Shelby and Ryan: The Details

A couple of weeks back I had the pleasure of photographing the beautiful wedding of Shelby and Ryan. They were married at Westover School in Middlebury, CT. The location was special not only for its beauty but also because Shelby’s father has worked at the school for almost 25 years. Shelby was a student herself and is now a teacher at Westover! We met Shelby and her girls in her apartment on campus where they were getting ready. I had the wonderful company of Julia from Salty Grapes for this wedding, please check out her awesome shots at The Salty Blog.

Aah…where to begin? I am a sucker for details. And this wedding was full of incredible ones! Shelby’s sister-in-law is none other than Lindsay of the incredible wedding planning duo at Sixpence For Your Shoe. So you can imagine the thought and care that went into every part of this day!

If you’ve been to my blog before, you may already know that I have a hell of a time narrowing my images down and I pretty much always post too many! But I figure my couples don’t mind, right? Who doesn’t want to see a million pictures of their own wedding?! This will be no exception. There were too many fabulous details for me to drool over so I am dedicating this entire post to some of my favorites.

First, a couple of images from Julia. She was on Detail Duty all day and got some awesome shots. I grabbed these straight from her blog. First, the school:


Next we head inside for the details of Shelby’s wedding attire. Her dress was breathtaking. It was by Bellisima and was from Mariella Creations.





We were shooting the dress in an empty dorm room and the building just has this lovely, old-fashioned vibe. The school is over 100 years old so the architecture is very charming and classic. I tried out this action (called, appropriately, ‘Old School’) to see how the dress would look with a more vintage touch:

On to the shoes. These were one of Shelby’s borrowed items. They are Vera Wang and were the shoes that Lindsay wore to her own wedding several years ago:


Some other borrowed items:

Shelby wore her grandmother's necklace. Isn't it exquisite?

And this beautiful little purse was also from Lindsay, I believe:

I tell ya, when I shoot details like these it kind of makes me want to get married again so I can pick out new shoes and jewelry!
The bouquets were magnificent. Shelby used her school colors for her flowers–blue and yellow. They were by Just For You:




The bridesmaids’ flowers:

The paper products were all designed by Sixpence For Your Shoe and were just so elegant:

The invitation

The ceremony program

The dining room looked gorgeous with the school colors and the school's own china.

We lucked out with nice weather so the cocktail reception was outside in the Senior Garden. The food was not only amazingly delicious, but beautifully presented by Emily’s Catering:


Sixpence designed this incredibly unique and beautiful way to display the guest’s seating cards. The cards hung from ribbons along the stone wall of the garden:


Cant’ forget the something ‘blue’ and something ‘new!’ Shelby wore her grandmother’s necklace for something ‘old’, her shoes, veil and purse were her ‘borrowed.’ But Ryan, winner of the Most Romantic Groom Award, wanted to be sure she would have something new and something blue to finish it off. Behold:

The diamond and sapphire bracelet was his gift to Shelby the day of the wedding.

We have some great shots of Shelby opening the gift which I will include in a future post. But can we get a round of applause for Ryan on that one? The bracelet matches her incredible wedding ring. Someone’s got some seriously good taste. 😉

Shelby and Ryan–I hope your honeymoon was as perfect as your wedding day! I had an awesome time from start to finish. Thank you allowing me to capture your special day. I can’t wait to post more photos in the coming weeks. I leave today for vacation but will be working on post #2 shortly. Congratulations!