I’m in love with today’s gorgeous lavender filled handmade wedding from Courtney Reese! Most of this wedding was DIY (the couple even made the table the bridal party sat at!) They did a great job getting the perfect blend of rustic and elegant. But how lovely is the bride’s lavender braid? It has to be one of my favorite bridal hairstyles!
Our wedding took place June 15, 2013 at Knoll Wood Farm (my parents farm) in Marshall, VA. The feel we were going for was country vintage and I think we nailed it! We wanted it to have a casual feel to it yet at the same time classy. The guys wore jeans and vests paired with a button down, matching tie, and cowboy boots. I grew up in boots riding horses, so naturally I wouldn’t get married in anything else. Michael (My husband) and I picked out socks for each other to wear on our special day…something only us would know about. I wanted to flower girls (my new nieces) to look like little fairy’s walking down before me which was the inspiration to the dresses they had on.
The ceremony took place in the rock garden. Not only is it a place we both use to go to relax and enjoy the evenings, but it was also the place where Michael proposed to me just the year prior. One of my favorite flowers is lavender, so my bouquet was simply just that-a bundle of it! My sister, also my matron of honor, carried a bouquet of flowers we cut from the gardens that morning when we cut mine. Our dogs are like our children, so they were obviously in the wedding also!
We wanted to use the beauty of the gardens and that time of year as our main focus so we didn’t have many flower arrangements. On each table, we had one simple gathering of pale pink and ivory roses. Some were in mason jars, others were in old silver tea pots, randomly placed on slabs of wood Michael cut off the farm prior to the wedding. We had personal touches around every corner. Some include childhood pictures for guests to look at on their walk through the barn on the way to grab some of our homemade “Lund Lemonade” we offered the guests as they arrived; my bouquet being wrapped in a sleeve from not only my grandmothers wedding dress, but also the dress my mother wore on her wedding day, and the bagpiper who played while I walked down to the ceremony site-a surprise to Michael. Another personal touch that some, but not all, know about is that Michael and I actually built the table where the wedding party sat. We wanted to have a “family style” feel to our dinner with our loved ones and close friends.
We lucked out with weather on our wedding day, but we like to believe we had something to do with that. It rained on my parents wedding day 30 years ago and it also POURED on my sisters wedding day coming up on two years ago. Learning that for some reason rain on wedding days run in the family, we researched what we could do to stop this unwanted tradition. I looked back to my Irish roots and found something I though would work…and by gosh it did! Exactly one month before the wedding day, at the ceremony site, we buried a bottle of whiskey upside down and left it there until the wedding day. Myth goes that if you do this, it will not rain on your day and sure enough it didn’t!
Photography | Courtney Reese Photography | Caterer | Smokin Willy BBQ | Rentals | Gibson Rental | Dress Store | The Barn
