Pretty Garden Wedding with an Elegant Yet Informal Feel

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As someone who tried to re-create Tuscan-style tables in Ireland, I was already in love with today’s gorgeous Italian-inspired wedding in Colorado before I even laid eyes on it. And boy is it beautiful.

Catherine & Clark tied the knot with a garden wedding at Villa Parker outside Denver. While their day was laced in florals and foliage, with luxe colours, and an elegant setting, it was also brimming with fun details from their candy table and lawn games, to their informal tapas-style feast of all their favourite dishes.

Captured by Sara Lynn in her signature candid, romantic style, this fabulous wedding is filled with ideas from the blooms and the bridesmaid dresses, to the too-cute dogs and pretty ceremony set-up (oh and you’ll love Catherine’s dress, it was the first one she tried on!).

But what I love most about this one is that it shows couples how to create a celebration that’s aesthetically elegant and in line with your vision of your perfect day, without losing a sense of fun and personality – the dream balance, am I right?

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Our Love Story

We met working together at a summer job and began dating right after my high school graduation.

Clark flew my entire family, his family, and several of our friends to Milwaukee for what I thought was just my college graduation.

After the ceremony we went to a nearby park to take pictures and while posing together, he got down on one knee. It was perfect because we were with everyone we loved and everything was captured on camera.

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Our Wedding

Our wedding was truly our dream come true – We spent time traveling in Italy together and dreamt of bringing the romance we felt there, home to our wedding.

Parker Villa was the perfect romantic Italian villa to host our wedding and also the very first decision we made in any of the wedding planning. From there we built our ‘wedding team’ based on vendor recommendations. Sara, our photographer was our first selection and she helped us select all of our other vendors. We loved each and every one!

As for the style of our wedding, I was, simply put, Pinterest inspired. I love the combination of both fall and early summer colors and felt that blush, gold, and burgundy created the romantic feel I was looking for.

From there, each detail added to this theme of simple elegance and Italian-romance – the delicate lace on my dress, the many candles, the long flowy dresses and tailored suits, and of course the flowers. I knew that I wanted to flowers and venue features like the two tier fountain to be the stars of the show, and they absolutely were!

So this was the vision that our team brought to life, but what made it us? The lawn games, the tapas style food, the never ending music, and best of all the amazing rap performed by my two maids of honor.

Our relationship with each other as well as our friends and family has a strong focus on having fun, and there was no shortage of fun that night!

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The Photography

Our venue was showing us a list of their preferred vendors and I noticed a theme about several of them, I love their feature pictures!

I did my research at home and discovered that each picture I loved was actually taken by Sara Lynn. After looking her up and scrolling through pictures for hours, I knew I wanted her to be the one to capture our day.

So could it get any better? Absolutely! We scheduled a quick call to get to know each other and completely hit it off. I realized she was not only someone with a talent, but someone with a huge heart that we could easily trust with the task of capturing our love in a still image.

Lucky for us, she had worked with several amazing vendors before and was able to help us build the rest of our team.

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Favourite Moments

I have to break this into three things – lawn games, tapas, and Fresh Prince of Bel-Air. Our friends and family spend the majority of our time outside, chatting and playing lawn games.

For our wedding we built giant Jenga and had several games of corn hole (or bags depending which part of the country you’re from) set up. Despite the formality of the day, we wanted everyone to remember who it was getting married and how important our fun-loving relationship is to us.

The second part of this was our food. When originally discussing what our menu should be, we knew ‘steak or salmon’ just wasn’t us.

We started putting together a list of all the things our dream wedding would have and realized nothing fit a true theme. But heck! We decided to sing ‘these are a few of our favorite things’ and enjoy small bites of a large variety of different foods.

From mini baked mac n’ cheese to teriyaki chicken skewers to numerous flatbread pizzas, everything was amazing!

Finally the speeches. Clark’s brother Corey gave a heartfelt speech that made us all cry, and next up was the dynamic duo (my two maids of honor). They began their speech introducing themselves when all of a sudden the DJ started playing music.

They played it off well and many of us started trying to get the music turned off. Out of nowhere the girls bust into a rap going along to the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air theme song, but with adjusted lyrics specific to Clark and me.

Advice for Other Couples

My biggest piece of advice? Use my vendors! The team I worked with was so incredibly talented and made every step along the way so easy.

I can’t thank them enough. I do have a second piece of advice – Let it go!

Don’t get stressed, especially day of. Remember what the day is really about and when the wrong cake shows up or your limo doesn’t show up altogether, don’t let it get you down.

Cut the cake, give your husband a kiss, and remember that relationship is all that matters.

As for budget, just go for it. We didn’t hold back (as much as we could) and are so glad we made the decision to do it big – I mean it’s the only one we’ll ever have!

The Honeymoon

We really wanted to take a honeymoon. We spent months researching and had planned our dream trip to an island with sand, water, sun, and no troubles.

Ultimately we decided to skip the seven day vacation and make a life long investment with that money. We bought a house!

My advice for you? Do what you need! If you’re at a place in life where you need a break, some time away with your husband, go for it. But if you’re feeling uneasy about the investment, consider taking a few days off together and having a staycation.

You can create that romance anywhere and you just might be able to spend that money else where that will bring you just as much joy!