It was a dream come true to have my wedding featured on BRIDES.com last week!

They wrote a beautiful feature that told Jon's and my love story and put a spotlight on so many wonderful highlights from our day. Big thank you to BRIDES for that lovely write up which you can read in full here.

Photos taken by Amanda K Photography

In this blogpost I'll be spotlighting our amazing vendors that were a part of our day & sharing some additional photos.

So here it goes!

As you may know from past blogposts and following along on Instagram, my husband and I planned a destination wedding at a romantic chateau in Provence, France. Our vision was to take our closest family and friends on an adventure in one of the most romantic and classic places of all time while we celebrated our love.

Planning from afar was much more intense than what we had imagined but luckily we had a fantastic wedding planner that helped us every step of the way and we were extremely lucky to be introduced to our insanely talented photographer, Amanda K Photography and florist, Krissy of Boston Pollen.

With those three women on our team the next thing we embarked on was the creation of our invitation suite.

This was a super fun process! To begin the work on our wedding invites I reached out to Juliana Nahas-Viilo of Veraly & Co, a fellow artist from my home state of Michigan, to create our custom crest and filigree for our invitation. Her work as you can see above is absolutely stunning! She took direction extremely well and handled all of my requests with grace and efficiency. 

Next, we worked intimately with Minted to create the remaining details of our invite + the additional parts of our wedding invitation suite, such as our custom made map of Aix en Provence, France and insert cards with our wedding week details. I can't recommend them enough! I'm actually ordering my Holiday cards with them this week!

Once our invitations were in the process of being made,...

I went full on with finding my dress. Which is no small feat! Believe me, my Mom can attest to the 10 places we went to and the countless dresses I tried on. At first I had two different (actually complete opposite) ideas in my head of what I would wear as my gown. Lots of tulle, flowy and princess-eque or fit as a glove with an elegant and classic feel. I'm sure other brides can relate to my experience! 

As you may have read on this Instagram post, once I honed in on what exactly I wanted in my dress it was strikingly hard to find all the little details that I wanted in a wedding dress. SO... I bought a top from one designer and a bottom from another and completely destructed them and then put them back together to form, essentially, a completely new dress. Originally if you can imagine this, the top was not form fitting and the bottom had a larger 'belt' on the top of the gown and it wasn't quite as form fitting around the bum. I am so thankful that I found my tailor, Veda of Shirley's Alterations & Designs who worked with me for a total of 8 ...or maybe 9 appointments over 5 months to make the dress of my dreams. 

Besides my wedding jewelry, which I kept very simple with the Linked Choker in solid gold, the last touch was my veil which I worked with designer, Mihca Cho on. Again, I kept it very simple, a cathedral length veil with a modern refined hand sewn quarter inch silk satin ribbon. It is truly a timeless piece that I'll keep forever!

As my dress and veil were being made, I was pinning endlessly on Pinterest from what felt like dawn until dusk on the daily. Again, I'm sure all my fellow brides out there went through this too! It's amazing how much Pinterest can help during the process of planning a wedding. Especially since we were working with a wedding planner in France, the time change could be challenging at times so I relied on my Pinterest boards to speak on my behalf of what we were going for when it came to our color scheme + furniture, florals, table and place settings, ceremony area, and the list goes on! I mean what did we do before Pinterest, honestly?!

I could talk endlessly about our wedding with you (it's so fun!) but in an effort to keep this short and sweet, I'll let our feature on BRIDES + the images below do the talking! If there's anything else you're curious about, tell me in the comments below and I'll be sure to get back to you! 

Lastly, before I sign off, I want to shine another spotlight on everyone involved in our wedding. Below is a list of all of the vendors who were essential to helping Jon and I create the wedding we always wanted. Thank you, thank you, thank you, from the bottom of our hearts! 

XOXO, Katie 

Wedding planner, @weddingbymademoisellec | Photographer @amandakphotoart | Florals, @bostonpollen 

Wedding dress top & bottom purchased at: Lovely Bride SF | Shoes: Gucci | Veil, @mihcacho | Wedding dress tailoring, Shirley’s Designs | Bridesmaid dresses, @birdygrey  | Venue, @chateaugrimaldi | Chef, Steven Borishansky | Rentals, @maison_options | Paper goods the day of, @cremedepapier | Cake, @madeincake | Live music, Kingswood String Quartet | Hair, @styleelectric | Officiant, @mrs_corrine | Wedding Invitations | Suite @Minted | Crest + Filigree Design @veralyco  | Videographer, @duncan_dimanche | DJ, @tonymartinezofficial 

{ Bridesmaid dresses by Birdy Grey }