Cameron + Taylor
(June 10, 2023 in Spokane, WA)
Welcome back to the Ivory Blog, your go-to destination for real brides and their exquisite weddings! In this captivating blog post, we take you on an enchanting journey through the stunning wedding of one of our real brides at the picturesque Arbor Crest in Spokane, WA. Join us as she delves into the meticulous process of discovering the perfect vendors and imparts her invaluable #1 tip for future brides. Get ready to be utterly inspired by the love, beauty, and cherished moments that unfold in this remarkable celebration!
By our real bride, Cameron:
What was the vision for your wedding?
We knew very early on that we wanted to get married at Arbor Crest. We had some dates there and it just felt right. We also knew we wanted everyone to be comfortable at the wedding and have fun. Taylor kept saying our wedding's theme was "fancy causal" and that truly was the vibe we were going for.
It was important to Taylor that we were able to bring our families together since a lot of our family is out of town and it was important to me that our wedding would feel warm and inviting while having things available for everyone do to throughout the event.
We spent a lot of time vetting our vendors but we truly went with our gut. It seemed like once we found someone we were really interested in, they were the ones we ended up booking.
I really wanted a food truck. I loved the idea of our guests going to the food truck to get their dinner. We were able to find one that fit our vision perfectly. I am also from Hawai'i so we found Island Style Food Truck and their food was phenomenal. We felt we hit the jackpot there.
When looking for videographers, Taylor loves to recall the moment he found me sitting in the living room, crying, while watching videos from Ferguson Films. He knew we had to book them from that moment.
We started looking for vendors waaaay in advance to ensure we did not have to settle for anything and it truly paid off.
How did it go the day-of?
The day of the wedding went perfectly. I woke up feeling so incredibly calm. Part of that was because I knew I could not change anything now but a bigger part was because I had total confidence in all our vendors and even if something came up, we had the team to handle it. Our coordinator, Paige Martin, was a dream come true for us. So much credit for how smooth our day went goes to her.
I made sure everyone who needed to be somewhere had an agenda with our entire day timeline and sent that out a week beforehand. This made sure everyone had the details they needed and if they did ask me later on, I would just say "refer to the agenda!".
We did what resonated with us for the ceremony and wedding events. We had our friend officiant and we would not have had it any differently. He did the most perfect job and added so much love to the ceremony. We wrote our own vows and we both were surprisingly not as nervous to read them as we thought! We just were filled with love and happiness in the moment and it truly felt like it was just us two up there. We re-joined cocktail hour after we had a moment alone (highly recommend a moment alone after the ceremony!). We only did a first dance with each other and loved that we did that.
We tried to add in thoughtful details anywhere we could: we had our dogs’ portraits printed on our cocktail napkins, we used our favorite locations instead of table numbers, I created a photo scavenger hunt for the kiddos, all our songs we picked out for throughout the night had memories attached to them. It really felt like OUR day.
What is your #1 tip to future brides?
Truly make sure you do what YOU want. This is your day. One of the best things Taylor and I did was that we talked about what we wanted for our day and then we listed out what we needed to do to make that happen. We really did not ask for any input from others when we were in the decision-making phase. Once we got all our details figured out, we looped everyone who needed to be in and went from there.
We told everyone what our vision was and what was important to us and set the tone early on that this was what we were going to do. Everyone in our circle was so supportive of us through every decision regardless but it helped US feel very solid in what we were doing.
