And the last installment of our wedding.

As I’ve mentioned my bridesmaids were family (sisters, cousins and sisters-in-law), but it meant so much to have these girls there with me, some of them I’ve been friends with since I was two years old.

“Hey guys look back at me, I know its awkward but it will make a great picture” … and it did!

Our beautiful city. 

Let’s keep it real. My wedding dress was beautiful, but damn it was huge and tight and a lot to carry around. At one point I decided to unzip it and lay down on the floor of the ceremony tent. Spencer came to blow me kisses and then quickly told me to get off my ass.

So I smashed cake in his face and thought I was the most funny person in the world.

A good family friend of ours happens to be an insanely talented singer, in an INCREDIBLE band (whose CD just came out, go out buy it, Isles by Wild Belle) sang “At Last” during the reception and I’m pretty sure the entire room went silent. This girl’s voice is like heaven.

And now… the after party. Long story short, our wedding took place on a little peninsula in downtown Chicago that at one point was used as a private airport… until our corrupt mayor had it torn up in the middle of the night and made into a park. Hence, our wedding being there. However, the old terminal building is still standing and that’s where our after party was.

The Spazmatics performed until all hours of the night.

And Spencer and I danced until every single person went home.

It was truly one of the best nights of our lives. I’m sure there will be many times in our life that will top this night (you know like birth of children etc ) but wow, this was a good one. I married a really incredible human in front of every other human I love. What more could you ask for?

If there’s something I left off that you’re curious about, let me know, otherwise, I hope you all enjoyed this adsurdly, long, drawn out, look into our wedding.

Photographer: Aaron Delesie
Wedding planner: Marina Birch from Birch Design Studio
Flowers and decor : Kehoe Designs
Lighting and Tent : Frost
Venue: Northerly Island, Chicago IL
Catering: Food for Thought
Wedding Dress: Oscar de la Renta
Brides Shoes: Jimmy Choo
Grooms suit: Brioni
Bridesmaid dresses: Elise Bergman
Paper goods: Jessica Murnane from Suitor
Band: Becca Kaufman Orchestra

You can see all the non-professional photos of our wedding here. Our wedding video here. Installment #1 of professional pictures and installment #2.

I completely lied. Don’t hate me. There is just no way I could fit all of the pictures that were left into one post. Next week will be a couple of my random favorites, and then the after party and I SWEAR I am done, done, done.

Today we have the reception.

Our tables…. with low bunches of all white, mono-botantic flowers and swiss dot linens.

Place cards were all pinned into a big wall of boxwood

Gold foil paper goods 

The cake had my dress pattern in a very subtle, white on white design. It was supposed to have fresh flowers on top of it, but what can you do.

Our menu. I felt really strongly about having food that was actually, ridiculously delicious. Not just the usual banquet food and damn was it good.

Our first dance to Wrapped by George Strait. Every time I have heard this song I have wanted to get up and prance around the house with Spencer. That’s how I KNEW it would be our song.

Damn I love this picture.

Our people. Truly the people we love more than anyone in the world. All 350 of them. In one room having fun. This picture embodies everything I loved about that night.

Photographer: Aaron Delesie
Wedding planner: Marina Birch from Birch Design Studio
Flowers and decor : Kehoe Designs
Lighting and Tent : Frost
Venue: Northerly Island, Chicago IL
Catering: Food for Thought
Wedding Dress: Oscar de la Renta
Brides Shoes: Jimmy Choo
Grooms suit: Brioni
Bridesmaid dresses: Elise Bergman
Paper goods: Jessica Murnane from Suitor
Band: Becca Kaufman Orchestra

You can see all the non-professional photos of our wedding here and our video here.

I won’t drag out the wedding pictures forever. I promise. One part this week, and one part next week. And then I’m through!

Here are some of my favorites that weren’t published on SMP.

THE dress. I love it. Its just perfection. Every time I look at it I love it more and more.

You have no idea how much fun we had getting ready (once I came out of my cave). I am blessed with the most amazing friends.

The girls all wore monogrammed shirts from Victoria’s Secret. You can find them here (now available in black and white polka dots… LOVE that, wish they had those when I was buying)

My monogrammed shirt was a gift from an amazing blogging friend (how thoughtful is that?).

How good is Taylor‘s reaction the first time she saw my dress?

Searching for a hair that was trapped under the thousands of layers of tulle.

And then our first look…

I sobbed. All I wanted to do all day was see Spencer so when I finally did, I just completely lost it.

I love this handsome human. So much.

The bridal party…

My bridesmaids in their beautiful custom Elise Bergman dresses.

Groomsmen wore a black suit of their choice, white shirt and we provided ties. Don’t they look dapper? This was my solution to wanting black tie but the groom nixing it.

All of us together.

The ceremony.

You’ve probably seen most of these pictures on SMP, so I’ll just share my favorites

My little brothers and cousins getting ready to walk down the aisle

Our incredible officiant doing this thing. Recognize him?

A stolen moment alone after the ceremony. Probably my favorite picture from the entire day/night.

Photographer: Aaron Delesie
Wedding planner: Marina Birch from Birch Design Studio
Flowers and decor : Kehoe Designs
Lighting and Tent : Frost
Venue: Northerly Island, Chicago IL
Catering: Food for Thought
Wedding Dress: Oscar de la Renta
Brides Shoes: Jimmy Choo
Grooms suit: Brioni
Bridesmaid dresses: Elise Bergman
Paper goods: Jessica Murnane from Suitor
Band: Becca Kaufman Orchestra

You can see all the non-professional photos of our wedding here.

I was going to share some of my favorite wedding pictures but they aren’t quite web ready. So instead, I am going to share our video. 

We were a little on the fence about a video. Are they necessary? No. Am I so glad I did it? YES. I grew up watching my parents wedding video and I loved every second. And now we have a special little highlight film (as well as a much longer one that I won’t torture you with) to watch over and over.

I adore our pictures, but there is something incredibly special about our video. I am so completely in love with it.

I Do Films created the most beautiful little look into our wedding day. Enjoy!

Alex & Spencer | A Chicago Wedding on Northerly Island from I Do Films on Vimeo.

Today, after 6.5 months, I am finally sharing our wedding with you! 

You guys have all been so patient. 

Image by the insanely talented, Aaron Delesie

Head on over to Style Me Pretty to see ALL of the details… and then come back here and let me know if you have any questions or want me to feature anything in more detail. You know I will talk weddings all day and everyday if you all want me to.

Enjoy! xo

I have shared some little peeks into our rehearsal dinner but today I’m going to share the beautiful professional photos taken by the talented Aaron Delesie.

To be perfectly honest, the rehearsal dinner was more of a blur than our actual wedding, so I love looking back at these pictures and seeing so many people I love.

The creative in me also loves how dark, moody and deco this event was in comparison to our white, airy wedding the next night. It wasn’t planned that way of course, but I can’t help but notice in these pictures how this perfectly complimented our wedding.

I never officially shared our wedding invitations, and when I came across Elise Bergman‘s beautiful pictures of them, I thought now would be a good time.

All of our paper goods were beautifully designed by Jessica from Suitor. I had a pretty distinct vision of what I wanted, but Jessica made it all come to life and come to together so perfectly. From the beautiful calligraphy on the envelopes, to the gold foil dotted liner, the details were perfection.

The rounded corners, the gold painted edges, the names and headers hand done by a calligraper. I love special details.  

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Invitations designed by Suitor

Calligraphy on envelopes and invitations by Stacey Shapiro 

Event Design by Birch Design Studio

Don’t forget to enter the Wildfox + Edith Hart giveaway!

I wanted to share some of the detail and planning that went into my bridesmaid dresses. It was such a fun process working with the talented Elise Bergman to create dresses for my ladies.

The original sketch for the dresses. 

So many color choices.

There was a period of time I really wanted to do a pattern, a play on something that was printed to look beaded. These were some of the options we looked at.

Ultimately, we decided to go with a solid, rich, grey crinkle chiffon

And then a muslin dress was made to measure all of the girls in.

I decided I wanted a gold belt that was thin, but packed a big punch. Elise handmade the one above to show me.

I fell in love with Elise’s sample and we decided to do it in gold to tie in with the gold accents in the reception.

Here is the belt being applied to the dress

And the end product on my sis.

All beautiful pictures taken by Elise Bergman throughout the design process (besides the last one).

I know I am a bit biased, but I am in love with the way they turned out. The gold belt helped it from becoming too bridesmaidy, it was classic and something I would have loved to wear. And actually, I’m in a wedding in February where we are being asked to wear long grey dresses of your choice. So I get wear my own bridesmaid dress, how fun?

The Monday after our wedding we took off on our honeymoon, and after 3 planes and 1 boat, we arrived at Bora Bora. It was everything we could have imagined, and a thousand times more.

For 8 days we relaxed, played tennis, swam, snorkeled, ate and drank. It was heaven. The perfect way to decompress together.

I never wanted to leave. Ever. Spencer claims I had tears in my eyes as we left for the airport. I think he’s exaggerating (but not really).

And there you have it. The end of my wedding related recaps. I hope I didn’t bore the hell out of you all. It was such an amazing time in my life and I had so much fun sharing all of these peeks with you.

Back to normal sparkly posting!

Our reception was magical. Being an interior designer, the opportunity of a tent, the options and possibilities were so exciting. It was a blank canvas; and although I knew my wedding planner was amazing, I had no idea it could have turned out this perfect.

Our first dance was to “Wrapped” by George Strait. We have both always loved country music and although our band had to learn it specially for us, I am so glad we went out of the box and chose a song that meant something to us (secret: we spent a couple too many nights dancing our kitchen making sure it was the perfect song)

Three of my very oldest friends (since we were in preschool). By far, one of the most special parts of the night was having everyone we loved all in one place.

Three of my bridesmaids (a cousin and two sisters). And a big giant happy birthday to my Brennie on the left. xo

The flowers were all white groupings of different kinds. They were perfect. Soft and romantic. Exactly as I imagined and blogged about so many times.

I need to preface this one. Months before my wedding my dad announced he had a surprise. He wasn’t going to tell me what it was, but I would find out at our wedding reception. I hate surprises. Hate. I wasn’t pleased. But let me tell you… at the end of my dad’s beautiful toast he picked up a guitar and sang “I Will” by The Beatles. My dad doesn’t sing or play the guitar but he had been taking lessons for both for the past year to surprise us. It was one of the emotional, sweet, amazing moments of the entire weekend. The entire room was sobbing. Including me. Serious, ugly crying.

We have the most amazing friends and family anyone could ever ask for. I am sure things went wrong (although I never knew about them) but I can 100% say I wouldn’t change a single thing. The room was filled with so much love and every last detail represented Spencer and I. It was perfect.