This Sault Ste. Marie wedding is beautiful. With a beautiful bride, and a beautiful groom. A beautiful stationery suite (from PALETTERA) and a beautiful color palette. And a beautiful beginning, which you are just going to have to read yourself. Every romantic, vintage, something blue detail was captured wonderfully by Calla Evans Photography, and I’ll say it once more. Beautiful. Click here to see more!
David and I met online and had our first date at a little Irish pub near my old apartment, right before he left for a short vacation to visit friends in LA. I thought the time apart might kill the momentum, but we talked the whole time he was away and by the time he returned and we were on our second date we both knew something special was happening.
On our third date I made a romantic dinner at his place, and then we went downstairs to watch a movie. There was a wild thunderstorm outside, and suddenly we heard slow creaking footsteps over our heads. We paused the movie, listening carefully, and I whispered “I think the front door is unlocked”. He sprinted up the stairs; I heard him yell and then two pairs of running feet. After a few seconds of silence I slowly crept upstairs, looked around, and walked toward the front door, which was wide open. There he was, alone, walking barefoot down the middle of the wet road, carrying my purse in his hand. He swears it wasn’t chivalry, but it made an impression. “Why on earth would you do that?” I asked, still a little shaken. “I thought he had my computer,” he answered, also a little startled by what he had just done. “Well,” we laughed, “it’ll be a good story to tell our grandchildren.”
A few weeks after that stormy night David asked me to go with him to his sister’s cottage on Georgian Bay for a few days. I was a bit nervous about heading into the woods with someone I hadn’t known very long, but a close friend reminded me of something my mother often says: don’t postpone happiness.
A little less than a year later, we returned to that cottage and as the sun set over the water, Dave asked me to marry him. After calling our friends and families to share the giddy news, we sat holding each other on the same beach where a year before, watching the Perseids meteor shower, I had wished on a falling star that that moment together might last a lifetime.
When we were first researching venues, it was Dave that suggested that he loved the idea of getting married in Sault Ste. Marie, the Northern Ontario town where I grew up and where my parents still live. Once we had made that choice, the rest of the decisions came easily. The Canadian Bushplane Heritage Museum was a place where we could have an outdoor ceremony on the water, which we wanted, and had a funky, nostalgic feeling, which we loved.
We picked Nick Drake’s song “Northern Sky” as our processional music, and the lyric “brighten my northern sky” emerged as a kind of theme. The museum made us picture a 1940s bon voyage party, or a Canadian picnic under the stars, and these ideas became an inspiration for what we wanted to create: an event with both an old-world formality and the playful ease of the outdoors.
I loved that my dress had a slight classic Hollywood look to it, and I asked Karyn Gingras at Lilliput Hats to create a vintage fascinator with a birdcage veil that would complement it. David had a tux created by Don Fabien Lee at Trend Custom Tailors that also had svelte mid-century lines and a classic feel.We picked blue and grey as our primary colours, with small touches of mauve. I asked my bridesmaids to pick out their own dresses in a palette of blue. It was partly a coincidence that they ended up as matching pairs.
My mother-in-law, Jo-Anne, discovered Palettera and brought me to meet Deborah. We really enjoyed looking through all the options, gathering ideas, and being shown beautiful papers and designs. It was also a chance for us to have time alone. On the way there we would chat and catch up. Afterward, we shopped for china together, or tried our hands at calligraphy. Heartbreakingly, we lost Jo-Anne a few months before the wedding to unexpected complications from surgery. It was, and is, a devastating loss. As difficult as it was, we knew in our hearts that she would have been adamant that we continue with our plans. I treasure all of our beautiful letterpressed stationery because it reminds me of that carefree, creative time with her.
In the end, almost every detail held some significance for us. My mother and her friends arranged the flower centerpieces. My “something old” was the necklace my grandparents had given me, pearl by pearl, as a child, which was strung together for my 16th birthday. For my “something borrowed” and “something blue”, I wore my mother-in-law’s sapphire engagement ring, lent to me by my sister-in-law who hadn’t once taken it off since her mother passed away. And the Sault itself…
Taking the formal family photos in my childhood home, the center of my emotional universe, was a very powerful moment in the day. Sault Ste. Marie is almost 700 km from where we live now, and we wish it were nearer. To have everyone we love from all corners of the world gathered in that place was very special.
Venue: Canadian Bushplane Heritage Museum / Caterer: A Thymely Affair / Event Planning & Floral Design: A Thymely Affair / Stationery: PALETTERA Custom Correspondences / Photography: Calla Evans Photography / Lighting and Sound: Crank Sound Distribution / Bride’s Dress: Cymbeline, Becker’s Bridal / Bride’s Shoes: Badgley Mischka & J.Crew / Headpiece: Lilliput Hats / Bridesmaids: J.Crew, Alfred Sung, Alfred Angelo / Groom’s Tux & Shoes: Trend Custom Tailors / Groom’s Cufflinks: Wedgwood / Ring Bearer Bowl, Table Numbers, Cake, Music: DIY