Tim and I met, through our close friend Brent, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula during winter break in 2016. I was living in Portland, Oregon working for Nike in Apparel Development at the time, and was visiting my hometown in Michigan for Christmas and New Year's. Tim was just finishing up his Mechanical Engineering degree at Michigan Tech University that month, and was roommates with Brent, who ended up being an usher at our wedding.
That winter break we spent most of our time hanging out at the boys' college house, playing boot hockey, skiing at Mount Bohemia and ice skating with our friends. Even though Tim was three years younger than me, we got to know each-other fairly quickly, because of all our shared connections through our church. Finally, after a week of hanging out with our mutual friends, Tim asked me out on our first date, two day before I flew back to Portland. We ended up hitting it off right away, and decided that long distance dating would be worth a shot. The year 2017 consisted of endless red-eye flights every 2-3weeks, long phone calls, facetime, and exciting adventures all over the USA. By the time 2017 was coming to a close, we were exhausted from all the travel and decided that we would get engaged before moving me back home to Michigan.
Tim and I were engaged on December 23, 2017 right before Christmas. The wedding planning started shortly afterwards, and we decide to have an outdoor wedding in the fall at my parents house, with high hopes for a gorgeous fall day.
The next big decisions we had to make were my dress and wedding theme. I grew up in my mom's sewing shop and attended school in Chicago for fashion design, so I was only natural that I would be designing and creating my own wedding dress, veil, cape, wedding decorations and floral arrangements. As for the wedding theme, Tim and I are from large families with children and wanted to have a theme that catered to both adults and children. We decide that our theme would be a formal fall festival!
I come from a long line of talented people, so almost everyone in my family had a hand in the creation of our dream wedding. Tim made the wooden box for our alter arrangement and helped to glitter all the pampas grass, that went in the back of the alter box, gold. My cousins helped to create the velvet pumpkins that were used around the entire venue, they also helped fold all the silverware in napkins with a ribbon and feather on each one. My dad found a local farmer to rent the hay bales from for the ceremony, and my aunt Eva helped me in the creation of the flower arrangements, with some assistance of friends and cousins. My Grandpa even got involved in the wedding creation and made 60 wooden chargers that were placed under our floral centerpieces and at the bridal tables place settings. My close friend Jamie made the wedding cake, and last, but definitely not least, my cousin Anders offered to catered smoked pulled pork for the event. Anders pulled two all-nighters before our wedding to prep and smoke all the meat for 300+ guests. The smoked pork was served with potatoes, salad, apple cider, cinnamon doughnuts and coffee. To say the whole event was it was phenomenal is simply an understatement.
The day of our wedding flew by quickly, but because we were all involved so much in the preparation, it felt like we were able to enjoy it before and after the wedding as well. All of our wedding helpers were gifted a gorgeous floral arrangement with flowers from Fifty Flowers, which I'm told lasted for weeks after our wedding!
Thank you Fifty Flowers for the amazing flowers and for getting all the flowers delivered to our door seamlessly! You made our wedding prep easy by being great partners to work with, and you helped us to make our day unique and special.
