The Elms Wedding: LT + Jack

If you could sum up your wedding in three words, what would they be?
Joyful, southern and classic!

Tell us about your wedding venue(s) and why you chose to get married there.
Jack and I live in Dallas, Texas, but I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and Jack is from San Antonio. When we got engaged, we weren’t sure what location would be best for our wedding. Jack had the wonderful idea of having a destination wedding in New Orleans, an amazing city that we have both traveled to frequently, apart and together. We knew that most of our guests would have to travel one way or another, so maybe New Orleans could function well as a central (and fun!) meeting place. It is also special to me because my grandparents lived just down the coast in Mississippi, my aunt lived in New Orleans for a time, and one of my best friends from Alabama now lives there. So we flew down on a whim and did a whirlwind tour of venues with our incredible planner CJ. We knew we wanted the reception to feel special, southern and unique, and give purpose to having our wedding somewhere other than our hometowns or where we currently live. I’m pretty sure Jack knew the moment we got to the Elms Mansion that we’d found the place. It’s an exquisite historic home with an expansive garden terrace area surrounded by gorgeous trees, right on St. Charles Avenue. About as picturesquely southern as you can get! We went back and forth about a few things – one being my fear of having an outdoor wedding, but eventually I threw my cares to the wind because we couldn’t say no to the place!

Despite originally planning to hold the wedding ceremony in the terrace at the Elms, and then flipping it for the reception, we ended up deciding to have our ceremony at a local church. When Jack and I were first in New Orleans looking at venues, we randomly chose a church to attend on Easter Sunday. We visited Rayne Memorial United Methodist, which as it turns out is also on St. Charles Avenue, just down the street from the Elms. It became obvious in our planning later how well it could work to have our ceremony at Rayne. We were so excited that it would also allow us to have a traditional second line parade from the ceremony right down the street to our reception! It couldn’t have worked out more perfectly.

What was your favorite wedding detail?
I think I have two – they both popped into my head because they were done for us by a family member and a friend.

First, Jack is not a sweets lover (more for me!) so he didn’t want a groom’s cake. Instead, we decided to have his sister make cookies which we used as favors at the reception. Jessica owns her own cookie decorating business and is so incredibly talented at what she does! She made us the perfect cookies, representing each of our home states and the universities we attended. It was a small part of the day but it meant a lot to us.

The other detail was our umbrellas for the second line. We weren’t quite sure how to go about getting those for the parade, so luckily a friend of ours in Dallas who is from New Orleans simply said she had it covered. Kelsey ordered the umbrellas and added the feathers to them herself. She took something very simple and made it meaningful for us, and we appreciated it so much!

What is your favorite wedding memory from the day?
My absolute favorite thing about the day was our second line down St. Charles Avenue, specifically a particular moment as it was ending, when we arrived at the reception. Jack and I were having so much fun that we didn’t want the parade to end, so we were both hoping that we’d go one more block down St. Charles and then turn around to get back to the Elms. Instead the band went ahead and crossed the street as we were approaching the front of the house, which created a really incredible moment for Jack and I as we walked up onto the front porch. When we turned around, we saw the massive gathering in the street of all our most beloved friends and family, laughing and celebrating and having the best time. They cheered for us and I have never felt so overwhelmed with gratitude for all the amazing people God has placed in our lives. It was an incredibly happy and humbling moment.

How did you incorporate your personalities into your wedding celebration?
So what’s neat about this is as much as we may have tried to directly incorporate our personalities into the day, it mostly just happened naturally. Looking back, there was SO much to plan that it usually felt like all we were doing was checking things off a list. But we can’t count how many people have told us since the wedding that the whole day was so “us”!

More than anything, we both wanted the day to be FUN for everyone. We prioritized the band, which I stumbled on right before booking someone else. I’m so glad we found Rewind because they were an absolute blast and made it the party we wanted! Jack is definitely a planner, or in my opinion a ‘fun-organizer’, so he made sure we planned out all the logistics as best we could, so the day would flow smoothly. He designed our koozies and even made sure that everyone could have a ‘pre-koozied’ beer during our second line! I chose to trust our vendors on several topics (I’m not particularly fond of making lots of decisions), communicating that I just wanted things to be simple and elegant. Our florist knocked that out of the park, as well as our bakery, who made a beautiful (& delicious) wedding cake. One thing I was passionate about was our invitations because I really love paper and stationery. I worked with our stationer in Dallas on a letterpress design with a mix of script and block fonts that I absolutely loved. I also drew a map for a piece that we mailed out to guests with all of the weekend details. All in all, we think we’re pretty fun people with classic style and we think that’s what was represented on our wedding day! We hope all our friends and family enjoyed it as much as we did.

What is your wedding song?
La Vie En Rose