– Bride and Groom’s names: Ashley Babb and Kerry Trantham
– How did he propose?
Kerry proposed after a romantic walk on the beach at sunset at one of our favorite places, Orange Beach. He set up a GoPro in the sand and said he wanted us to take some pictures together. After he set it up, we started talking about our lives together, he took me in his arms and told me how much he loved me….before I knew what was happening, he was on one knee proposing!
– Tell us about your venue and why you chose it:
We were married at Howe Farms in Georgetown, TN. My husband’s grandmother lives near this venue and when we were dating, we would drive by and we would talk about how pretty it looked (but all we could see from the road was a gorgeous fence). When we got engaged, we knew that we immediately wanted to go look there. On our tour, we instantly fell in LOVE with this venue! There was a huge, glamorous barn for our reception, and our absolute favorite part was “Ceremony Hill” which has beautiful views of the mountains. It was so romantic. We also loved the bride and grooms rooms for getting ready, so we could make our wedding day an all-day fun event with our family and friends. We also were sold on the fact that the venue gave you free-range of any vendors you wanted to use. Talene Howe was a joy to work with!!!
– What was your favorite and least favorite part about the wedding planning process?
My favorite part about the wedding planning process was getting to spend so much time with my sweet Mom & to see my husband’s and mine’s vision come to life for our day! My least favorite part about the wedding process was just the stress it added to an already busy schedule (which that may have been partly because I was working and also in graduate school at the same time!). There are SO MANY details that you don’t even realize go into a wedding until you plan one yourself! Thankfully I had an amazing Mom who helped keep us on track with lists upon lists! The stressful part of wedding planning brings me to my next point….
– Any advice for other brides planning their big day?
As I’m sure you’ve heard a lot, “don’t sweat the small stuff.” This is SO true. No matter how much you stress, things WILL go wrong the day of your wedding. The week before our wedding, our get-away car broke down, and the day of our wedding, our Snapchat filter was not working and somehow our “reserved” signs did not make it out on the tables at the reception. All these tiny details you stress over in the days, weeks, and months leading up to your wedding really just don’t matter the day of your wedding. I refused to be a “bride-zilla” and I wanted to make our day enjoyable and fun for everyone. I honestly was shocked at how much I just didn’t care about any of that, and how happy I was just that the day had finally arrived and we were joining as one (the part of your wedding planning process that REALLY matters)! Also, BE KIND to your bridesmaids!! Do not have the attitude that “this is my day and everyone has to do what I say.” Your bridesmaids are taking time out of their busy schedules to devote time to you and your future husband, so be appreciative of everything they are doing to make your day special!!
– What was your favorite part of your wedding day?
It’s so hard to choose just one part!!! My top 3 favorite parts of our wedding day were our first look, our ceremony, and seeing our reception venue decorated for the first time. We had decided prior to the wedding that we wanted to have special time to ourselves before the ceremony to calm any nerves and for my groom to see my dress! I will NEVER forget his face when he saw me in my dress for the first time as long as I live. It was literally THE sweetest moment of my life! Also it gave us a chance to get all of our couple pictures out of the way before the ceremony and really just savor our time together. Our photographer, Tim Ivey of Imago Photography was amazing and really made our time together taking pictures special for us both! We were ESPECIALLY glad we got all of our pictures out of the way before the ceremony because as soon as our ceremony ended, the sky opened up and it started to pour rain, which would have made it impossible to take any outdoor pictures at our beautiful venue. So we were happy with having a first look prior! Also, we spent a lot of time planning our ceremony. We wanted to make it personalized by incorporating our families and to make it Christ-centered. We actually used the template from my parents’ wedding ceremony 45 years ago for ours but made it unique to us. We also wrote our own vows. One of my favorite parts of the ceremony was our “Flower Grams” (instead of Flower Girls) who were my Nana and his Granny. It was seriously THE cutest thing ever!!! Seeing our grandmothers walk down the aisle together is something I will always remember! Finally, I absolutely LOVED seeing our wedding venue decorated for the first time. I based a lot of our vision for the day on a Pinterest picture I saw with a black and white dance floor. That was the centerpiece of our day and it just came together beautifully. We had a 5-tier wedding cake in the middle of the dance floor for our first dance with a spotlight. It was just gorgeous! All of the flowers popped with pink. We had black and white striped table runners and gold accents throughout. It was just exactly what I had in mind and I’m so happy with how it all turned out!
