How One Couple Used Style Me Pretty Products to Transform Their Last Minute Wedding at Home

Samantha Melei
November 18, 2020
Categories: Real Weddings, The Blog

For all of you ‘COVID brides,’ this is one you’re going to want to read! Rather than cancel their big wedding, this couple opted to say I Do at the brides family home, surrounded by their family and the fruits of their labor – a true family affair as they all came together to make the day possible! Brooke Allison Photo was there to capture it all from all of the local favorites to the surprise car parade for the bride and groom. Decorative florals were gathered from around the home and the bouquet was crafted by White Moss and Twigs and the other decor….well, that just so happened to be done by Style Me Pretty products! Check it all out below, and be sure to read all about each and every special detail of this magical day!

From the Bride…On June 20, 2020, Sydney and Caleb’s family gathered to celebrate their wedding at the bride’s parents’ house. It wasn’t the wedding they had been planning over the last year ( in fact it wasn’t planned for at all until a month before the wedding) but both family pulled together, to pull of this amazing home wedding in Newport, RI.

At the beginning of May, when it became obvious their large wedding would not be able to take place, the bride’s father suggested using a side room in the family’s historic farmhouse. It was a large round room with 12 ft ceilings and a beautiful stone fireplace in the middle. The only problem was the room was unfinished. Prior to the family moving into the farmhouse, the room had been gutted and it had not yet been refinished. Her father was undeterred though and over the next couple weeks, her fiance, her brother, and her dad worked together to complete the drywall, reface the fireplace, paint the ceiling and walls, and put in new light fixtures. On June 18th, just two days before the wedding, it was finished.

From here, the bride and her mother took over planning how to decorate. The mother of the groom had drawn a beautiful wedding crest that was meant to be used on the invitations, and they used this crest as the inspiration for decorations. It was a romantic yet cheerful crest, filled with soft pastels, roses, and shades of blues. The bride and her mother walked around the neighborhood asking neighbors for permission to cut some of their garden roses. Because of COVID, no florist would sell flower petals so they gathered them from under bushes around the yard.

Earlier that year they had bought small potted olive trees to use as extra centerpieces at the original wedding, but now they took center stage amidst a flurry of votive candles and under the twinkling Christmas lights. The bride and grooms seat was marked out by Style Me Pretty “Bride” and “Groom” signs as well as SMP gold champagne glasses.

From the barn in the family’s backyard they hung SMP’s “Together is my favorite place to be” banner, a saying that seemed especially meaningful for such an intimate family wedding. And it truly was a family affair! The groom and his brothers set up tables in the backyard, small pop up tents, and hung Christmas lights from the shed. The bride’s brother, the mother of the groom, and the sister of the groom decorated the ceremony room, and the maid of honor (Sydney’s sister) decorated the master bedroom for a “getting ready” suite. The bride herself made the “Wedding Schedule” sign on a mirror from her old dorm room, calligraphed small signs to hang around the property, and designed the programs. When all was done, it was hard to tell if the beauty came from the details or the love that the family had poured into it.

Outside the door to the ceremony room was the framed crest alongside the mirror, the programs, and a SMP card box. The doorway was framed with two potted blueberry bushes, a nod to Caleb’s home state of Maine while all the flowers inside the ceremony room came from around Sydney’s neighborhood. The bride’s bouquet, the boutonnières, and corsages were all provided by White Moss and Twigs. Music was played by the groom’s sister as the family gathered in the room and during the procession (which started at the top of the stairs just outside the room and stopped in front of the fireplace).

After the ceremony the bride changed out of her ballroom style dress into a more casual and fitted dress. Upon exiting the house, the newly married couple were surprised by a parade of friends driving by with congratulations and well wishes. During cocktail hour the family mingled in the backyard; the older member of the family played corn hole, relaxed and chatted on patio lounge, and enjoyed appetizers while the younger ones swung around on one of the tree swings or the zip line.

Because it was a day of two families coming together, they wanted to acknowledge both families’ home states in the food served (Rhode Island and Maine). So for specialty cocktails, they served Rhode Island favorite, Del’s Lemonade (kept in white coolers the bride had hand painted for the occasion) with a vodka mixer, and for dinner they had a lobster boil.

One request of the bride, was there had to be some sort of French fries, but the bride and her mother where they could order so many French fries from. One week before the wedding, while the intended couple and the bride’s parents were eating out at a local restaurant, the bride and her mother commented on how good the tator tots were. On a whim, the bride’s mother asked the chef if it would be possible to order tray of them to go for the following weekend, and were pleasantly surprised that they could! For dessert the mother of the groom made ice cream sandwiches, and the couple’s cake was from Greggs (a local favorite).

After dinner, the families moved back inside to the ballroom for the couple’s first dance and cake cutting; which then lead to everyone joining the dance floor as the bride’s sister played dj. After all the dessert had been eaten and everyone was worn out from dancing, the two families gathered together in front of the house to send off the new couple with a sparkler exit. It was a beautiful ending to an entire day celebrating not just two individuals but two families coming together. Every single person had helped and played a part in the day, and because of that every detail had extra meaning.

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