Who to choose, who to choose....

Once we decided to get married at Sean's church (Holy Family Catholic Church in Brentwood), we needed to decide where to have the reception. The first place we visited was Lillie Belle's in Historic Downtown Franklin.

Lillie Belle's is a historic Queen Anne style Victorian house that was built in 1892. They serve lunch and host teas, baby and bridal showers, rehearsal dinners and wedding receptions. If you want you can even getting married at the house. While it is quite charming, in the end, it was not the style that we envisioned for our wedding. http://www.lilliebelles.net/index.html

The next site that we visited was CJ's Off the Square which also located in Historic Downtown Franklin. While CJ's was much more our style with it's indoor art gallery and outside tent with garden, it was not large enough to host all of our guests. http://www.cjsoffthesquare.com/

Sean's mom works for Saturn and told us about the local UAW hall. We agreed to check it, but to be honest, I was apprehensive about anything called a hall. In the end, we were pleasantly surprised. The "hall" was very open with high ceilings and a large dance floor. It also has beautiful chandeliers and sconces along with walls. Plus, we got a great deal which allowed us to put the extra money toward the lighting I really wanted.

Now that we knew where the festivites would be taking place, it was time to start with the many other factors. At the top of my list was finding a photographer that was a mix of creativity, modern and fun. After doing a lot of researchand some recommendations, I narrowed our choiced down to three. Our first appointment was with Whitney and Peter Carlson of Dove Wedding Photography. Instantly, I was drawn to them and their style. They are this young, artsy, down to earth married couple. While Peter mostly handles the business affairs, Whitney and Jenn our the actual photographers. The other cool thing about their company is that Jenn resides in Atlanta, so they cover a wider area than just Nashville.

After our meeting with them, I took a day to think it over and decided to book them. We did not even meet with the other two photographers that I had on our final list. My gut was telling me to go with Dove, and so we did. Not only did they end up shooting our wedding, we also did an engagement session with them last May. I was so thrilled with that single experience, that I also decided to do a bridal session.

Today, I am so very thankful that we chose Dove. Not only do we have some amazingly gorgeous photos that we will treasure forever, I also feel that we made some new friends. There will definitely be more to come here in regards to Dove because they were one of my favorite, if not my fave, wedding vendor.

Please check out their site. http://www.doveweddingphotography.com/ If you visit their blog and scroll down a few posts, you will see some photos from our wedding day. http://www.doveweddingphotography.blogspot.com/

In my next post, I will post some of my fave pics that the extremely talented Whitney and Jenn captured. Until then, be full of love; joy and peace.

2007: The Year of the Wedding

So the majority of 2007 was spent planning my marriage to Sean. I never knew how much work goes into a wedding! Since details are important to me, I did a ton of online research before making any final decisions.

First big decision we made was to have our wedding and reception here in Nashville. Originally, we considered doing a destination wedding somewhere in the Carribean. However, in the end, we decided that we really wanted all of our family and friends with us on such a special day.

Here are a couple of my fave online wedding resources for any of you brides to be out there.

The Knot was a huge help, so I definitely recommend checking out their website. They even have local boards so that you can get ideas and tips from brides in your area. http://theknot.com

Another great online resource is Weddingbee (which I still read today even though I have been a married woman for nearly three months). When we were planning the wedding, they were looking for bloggers. I was tempted but did not know how good I would be at keeping up with the blog demand. http://weddingbee.com

Next, I will talk more about how I found my specific vendors. We were so blessed to find some really wonderful people to work with!

The Story of Us

I officially met Sean in November of 2005 at work. While we worked in different departments, we sat near each other for a few months before ever speaking to one another. Finally, we said hello while I was frantically running back and forth to the copier near his desk.

Soon after, he added me to his inter-office IM and we began chatting on a daily basis. One thing lead to another, and we began dating in January 2006. Since I had just gotten out of a long relationship, I was totally not looking for something serious. Of course, you know what that means. Yup, I feel in love in a matter of months.

Sean proposed on Saturday, November 25, 2006 while we were having dinner at Opryland Hotel here in Nashville. I was completely shocked since we had been talking about a possible spring 2007 engagement. After I gained my compsure (tears stopped briefly), I said yes!

Fall has always been my favorite time of year, so I had dreamed about having a fall wedding for a long time. Once we looked over the football schedules for our alma maters (Auburn and University of TN), we set the date as November 17, 2007. Yes, you read that correctly. We had to plan our fall wedding around college football. If we had scheduled the wedding on a big game day, our guests (and the groom) would have been preoccupied. Crazy SEC fans!!!

Having a date set, the next step was to choose where we would be married. More details in the next post....