Last December, we got married! We gathered a small group of friends and family together for a weekend in one of our favorite cities. It took about a year of planning, even for our small event, but we couldn't be happier with how wonderful everything was.
We chose St. Augustine as it was our first travel destination together as a couple. We knew we wanted to get married somewhere beautiful and meaningful to us, and St. Augustine ended up being the perfect choice. We didn't want a wedding indoors, or on a beach (in typical Florida fashion). We wanted to be somewhere woodsy and natural. We scouted around several places, but ended up deciding to do our ceremony outdoors and the reception indoors.
A good friend of ours officiated our ceremony under a beautiful oak tree in
Washington Oaks State Park. While we had a lot of rainy weather over that weekend, we were incredibly fortunate in that it didn't rain at all during our ceremony. In fact, the weather and lighting was absolutely beautiful. There is just something so magical about the way that sunlight filters through Spanish moss on these ancient and magnificent oak trees. The park was decorated for the holidays, which included many Poinsetta plants. This ended up being a wonderful compliment to our color story! With such stunning surroundings, we didn't have to spend any worries about decorating for our ceremony.
I chose to wear a grey lace dress instead of white, as we are not people that are highly traditional. I styled myself with inspiration from vintage looks, including a birdcage veil. My bouquet was made from silk flowers and constructed with the help of my mother. I had a friend help with my hair, and I did my makeup myself. I also created Josh's boutonniere, and the hand-fasting ribbon we used in our ceremony. We wrote our own ceremony, keeping it short but heartfelt.
We hired
Woodland Fields Photography as our photographer after seeing her portfolio and consulting with her online, and we could not be happier with her work! While we live in Florida, we are several hours away from St. Augustine, and so most of our planning was conducted online or over the phone! I can't imagine how stressful it must be to plan a destination wedding that is farther.
We had our reception dinner in a private room of The Chatsworth, a English pub/tea room. It was a small and cute venue that perfectly fit our friends and family. For decor we stacked some of our personal books on the tables along with jars of fresh flowers (again, arranged by my mom). Josh illustrated the cover of our guestbook, which I put together with some red ribbon. We had an instax mini camera at the venue for guests to take pictures. After dinner, we had a fun night at a couple of bars with our friends.
Overall, it was an incredible day. It really does fly by so fast. We are so grateful to our friends and family that helped us in so many ways to make this day so special.
