The Woodward Wedding : Mary & Andy

South Bend, Indiana, Wedding Photography | October23, 2010

We met for the first time in Indianapolis at a bar called Slippery Noodle in October of 2005. Over the next 4 months my sister Jen and Andy’s best man Mike played matchmakers and before I knew it Andy and I were having our first date on February 14^th, 2006.

Andy proposed on November 1^st, 2009 at his parent’s house on Eagle Lake in Edwardsburg, MI. We had just celebrated my little brother Joe’s 15^th birthday at my parent’s house and were on our way to his parent’s house to visit and have dinner. When we got to his parents, they weren’t there, but had left a note saying they ran down to the neighbor’s house real quick and would be right back. Andy said well lets go on a boat ride then real quick before they get back. So Andy, me, and our dog Bella got on the boat and headed out for our last boat ride of the season. Just as we were about half way around the lake, I turned to look at Andy and he was down on one knee asking me to marry him. I was shocked, but so excited and happy. I didn’t expect it to happen that day or that way, it was the best surprise!

Well Andy and I both love the fall and knew that we wanted to be married sometime in the fall months. After we decided on October 23^rd (after going through the Notre Dame Football schedule), I started thinking about a color scheme and decorations. I didn’t want the traditional fall colors of burgundy, gold, and orange, but wanted more bright deep colors. I decided on a deep purple with accents of ivory, black, and silver. I wanted everything to look classy, clean, and beautiful.

My Dad actually is the one that mentioned having the wedding reception at The Woodward. He’s a caterer and had done a wedding there a couple of months ago and thought we would really like it. As soon as Andy and I went and looked at the venue we fell in love. It had a great intimate space, beautiful windows, and had W’s monogrammed in various places (which is the first initial of our last name). We also found out from Andy’s mom that it use to be an old disco dance club where Andy’s parents actually met at!

I looked for a long time online at a lot of different photographers websites and there recent wedding albums. I also talked to a lot of other brides about their experiences with their wedding photographer to try and find out who to use. I wanted a photographer that was creative with photos; I wanted candid and traditional photos from my wedding. I liked Katie Whitcomb’s style of photography and that they were a husband and wife team. One of my friends (Christine & Chip) was also using them at her July wedding and recommended me to use them at my wedding. So that is how we decided to use Katie Whitcomb Photographers!!

Like I said before my Dad is a caterer and owes his own catering company called Garden Fresh Catering. One of the nice things about The Woodward is that you can have anyone you want to cater your wedding, so my dad was our caterer. He pretty much said we could have whatever we wanted, which was really cool! We decided on doing a buffet, we feel that people can eat what they want and however much they want that way. We did a polish dinner that included polish sausage, chicken, mashed potatoes, green beans, gravy noodles, mostacholi and bread. The food was absolutely amazing and I could of ate it all night =)

I love flowers not a particular type or color, I just love all flowers. I knew I wanted fresh flowers on all of the tables, and wanted all the bouquets to be full and colorful. I pretty much left all the details up to Ashley from Ashley Troyer Events. I knew I wanted the girls to carry ivory flowers and me to carry various colors of purple flowers. The design and type of flowers I left in Ashley’s hands!

We decided to go with cupcakes instead of a traditional cake. I had seen cupcakes at other weddings and loved the way they looked and how it was different from the traditional wedding cake!

Wow this is a hard question to answer. I loved everything about our wedding day, but I would have to say the best moment of the entire day was probably seeing Andy for the first time when I walked down the aisle. At that moment I realized that the small things I have been agonizing over the last few weeks didn’t matter, all that mattered was that I was about to marry the love of my life!

If I could give other brides advice about their wedding planning it would be to not spend every moment of every day planning your wedding. It is one day, don’t get me wrong it is a BIG day but don’t lose sight of what is really important about that day. Also do what’s important to you, if you think you want it in your wedding then make it happen have no regrets. The final tip is let others help you with things, even though we want to all think we are super woman it will benefit you greatly!!

To view more images from their day go to: http://pictage.com/794894