I live in Texas, so I think of April as spring. Not so in Colorado! For Paige and John it was an awesome winter wedding!
Before we get to the heart of the wedding though, you’ve got to see Paige’s gown … a Lela Rose design from the lovely ladies at Anna Bé in Denver …
photos courtesy of Jennifer Davidson of LUCE’
And now … a bit of their story from Paige …
John works Burton Snowboards so when we got engaged in Sept 2008, it was pretty clear that we would probably have a winter wedding. Zach’s Cabin is one of our utmost favorite spots…located half way up the mountain you take a snowcat from the Ritz Carlton in Beaver Creek to get to it.
After figuring out that our guest list had close to a 50:50 ratio with local and out of town guests, we decided we wanted our wedding to really be an experience.
The Thursday before, we invited our parents and our wedding party to Churchill Winery to personally bottle (and drink) delicious wine which we then gave out as our wedding favors. Yes, our wedding party was quite lopsided … John had 6 close friends he wanted up there as his support system (5 as groomsmen and 1 as our officiant), and I was happy to keep it clean and simple with only my maid-of-honor.
On Friday, we invited all of our out of town guests to a wine and cocktail celebration at a wine bar –Vin48, in Avon. And of course, all days – yep, including the big one – we spent the days up on the mountain snowboarding! We skipped a Sunday brunch and had one last ‘shred session’ with anyone who had a later in the day flight. Overall it was a lot of fun and really great to be able to have time outside of the actual wedding to spend with all our close friends and family.
I wanted the day to feel really intimate so I made as many small touches and details as I could and sourced out friends to help as well. A close friend and her mother created all our florals, including the great topiary trees we used in the ceremony. She also had the awesome idea to create a cotton bouquet which worked perfectly for the winter setting and with my dress.
John has a metal fabricator that he does business with for displays, so he designed and had a large metal frame created which held 10 of our engagement photos. I laid out craft tags for people to sign as our “guest book”.
For our centerpieces, I bought apothecary jars in a variety of sizes (from saveoncrafts.com) and filled them with unscented filler (from Target) and typed out 2-3 sentences telling about our “firsts”. First Date, First Road Trip, First “Meet the Parents” – each table had a different story and ‘first’. I also bought food storage containers and mason jars to hold candles which I simply tied pieces of yarn around to keep a cohesive look.
I absolutely LOVED our placecards which also were another take-home for guests. I bought preserved aspen logs from a local florist (The Perfect Petal) and cut them into 1″ thick slices, then hand-stamped with a metal stamp kit the guests names on one side and “eat, drink, get married” on the other.
For our wedding favors, I created wine labels that looked like an aspen and drew out a P + J in a heart to attempt to look like it had been carved in the bark. Putting in the time to do things myself definitely took a lot longer than I expected but I am so glad that I did it.
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Paige sent us a link to their wedding video by Danielle Yuthas of Unleaded Productions. SOOOOO sweet! You can see LOTS more details of her dress (Lela Rose from Anna Bé) … and her cotton bouquet … and the flower girl shaking her wand with cotton in it! Really good stuff!!
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Congratulations to Paige and John! And to their wonderful photographer, Jennifer Davidson at LUCÉ, a HUGE thank you!!