A Custom Two-Piece Dress for a Glam Southern Bride

Stephanie Weers
September 8, 2017
Categories: Real Weddings, Romantic, The Blog, Whimsical
Tags: Real Wedding

Madison and David met while volunteering in Haiti and it wasn’t long before they knew they’d found forever love. To celebrate their official kick off as Mr. and Mrs., they planned a glamorous North Carolina celebration complete with major fashion moments, including Madison’s custom two-piece dress by Erin Grey Couture. The fabulous Allison Kuhn photographed the day and the full gallery is just a click away.

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From the bride… I was never one of those girls who dreamt of a big, beautiful wedding all of my life. I only ever dreamt of marrying my best friend. Believe it or not, David was actually the one who requested that we even have a wedding! The one thing I was certain of was that I wanted it to be a short engagement. Because when you know- you know. So why wait!? When we first got engaged back in January, we could not make up our minds on how we wanted to tie the knot. Do we make a quick stop at the courthouse? Do we have a small destination wedding? Where would we even do it? How big? How small?

There are so many questions + details that go into planning a wedding. I had no idea! Not to mention the amount of preparation + refining I needed in my heart.

Soon after we got engaged, we went to Charlotte to celebrate with family and friends. For a girl who never dreamt of her fairytale wedding… I was quick to go dress shopping! It was a Sunday when we landed in CLT and all of the bridal boutiques were closed but my best friend, Anita (and also my maid of honor), found a few that happened to be open. My mom, Anita, and I had some good laughs that day. For some reason, neither of them could take me seriously in a wedding dress and all of these princess gowns were hysterical on me. I had never worn a big ball gown!

I knew that when I found the dress I would know what kind of wedding I’d want to have- because I would be able to picture myself walking down that aisle to that handsome face. Heart melts. A few days later, I found THE DRESS! It was a custom skirt that we turned into a dress and it was exactly what I pictured. Different, but classic, kind of funky, had a little sass, would maybe surprise some people, even David… I loved it. And so did my mom.

So, thanks to my dress- we decided to have a wedding! My mom was a hero the next few months. I mean, she’s always been my hero. But you have no idea how much time, effort, tears, you name it- she gave this wedding her all. We are both very creative, we love design and are incredibly detail oriented + also huge bargain hunters, so we figured we could handle this wedding on our own without a planner. Sheeeesh!! Planning a wedding is a full-time job! My mom took care of every single detail, down to the hand-stamped forks we ate our wedding cake with. We had a vision and she made it happen. I am so grateful for my amazing parents who gave us our dream wedding. Even more grateful for the high standards they set for marriage + family.

Because of their legacy I never settled + married my BEST FRIEND who I adore and admire and can’t even imagine a day without.

Yesterday when I asked what you guys wanted to read about, I had many messages about our relationship, how we met, our testimony. I won’t go into all of those details on the wedding post right now, but I had this revelation over our engagement that I thought I’d share. Back in March, I wrote this quote in my notes on my phone. I don’t even remember where I heard it but I go back to it often.

“A champion wants his greatest match to be his greatest battle.”

For me, my greatest medals I’ll ever wear will be the one with a title “WIFE” and the other (I pray one day) will be titled “MOM”. In order to win a medal you have to go to battle, right? I always heard marriage wasn’t easy- it’s going to be the never-ending battle of your lifetime. Unfortunately my parents always made it look incredibly easy so I never believed anyone when they told me this. But, I do understand that a good marriage takes WORK! Throughout our engagement, I realized that marriage was going to be my greatest match. My greatest battle with myself, the enemy, sometimes David, outsiders…

You don’t want to go into the greatest match of your lifetime against somebody who is just going to give up- you want to win with a fighter. I don’t know if this is making any sense, but it does to me, so here’s to hoping! I kept going back to this quote. I realized that I wanted to fight it out with David. I knew that I wanted to win this battle with him. We actually fight pretty well together. We fight for each other everyday. We definitely fought through hard times during our engagement- and I knew that I would never fight for anyone else the way I fight for him. And vice-versa.

Fast forward to the week leading up to our wedding. David, Winnie and I drove from Dallas to Charlotte. We love our road trips and always end up making some of our favorite memories on them.

Everyone had us prepare for the worst: we knew that there was a chance of rain, something was bound to go wrong!! But David and my mom both kept faith through it all- “it’s going to be perfect.” And it was.

The night before our wedding, David’s mom threw us a beautiful rehearsal dinner. We ate Mexican, drank margaritas and were toasted with the sweetest speeches by family. It was so special to have our two families together in my home town. That night we parted ways until the next time we’d see each other at the altar! I went back home with my parents and slept in my old room. My brother was home from California and we had the original crew of four back together. Then we were ready for wedding day.