Intimate + Timeless Mountain Brook, Alabama Wedding {at a gorgeous 1927 Tudor Estate!}

I have a huge photographer crush on Leslee Mitchell. I honestly imagine glitter and confetti exploding every time her finger hits the shutter button because her photos are just pure magic. Every one of them. You might remember that I shared this darling Harvard love shoot of Leslee's awhile back. And today I'm extremely thrilled to share a wedding Leslee shot in Mountain Brook, Alabama. And, omg, is it a doozy. The wedding took place at the bride's gorgeous 1927 Tudor home and includes so many couture DIYs that my head is spinning. One more thing I love about this wedding: Mary Catherine and Les are in their seventies and their beautiful grandchildren wanted to be with them at the altar so they all held hands - doesn't that just make your heart melt?? // Magical photos by Leslee Mitchell.

Says Mary Catherine, "My home is surrounded by beautiful gardens and we decided to have a seated dinner in the formal garden for family and friends.  Everything just came together after we made that decision. The invitations set the tone by using an old-style printing technique called letterpress. They were cream color Crane card stock with a rich chocolate brown ink. I picked a non-traditional set-up with an old engraved oak tree design. [...] The huge old oak tree is central to the house and grounds. A can-do-anything family friend wired it for electricity and we hung 12 antique chandeliers of various sizes and styles from the branches that spread out over the circular drive. They were fabulous!"

Says photographer Leslee, "When my website went live, Mary Catherine was the very first person to inquire about my wedding photography. We e-mailed, her daughter, Kristin, and I e-mailed, we all talked on the phone & in February I visited MC and the wedding site, the formal garden of her beautiful 1927 tudor home. MC met me @ the car door with a hug & to this day I still feel like family. One of many favorite things about Mary Catherine is that she's an artist & a photographer. As a photographer, I've never been hired by a photographer. It's extremely flattering. MC is one of the coolest, classiest ladies I think I've met. Definitely."

Says Mary Catherine, "I picked the wedding date when the gardens would be at their peak so we kept the arranged flowers very simple. I have many friends who are talented floral designers and gardeners so most of the flowers came from their own gardens. We ended up with a beautiful mix of garden roses and hydrangeas.

I used the same antique tussie mussie to hold my bouquet that all the brides in my family have used in their wedding ceremonies.

I wanted something different and unique-looking [for my wedding attire] because, being in our seventies, we are not the typical wedding couple. I went up to my attic thinking about antique clothing and found a vintage cape I bought years ago from an antique mall in the Hamptons. It was a beautiful faded pink color and I had always loved the fabric. I thought the design of the fabric would lend itself to a cool skirt so I worked out a design and took it to a seamstress to implement. An artist friend brought over a scrap bag of ribbons and lace and I found the perfect ribbon in a beautiful moss green that perfectly complemented the pale pink color of the skirt. I added fabric roses from a jacket I wore to one of my daughters’ weddings twenty years ago. I remembered a pair of shoes from even longer ago that I thought would work well. They were a perfect fit and, amazingly, back in style. My granddaughter also wore a vintage dress I purchased at a flea market in France that fit beautifully after a few adjustments.

My two young grandchildren, six and seven, decided this was such a momentous occasion that they stood with us through the entire ceremony, held our hands and each other’s at the pertinent parts, even through the exchanging of the vows. I’m not sure, but we legally may all be married.

Since the wedding was not in a church, we wanted a religious symbol for the ceremony. A friend created a free standing floral cross with the combination of garden roses, spray roses, hydrangeas, variegated ivy and smilax which served as the centerpiece on an old farm table layered with embroidered antique table linens and surrounded by sterling containers filled with smaller floral arrangements. The table stood in the timber arbor at the end of the formal garden and made for a truly striking backdrop and focal point for the ceremony.

Les + Mary Catherine's Love Story:

Les and I met through a blind date arranged by a mutual friend.
We dated for more than nine years before I accepted Les’ proposal of marriage.

Since we had a small ceremony for our family, the dinner was really the main event. We are both very passionate about the art of food and the feel of the dinner was especially important to me. When the weather turned bad, we rented a large tent at the last minute that fit exactly over the center of the formal garden. Since I didn’t want groups of round tables that would separate the guests, we decided on a banquet-style set-up. I was really pleased with the look of the long, narrow tables arranged end to end. We covered the tables with painter’s drop cloths I purchased online. The drop cloths were absolutely perfect; they looked like rough linen! To create an intimate look and feel, I borrowed (rather than rented) just about everything for the dinner. The chairs ranged from modern to old church chairs. I borrowed different plates that all had a unique garden pattern. We kept the table decorations simple, choosing simple pillar candles in glass cylinders and spray roses clustered in sterling mint julep cups. The wine and champagne bottles were placed on the tables for the guests to help themselves. (Trust me: they loved that!)

We really wanted to have an open sky over the tables with light strung between the trees, but the tent ultimately gave the dinner a wonderfully intimate feel we just loved. In the middle of dinner a weather check showed a perfectly round circle of clear weather with Birmingham in the center surrounded by rainstorms. How lucky were we?

Thank you so, so, so much to Mary Catherine and Les for sharing their beautiful day and to Leslee Mitchell for sharing her exquisite photography with us! xx.

Mary Catherine will leave us with some wisdom on wedding planning {and I couldn't agree more!}: "Keep it small with family and special friends, and always be mindful of what is important to you and don’t skimp in that area. Whatever that may be, do it spectacularly. For me, as an artist and photographer, the photography was very important. I knew I would want pictures that were more artistic than typical wedding pictures. I wanted to have pictures that captured all the little moments and special details of the day. It was worth the extra effort to find a photographer I knew would be able to do that for me."

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Tags : ALABAMA , ANTIQUING , AT-HOME WEDDING , CLASSIC , ESTATE WEDDING , LESLEE MITCHELL , PREPPY WEDDING , real wedding , SOUTHERN CHARM , VINTAGE CHIC WEDDING

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