Jekyll Island Microwedding With A Gold Flecked Veil
What do we love about this Jekyll Island microwedding? Well… everything. Hope and Tyler’s courtyard pond ceremony is bursting with warm colors from rust and ochre to paprika and white sand. Their portraits from Love & Covenant beneath canopies of drippy Spanish moss are uber romantic. And their portico dinner featuring oatmeal velvet linens, cane back chairs and flickering candles in brass holders is an ambiance we simply live for. While scaling down from a 300 person guest count to one just under 30 was no easy decision, we adore the way it allowed them to level up on epic floral moments from Marble & Pine, designer fashion, a family style feast and fine art photography & cinematography that will stand the test of time.
From the Bride: When the pandemic started in March we knew we should start considering Plan B’s for our November wedding. I reached out to all of our vendors to see how they were handling the situation and asked for their travel policies in case we had to change locations. In July we made the difficult decision to cancel our original 300 person wedding in Maryland. It was really important to us to have our wedding before my (now) husband got deployed so we decided to pivot and have a micro wedding close to our current home.
I have always loved autumn for the vibrant leaves and cool weather so I never imagined anything other than a fall wedding. I immediately got to work trying to bring “fall” to coastal Georgia and I knew the way to make that happen was through our florist. We were very lucky that some of our vendors from Maryland were able to travel and keep our contracts, and while we were sad to lose others it was a blessing in disguise because we truly had the best team on our wedding day. Our florist and rental company captured our vision so beautifully. For florals I had focused a lot on hues and tones I wanted to use since I don’t know much about flowers and they absolutely killed it. Our rental company made custom stands to string lights across our dinner table during our reception which was no small feat. Our venue has stunning architecture and landscaping so we wanted to compliment it as much as possible and enhance the features it offered. The best part of our venue is everyone stayed on the property together so we were able to enjoy every moment of our weekend together. I also wanted to make our budget go as far as possible so we repurposed a lot of structures from our ceremony to be used during our reception. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw our dinner table and it was incredible that all of this was designed and accomplished with less than 90 days of planning.
We knew we wanted to prioritize photography and videography with our budget since we would look at these photos and videos forever. Having a photographer who could shoot both film and digital was my top requirement. I feel like film has a look that can’t be replicated, it is so timeless and has a fine art feeling. Finding Angel was fate because he was available for our date due to a cancellation. I knew after looking through his galleries he could capture all of the little details of our day and tell the story of our wedding day through photos. I wanted to have total trust in our photographer to get all of the candid moments and small details that we worked hard on and not fret about them being captured and that’s exactly what Angel delivered! Our videographers also totally nailed our request to make our videos fun and lively and convey the total joy and love we felt all day. We decided to also hire a live painter since we felt it would be cool for guests to see with limited dancing and also have art to hang in our home from our wedding day. Brittany Branson was amazing and it is something I’d encourage every couple to look into for their wedding!
There is no “right” way to proceed with weddings right now. I joined so many bridal support groups because at times I felt so heartbroken and then guilty about feeling heartbroken since there is so much loss at the moment. It felt like the only people who could understand were other couples experiencing it too. People dream of their weddings their entire lives, and because the wedding industry is booming many livelihoods depend on it. This year showed us that we should never take another day or year for granted so we were committed to having our wedding and celebrating our love and also adhering to any restrictions to make it as safe as possibly. Our guests quarantined or tested negative prior to arriving, we hosted everything outside, and had custom masks and hand sanitizers. We made our seating chart based around who interacted together outside of our wedding and spoke with each guest about their comfort levels and concerns individually. It did hurt to not have all of our friends and families with us but we tried to include everyone by live streaming our wedding and this worked wonderfully. We both have no regrets about our micro wedding because it allowed us to spend more time with our guests and use more of our budget to make it a personalized experience. More importantly, we were able to commit our lives to each other forever and it felt extra special to do that during this trying time.
Did you catch the pockets in Hope’s 2nd dress?! Now that’s the way to do bridal! This Jekyll Island microwedding is a wonderful reminder that no matter the circumstances of the world, love will conquer all. See more real microweddings here!
Wedding Vendors:
Venue: Crane Cottage
Photography: Love & Covenant
Videography: TLIC Media
Floral Design: Marble & Pine
Bridal Dress Boutique: North Fork Bridal Shoppe and One Love Bridal Outlet
Wedding Dress: Essense of Australia
Hair & Makeup Artist: Southern Belle by Maria Noel
Groom’s Tux: The Black Tux
Bridesmaids & Groomsmen Attire: Assorted Dresses and The Black Tux
Invitation Suite: Magnet Street
Signs: Created by the Bride
Linens: Beachview Rentals
Catering & Bar: Jekyll Island Club Resort
DJ: Island Sound DJ