I’m really excited to share Cansas and Sean’s wedding, we had absolute perfect weather and the light couldn’t have been better. Cansas was kind enough to share her experience with us. She has a great write up on planning, expectations and when things don’t turn out as planned.
From Cansas:
People talk about their wedding day as being utterly surreal and flying by in a flash; we now understand how true this is. We did our best to soak up every beautiful moment, from the time we woke up and spent the morning getting ready and having our teary-eyed first look, to hitting up the dance floor at the reception followed by our amazing late night donuts compliments of Little Lucy's food truck. The common theme of our engagement leading up to our wedding was learning to laugh and embrace the imperfections along the way...dancing in the rain, so to speak.
After a surprise trip last year to Mexico which set the stage for our engagement, Sean and I unknowingly drank the water and were sick for 3 weeks. Not to mention we discovered that Sean was allergic to bees after he was stung by one on his ring finger! haha! Good thing we don't believe in bad omens;) From that moment on we had our fair share of hiccups (like many other couples in the throws of wedding planning) from changing rehearsal dinner locations last minute to getting a new florist 28 days before the wedding. I gave Sean an penny engraved with our initials and wedding date for good luck to carry on the wedding day (I had one too) because, it couldn't hurt, right?? The big day was perfectly imperfect as many of our favorite moments were unplanned, such as our fathers delivering a funny slideshow chronicling our lives as we grew up a couple thousand miles apart and watching the best man and my brother-in-law have the most hilarious dance off I've ever seen. The day was filled with so much love and excitement between Sean and myself and from all of our amazing friends and family.
We knew we wanted the style of our wedding to be timeless, southern and romantic while keeping the vibe casual and personal. Sean is from the city and favors modern style and clean lines while I am a country girl at heart and swoon over lace and want everything to be warm and romantic bordering on the line of princess fairytale. Securing The Winfield Inn as our venue was the easiest part as we came across it within a month of our engagement and decided on the spot that it was the one and complimented us both. It is so dreamy, how could you not fall in love with it?! But it was our amazing vendors that really brought our celebration to life. To highlight a few, we found Mike’s stunning portfolio and our videographer after hours of online research. My biggest piece of advice is to really do your research on this one and secure the best photographer and videographer you can get within your budget. Bouquets of Austin blew me away with the gorgeous arrangements of cream and blush florals that fit perfectly in our garden venue. It probably gave us the most stress finding a florist last minute but Becky and her team came to the rescue and were nothing short of amazing. Our glam team Beautymark Agency also helped to make me and my girls look and feel beautiful for this special day.
My advice for the couples that are planning would be to splurge on photography, get a videographer if you haven't, secure your vendors and venue early because they get booked far in advance, avoid diy projects if you are not a diy person, have a day of wedding coordinator, ask for help when you need it and keep on top of your checklist. Another piece of advice that I have is to ask your venue and Mike for recommendations on other vendors-we discovered a lot of really great folks by doing this. Sean and I had 90% of our wedding guests flying in from out of state (23 different states to be exact) so we held a welcome cocktail party the night before the wedding and that was one of the best things we did because it gave us that much more time with our lovely friends and family. Another home run was doing a first look. We loved how it allowed us to take a deep breath, calm our nerves, feel all of the emotion and be together before having all eyes on us. Not to mention we knocked out almost all photos before the ceremony so we had more time to enjoy our cocktail party! I can say that I ate dinner at my own wedding!! No matter what you decide, the important thing is choosing what's right for you as a couple. I've been trying my best to avoid cheesy cliches, but with the love of my husband and the help of these talented people our wedding day completely exceeded every expectation and perfectly validated every cliche wedding phrase that I can think of; cue, the best day of my life.
