The St. Vrain Wedding

11 May 2019Longmont, United States

When Shelby first reached out to me to talk about her St. Vrain Wedding, she warned me that she and Brian were going to do things a bit differently. Their wedding wasn’t going to be “typical.” But Jesse and I long ago left behind the idea that there’s a right or wrong way to do a wedding. We get fired up by all the ways our kick-ass clients personalize their weddings, particularly if it goes against what everyone else says you’re “supposed” to do. (Plus, we had already partied with this group last year at Amanda and Brian’s wedding and knew that it was going to be a crazy-good time!)Bridesmaids? Nope. Shelby had Maids of Awesomeness. Groomsmen? Ha! Brian had his Dudes of Hazard. The night before the wedding, instead of a rehearsal dinner, Shelby and Brian hosted a wine tasting at Cured in Boulder.Oh, and you know those first looks you always see where the bride pretends to sneak up behind the groom, including turning around midway to make a shushing face toward the camera? The ones where she then reaches out and taps him on the shoulder and the entire thing is highly scripted? Not for this couple. Instead, they incorporated their own version of a bedeken, which has historically been part of traditional Jewish ceremonies. But they even made this their own. Rather than traditional music, Brian and his scrum danced in to the Blitzkreig Bop by the Ramones. And his Dudes of Hazard made him work to see his bride for the first time, dancing up and down the long cocktail reception room.That wasn’t all, though. After the bedeken and the couple’s portraits, Shelby and Brian mixed things up with a cocktail reception before the ceremony, because their top priority was spending time with their friends and family. They exchanged vows and then the newlyweds made their grand entrance straight into a delirious 15-minute hora. There were frenzied circles of dancers, hands and chairs in the air, and lap dances! And after the hora, the party just continued. Guests danced their faces off, took a break to sample one of the many food stations or refresh their drink, and went back to the party.So if anyone ever tells you how a wedding is “supposed” to be or makes you feel bad for wanting to do something different, just show them the photos of how much fun everyone had at Shelby and Brian’s celebration. And then go make your wedding exactly what you want.