Tented Meadow Musing Wedding at French Park
A beautiful wedding for beautiful people is the best way to describe Shelby and Nick’s outdoor garden themed wedding. Both self-describe as easy-going and outdoor enthusiasts, both qualities they wanted tied into their wedding. Inspired by their love of hiking, we created the color palette based off the lush river valleys of Colorado. As Colorado was their favorite place to adventure, this theme design and color palette perfectly encapsulated our sweet couple.
A custom invitation suite is an opportunity to transform an ordinary wedding tradition into a stunning, artistic collection representing key elements of the wedding design. For this wedding, we incorporated pressed-flower, handmade tissue paper to delicately wrap the suite and watercolors as a key design element. Our bride loved the details of intricate folding, reminiscent of origami, so it was important to us to incorporate this quality in her invitation suite. We also brought in different textured papers paired with elegant scripts, corresponding to the numerous patterns interwoven into the elegance of nature. For featured design elements, we included some of the flowers from the bouquets and boutonnieres of the bridal party, small river rocks, and the tiny, floral-papered boxes of jordan almonds gifted to each guest.
The ceremony was held outdoors at French Park in Cincinnati. The venue was perfect for a fully outdoor event, with a beautiful garden for the ceremony, a manor and manicured grounds for guests to explore during cocktail hour, and space for an exquisite sailcloth tented reception. A unique addition to this sweet event was a live painter during the ceremony to immortalize their vows. Guests were able to enjoy her work as she finished the piece throughout the evening.
Their reception was held under a sailcloth tent with the ground covered in green turf to create the feeling of celebrating in a meadow. Guests felt that they were dining under the twinkling stars of the night sky with hundreds of tiny lights hung from above. The focal point of the reception area was the hanging garden above the bridal table. Shaped into a long cloud of greenery and tiny wildflowers, the alluring smell of the florals, highlighted with the scent of the chamomile woven into the piece, suffused throughout the air of the tent and greeted incoming guests with the sweet scent of a garden.
The tables of the reception were laden with charming, delicate details that tied everything into the garden theme. White enameled plates and wicker chargers were laid on steel blue linens and topped with deep cream napkins tied loosely around the night’s menu. We were able to recognize part of the groom’s Italian heritage by placing tiny boxes of jordan almonds at the top of each setting. Guest place cards were adorned with tiny wildflowers. Mossy green taper candles sheathed in glass and florals of deep creams and soft yellows created a romantic atmosphere under the tent.
Shelby surprised her guests with a dress swap before dancing away the night. Her second outfit was a custom 2-piece created from her mother’s wedding dress; the top was crafted from the bodice and the pants from the skirt. The evening of celebrating was capped off with a dreamy, tiered cake decorated in the same wildflower decor as the wedding florals and dancing on a custom watercolor designed dance floor that echoed the watercolor design of the couple’s invitation suite.
“We hired Samantha and her team for our wedding a few weeks ago at French Park in Amberley. We were in over our heads when it came to planning and all we had done was pick a venue. She stepped in and completely simplified the process for us. We were clueless when it came to what we truly wanted out of our wedding and she was patient and explained our options for every little detail. She really works hard to get to know you and tailor every detail of the design to fit your personalities perfectly. She handled every detail so that we could enjoy the process and more importantly enjoy our big day! Her team had the expertise to suggest vendors that went above and beyond our expectations in every way and she has a computer program that makes it simple to handle all the details and keep track of what we needed to do. We say all the time that without Samantha we would’ve eloped and it’s very true! We couldn’t imagine our wedding without her help.”
