Our incredible planner, Noelle, recruited a fantastic group of vendors for a dreamy styled shoot last August, and we’re really excited to share it in honor of Pride month! I’ll let Noelle share more below…

In August of 2021, we teamed up with an incredible group of vendors to produce a styled shoot that would eventually go on to be published by Love Inc. in January 2022 which was SO exciting! It was an honor to have our work featured with a company that is dedicated to sharing love stories, inspo, and more for couples of all orientations and backgrounds.

I hope you love this shoot and the designs as much as I do! This will always be a pride and joy of my work in this industry, and there was no better place and people to do it with.

I was originally inspired by a Chicago skyline sunset - the meeting of steely, sleek skyline and soft, vibrant watercolor skies. My commute from the suburbs to the city and back always lined up with the perfect late summer sunset and made the traffic sounds melt away. I couldn’t help but think how this stunning city staple would translate into an amazing color palette and design concept for a wedding - so off I went to create a mood board!

We were so so lucky to be able to hold our shoot at The Arbory. Their modern yet vintage take on a classic lofty venue, complete with custom New Orleans inspired woodwork, hand painted murals, and skylights galore. Taking inspiration from their vibe, I connected with Gerrit at Farmdog Flowers, who took the sunset vision and exploded it into some of the most stunning florals I have ever seen. With Emily Williams at the helm of photography, some gorgeous stationary by Erin Shannon Design, grooming by Beauty by Ann Krause, the perfect tablescape from Tablescapes, and an absolute knockout of a cake by ECBG Cake Studio, I knew I had the true Dream Team for this shoot.

It was incredibly important to me to feature a couple from the LGBTQIA+ community. So often we see wedding inspo that is saturated with cis white couples, the standard bride and groom set, but that’s only a portion of the weddings that actually take place in this world. Our real life couple, Zach (he/they) and Noel (he/they) jumped on to have the fake wedding of their dreams, and to help us show that love is love is love, always.

After bringing all these elements together, I quickly realized that my Chicago sunset inspiration had morphed into an exercise of melding together the masculine and feminine. Our industry leans heavily on the dichotomy between the female wedding experience and the male wedding experience, what a bride wears and what a groom wears, what a bride's bouquet looks like and what a groom's boutonniere should be. But what happens when you blend them together? When one person is a bride and a groom? That’s what I really leaned into for this shoot: the idea that masculine and feminine can be embodied in one event, one person, and one relationship. There is beauty in blending the binary, and these vendors, Noel, and Zach helped us show that.

Shout out to the incredible team that brought their artistry to this shoot, for their collaboration, and for being some of the absolute best of the business. We wouldn’t be able to have created this beauty without you!