Okay. So it’s been two weeks and I’m just now getting back to you. Life is still moving full steam ahead. You blink and a week goes by!

So back to my wedding recap. As many of you know, we chose Journey Church (our church home) at The Factory in Franklin as our ceremony AND reception venue. Journey Church leases Building No. 8 at The Factory. It’s SUCH a neat building with exposed brick, large wooden beams, super-high ceilings and all of these incredible wrought iron candleabras we placed everywhere. My favorite part about our venue was that it didn’t call for much decoration. It has so much character…it’s naturally decorated. Covering it up is just wrong to me. Here’s a look at the inside of Building No. 8:

This wall is inside our church and it was painted by my incredibly talented artist friend Deeann Carson. The wall reads “We dwell in soul environments, knowing, living and telling the love story of Jesus to the world…” I LOVE this!

This is the gigantic wall of old, distressed windows and doors you see as soon as you walk in the front door. It creates the most perfect walkway/divider from the door to the rest of the large room.

Here you can see the opposite side of the door/window wall, where my handsome father is greeting our family and friends as they arrive for our wedding. Just look at the beautiful lit branches everywhere. I mean, this building is just naturally beautiful!

You may recall the wedding wish jar idea I’d found over at Martha Stewart Weddings last year. Well, we DID incorporate a wish jar and our guests loved it! Not only was it a part of our sign in process, but it’s also made a wonderful keepsake which we now enjoy seeing every day in our living room:

Thankfully I’d hit a fantastic sale on scrapbook paper at Joann Fabrics and purchased 2 full books of beautiful scrapbook paper at a buy 1 get 1 free discount! Plus, my adorable little wish jar was 50% off from Swoozie’s in Green Hills.

Another thing I loved about our venue was that our guests didn’t have to drive somewhere else for the reception. See, our ceremony was “in the round”, meaning our guests encircled us, on one side of the room and our reception was setup on the other side of the room. We covered our tables with purple linens and were VERY creative and frugal with our centerpieces. We collected a large box of wine bottles from friends and family, borrowed 2 sets of Ball jars from wedding coordinator Emily Humphries and then used scrapbook paper beneath the bottles and jars. Easy peasy:

Thanks to Bridesmaid Megan who has lovely, calligraphy-like handwriting, we had simple, easy to read signs for our “in memory of” candles:

The following image allows you to see just how large Building No. 8 is. Note the incredibly high ceilings, the candles placed around the room and the gorgeous lights strung across the center of the room:

Here we are surrounded by our friends and family, sharing a moment of quiet prayer before we vow our lifelong commit to one another:

And here we are coming down the aisle:

*sigh* SUCH a magical day! I still get teary thinking about how beautiful and perfect it was.

There’s more where that came from, folks. STILL so many things to share and tell you about! I’m ESPECIALLY excited to tell you about what I’m up to this Thursday. And I’m going to get to treat a few other local Nashville brides and brides-to-be too! Woohoo, I’m pumped! Stay tuned, friends. I promise to focus and dedicate more time with you! You will NOT want to miss what I have brewing.