Laura + Tom's Blue Ridge Mountain Wedding | Whitehall Manor | Bluemont, VA
Laura and Tom had a beautiful, bright wedding at Historic Whitehall ManorWe loved photographing Laura and Tom's sun-filled, romantic wedding day. Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains, Historic Whitehall Manor was the perfect backdrop for their celebration. The air was warm and everyone was overflowing with joy for Tom and Laura - including us! We asked Laura and Tom to reflect on their wedding day and share their experience with us. We loved reading their answers, so we've shared them with you below! Enjoy! The ceremony and getting to see all of our friends and family when we walked back up the aisle together as husband and wife! In no order, excluding ceremony since that was #1: - Speeches from Maid of Honor, Best Man and Father of Bride - Dancing all evening including the Father of the Groom's dancing (!!) - Seeing Laura's grandparents dancing together (first time) - Ending night with Bohemian Rhapsody with everyone in a circle with arms linked (which was a high school thing) - Bourbon part of the ceremony / bourbon unity ceremony - Maid of Honor and Best Man running endless laps around us when we tried to take the sparkler photo - And all of the crazy things they were saying throughout (Maid of Honor may have joked she was going to light the Best Man's pants on fire while running around with the sparklers haha!)
Laura's grandmother's handkerchief made of Irish lace was her "something old"; she incorporated "something borrowed" and "something blue" was a tennis bracelet from Laura's aunt. For her wedding day, Laura's wedding party made a personalized charm bracelet with a charms that they had each selected. This bracelet was used to hold the Irish lace handkerchief around Laura's bouquet. So sweet! Planning our Virginia wedding from California could be a challenge, particularly as we got closer to the date and were looking to figure out all of the decorations, favors, and gifts. There were a lot of labor-intensive tasks and some last minute errands that we couldn't do until we were back in Virginia the week leading up to the wedding but we got a lot of help from our family and friends. Google Docs was our friend throughout the planning process. Google Calendar... not so much when I realized I had mixed up travel dates and that we had a conflict the weekend we had originally selected to do our engagement photos in California :X Luckily, Katie was able to be flexible and change her travel dates and still photograph our engagement session in San Jose! It will give us an amazing, beautiful way to look back at our wedding day and relive the experience! Having Photos from the Harty capture all of the amazing moments from the wedding that we couldn't necessarily be a part of or witness directly and to see all of our family and friends and how they experienced our wedding day - it was perfect! It's also been incredible to be able to share photos with our family and friends who couldn't be there in person and to watch our loved ones' faces light up as they look through each photograph. Hiring Photos from the Harty for our engagement and wedding photography was one of the best decisions we made in planning our wedding!Off the bat, we were struck by how warm and friendly Sara and Katie were when we first spoke with them and how interested they were in getting to know us and to learn more about our wedding day. They were incredibly flexible and accommodating, chatting with us over the phone or via Google Hangout several times (since we now live out in California). Katie even traveled out to the west coast for our engagement session and we were able to include our dog in most of the photos - for which we were so grateful! On the day of our wedding, they did such an amazing job!! They were super friendly and easy to work with and were incredibly kind and patient working with our wedding parties and our families for formal group photos. Throughout the wedding, they captured so many amazing little moments, big and small, candid and formal, and all of their work has served as such beautiful reminders of our special day! You can really tell just how passionate and just how dedicated they are to their craft! Above all else, Sara, Katie and Chris were sincerely a pleasure to work with both throughout the entire planning process (including engagement photos) and on our wedding day. |
