If you’ve followed Real Weddings Magazine for any amount of time, you know that we’re obsessed about weddings. Personally, I’ve been fortunate to be a guest or a member of the wedding party at many weddings of friends and family throughout the years, but until recently I’ve never had the opportunity to actually “work” a wedding before. What an experience that was! How did this come about? This past summer, the Sacramento Chapter of the National Association for Catering and Events (NACE) announced that for their service project the members were going to gift a wedding to one deserving couple—the project became “The Wedding of a Lifetime” contest. We’ve been honored to be a NACE member for several years, so, of course, we jumped on board and got involved wholeheartedly in this effort. We volunteered to be on the selection committee—boy was that tough! We had so many delightful and deserving couples; we wanted to gift a wedding to each of them. Ultimately the committee chose Brittany and Daniel as the winning couple, and their wedding took place on 10.11.12. I got to experience their wedding firsthand from “the back of the house” as a server that evening. It was something completely outside of my comfort zone (and, yeah, I did break some glasses. Thankfully it wasn’t in front of Brittany and Daniel’s guests!). Several of my fellow NACE members volunteered to work the wedding as well, some in their professional capacities and some, like me, outside of their normal work experience (check out the super-cool photo strip to the left featuring many of us cramming into the photo booth!). Needless to say, it was a thrilling and exhilarating—and dare I admit it, completely exhausting—experience. It was truly an honor to be a part of Brittany and Daniel’s special day, and to be part of an organization that would give so much of themselves to ensure that one deserving couple had a very special day that we hope they will never forget. Read more about Brittany and Daniel’s “Wedding of a Lifetime” starting on page 91.
What else do we have in store for you in this issue of Real Weddings Magazine? Ready to be inspired? We worked with not one, but TWO amazing design teams for this issue for two inspirational décor stories: “Once Upon a Forest” and “Passion for Pink.” These design teams created some pretty darned cool décor themes for these photo shoots—we hope you think so too…check them out starting on pages 51 and 83 respectively.
Next up…it’s our über-fabulous cover model finalist photo shoot. As always, we picked three spectacular real brides from the hundreds who entered our cover model contest to serve as our fashion models. These young women—Tosha, Heidi and Nicole—got to play dress-up for the day and literally were queens of the castle, Preston Castle that is, this past September at our shoot. And the wildly-talented Kris Holland of Kris Holland Photography captured all of the stunning local gowns and bouquets through his lens. Turn to page 59 to see this virtual fashion show (and don’t forget to download our digital edition to see even more photos from this beautiful photo shoot!).
And of course, we wouldn’t be Real Weddings Magazine if we didn’t present you with some of the best-of-the-best of this past season’s real weddings—we’ve selected 29 of the area’s finest real weddings to inspire you to make your special day unique and all your own. Be sure to log on to our Web site for even more photos, tips and vendors from each of these real weddings.
As always, we absolutely love putting together this magazine for you, our gorgeous Real Weddings Brides. We love to hear that this magazine is one that you really use in planning your wedding—we love to hear that you cut out pictures that you love, utilize the lists we provide to put together your wedding dream team, and that you tune in to our Web site and social media sites for your daily dose of inspiration.
When you find your wedding vendors through Real Weddings Magazine (the magazine, blog, Web site, mobile app and our social media sites), be sure to tell them that you’re a Real Weddings Bride because without their support, we simply couldn’t do this magazine.
Happy planning!