Wedding planning can be stressful enough without the added anxiety of a tornado storm coming through your reception site just two days before the wedding! The perseverance shown by Heather and Seth along with their community is so admirable. After working together to clean up the site they even cut the fallen trees and used the pieces as decor! Their hard work definitely paid off and the result is a precious at-home wedding, photographed by Caroline Ghetes, with superb attention to detail and dedication to family. Don’t forget – there are even more handmade, dreamy details in the full gallery!
See more down home goodness in the full gallery!
From the bride, Heather –
“Seth and I have began our adventures together almost 5 years ago. From the beginning, I always knew he was “the one”. I feel so blessed to have him in my life and to spend the rest of my life with my very best friend. About two years into our relationship Seth joined the Marine Corps. Trying to plan a wedding around the military is quite difficult and felt like even setting a date was impossible. The weekend before the wedding, the military told Seth he wasn’t going to be able to come home for the wedding. But, our faithful God allowed a way for him to come home two days prior. As if that wasn’t enough stress, two days before the wedding, a windy tornado storm came through the wedding site and knocked down trees everywhere. We are blessed to have a community that is so loving and knows how to use chainsaws! On our wedding day, the skies were blue, weather was beautiful, and everything was more than perfect.
When Seth and I began our wedding planning journey, our main goal was to keep the theme very relaxing and to be ourselves. With both of us being brought up on farms, we knew we should incorporate our roots into our venue and decorations. And that is exactly what we did. We chose to celebrate our special day on the family owned Payne Dairy Farm where Seth was raised. We looked into other venues but nothing gave us the feeling of “home” like actually being home.
The ceremony was held under a few trees in the middle of the field where we hung mason jars with candles from their limbs. Wooden chairs were set up to acheive the country/rustic feel and ivory rose petals filled the entire aisle. The reception took place in a hay barn not far from the wedding site. A chandelier hung with lights cascading to each corner of the barn. Hay bales were set up for additional seating around the barn with rustic lanterns for lighting/decor. For centerpieces we used white table cloths and ran burlap table runners over them. We then placed cut pieces of tree trunk (from the tornado storm that occurred two days before wedding) on top where then we topped off the table with potted mums with our initials engraved on the pots. Mason jars wrapped in burlap with stems of carnations and candles surrounded the centerpiece. Good ol’ homestyle BBQ and southern sweet tea were served to our guest as well as homemade desserts from the special ladies in our lives. Three Forks Cakes did an amazing job with our double chocolate wedding cake.
