Lee & Alex’s Countryside Microwedding

Good morning and happy Thursday everyone! I’m so excited to finally be sharing our wedding photos from our July 10th micro-wedding! As many of you know we had to change our plans a ton (thanks to COVID world) but looking back I can honestly say the our wedding day was magical. I am really glad we had wedding 2.0 last weekend to celebrate with family & friends (more on that to come!) but our intimate micro-wedding turned out to be one of the best days of my life and I am so grateful. We got married on my parents property, with the ceremony in a clearing in the woods (they live on 36 acres) and the reception on a field over looking the pond.

I have SO many photos from that day that I absolutely love and narrowing it down for this post was so tough! I debated sharing multiple posts, but I decided to just include everything all at once so you can really get a sense of the day. I’ll separate the photos below by ‘category’ (getting ready, first look, ceremony, reception) and talk a bit about the category after each set of photos.

I’ll also include links to all vendors / wedding details at the very end of the post! 🙂

Getting Ready:

Getting ready was honestly so much fun! The night before the wedding Maddie (maid of honor / hair stylist extraordinaire) and I stayed at a local hotel & spa. We woke up, went to Starbucks, and then did yoga outdoors in a gazebo on the property. It was the most relaxing and fun start to the day! I highly recommend every bride take some time before the chaos of the wedding starts to do some yoga. It gets you in a good headspace and helps your posture before you stand and have your picture taken all day!

Once everyone started arriving at our hotel room (mom, mother-in-law, sisters, nieces) we had blast hanging out while getting hair and makeup done. I decided to do a ‘dress reveal’ to everyone (since no one other than my mom had seen the dress!) and it was priceless. Just look at everyone’s faces in the above photo! *makes my heart melt*

Last thing I want to mention about the above photos is the photo of my mom’s hands looking at my wedding dress. By far the most sentimental touch I added to our wedding day was this customization of my wedding dress. To honor the strong, amazing women in my life I had my great-grandmother, grandmother and mother’s initials embroidered into the train of my dress. My great-grandmother and grandmother have both passed away and having this reminder of them made me feel closer to them as I walked down the aisle.

First Look & Couple Portraits:

Alex & I chose to do a first look, mostly because we are actually pretty private people (shocking given the online presence i know lol) and we wanted a moment just to ourselves without everyone else staring at us. It was amazing. I thought I would be nervous but I was just so calm and so ready to see Alex.

In what is now one of my all time favorite memories, Alex’s first look reaction melted my heart. He turned around and immediately teared up. He then forgot his ‘instructions’ from the photographers (ie. turn around and watch me as I walk to him) because he was so happy. Instead of letting me walk to him he just ran at me and hugged me, tears streaming. It was the sweetest thing!

Ceremony:

Our ceremony had so many sweet moments! We started, of course, with my nieces (flower girls) and nephew (ring bearer) heading down the aisle. Maddie followed them as the Maid of Honor and then my dad walked me down the aisle. I walked down the aisle to an instrumental version of Taylor Swift’s “Wildest Dreams” (very Bridgerton vibes 🙊) My baby niece Winnie also decided to take her turn on the aisle as she crawled down it during the ceremony!

We had two readings in our ceremony, one by my sister Sarah and one by Maddie. They both made me tear up.

My favorite part of the ceremony though was our ring warming ceremony. An old Irish & Welsh tradition (my background is Welsh!) a ring warming ceremony is when the wedding rings are passed from person to person to allow everyone the opportunity to hold the rings and put a prayer or blessing into them. It felt really special getting to exchange our rings and our vows after the rings had been ‘warmed’.

Wedding Party Photos:

Since our entire wedding was only 24 people, we didn’t have a traditional wedding party. We had Maddie as the Maid of Honor and Dan as the Best Man. My nieces Sally and Chloe were are adorable flower girls and my nephew Caleb is the dashing ring bearer you see in these pics haha. We also had my goddaughters Adelaide, Lila and older niece Maia as ‘honorary wedding party members’ dressed in the most beautiful pastel bridesmaids dresses.

In the one photo above you can also see Maddie’s youngest daughter, Presley, who is 2.5. Something that felt really special and so surreal to me is that we had Presley wear the flower girl dress I wore to my parents wedding! My parents got married when I was three (1989!) and seeing Presley in this dress was just so special.

Cocktail Hour:

I think the cocktail hour was my favorite part of the whole wedding day! I was so happy to be married and Alex and I were just on cloud 9. Since we had already done first look photos it meant we actually got to enjoy the cocktail hour and celebrate with everyone! We decided to champagne and oysters for cocktail hour so we had a raw bar with oysters being fresh shucked on the spot and we had a “champagne bookshelf” (which was a DIY that Maddie and I did … check out this video of us making it if you haven’t seen it yet lol!

The details and little touches of our cocktail hour are what made it feel truly special. In addition to the champagne bookshelf, my dad and I built a wooden rope swing which I decorated with flowers. We also had a cocktail bar with signature cocktails that we created (“the sweet” & “the spicy”) and a mocktail for the kiddos which was the biggest hit! The next day Sally and my mom walked past the champagne bookshelf / cocktail bar area and Sally turned to my mom and says “Oh, grandma, I had the BEST drink there last night!” 🤣 Sidenote: hilarious preview there of what her twenties are going to be like LOL!

I knew I wanted the decor of the cocktail hour to flow seamlessly into the dinner so I worked on adding little details to do that. The feature item for my decor was a printed table cloth. I fell in love with the floral print and having a print felt like a very modern, 2021 move for a wedding. For the cocktail hour I bought fabric in the same print as the table cloth and my sister helped me by making throw pillows for the pink couches! Maddie and I also used fabric in this same print as the back wall of the champagne bookshelf.

Dinner & Reception:

The nice thing about having such a small wedding was that we could all eat together and one long table and really enjoy each other’s company (and good food!) We had a catering company design a custom menu for us and it was legit amazing! We have so many different dietary restrictions in our family (vegan, gluten free, pescetarian, vegetarian) and they made sure every single person had an amazing meal! I loved our beautiful table decor, including the place cards which were sugar cookies handmade by my mother in law. She is so talented!

We didn’t have a traditional reception (the whole first dance and dance party thing felt weird with so few people) but we definitely had fun running around with kiddos and just hanging out. As you can see, Alex and I even took the row boat out on the pond for some photos and a quiet moment alone. Told you it was magical!

I still can’t believe how well the day went – how smoothly it went, how calm I was, and how much fun we all had. I’m so lucky to be married to my person (double married now lol!). I am eternally grateful to everyone who helped make our day the incredible experience that it was. From all our friends and family who helped so much with this DIY wedding, to our team of vendors. Below you’ll see all the details.

Thanks for reading! I’d love to hear your thoughts or answer any questions you may have.

XO
Lee #LegalLeeBuonassisi

Engagement Ring & Wedding Bands: Minichiellos
Monogram Ring Box: The Mrs Box*
Getting Ready Feather Robe: Amazon (also available on Amazon.ca)
Makeup: Kyrsten Bryant
Hair: Maddie Griffin, Lead Stylist Salon Nine*
Hair Flower Pins: Etsy*
Wedding Dress: Essence of Australia
Shoes: ASOS*
Alex’s Tux: Custom from Surmesur
Maid of Honor & “Honorary Junior Bridesmaids” Dresses: Kennedy Blue*
Ring Bearer Wooden & Flower Ring Box: Etsy
Flower Girl Dresses: David’s Bridal*
Flower Girl Crowns: Etsy
“Little Miss Flower Girl” Denim Jackets: David’s Bridal*
Tablecloth, Fabric for Pillows, & DIY Bookshelf: Spoonflower
Mr & Mrs Chair Signs: Michaels
Flowers: Threads & Blooms
Day of Styling / Furniture: Tufts & Toile
Wedding Cake (Gluten Free!): Bunner’s


*Gifted to me. Thank you to the amazing brands who work with me!