Bess & Austin on Style Me Pretty

May 9, 2014

Boy do we have a treat for you today. Not only do we have some gorgeous images to share from a wedding that we designed and coordinated this past December that is featured on Style Me Pretty today, but we have quite the story to go along.

If you follow the blog, you may have seen Bess and Austin’s sweet as can be engagement shoot taken by the talented One Love Photo. The darling couple (who we just adore if you can’t tell) were college sweethearts. Bess tore it up on the lacrosse field and Austin on the baseball diamond. After 7 years of dating and an amazingly sweet proposal, the two decided to tie the knot at a venue that seemed just oh so them. They wanted something laid back but beautiful and a place where they could bus in their friends and family who were traveling from all over the country and make a weekend out of it. A winter wedding at Union Hill Inn it was!

Bess had the most beautiful vision for her big day, which included candles galore, gold accents and mix of winter and personal touches tucked throughout the design.

We planned and planned some more, and as the weekend came closer, we noticed the weather report shifting from a chance of rain to a chance of snow to, oh you know, 7 inches. No big deal, we thought. A winter wedding will be gorgeous and we have lots of umbrellas for the guests to use! The rehearsal took place at the venue and in came the beautiful wintery snow. Luckily there were shuttles with chains to take everyone back to town since the roads were not in the best condition (in fact, our van got stuck at the venue so we had to use them as well).

We woke up to an absolutely stunning winter wonderland. It was gorgeous and made the venue look even more spectacular. But with the storm also came a bit of a disaster – the electricity in town was completely out due to a tree that fell onto a power line. Cal Trans was working hard but there was no guarantee it would be back and the venue only had two generators to be used that weren’t strong enough to power the entire venue.

We went into super problem solving mode and found another hotel in a neighboring town that still had power where we bussed the bridal party to get ready and told the catering staff to bring their headlamps. The show must go on! It was definitely serendipitous that Bess had candles in her vision as they came in handy along with the gorgeous fireplace ceremony backdrop. While the vision for the ceremony was to have Union Hill’s sparkly lights, we think it couldn’t have been more perfect and was one of the most intimate and special ceremony’s we’ve ever seen.

Following the ceremony, guests used mason jar lanterns to guide them to a dimly candlelit cocktail hour where they were serenaded by an incredible guitarist and a good time was had by all. We were planning to have a candle lit reception and were going to use the one generator to power the DJ and it was nothing short of a miracle that the power came back on just before we were to lead guests to dinner! Cheers erupted throughout the venue!

The rest of the night was beautiful and oh so fun and it will definitely go down as a wedding that we will never forget. We couldn’t be happier for Bess and Austin and are so excited for their future together.

You can read more about their story and big day on Style Me Pretty today. Big thanks to the entire team that we worked with to make their big day happen!