Photos by Kristin Vanzant Photography

This post is dedicated to Cedarwood’s May 2 bride and groom, Beth Clarke and Brian Whaley, their amazing families and friends.

We rarely do style shoots at Cedarwood because our design team is first and foremost focused on creating the most stunning and spectacular real weddings for couples getting married at our Tennessee historic farm estate. This is an exception done with purpose. The shoot took place just after the devastating May 1-2 floods forced hundreds Nashville brides and grooms to compromise their wedding plans. All of you reading this are emotionally invested in weddings, so you know how disappointing and unsettling it is to let go of even a few long anticipated wedding day details.

Beth and Brian are both attorneys in New York with an impeccable sense of style and pragmatic sensibilities, so we must say that working with them through this historic weather event was impressive. We must also say that their wedding did happen beautifully at Cedarwood – miraculously with most of their plans in tact (special shout out to the amazing staff of A Dream Come True Catering, Patty Cakes, Wedding Guitarist Rob Higginbotham, Anthony – the best bartender in the world – and the band, “The Dickens” who traveled through nasty weather from North Carolina to play for the reception!) We’ll share more details when we post an official blog on Beth and Brian’s wedding.

So on with this story…. As often happens after a natural disaster, the day following was blue sky-beautiful as Beth and Brian left Nashville. The Cedarwood team looked around at the lovely table tops, flowers, linens and the emerald green lawn that went unused on Sunday when everything was forced under the pavilion. We wanted to create a special memory for Beth and Brian that would involve the Cedarwood grounds.

Days earlier Kristin Vanzant of Kristin Vanzant Photography and Emily Humphries of Simply Yours Weddings & Etc came to meet us and express their interest in shooting a session at Cedarwood. These creative women have huge hearts so we called them with our idea of dedicating a ‘style session’ to Beth and Brian, using their wedding flowers.

We re-purposed Beth and Brian’s reception table centerpieces, pew arrangements, focal arrangements and house decorations for this stylized redo, along with a few items from the Cedarwood design studio, pantry and gardens. We rescued a few left over stems from buckets in our studio to create the cascading ‘love knots’ on the table and an exotic, yet simple bouquet of Parrot Tulips, Calla Lillies and Fern Fronds.

Design Redo. Beauty captured. Dedicated to Beth and Brian. Enjoy.

Beth and Brian, your epic wedding has just landed on top of our unforgettable weddings list. You are fantastic! We hope you enjoyed seeing your lovely wedding flowers again.

Please check back in with the Cedarwood blog to see the beautiful Beth and Brian Whaley and lovely ‘real wedding’ details when their photographer Christy Bryan of Waldorf Photographic Art releases images from the day. We can’t wait!

Thanks again to Kristin Vanzant and Emily Humphries for reaching out to Cedarwood and taking time to help us with this shoot. We love to network with creative and fun people.

Linda & the Cedarwood Event Team