An Organic Lakeside Celebration in New York for the Sweetest Couple

Lauren Megerdichian
July 31, 2020
Categories: Real Weddings, Romantic, The Blog

For Nick and Kevin, an elegant tented celebration at their family’s lake house was the perfect recipe for their special day. And thanks to the planning wizards at Simply Beautiful Events, their wedding dreams became reality. Arena’s decorated their day in plum and evergreen blooms complete with two breathtaking living chandeliers, completely transforming their tented reception. Head on over to the full gallery captured by Alexandra Elise Photography for all the inspiration, and don’t miss the groom’s write-up below for the best wedding planning advice.

From the Photographer… I met Nick & Kevin in Washington D. C. For their engagement session in the city that they call home. I love getting to know my couples personally but also in front of the camera before wedding day. Nick & Kevin’s wedding day was focused so much on their closest family and friends and I loved the inside scoop of hearing all of their stories before wedding day. Kelli, owner & lead designer at Simply Beautiful Events has planned weddings multiple times during this same first weekend in August for the same family at the lake, making Nick & Kevin’s wedding extra special. Building relationships is so important in the wedding industry. We want to create the most personal and beautiful day specifically for you and your loved ones and building a relationship strengthens that personal bond and brings in a trust factor. This was so evident on Nick & Kevin’s wedding day. Living in DC, they were planning from afar, but they had all their trust in Simply Beautiful events and the rest of their carefully selected vendor team.

From Nick… We met on an online dating app in December of 2015 (Like all good millennials do haha). Originally we talked about just hanging out together as friends because we both liked the other but thought of it as more of a “he’s a cool guy that would be a great friend”. After chatting for a week we planned on hanging out. On our first “date” we went out for tacos and played Super Smash Brothers! We dated 2 years before I popped the question. I planned to propose on my birthday weekend when we were spending the weekend up in Rochester with some of our closest friends. After getting all of our friends together, I decided to wake Kevin up from his nap to come out and hang out with us.

Our friend group is very into “Icing” each other with Smirnoff Ices, so as soon as he came out I Iced him. Everyone had a good laugh and Kev was about to be a good sport and drink the Smirnoff but before he could I said “It’s only fair that if you are going to get down and take a Knee that I will too” and then popped the question! Our engagement lasted a little over a year. I didn’t really have a vision of our wedding day but I knew that I wanted the color scheme to be dark purples and evergreens and that I didn’t want a lot of flowers but wanted more greenery. Kev was great because he was happy with what I was envisioning for our wedding. We ended up having about 130 guests which I think was the perfect size for us! We both agreed on our lake house for a few reasons. 1 – The lake has always been really important to my family and when I think of going home I think of going to the lake

2 – The majority of both our families live in NY so it just made sense to have a centralized location. Some of our favorite wedding day moments were spending the morning together with the wedding party getting ready, it was a great time to just hang out and enjoy each other’s company. Another favorite moment was having our family portraits done. It’s rare that we get to have both families in their entirety (since many live all over). I also loved the best man speeches. My best man Bob has been my best friend since the 6th grade so it meant so much to me that he was there and did a trip down memory lane. I know both Kev and I agree that our Mother-Son dances were important to both of us. And although the dancing was so much fun, I think getting to go out on the boat at sunset to get pictures done and being able to see the whole tent and party really made it special and gave us a moment to appreciate it all. I think the best advice I could give to couples that are planning now is to make sure you are listening to advice/suggestions, however at the end of the day, this is supposed to be about what you two want and how you want to celebrate.