Christine, Social Media Editor & Robert, Operations Manager
One sentence sum-up of the wedding vibe: A laid-back Southern summer party.
Soundtrack for reading: “Hummed Low” by Odessa Rose
Other Cool Stuff We Should Know About
As someone who has written about wedding and special events for a living, I thought wedding planning would be as easy for me as it could be for anyone. But it turned out to be challenging in all sorts of ways I didn’t expect.
In fact, my now-husband and I had a truly impressive array of wedding day mishaps. Standstill traffic on the freeway put the bridal party an hour behind schedule and scrambled the pre-wedding time line in a major way. Flash flood warnings meant we had to scratch the plan to get married under an ancient tree. The venue kindly offered the (thankfully unbooked) chapel on the premises constructed in 1823 by President Andrew Jackson, but we had to nix all our wedding decor due to decor restrictions on the historical building. I had literally thought when planning the whimsical and unusual wedding decor: The wedding blogs are going to love this.
Ah well.
Despite the wedding day craziness, I still got to marry Robert, and the celebration was as joyous as we had hoped for—even if it didn’t take the form we had envisioned.
What Robert and I had pictured was a relaxed summer party—and for me, I also wanted to show the people I love, most of whom traveled for the wedding, the state I love and grew up in. So there was a lot of Tennessee in the details.
We set the tone with our wedding invitations, printed by one of the oldest letterpress companies in the nation, Nashville institution Hatch Show Print, known for their country music posters. Our wedding and reception took place on the property of President Andrew Jackson. Food included biscuits, shrimp and grits, and peach cobbler—and a late-night snack of gourmet popsicles from acclaimed Nashville popsicle shop Las Paletas. And we surprised our guests with country line dance instruction, including a barn dance that had us switching partners every 30 seconds—and allowed Robert and I to speed-chat with many of our guests.
But one of the most memorable moments is when the fireflies came out. Many of our California guests had never seen them before, and the evening broke out into an impromptu firefly-catching session.
It was pretty magical. And so was the whole evening. It didn’t go remotely according to plan, but those were just details. When Robert and I discussed our wedding in the planning stages, we often described the feeling we hoped to capture. And our wedding day had all the fun and joy we imagined.
Favorite Thing About The Wedding
Getting married to each other. Also, the fireflies were neat.
