My fairy tale themed wedding

On September 27th, 2014, Chris and I got married at Rhodes Hall in Atlanta! The theme of our wedding was "Happily Ever After" with a hint of Cinderella. ;) To celebrate our 1 year anniversary, I'm finally posting photos and video from the big day! <3

Our wedding day was so perfect and magical - I still feel excited when I think about it or look at photos!! :) It might be the best party Chris and I have ever thrown together!

I did almost all the planning myself with some help from Chris and my bridesmaids since I love party planning... We did had a "day-of" coordinator though that assisted with lots of little last minute things a few weeks before the wedding, and during the actual wedding she was a MAJOR help making my ideas reality!!

The inspiration for our wedding's theme comes from what I always imagined true love and marriage was like when I was a child. I've never been much of a "wedding person", but as a little girl the kind of wedding stories I liked the most were the ones in Disney films due to their creative and dreamy themes. The songs, castles, the notion of true love's kiss - that's what I always thought of as romantic! I figured if I was going to have a wedding of my own, I wanted it to capture that essence of "Happily Ever After" since that's how I feel about my love with Chris. (Cheeeeese, I know! haha)

Cinderella ended up being a major inspiration for our wedding as well! I had been toying around with the idea since I always loved the music and art style of the original animated film, and when we found my dress at a place called "Cinderella's Gowns" I took it as a sign. (Make sure you watch the video in HD for more sparkles!! lol)

After that, all the fairy tale items fell into place... We were able to book the dreamiest location - a real castle in Atlanta! And then I happened to find beautiful shoes that sparkled like real glass slippers... (here's a link to illustration on the box we found after the event!)

My "Glass Slippers" from San Smith on Vimeo.

We were even able to have our wedding cake designed as if the little blue birds from Cinderella were building it! It was so cute I almost didn't want to eat it. Chris got a special cake to reflect his interests as well - it was an epic mountain biking cake!!

To continue the fairy tale theme - a week before the wedding my bridesmaids and I went to Disney World to celebrate my bachelorette weekend, and we even got to dine at Cinderella's castle in a special celebratory dinner! From that, we each received special toasting flutes that we used before the wedding.

We did a "reveal" before the ceremony so Chris and I could have some time together privately, and then we took formal photos!

After all the formal photos were done and everyone rested for a moment, we then had a brief and informal ceremony with our good friend, Seth, as the officiant.

To continue the theme of the event, my Junior bridesmaid (and step-niece!) wore beautiful realistic fairy wings in the ceremony to bring in a little "fairy godmother" element, and for the music my bridesmaids walked out to the opening song from Cinderella and I walked out to "So this is love" from the movie.

We decided to skip a lot of the traditional wedding speech notes and events in favor of a more personal and casual atmosphere where everyone could hang out, drink and eat delicious food.

Over all, I feel like we ended up with a good balance of whimsical, romantic and laid back atmosphere for our wedding!

Before the cake cutting, my bridesmaid, Sarah, sang and played a ukulele cover of "Kiss the girl" from The Little Mermaid and we all sang along! It was the cutest!!

As the evening started to wind down, doughnut boxes were put out for all the guests to take home as a thank you for coming. We had a pair of Krispy Kreme doughnut for each person attending, one doughnut to represent myself and one to represent Chris (or his favorite flavor at least!!)... ;)

When it came time to leave, we exited under rainbow bubbles and magic wands to get on a bicycle pedicab and ride off through the city of Atlanta.

Chris and I met riding bikes in Atlanta, and now we were on another romantic bike ride to start the next exciting chapter of our life! It was super fun since many cars slowed down to wish us congrats and wave! lol