After dating for 8 years and 8 months Taylor finally popped the question! As most who have been dating that long I already had a pretty good idea of what our wedding would look like. We both agreed on a winter wedding many years ago. We've attended and been in one too many scorching summer weddings in famously hot Columbia SC. We both loved our venue from the start. It just felt like us. 701 Whaley is a beautiful historic industrial venue space located in Columbia SC. The exposed peeling brick and stained concrete floors in 701 Whaley was the perfect backdrop for our February wedding. Next was our planner and photographer. By chance our planner, Melanie Murphy of By Invitation Only and our photographer Whitney Wysong had worked together on a wedding the weekend before I had my initial meeting with both of them! They were a perfect fit. Next was the dress! So I had been obsessing over Hayley Paige designs secretly before I got engaged but I was going to keep my options open to stay budget friendly. My mother and I traveled to Atlanta GA where my little sister/MOH lived to find a dress. After 4 boutiques and about 20 dresses I was growing weary that I would not find my dress that weekend. We had one last appointment at The White Magnolia in Atlanta at 9am on Sunday before we were to return home. I was welcomed to the most adorable house with a welcome sign out front with my name on it! 4 dresses later I was standing in my Blush By Hayley Paige gown. Her name was Opal. She would go on to inspire many other details of the wedding and she had pockets, come on! One of the other areas I really focus on was the look of my bridesmaids. I wanted all of my girls to feel gorgeous. We ended up picking primrose English net dresses by Ocassions by Hayley Paige. They ended up being the exact same color as our amnesia roses!! I gifted them opal bangles and earrings that tied in with my gown Opal! I topped off their look with blush faux fur jackets and they all wore suede booties underneath.
Once we started on the design aspect of the wedding I really started to warm to the idea of doing our own flowers. I was incredibly optimistic and I'm still not sure how or why! We wanted a heavy dose of greens and lots of candles. I wanted a really romantic look for the industrial space at 701 Whaley. Lots of rosemary from my mothers garden and eucalyptus from my fathers lake home started my inspiration.
My sister and mother have a wonderful eye for arranging so we decided to be brave and put that task on our shoulders. We used FiftyFlowers to order all of our blooms and most of our greens. The rest we foraged from my parents' homes. We worked along side with Melanie our planner to get the look just right with all of our greenery and flowers in the venue. We wanted eucalyptus and cedar dripping from everywhere. Clusters of candles with sapphire cedar adorned our guest tables. Ruscus and eucalyptus climbed over a set of vintage doors that served as our alter. I got a crazy idea from Pinterest to have a flower wall as our photo area. Melanie and her girls took gold washi tape and a ton of blooms to a beautiful white wall in the venue. It was one of my favorite elements. We had eucalyptus and roses hanging from chandeliers over our dance floor. Melanie's team made large letters out of Italian ruscus for above the bar that were so beautiful! Now when it came to our bouquets I am proud to say we handled that ourselves. My sister and I created all of the bridesmaid bouquets and mine the morning before the rehearsal while my mother knocked out the boutneers. They came out better than I could have imagined. Big burgundy dahlias, quick sand roses, and amnesia roses were the main flowers. It was nice to have that creative freedom and control over our final look!
Our ceremony was so sweet and simple. We were married under an alter of vintage doors covered in roses, dahlias, and eucalyptus. Candles lined the walls and wrought iron chandeliers hung from the ceiling. We had my sisters boyfriend and his best friend play acoustic guitar and cello for our friends and family. They played some of our favorite Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and Beach Boys songs. I walked down the aisle to an instrumental version of Beyoncé Halo, most would not notice that's what it was but people who knew me well picked up on it! My officiant and I wrote out ceremony script together wanting to make it just right for Taylor and I. It was a perfect representation of us! We exited to God Only Knows by the Beach Boys.
