I am absolutely in love with today’s fun Chicago wedding! I love the mix of modern style and retro details. And how fabulous is this venue? I don’t think it could get any better!
The beautiful bride Michelle shares:
When we were planning our wedding, although we knew that for us the most important part of the day was going to be the wedding ceremony, we also wanted to make sure that our guests had a great time at the reception. We decided on a relatively traditional format for the day, with the ceremony and reception starting in the early evening, with a seated dinner, open bar, and dancing, and chose to have both events at the same venue so that our guests wouldn’t have to navigate Chicago traffic more than once. But, even with a traditional format, we also wanted to make the event as fun as possible. We picked a venue, Salvage One, that was truly unique. It’s a salvage store during the week, but on weekends it hosts events, mainly weddings during the summer, and they have great indoor and outdoor space, lots of wonderful little nooks and crannies for small groups to socialize in, and lots of fun stuff to look at everywhere.
Many members of my mother’s family were going to be flying in from South Texas, and Nick and I love Mexican food, so we went with a Mexican theme with the food and drink, offering margaritas and mojitos as the specialty cocktails during cocktail hour. We booked a great DJ company, Toast and Jam, and our DJ totally got our musical tastes (basically fun indie rock). We also booked a vintage photo booth, through the Original Traveling Photo Booth company, and had guests take pictures and paste them into our guestbook. One of my favorite parts of the night was sitting on the couch with my new husband after the reception, looking through the photo strips in the guestbook and knowing our guests had enjoyed themselves! We really prioritized our guests, and tried to think about what they would enjoy, and we still are getting compliments about how wonderful our wedding was now, over a year later!
Other favorite moments from the day were all small, normal things: walking down the aisle with my dad (and trying not to openly bawl my eyes out), marrying my husband, the toasts given by our parents, dancing with my sister and college friends at the reception, and doing a tequila shot with my cousin. Throughout our planning, bringing our families and friends together to enjoy each others company and share in such an important event in our lives was the most important thing, and I’m grateful that we didn’t lose sight of that throughout the wedding planning process.
Photography | Two Birds Photography
Venue | Salvage One
DJ | Toast and Jam
