real brides

It's time to celebrate the most romantic season of the year with our featured weddings! Each week we will be sharing an inspiring real wedding with insight from the bride on everything from the decor details to the honeymoon plans, as well as lots of gorgeous photos from the big day. Pin your favorites to take part in our Pinterest contest, and you could win a romantic getaway! Today we share a wedding that brought soft sparkle to the urban SmogShoppe in Culver City, CA.

When it came to picking bridesmaids, Tara knew exactly who to choose. She'd have her best friend since high school, Lisa, and Heather, her college pal and former roommate. It was Heather who set up Tara with her future husband. "Ryker and I met in college in San Diego," Tara tells us. "The first time we really hung out was when went to the same midnight movie showing with mutual friends. My roommate Heather told Ryker that she could see us getting together one day."

But Heather would have to wait awhile to become an official matchmaker. Tara and Ryker spent that Summer as friends before they fulfilled Heather's prophecy and started dating. After more than three years together, Ryker proposed. In fact, sneaky Ryker got Tara's other bridesmaid, Lisa, in on the engagement action, asking Lisa to hide with a camera so the proposal, and Tara's reaction, could be caught on camera, paparazzi-style.

During their nine-month engagement, Tara planned their November Southern California wedding. She mixed girlie elements — like pink, hearts, and sparkles — into the industrial setting of Culver City's SmogShoppe. Tara didn't shy away from DIY projects, making glittery table numbers and personalized photo cards for each guest's seating assignment. Although uninvited, rain showed up on their big day, but Tara and Ryker didn't mind. Tara tells brides to "remember what the day is really about: celebrating the commitment you're making to your partner with your loved ones."

Get a look at the sparkly urban celebration now, and see some of the unconventional elements Tara incorporated, including balloons instead of flowers, a food truck dinner, and doughnuts for dessert.

Photos by Michèle M. Waite

It's time to celebrate the most romantic season of the year with our featured weddings! Each week we will be sharing an inspiring real wedding with insight from the bride on everything from the decor details to the honeymoon plans, as well as lots of gorgeous photos from the big day. Pin your favorites to take part in our Pinterest contest, and you could win a romantic getaway! Today we share a rustic wedding that took place in front of an abandoned historic railway tunnel in Canada.

Paige wasn't looking for love when she took a hostess job at a restaurant down the street from her house in Kelowna, British Columbia, but love found her anyway when she met and fell for the "cute bartender" Kelvin. "We clicked immediately, but I wasn't looking for a relationship and kept turning him down," Paige says. "He was persistent, though, and we couldn't seem to stay away from each other!" Only a year after dating, Kelvin proposed, and then they took nine months to plan the big day.

Since the wedding took place in the Spring, Paige pulled her decor inspiration from the natural surroundings for the "vintage rustic" theme. There were bright wildflowers galore, and the outdoors were brought indoors for the chandelier-lit tented reception that was decorated with antique furniture, mismatched teacups, old barn wood, and wrought iron tables. "We wanted it to be a big party with good food, drinks, and a relaxed atmosphere," Paige says. "We wanted everyone to have as much fun as we were going to!"

While the decor was elaborate at the reception, the ceremony required little more than candles and flowers with its breathtaking backdrop. Paige and Kelvin said their "I dos" in the middle of a forest in the mouth of an abandoned train tunnel. "It was like an enchanted forest, with a lot of excitement and anticipation in the air! And being so removed from any 'civilization,' it felt like our wedding was the only thing happening in the world at the moment," Paige recalls. Despite a rainy morning, the sun came out for the hour of the ceremony, even topping the festivities off with a rainbow!

See more gorgeous photos of this rustic wedding, and learn more about how it came together when you click through.

Photos by Glen Durrell Photography

It's time to celebrate the most romantic season of the year with our featured weddings! Each week we will be sharing an inspiring real wedding with insight from the bride on everything from the decor details to the honeymoon plans, as well as lots of gorgeous photos from the big day. Pin your favorites to take part in our Pinterest contest — you could win a romantic getaway! Today we share a wintry wedding in Seattle.

Julie was the first of all her high school and college friends to get married. And both she and her fiancé, Jason, were the first of their generation in their families to tie the knot. Julie recalls, "The excitement and enthusiasm that surrounded our wedding was incredible and made the entire day far better than we could have ever imagined." But before we get to their November Seattle wedding, let's go back to a few Summers before, when they met.

Julie, who was living in San Francisco at the time, was out to dinner with some girlfriends on a Saturday night, when they were approached by two gentlemen, one of whom would become her husband. "After introductions were made," Julie recalls, "the guys nixed the chitchat and asked us if we would be interested in joining them — complete strangers — and a few of their friends in a limo to go wine tasting in Napa the following day." Julie and her girlfriends didn't commit, but the guys offered a time and place to meet them in the morning. "Lucky for them," Julie says, "we decided to show up." Had they not, Julie jests, "it would have been five guys in a 10-person limo going wine tasting in Napa. As my husband now describes the weekend, he and his friends were 'fourth and long' when they approached us at that restaurant." The bravado paid off, and after a friendship that quickly turned into a romance, Julie and Jason are now in it for the long run.

While they were dating, Julie and Jason moved down south to Los Angeles. But she decided to have the wedding in Seattle, where she grew up and where most of her family lives. Julie describes her November wedding as "wintry, romantic, and traditional." See photos of the wedding and reception, which took place at Seattle's Four Seasons, now, and learn how it all came together.

It's time to celebrate the most romantic season of the year with our featured weddings! Each week we will be sharing an inspiring real wedding with insight from the bride on everything from the decor details to the honeymoon plans, as well as lots of gorgeous photos from the big day. Pin your favorites to take part in our Pinterest contest — you could win a romantic getaway! Today we share a fun-filled wedding bash at a Northern California winery.

Teenage romance doesn't always last past graduation, but for high school sweethearts Kendall and Dustin a friendship sparked in yearbook class led to their "I dos." The pair met when Dustin was a high school senior and Kendall was a sophomore, and they dated for four years before they got engaged. A year later, they tied the knot at a local winery in Morgan Hill, CA.

Kendall explains that they wanted a traditional big day that was also big on fun. "We wanted our wedding to be a classic, fun celebration, and we wanted our guests to feel like an important part of our commitment, and to remember it as a lively event," she says. "We wanted to keep things traditional and classic, while also keeping things playful and representative of us, so we had things like a candy bar, and a live band that played all the classic hits."

See more beautiful photos of this vineyard-set wedding with the bride's commentary on how it all came together now!

Photos by Flory Photo

It's time to celebrate the most romantic season of the year with our featured weddings! Each week we will be sharing an inspiring real wedding with insight from the bride on everything from the decor details to the honeymoon plans, as well as lots of gorgeous photos from the big day. Pin your favorites to take part in our Pinterest contest — you could win a romantic getaway! Today we travel to Paris for Kaitlin and Aaron's intimate wedding celebration.

Kaitlin and Aaron are part of an international love story. They met at a nightclub in Alicante, Spain, the city where Kaitlin, who's American, was studying abroad and Aussie Aaron was taking time off from his job Down Under to travel. Kaitlin recalls their out-of-order introduction: "The night we met, he told me I was incredible, we kissed, and then we introduced ourselves." Next, they made the most of the month they had together before Aaron went on from Spain to travel more, staying in touch and meeting up again in Ireland for a few days before Kaitlin headed back to the States. They'd spend the next year and a half on opposites sides of the world, with Aaron in Sydney and Kaitlin near San Francisco. Once she graduated, Kaitlin packed her bags and moved to Australia. They've been together ever since, and after dating five years, they got engaged.

After a nine-month engagement, Kaitlin and Aaron invited friends and family to celebrate their wedding in Paris, France. Kaitlin says, "We were first married legally in Kenya — just the two of us and our two witnesses. Our second wedding in Paris was an intimate celebration of life and love. We wanted simplicity. Good food, good wine, and great company in a magical city. A fabulous celebration with people we loved." The ceremony took place at the iconic Hôtel de Crillon located at Place de la Concorde in the French capital.

Paris proved to be a lovely destination for both sides, coming from either America or Australia, and it also made for some stunning photos. See tons and learn more about how this destination wedding came together now.

It's time to celebrate the most romantic season of the year with our first featured wedding! Each week we will be sharing an inspiring real wedding with insight from the bride on everything from the decor details to the honeymoon plans, as well as lots of gorgeous photos from the big day. Pin your favorites to take part in our Pinterest contest — you could win a romantic getaway! Kicking off the series is Tessa and Tyrell's glamorous Canadian wedding!

Tessa and Tyrell met as staff members at Camp Firwood in Bellingham, WA, and they tried unsuccessfully to keep the relationship from getting too serious due to all the family ties at the camp. Tessa says, "Since we both have lots of family that has worked at Firwood, our first conversation was about how we could never get married — otherwise all of the Camp Firwood staff would be related!" But just a year later, they began their two-year dating relationship. They were engaged for six months before tying the knot.

Taking place outdoors at Tessa's family's home on Lake Okanagan in British Columbia, the wedding had a beautiful, nature-filled backdrop that didn't require much in the way of decor. "We didn't really have a theme for our wedding," Tessa says. "I just wanted it to be elegant. We chose to have it in the evening and have purple, charcoal, and black as our colors. We had lots of damask pattern in the dark colors, which I think helped us achieve the classy/sophisticated look that I wanted."

See more stunning photos of the wedding and learn more about how it came together now!

Photos by Glen Durrell Photography