

  4. avatar Jordan Thompson reply

    Wow. Such a perfect “Southern Wedding”! So perfect!

  5. avatar Heather reply

    So beautiful! Where is the little boy’s outfit from?

  6. avatar Caroline Fausel reply

    We’re so honored to be featured again, Southern Weddings! I had no idea we’d make it to the blog, too :) Thanks for all of your kind words!

    • avatar Kayla Whaley reply

      Caroline Fausel: I am in love with this dress it is almost exactly what i have been looking for, I know the designer is Watters but i cant seem to find it anywhere. If you know what the style is could you please email me and let me know.

      Thank you so much
      Kayla

    • avatar Caroline Fausel | Caroline Fausel Paper Co. reply

      Kayla I’m so sorry I’m just now seeing this, a year later… I’m sure you’ve already found a dress, but it’s Waters’ Wtoo line, which I highly recommend! It’s their less expensive line… Here is the link to this specific dress: http://watters.com/Product/WtooBrides/15828
      Or I’m selling mine at preownedweddingdresses.com! Let me know if you’re interested :)

  7. avatar Ashleigh reply

    Such a darling wedding! Everything is so sweet & southern!

  8. avatar Meghan P. reply

    I absolutely adore this post!! I am from Franklin, TN, and grew up down the road from the Carnton Plantation. I am so happy to see someone do it justice and have an absolutely gorgeous wedding there!

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  10. avatar Al reply

    Where did ya’ll get the Bow ties?

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