Jasmine's Woodland Wedding

My friend Jasmine was getting married in Italy, where her fiancee is from, but a change of plan brought the wedding to Waterton National Park in Canada.  (side note: she was so fun to work with on this wedding, she's really the age of my kids, but I feel like we are kindred spirits.  She is such a sweet girl and was such a beautiful bride.  I'll have to add more pictures when I get some of her and Fausto on their wedding day)
She told me that she really wanted to get married in a camp kitchen by the lake.  I hadn't been to that particular camp kitchen so we drove over for a look.  I immediately fell in love with this old log building.  The basic bones of the structure were AWESOME!  Log trussed roof, log walls, 2 giant stone fireplaces at either end.
Immediately my mind started whirling!  

Here is what it looked like that day.  There was a family having a wiener roast.  It was in  February.  

She sent me some sketches that she had done.  We talked lots about how it should look.
I suggested instead of trying to make it look Italian, we should have it be truly Waterton (Canadian Rookies).
The Wedding dinner was held at the bride's parents home in Waterton
and was an elegant 7 course Italian meal.  Decorated in true Tuscany Style.
So I suggested the "Waterton Meets Italy" theme.  

No vegetation was harmed in the actual National Park.
We gathered the Willow and Saskatoon branches from the Jasmine's 2 brother's land.
We cut them down 4 weeks prior to the wedding and then forced Mother Nature's hand
by forcing the leaves to come out early.
They were kept in a warm garage in buckets of water.  

The pine boughs were from our friends tree that was blown over in the wind.  
We called it a "environmental upscaled" project.
We were just recycling natures beauty.

The forced Saskatoon branches.

These pussy willows are actually off a poplar tree that we had to winch down because it was rotten at the roots
and was threatening to crash into our little cabin's roof.
So after it was down Pete noticed these awesome pussy's.
They were perfect on the ledge on the stone fireplace.
Thanks to Jon for climbing the rocks and doing such a great job of bunching!!

This is one of my favourite parts.
I had seen a wind chime made out of sea glass, it was so airy and cool looking.
How to reproduce the sea glass in less than a week?
What did I do before the internet?  I found that you can rock tumble glass.
So I tumbled a bunch of glass in 3 tumblers over 5 days.  Each batch would take over 12 hours.  
Then I tied them into strings to replicate icicles.  

These are willow branches that I bunched around the centre white pillars.
It made it look like a willow bush was growing around a birch tree.  

More poplar pussy's.  Jasmine wanted lots of different textures, and be true to the beautiful natural setting.
 I think we accomplished that!

Since the wedding party consisted of 30 people we divided the camp kitchen in half.  we hung canvas drop clothes then draped sheer fabric in front of the canvas, and draped burlap along the top.
 I "swagged" it up with the hope that it would look like a mountain range.
Again the willow branches on the centre pillar. 

Vases of Waterton rocks (returned to the beach after) with snap dragons flanked the aisle, sitting a top log stumps.
We were hoping they would look like Bear Grass.  We were able to order Bear Grass (the greenery) from Costco.

Bear's Grass and Snap Dragon's hanging off the backdrop where the ceremony happened.  
The tumbled sea glass hanging off it as well. 

I couldn't get enough of the florescent green baby leaves!  Especially the ones we made
swags out of and hung over the windows.  

You can barely see the rug, but it's from Turkey!
A treasure that Jasmine found while in Turkey!

The corner the ceremony happened.
Again the Bear Grass from Costco.

The view out the window, this was the morning of the wedding.  Mount Cleveland in the background.

A stand of brave wind blown spruce trees
with Vimy in the background.

I am so lucky to have this fabulous photographer that follows me around all the time.
He has such an eye for detail, I love it.
I love that he's also my best friend and husband!!!  Thank you, Pete!
He took this shot outside looking in with the reflection of the lake!
How cool is that?  Like I said, great eye for detail!

Carriage and Horses arriving

Bear Grass backdrop

Wait, what?  A storm blowing in right at the time the carriage is to pick up the bride?  That's Waterton for ya!  

Good thing we had a roaring fire going in the massive fireplace.
Actually we had fires going from Friday, when we started decorating, through the night and all morning.
The rock fireplace was actually warmed up, it radiated the heat.

Thanks Jasmine and Fausto for letting me be a part of your wedding!
I loved every minute of it!

Shout out to the "Low" men, they were such fun to work with.
They would do anything I wanted!  Bunching, draping, sweeping, chopping, climbing, hanging!