You lovelies out in SMP-land never fail to amaze me with the unique details you manage to infuse into every aspect of your Big Day. Never. And in the case of these two Bristol sweeties, my jaw hit the floor the moment I read the bride’s sweeter than sweet description on how they managed to make a day that was already drop-dead gorgeous even more beautiful with special touches that were completely THEM. From the beautiful blue color palette to the save-the-dates to the escort cards made of paper airplanes, this was a wedding that was 100%, completely original. See all of the pretty snapped up by Lauren Methia Photography in the full gallery.
From the Bride… Nick and I wanted our wedding to feel like an intimate dinner party with our closest friends and family, but we also really wanted to have a rocking time on the dance floor (my favorite part of weddings!). Nick grew up all over Rhode Island and he wanted to be married close to the water, and I loved the laid-back style and intimacy that the Cove Cabin at Mount Hope Farm offered.
It was important to us to make our wedding feel like us, and to do it on our terms. We wrote the ceremony and vows ourselves with the help of our dear friend Ivan who became a Universal Life minister for the occasion. Instead of having a central aisle, we walked down our respective sides of the field simultaneously with our families and friends because we really wanted to emphasize our coming together as two equal individuals to our partnership.
The style inspiration started with a blue cobalt bottle collection that my mom and I have been collecting from antique shops and flea markets since I was a kid. Cobalt and vintage became the base for the rest the details, which included some more vintage elements like my birdcage veil and fascinator, and an art deco era cake topper I picked up on eBay.
We’ve been all over the place in the last couple years, so travel was also an important theme for us. Our engagement was mostly spent living in China while Nick was doing field research, we came home to the US about a month before the wedding, and we shipped off to the United Kingdom for me to start grad school immediately following our nuptials. Our save the date was a vintage postcard of the Mount Hope Bridge connecting Bristol to Newport, and all the tables were named with postcards of place that are important to us or we have lived (fell in love in London, engaged in Hawaii, etc). We made little paper airplane escort cards and placed around a vintage suitcase and globe. At the end of our ceremony, we marched off to lyrics that capture our itinerant life together: “Home is wherever I’m with you” by Edward Sharpe.
We also incorporated some Chinese traditions into our wedding, red envelopes (hong bao) in place of a registry and we toasted each table individually in the Chinese wedding banquet tradition (with champagne, we skipped the potent baijiu). While in Chongqing, we did a Chinese wedding photography session complete with four outfit changes. We displayed our hilariously captioned picture album at the wedding.
I study the internet, so it was also important to me to incorporate technology into the day itself. We encouraged friends to use our hashtag to tweet and capture shots on Instagram. Some of my favorite moments the following day were looking at all the different perspectives people had shared on Instagram. We ended up with an immediate crowdsourced wedding album!
Our day was filled with so many memorable moments: realizing that Nick and I had unknowingly coordinated our gifts with mementoes from the day we met each other; our families setting up the last minute details in the afternoon; being overwhelmed with emotion and forgetting my vows; our friends struggling to remember how to blow kazoos; my brother tearing up at our father-daughter dance to Willie Nelson; giving Sofia Vergara a hug at the Clarke Cooke House after-party. We were so happy to have 42 of our closest friends and family together there to celebrate with us.
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Wedding Photography: Lauren Methia Photography | Wedding Venue: Cove Cabin at Mount Hope Farm in Bristol, Rhode Island | Bouquet Design: Robin Hollow Farm | Floral Design: DIY by Mothers | Catering: Plantation Catering | Wedding Cake: Sin Desserts | Wedding Dress: Pronovias via Madeleine’s Daughter | Bride’s Shoes: Madewell | Bridesmaids’ Attire: J.Crew | Hair + Makeup: New Leaf Studio