Artful, Family Centered Kentucky Farm Wedding

This week, I am so excited to share the entire design story of Lauren + Jason’s wedding. You may have seen me post pictures as the day unfolded in July, but I haven’t shared the entire beautiful day with you and I feel like I need to before the year ends! It was one of my highlights of 2019 and a true delight to work with a bride who I aligned so tightly with. If this were the last wedding of my career, I would have left the industry completely happy.

My brides are usually artists, designers or stylists (with the occasional nurse or hair stylist thrown in) The commonality between all these professions is that they are all empathetic, sensitive, and visual (aka, me.) I know I’ve said this before but it’s funny how so many of us start businesses and lose sight of who our ‘ideal’ clients are - they are US. We start a business to fill a void - something we alone can offer. So, when ideal clients come back around, the job feels effortless in many ways.

Lauren and I spoke the same language from the start. She wanted a warm, harmonious event where aesthetics were one of the top priorities. She wanted everyone to feel warm and welcome and understood that the look and feel of the space contributes to that. Ashbourne is an absolutely incredible venue that provides a lot of that warmth in it’s amazing interior design already. We wanted to play off that - design the event around what was already there, rather than try and transform it.

As L is an artist, I knew from the very beginning it was important to have her art woven through the design. Together, we created a color palette to work from, with 20 different shades, lol, but neither of us thought it seemed that crazy to do - when you are inspired by nature, it happens haha. I took the 20 different Pantone colors we selected and created a floral recipe that inspired the rest of the wedding design.

My floral recipe for this wedding was full of colorful, mid-summer blooms, based on our Pantone selections. We planned to have fruiting branches, roses, dahlias, protea, amaranthus, foraged summer ‘weeds’, snapdragons, rusty oak leaf hydrangeas, and pomegranates. I asked Lauren to use that as inspiration and paint some flowers so we could use them as a seamless connector throughout the rest of the stationery for the wedding. She created the most beautiful floral artwork that we used on the invitation vellum wrap, the envelope liner, the menus, the ceremony program, the coasters….anywhere we could add that special touch, we added it.

Gift giving is my love language and I LOVE shopping for and styling a welcome basket for wedding guests who have come in from out of town. The goal is to treat them for making the effort to come all the way in from wherever they live. They showed our couple love so we show them a little extra love.

I curated this basket with pretty items in pretty bottles and containers in the colors of the wedding and added in a little bit of Kentucky via Woodford Reserved bourbon balls.

From the moment we started talking about L+J’s ceremony, I envisioned them standing in a garden. Well, Ashbourne didn’t have a flower garden so I knew we were going to have to build one. I used a mix of potted plants and faux flowers to build it and when we finished it, it honestly took my breath away. With the billowing draping of the tent and the breeze blowing the taller blooms from side to side, it was calming, sweet and colorful.

We picked this spot for the ceremony because of the beautiful view of the rolling hills. Because of the time of day of the ceremony and the fact that it was mid-July, we opted to bring in All Occasions Event Rental to build us a structure tent with no gables so it didn’t block the sightline. We added the pink draping to the ceiling to not only hide the steel beams but also to add some softness to the structure. Since the ceremony was happening during daylight, we didn’t need any lighting so it was a clear view all the way through. It became a garden under a pavilion, with a nice breeze in the middle of the summer 🌸.

I don’t think I am able to describe the ceremony and do it justice. The whole thing was so emotional and intentional, it brought tears to all of us!

To show their service and humility to one and other, L+J had a foot washing ceremony and it was my favorite part. It was so intimate and such a beautiful way to show their family and friends their commitment through their faith.

As a gift, I commissioned Kristen of Kristen Falkirk Tileworks to make a pitcher and bowl for them to use for this ritual and hope it will be something they treasure (until one of their future kids accidentally breaks it 😏)

We wanted L + J’s reception to feel comfy, cozy, colorful and layered. For the head table, we placed rugs underneath the tables to warm up the room. We had light pink custom linen tablecloths (that they took home after the wedding!) made at cafe table length so you could still see the rustic legs of the farm tables. On these tables we had various types of beeswax taper candles and votive candles in pretty floral dishes. We placed lush arrangements of blooms in Camp di Fiori vases and single stem bud vases in the center, so the entire tablescape connected with color and texture.

For the rest of the tables, we used soft green linen tablecloths to the floor and did varying centerpieces of connected bud vases and smaller lush compotes and piles of styled flowers and pomegranates on ceramic dishes.

The ‘placemat’ for this wedding was one of my favorite details, ever. We used L’s florals and had them printed on round vellum translucent paper. On the head table pink linens, we did pink paper menus and on the green linens we did light green menus.

Curious what was on the menu for dinner? Ashbourne Farms food is just absolutely incredible. To start, they had chilled tomato and cucumber gazpacho with grilled prawns toasted almonds and picked grapes. As an entree, they had short ribs and butter poached lobster, with truffled potato gratin, roasted asparagus with a summer truffle demi-glace and bernaise. For dessert, they had wedding cake, blood orange macarons, donut bites, and tartlets all from Scarlet's Bakery.

One of THE sweetest parts of the evening was that our groom serenaded his lovely bride for their first dance! We coordinated this surprise with the band and it had us all in tears.

Thank you L + J for trusting us to curate this entire experience for you. It was a true J O Y.