Independence Grove Libertyville Wedding, Lauren and Dan (2)

To see Lauren & Dan’s wedding details, click here.

I love it when couples decide to see each other before the ceremony, it gives me an opportunity to capture images like this!!!!

Love this one so much…FAVORITE!!!

Clearly Dan was impressed with what he saw 😉

The ceremony site was  just beautiful!

Although a tiny guest decided to take a little snooze in the shade.

This truly is every Bride’s dream right ladies?  To have a Groom that looks at you like this…

So happy!

Love all the photos we took at Independence Grove, it was hard not to take a beautiful photo there.

Another favorite!

Yes, they had a bar made out of ice…yes, it was the coolest…yes, pun intended 😉

[Dan Rebholz at World Class Ice Sculpture Chicago]

Yummy midnight snacks!

From Lauren…

“I think our wedding day was amazing…minus the heat of course!

I loved preparing for the wedding and putting together all of the invitations, seating cards, table numbers, etc. even though it took a looong time with the help of my bridesmaids and Patti it was a lot of fun.

Even though we really ended up spending a lot of money on the wedding overall, we actually saved money in almost every aspect by using our connections or doing as much as we could on our own.

The majority of our flowers, meaning all of our calla lilies, we bought from a family friend who sells wholesale flowers so we saved a ton of money on that. We decided not to do flower arrangements for the centerpieces to save a lot of money but I feel that with the centerpieces that Patti came up with it didn’t look like we were trying to save money by not going with flowers since there were still 3 callas at each table and candles everywhere.

Some of my favorite moments from the wedding are actually when things went wrong because I felt that it added character to the wedding.  Like when our pastor dropped Dan’s ring and it went rolling away…he felt really bad but I laughed and told him it was funny and added a special extra touch. I was also told that our ring bearer was not about to carry his pillow down the aisle so Patti tied it to his wrist and he shook his hand down the aisle and tried to get it off.

Going into the wedding planning, Dan and I knew we didn’t just want to have a reception in a room in a hotel, we wanted something with a little more character and I believe we found that with our venue.  The surroundings were beautiful and so was the garden that we got married in.”