Our dream wedding: You can help!

If you haven’t already heard, we’re engaged!  And guess what else.  You could help us have our dream wedding!  Just vote for us in the Crate & Barrel Ultimate Wedding Contest, and we could win a big ol’ wedding worth $100,000!  We NEED your vote.  In the name of love and happiness and handmade, eco-friendly weddings, perdy-please vote for us here!  It will only take a few seconds.

EDIT: If you’ve voted for us, you can now enter our giveaway to win a stunning embroidered necklace from Marañón, a featured seller on Etsy.  Enter here.

Our love story: I’m Australian.  On a family vacation in the states, we met and fell in love on a California beach.  In a happy twist of fate, my family decided to move there, and Brian and I ended up going to the same high-school together!  But Brian turned out to be a bad-boy, and my good-girl ways made it hard for us to be together.  But love conquers all!  Eventually, a song-and-dance number at a school carnival brought us back together, and we each realized that “You’re the one that I want”.

Ok, so that’s actually the plot of Grease… but our story is romantic, too!  Brian and I met on the first day of school (college), and we spent the first days of our friendship on a class trip to Memphis.  He put my number in his phone, listed as “Elvis”.  He fell in love almost instantly and spent the next three-and-a-half years patiently and tirelessly bearing the burden of unrequited love, making me mac ‘n’ cheese, taking me on dinosaur hunting adventures and holding my hand when I cried.  Eventually, I received a metaphorical slap in the face, and realized I would never meet another person more talented, fun, handsome or caring.  [insert more gooey-lovey-dovey stuff], and now we’re living happily ever after.

Three important details about our Ultimate Wedding: Our dream wedding?  Picture this.  An underwater reception, a chorus of glittering mermaids, floating off into the sunset in a hot-air balloon piloted by Dolly Parton.

But if that doesn’t fit the budget, here’s Plan B:

1) Environmental and social responsibility:  We don’t want our special day just to be about us (for more reasons than Brian’s shyness).  With every detail, we want to support our community, environment, and small businesses.  We’ll have food from local farms, local wildflowers, a handmade dress from an independent designer, recycled-paper decorations and invitations printed on vintage silk scarves.

2) Nature meets Urban:  We’ll exchange vows atop a landscaped roof in downtown Chicago.

3) Bye-bye traditional:  Champagne pyramids, identical bridesmaids, 6-tierd cake?  NO THANKS!  Yes to cup-pies, quilt-covered hay bails, a bluegrass band.

Our everyday dream day: Our everyday dream day includes shopping at Crate & Barrel *wink wink*  Then, blogging together, baking together, balloon dancing together, playing thought-jinks — all on a warm, summer Sunday, with the windows open and Sam Cooke vinyl crackling on the turntable.  After all that we would be tired little puppies, so we would take a nap until dinner, which would include grilled salmon and scrumptious inside-out BLTs, a Pink Slip (one of Brian’s original cocktail creations that includes basil and raspberries) and cinnamon rolls for dessert.  The rest of the night would be spent dancing with our wonderful friends.

Thank you so much for reading and viewing all these vain pictures of us!  Please remember to vote for us here.  If you really want to help us (and I will love you forever if you do) please post this on your blog or website, asking your readers/viewers to vote for us, too!  Don’t hesitate to email me at sarah@westervin.com if you have any questions.