midwest wedding, Middle of the Map Weddings

People often dread it raining on their wedding day.  It might ruin the brides dress, or hair, it limits the picture you can take outdoors, and if you’re having an outdoor ceremony or reception, forget it!  However Brock and Jenna definitely didn’t let the spring showers put a damper on their day.  The vibrant and beautiful color palette of teals, apple greens, and white, make for such wonderful photos.  Jenna said that every detail of their day was thoughtfully chosen because “It simply felt right and fit our fun, not so serious style”, and the whole town pitched in to help make their wedding day beautiful, just read her description below.  A big thank you to Brock and Jenna for sharing all the details of your day and to Heidi Lynn Photography for her lovely images.

Who, What, Where ~ Ceremony: Evangelical Covenant Church.  Reception: Elks Club.  Photography: Heidi Lynn Photography.  Flowers: Rachel Stroetz.  Dress: Robert Bullock.  Hair: Tricia Baldwin.

From the Bride…

Growing up in a small town of only 6,000 people you pretty much know everyone, or at least who everyone is. That being said, I had never had an encounter or even a conversation with Brock until the fall of 2006 when I moved back to International Falls to attend community college.  Through many jokes, classes, work hours, and coincidentally being paired up as science lab partners, we got to know each other and become good friends. In the spring of 2007 Brock asked me to be his girlfriend, and we’ve been happily together ever since.

The proposal was so “us” that everyone still laughs about it. A simple promise to take me out to breakfast before church, turned into a picnic breakfast of muffins, fruit snacks and orange juice out on our local Lake. As we were leaving to head back to the car, Brock bent over claiming he had a rock in his shoe, and pulled out a ring. I was ecstatic, of course I said “yes” and so the wedding planning began!

Before we were officially engaged I had a clear picture in my head of what I wanted the day to look like in terms of colors, theme, etc. but as we started planning I realized that wasn’t really our style and so those plans went out the window. A small clipping of a green pair of shoes and a teal dress from a random Google image search started the look of our wedding.  The flowers were chosen to incorporate a combination of (in the words of my florist friend) “romantic, fluffy Minnesota-grown peonies, and a splash of modern, fresh bright green hypericum.”  Brock is big into skateboarding so he wore cuff links that I found made from recycled skateboards, and opted for skate shoes instead of dress shoes.

Small town weddings mean that a lot of things need to be done DIY style due to limited resources.  For our wedding, almost everything was a DIY project and people all over town offered to pitch in and help out.  A good friend of my mom’s planned and created the meal for over 300 guests – a full Thanksgiving style turkey dinner  – and turkeys were passed out all over town to be cooked.  The granny-smith apple and curly willow centerpieces were chosen by me, but put together by my mom and one of her best friends.  The flowers were planned and assembled by one of my good friends Rachel, who was also on bridesmaid duty and runs a small at-home floral business in Rochester, MN. The table runners were made from clearance fabric found at Walmart and cut and sewn by family friends. Our wedding favors consisted of personalized pencils, and homemade crossword puzzles full of fun facts and details about Brock and I that we created on my computer. In front of our seats at the reception we had homemade chalkboard signs, which matched our cake toppers that I actually created from scrap wood and chalkboard paint for our engagement session with a local photographer last fall. One of the highlights of the dance was a large wedding caricature face cutout that a family friend of ours made as a wedding gift. Either my mom and I, or family friends put the entire day together; it was essentially the definition of a small town wedding.

I know it sound generic, but my favorite part of my wedding day was walking down the aisle and marrying my best friend. It was so neat being surrounded by people we love, and we loved getting to celebrate with everyone who helped put the day together. It was the perfect start to our married lives and so much fun.