Chicago Botanic Gardens wedding | Gaby and Brad | Chicago wedding photography-
Watching Gaby & Brad on their wedding day was like something from a movie. They were grinning the entire day, when they were near each other they glowed from happiness. Even when a thunderstorm forced their ceremony indoor no one missed a beat. My most favorite memory is Gaby smiling and telling anyone and everyone who would listen “I’m having the best time! I’m so happy!! Isn’t this a great day?!!” Days like these makes all the sweat from 95 degrees and endless hours of editing worth it 🙂
Dress: Vera Wang
Make Up: Diana Alvarez, Glam Hard Beauty
Such a beauty.
Love this one.
Venue: Chicago Botanic Gardens
Flowers: Pollen Floral Design
Flowers: Pollen Floral Design
Cake: Bittersweet I am not exaggerating when I say that this is the best wedding cake I’ve even had. Got myself a second piece and I had to share with the other vendors because they all wanted some…soooo yummmmy!!!
The band was great! Everyone was on the dance floor.
From the Bride & Groom…
‘Venue: Chicago Botanic Gardens (The most beautiful place ever! Worth it just for the pictures. Lots of people told us it was the most beautiful place they’d ever been for a wedding.)
Band: Morry Sochat and the Special 20s (a local Chicago blues band– they aren’t really a wedding band, so it didn’t offer the same flexibility as wedding bands probably would, but we loved their energy and thought that they did an awesome job the day-of. We wouldn’t have had it any other way. We heard them together at our favorite BBQ joint in the city, Smoke Daddy, the night Blues Fest ended last year. They were playing for a lot of the blues musicians who had been playing at Blues Fest, and we thought they had an awesome vibe. We asked them to play at our wedding right then and there, after their set. They said yes.)
Ceremony Music: Neil Dixon Smith–he is honestly the nicest guy I’ve ever met (second to Brad, of course). We heard him before we were engaged, at Indy Wedding. We were walking by when he played his rendition of Here Comes the Sun, and I could just picture it: the sunshine, the wedding day, etc. It was the first visual I had for the wedding (I sort of knew at that point a proposal was likely coming soon). As soon as we got engaged, we hired him to play for the reception/cocktail hour. I suppose with the rain issues, etc, he really didn’t get to play as much as we would have liked. He does great latin guitar music, and since my family is from Argentina, we thought it would be fun to have him play tango music, etc, for the cocktail hour. Even though I think the band ended up playing instead, he was definitely one of my favorite vendors.
Day-of coordinator: Carlene Smith from Naturally Yours Events. My mom corresponded more with her than we did, but all I kept hearing was how she really came through when it counted. My family was really happy with her, and I think they’d definitely recommend her.
Dress: Vera Wang (White), it was love at first sight. Even my niece concluded when I came out of the dressing room that she “didn’t hate it”. (Coming from her that’s pretty big.) I went dress shopping with my mom, sister and niece, and we had a great time together. I loved it.
Make Up: Diana Alvarez, Glam Hard Beauty–she did my makeup for a pin-up shoot I did as a present for Brad. We both loved how it came out. After multiple trials with people who did not do a great job with my makeup, I called her and asked her to come do makeup for us. I gave no instructions, other than “something natural-looking, I still want to feel like myself” and I trusted her completely to get it right. She made me feel totally beautiful and relaxed on my wedding day. I heart her.
Cake: Bittersweet (this has been my favorite Chicago bakery for a long time, so we wanted to do our cake with them. It was chocolate-raspberry-dark chocolate mousse for two of the cakes, and passion-fruit curd-almond-raspberry for the other two cakes, all layer covered in hazelnut butter-cream. YUM.
Flowers: Pollen Floral Design, we went with vintage tones (blush, ivory, lavender, gray) and soft, ruffled flowers (I am a sucker for peonies, hydrangeas, that sort of thing). Lynn from Pollen is amazing, she does great work in general and is the sweetest most reliable person. My mom and I both love her to pieces. I do wish I had gone for a little more color with the flowers, but I do think she did an awesome job and she provided us with exactly what we had asked for.
Brad (and his favorite purchase): he was wearing a Hugo Boss Suit with a purple flowered Ermenegildo Zegna tie and the tie was his favorite purchase. When we started the tie search, he was looking at some pretty conservative things, and by the end, he had wholly embraced the idea of a loud, patterned, bright colorful tie and he loved it.
My favorite wedding-related purchase: might have been the reception dress I changed into, it was a dress by Sue Wong that I totally fell in love with, along with this gorgeous necklace my mom got me as a gift to wear with that dress. Or maybe it was Brad’s socks, some colorful Happy Socks I got him as a little present for the wedding. I had a lot of fun picking out patterns he’d like.
Favorite Wedding Memories:
Brad’s top 3 (in order from best to third-best): 1) after the wedding when we were having some private time under the gazebo, where we read each other the letters we’d written for each other; 2) our first look; 3) the look I gave him when I was walking down the aisle;
Gaby’s top 3: 1) seeing Brad for the first time that day and knowing I had 100% made the right decision, and feeling any remaining nerves completely disappear; 2) our last dance, to Bring It On Home To Me; 3) Kissing Brad for the first time as as husband and wife.
Brad concludes, long story short, there were a lot of great memories to choose from.
Advice: Take everything in stride, and know that not everything will go exactly as planned, but remember to focus on what really matters– you are marrying the person you love, so how could it not be perfect? Anything else can be laughed off. In the end, it was really true. Whatever was stressing us out beforehand made no difference to us at all on the actual day. All that mattered to us in the end was that we were marrying our true loves. I only wish I had been able to really take this to heart sooner in the process. It would have saved me a lot of stress. This is definitely the thing I wish I’d done differently. Brad would agree. On a related note, I was so stressed the few days leading up to the wedding, that I kind of stayed away from my family because I was too busy freaking out. Family time is precious to me, and I wish I had been able to just relax and enjoy my last bit of time with them as a single woman, instead of worrying about things that were largely outside of my control.
Also, a second piece of advice which we received (and gratefully followed): do not host your own wedding. I have watched so many couples make this big effort to get around to every table, and get caught up in 20 minute talks with Aunt Mildred, etc. As a result, they don’t get to eat or have time alone together to enjoy themselves to the fullest–it is all over so quickly! Brad and I decided that if someone wanted to spend time with us, they could make their way over to us. We did not feel like we needed to entertain others that day. Instead, we sat down and had dinner and cake, we danced together, we had private moments together, and we still got to spend plenty of time with people we loved– lots of people made their way to us. It was fabulous that way. We played “hosts” a little at the rehearsal dinner, making sure to go around to people we barely knew, etc. On our actual wedding day, we just enjoyed.’
