family wedding

Westover Inn - A Small, Intimate Family Wedding

I was lucky enough to be part of a very sentimental and special project. Carolyn (Carolyn Bentum Photography) Bentum and Anna (Spunky Sapphire Events) poured their hearts into a creative project to highlight how couples can have a beautiful, elegant and meaningful Wedding Day with budget in mind. They worked with passion through the planning and execution of this styled shoot, and I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out. Here’s a story that Carolyn wrote, that it too beautiful not to share…

Olivia and Ryan met while Olivia was on a ski vacation with friends in Banff; he lived and worked nearby and she was visiting from Ontario. The connection was instant and they started dating long distance after a few short months. Ryan decided to relocate to Ontario and they have been inseparable ever since. After a New Year's proposal, they began planning for an intimate late-spring wedding; after all, they were excited about becoming husband and wife (finally!) and starting their life together.

Coming from small tight-knit families—each only have one sister—they knew they wanted their wedding to feel the same way their families did: welcoming, full of laughter, and really close. So instead of opting for the traditional wedding where they would invite family and friends from afar, they decided they would invite "their family"—those individuals who shared their blood and their heart's love which would allow them an intimate event with about 25-35 people.

Because Ryan's family (his parents, his two living grandparents, and his sister and her wee family) would be travelling from Alberta for the wedding, Ryan and Olivia also wanted to have a wedding that would make them feel like it was happening at "home". So, they decided to be married at a small inn where their entire "family" could stay for the wedding weekend and partake in the festivities from start to finish.

Ryan and Olivia felt strongly about using their wedding to celebrate not only their own relationship, but the ones that had brought them this far. They wanted to bless their family and friends as they had been blessed. They rented rooms at the Inn for all their guests and were planning little surprises like welcome packages filled with local goodies and tickets to the local theatre for them to enjoy as part of the wedding weekend. They would host their rehearsal dinner the evening before in the dining room; as long as the weather allowed, they would be married just after sunrise and celebrate their marriage over a beautiful spring brunch with their family in the beautiful and fresh garden.

They decided that they would rise early the morning of the wedding and do sunrise wedding photos so that they would have the beautiful soft light that creates the light, airy and romantic images that they were drawn to. They also loved that they would time together alone first before greeting their family and guests for the ceremony and breakfast celebration where they could share in their excitement and emotion of becoming husband and wife.

Simple and Elegant Greenery Garland Family Affair Small Wedding at The Westover Inn (web) (20).jpg