Filed Under: Wedding Planning
A reflection on what went into my countryside wedding.
A few* (many many many weeks ago, I am very bad at this, I apologize), I asked on Instagram what questions you had about our wedding, and there were so many good ones so I’ve split it up into multiple parts. Part 1 is about how we built the wedding: the venue, the planning, the design, the details, and the things we chose to spend on.
The place came first
A lot of people asked about the “vision” for our wedding, and the truth is that it started with the place.
We got married at my husband’s father’s property in the Eastern Townships in Quebec, and from the beginning it felt like the whole wedding should take its cue from the land, the house, and the atmosphere already there. The goal was to make it feel like we were having all of our close friends and family over at a place that holds a lot of meaning for us.
Of course, a private property comes with its own set of realities. It is beautiful, but it is not an event venue. It is not set up for 99 people, a full dinner service, accommodations, rentals, staffing, timing, power, bathrooms, or weather contingencies. So while the property gave the wedding its feeling, it also created most of the logistical challenges.
Creative direction and production are not the same thing
My husband, Phil, my best friend Jean-François (who, coincidentally, also happens to be Phil's cousin), and I were the creative minds behind the wedding. We had a strong sense of how we wanted it to look and feel, and we were very hands-on throughout. Alison Forbes from Raisonnable Events helped bring that vision into reality by handling the very necessary production side.
She was thinking about supplier coordination, the tents, the bathrooms, timing, and all the practical details you do not instinctively think about when you decide to host a wedding on your in-laws’ property. For example, we had really nice portable bathrooms, which is such a funny detail to mention, but honestly, it matters!! That was exactly the kind of thing Alison made seamless. She was handling the functional side while Phil and I stayed close to the creative one.
I think if you are a very visual person, or you know what you want, it can actually be more helpful to work with someone who is strong on production and execution than someone who is trying to invent the aesthetic for you. I did not need someone to tell me what kind of wedding to have. I needed someone to help make our ideas work, and more importantly, to think of the things we would not think of until it was too late.
The look of it
From there, the wedding came together through a series of small choices that all belonged to the same world.
The land lent itself perfectly to a romantic countryside wedding so we leaned into that. A little vintage. Refined, but tied to the environment. The setting was already so beautiful that it never felt necessary to “over decorate” which no doubt helped us save so we could allocate the budget elsewhere.
Our dear friend Dan Climan did the graphic design, which I loved because it gave the wedding its own visual language. We made a little “logo” for the wedding that we used across the invitations, matchboxes, and other printed details.
A lot of the decor we sourced ourselves. We had a giant disco ball that we found on Facebook Marketplace. We used vintage tableware and serving pieces for cocktail hour. I loved collecting and bringing in objects that already had some life to them. It added to the feeling of hosting a party with our friends, rather than producing an “event.”
The florals were by Studio Sveja, including the grass chair. That was one of my favourite details because it subtly brought my own work with Centerpiece into the wedding. The vintage chair was wrapped with citaria grass and it sat somewhere between furniture, sculpture, and decor. We went with sunflower florals that were the “altar” and sunflowers without the petals were the table centerpieces.
What we splurged on and what we saved on
People also asked what we splurged on and what we saved on.
The answer is easy. We splurged on the food, wine, and drinks. By keeping the guest list relatively small, we were able to put more into the meal, which was prepared and served by Le Violon in Montreal. That was a non-negotiable for us. Food and wine mattered a lot, and we wanted dinner to feel generous and memorable.
What we saved on, in a way, was excess. We did not feel the need to fill the property with oversized decorations or things that did not really belong there. We worked with what was already beautiful and filled in selectively.
If I had to give one practical piece of advice from the planning side, it would be to keep your guest list tighter than you think. Invite the people you are really in conversation with. The people who are part of your actual life. That intimacy affects everything: the ceremony, the dinner, the dance floor, the morning after.
Wedding and a sleepover
We also really wanted people to stay on the grounds.
We are a very close group, and we wanted the wedding to feel like a big family gathering. We had 10 glamping tents and about 40 people stayed in them on the property. The glamping tents were from Tipi en Fête and, they were actually very spacious, fitting 2 queen beds in each tent. We got all the bedding from Amazon. The main tent was by Sperry.
Keeping people on site changed the rhythm of the weekend. Our closest friends slept there overnight and we continued the celebrations the next day with a little pond party for Phil’s 30th birthday. More on that in Part 2.
The thing we could not plan for
As for the “worst” investment, it was not really an investment in the literal sense. It was probably how emotionally invested we all became in the day not raining.
It had not rained on that date for decades. We were having an amazing summer weather wise, I could could on my one hand how many times it had rained. It did not rain before or after our wedding. And yet, of course, it rained on our wedding day.
Because we had planned so much around being outdoors and the weather being warm, we suddenly had to pivot. Cocktail hour, photos, decor, timing. All of it had to shift. We kept hoping to wait it out, and for a while that was the mood of the day, just looking at the sky and bargaining with it.
But that is the thing with weddings, or maybe just life. At some point, you stop trying to control the conditions and just begin.
And in the end, that became part of the beauty of it too.
The clouds parted right after the ceremony and the most incredible sunset appeared through the fog. It felt almost absurdly cinematic. Like the weather had put us through a full emotional exercise first, then decided to reward us.
In part 2, I’ll answer the questions about the day itself, the dresses, the vows, the weather, and the things I would absolutely do again.