I just love Lowndes Grove Plantation. There’s always something special about a beautiful Southern home right by the water, and these photos by Tim Will do it just the right amount of justice. Elizabeth + Alex chose to have their ceremony on the front lawn, and we think that the gorgeous white facade of the house serves as the perfect backdrop. I can’t get over how timeless Elizabeth looks in her lace dress or the fun news that the couple surprised their guests with. (Read on to find out what it is!)

Don’t you just love the varied tones of Elizabeth’s bridesmaids’ gowns? Mixed skirts and a matching top make the look come together.

What Southern details or traditions did you include in your celebration? What was Southern about your wedding? Boiled peanuts at the bar for guests to snack on, shrimp & grits and fried turkey on the dinner menu, flowers such as gardenias and touches of cotton in the bouquets.

What’s a Southern reception without some lawn games? The custom wooden sign by the bocce ball is such a fun addition.

What was your most memorable moment about your wedding day? Telling guests we were expecting a baby by posting “Baby On Board” on the back of the car as we exited the reception.
What’s next for you as a couple? What are you looking forward to in the future? Our baby girl is due this April. In the fall, we’re moving to Peru for Alex’s job.

In what month did you get married? September on Labor Day Weekend! Since it was a Holiday weekend, all guests were also invited to a Saturday afternoon meet & greet at the Rooftop at Vendue Inn for snacks, drinks and football.
How many guests attended your wedding? 150
Our favorite detail of the wedding was: The Voices of Deliverance performing for the ceremony.
Describe your wedding flowers: Peonies, garden roses, hydrangea, ranunculus, gardenias, lisianthus, dusty miller, lambs ear, touches of lavender. We had a mixture of milk glass containers and mason jars.
Describe your wedding cake or dessert: It was a two-tier lace design by Jim Smeal to mimic my dress along with gourmet s’mores with homemade chocolates such as orange, chipotle, peanut butter & peppermint.
What was the biggest challenge you had to overcome while planning your wedding? I plan entertainment for large scale events on cruise ships, which took me out of the country for days and weeks at a time.
What is the one thing you are most happy you splurged on? Our letterpress stationery with custom hand-drawn images by artist Sarah Watts.

Photographer: Tim Will // Planner: Carrie Glasscock of A Charleston Bride // Venue: Lowndes Grove Plantation // Florist: A Charleston Bride // Wedding Cake or Dessert Baker: Jim Smeal // Caterer: FISH Catering for Patrick Properties Hospitality Group // Rentals: Snyder and Event Dining Rental Solutions // Custom Table Runners: A Charleston Bride // Lighting: Technical Event Company // Paper Products: Art by Sarah Watts, printing by Sas-E Ink // Hair: Canvas Salon // Entertainment: Quiana Parler & Friends // Transportation: Trolley from Absolutely Charleston, Bentley from Royal Limo

Love this wedding? You might also love these:
Ashley + Patrick’s Southern garden wedding here and here.
Brooke + Victor’s Lowndes Grove wedding here and here.
Candice + Jimmy’s pink Lowndes Grove wedding here and here.

Sometimes, the tiniest details just sing in a wedding, don’t they? I knew the instant I saw these delightful favors that they’d be perfect for a Southern Spotting. Southern food is a huge part of Carly and Rich’s lives, and so muslin bags of biscuit mix, tied off with Carly’s grandmother’s biscuit recipe, were a perfect offering to their guests. Lucky & Lovely did a beautiful job with the design, too!

The lovely bride, Carly, let us in on the inspiration behind these special favors:

“Since our Southern roots are deep, we wanted our guests to enjoy a something Southern with their family or friends when they returned home from our wedding. My grandmother always made homemade buttermilk biscuits for anyone who might drop by for a visit. I will always cherish the fun and memories of cooking with grandma, and we hope our guests can carry this tradition on in their families for year to come!”

Our thanks to CWF Photography for sharing these lovely images with us!

It’s Wednesday, which means it’s time for another Emily Plans a Wedding post! Yippee!

Wayyy back in the cold of January, I told you about some of my favorite flowers, bouquets, and boutonnieres. I also introduced you to our wonderful florist, Blush Floral Design. At the end of the post, I promised to share my ceremony and reception floral and decor inspiration next.

We-e-ell it’s now the end of April, but I’m finally ready to share, so let’s not waste another minute! To recap, I love a lush, garden (but still refined) look in my flowers, and some of my favorite varieties are garden roses, sweet peas, ranunculus, clematis, poppies, camellias, and azaleas. I also love mixing in fruit, like blackberries and crab apples.

For our ceremony, we’re keeping things super simple. Our chapel is absolutely gorgeous, in my opinion, and there’s really no need to dress it up. In fact, we might end up not doing a single thing to it. That decision was in part made by our budget, but mostly, I just don’t think it needs it. If our budget does allow, I would love to do two floral wreaths on the front doors, perhaps like one of these options:

Martha Stewart Weddings and Stacy Able via Style Me Pretty

I would also love to set two small boxwood bushes on the steps of the chapel, just like we did for a Southern Weddings shoot last year. Love the addition of white blooms! We’re looking into the option of renting bushes from a home improvement or garden store to help keep costs down.

Katie Stoops via Southern Weddings (floral by Merriment Events) and via Southern Exposures

After the ceremony, it’s on to cocktail hour! This happy event will take place on a wide porch and the lawn in front of it at our reception site (see this post again for a refresher). Here, we’ll have a few high-top tables decked out in beautiful linen from La Tavola. In fact, the linen we’re using from La Tavola is largely the basis for our color scheme. It’s a little pricy, so we’re using it sparingly, but the color is perfection – so much so, that I’ve been carrying my swatch around with me for the past eight months, so that I can whip it out at a moment’s notice to illustrate a point or judge the color of a potential purchase! Yes, I am slightly ridiculous. Prior to making a decision, I requested several samples, and our linen of choice is the one in the bottom right corner – Tuscany Ocean.

In person, it’s a bit lighter than it looks in this photo – the color is actually somewhere more in between what’s shown here and the top left linen.

I’m not positive, but I think this might be it in action:

Jose Villa via Style Me Pretty and Jonathan Canlas via Snippet & Ink

We’re going to keep things nice and simple at cocktail hour (trusting that guests will be so interested in arriving at the reception site, mingling with each other, and eating delicious food that they won’t notice much else!). We’ll put a few votive candles on each high top, and that’s it! No florals here. We’ll also have our guest book and a limited bar to keep guests interested.

Once cocktail hour is finished, we’ll invite guests into our Sperry tent (yay!). As we discussed before, we’ll be having a mix of different seating options – high-top tables, small rounds, and lounge furniture. Our florist will be putting together lovely small arrangements for the high-tops and round tables, as well as low, longer arrangements for the tables in our lounge areas. Here are a few images that are inspiring me:

From top to bottom: Michael + Anna Costa (flowers by Florette), Poppies & Posies, Virgil Bunao via Southern Weddings, Jodi Miller Photography, Lisa Lefkowitz via Snippet & Ink (flowers by Ariella Chezar), Martha Stewart Weddings

Note that these examples aren’t so much about colors, but more about styles and flowers I enjoy.

One project my family and I have been busy as bees with is collecting silver pieces to house the centerpieces. It’s been a group effort, and I’m happy to say we’re just about finished! (If you’d like the back story on how and where we’re finding these pieces, you can check here, here, and here.) I don’t want the reception to have a vintage look overall, so we’re hunting down clean, stream-lined pieces that are in good shape (i.e. no banged up teapots). Here are a few images that are inspiring me:

Thuss + Farrell, Picotte Weddings, Jessica Claire (flowers by Flowerwild), Steve Steinhardt (flowers by Holly Flora via Inspired By This)

Besides the guest areas, we’ll also have at least one bar and several food tables, and probably a favor and dessert area. Our caterer is exceptionally good at food presentation, so I’m not too worried about adding additional decor to the food tables. I will be creating some signage and other little touches, though (but you knew that already, right?). I’m also considering adding some greenery arrangements to these areas, but I haven’t discussed this yet with my florist, so I’m not sure what the pricing would be. Some inspiration:

Top and right by Adrian Tuazon via 100 Layer Cake, left by Lisa Berry (flowers by Blush Floral Design)

And that’s about that! What do you think? What sorts of flowers will you have at your reception? Are you having any decor at your ceremony?

Up next: Accessories! Shoes, veil, jewelry… fun, fun, fun!

In case you missed a post…
The main characters
Where we’re getting married
I go dress shopping
We choose a photographer
I ponder bridesmaid style
Mini food!
The music
We’re renting a tent!
We discuss bouquets + boutonnieres
We send out our save the dates
I gather hair and makeup inspiration
We talk cake and sweets
I introduce you to our videographer
We create a registry
We buy a tuxedo

My goodness, it’s an exciting day already, what with our new Maile Lani giveaway, but it’s about to get even better! The Southern Weddings gals are so excited to say that we’ve recently partnered with the visual search engine Lover.ly!

What does this mean for y’all? Only that you’ll now be able to find tons of your favorite Southern ideas in the most edited visual search engine online. Yahoo!!

For those who aren’t familiar with Lover.ly, here’s a brief primer:

– Lover.ly allows you to easily search, discover, and save your favorite wedding ideas. Just like Pinterest, you can then access these images from anywhere and on the go.
– Unlike Pinterest, there are only wedding images in the search engine, making it perfect for engaged ladies (and gents!) like yourselves to get to the good stuff quick. The images are also pulled only from top wedding blogs (like SW!), so you know you’re getting the good stuff, sans duds.
– A super awesome component of Lover.ly is that every image comes with vendor attribution, so you can actually see who created that amazing bouquet, or wear to buy those amazing shoes. Love this!!
– Our last favorite feature of Lover.ly? Because of the super intense tagging of the images that goes on behind the scenes, it’s possible to get very specific search results (for example, cake –> fondant –> multi-tier –> pink). Perfect for when you know exactly what you’re looking for!
– You can save images in Bundles (like “Stripes” or “Monograms” or “Bow Ties”), or if you’re not sure how you’d like to categorize an image, you can simply add it to your “Loved” Bundle.
– Best of all? You can keep as many Bundles as you’d like private! Perfect for keeping an element of suspense among your guests, or for brainstorming bridesmaid gift ideas!

Ready to get going? Just head over to Lover.ly and sign up for an account! Be sure to check out the SW account while you’re there – we’ll be bundling and sharing right alongside you!

Oh y’all! We’re always on board for a great giveaway, but this one has got us over-the-moon excited! One of the most common things brides tell us was worth splurging for is a great photographer. We all know that nothing could replace the images from your big day, and finding a photographer you love is so important.

Maile Lani and Southern Weddings partnered up for a giveaway two years ago, and we just ate up all of the responses we received. In the end, Bonnie + Brent won and a year later, we featured their lovely Florida wedding on the blog. (See it here and here.)

Of course, we hopped right on board when Maile suggested we partner up for another giveaway! Don’t her romantic Southern photos and light-play just steal your heart?

Readers, now is your chance! If you’re planning a 2013 Southern wedding, follow the directions below to win a great photography package from Maile!

The lucky winner will receive the free wedding package described above but will be responsible for travel and accommodation fees for Maile, who is based in New Orleans. This contest closes on May 11. Then, we’ll post our three finalists on the blog and open it up to a vote!

Good luck! We can’t wait to see who will win!!