Where It All Began

Most love stories start somewhere. Lauren and Atticus's started down the street. Their families were neighbors, the two of them met as teenagers and spent a little while as "just friends" — and then, as these things go, they were inseparable. Even years of long distance couldn't undo what that street started.

Lauren's father said it best in his toast, remembering the boy who lived down the street:

"Who’s that boy — and how close does he live to us? … This is going to be a problem."
— Steve Hardage, Father of the Bride

The whole backyard laughed. They knew exactly how that problem turned out — they were sitting in it.

So when it came time to get married, there was really only one place it could happen: Lauren's parents' backyard. The same lawn, the same trees, the same white fence — the place where it all began. And this family was finding its way as it went: Lauren is the first of her sisters to marry, so planning a wedding was unknown territory for all of them — no family playbook, no one who'd done any of this before. Planning a wedding at home means building a venue where there isn't one, and that's exactly what Full Planning & Design is for: I was with them from the very beginning, and together we turned that lawn into a ceremony on the grass, a white tent rising under the trees, and a house full of people who had watched these two grow up — some of them from right down the street.

The design kept the romance soft and the meaning close. Lauren's eight bridesmaids wore light blue — her "something blue," all eight of them — against bouquets of coral peonies and garden roses tied with blue ribbon. A gold mirror leaned against a tree to welcome everyone in — Welcome to the wedding of Lauren and Atticus — with the tented tables waiting just behind it. The trolley made the arrivals part of the charm, the bar poured signature drinks, and as the light went down, the tent took over: glowing under the trees while the dance floor filled.

There are moments in this job you just get to witness. Lauren's father seeing her for the first time, holding her close, both of them smiling through it. The two of them afterward on the front steps of the house, her gown spread over the steps. Atticus in the middle of the dance floor, holding his bride's jacket, grinning like a man with nowhere else on earth to be.

And one quiet moment to end it: the two of them forehead to forehead at the white fence, her bouquet between them. A full circle, closed in the same backyard where it opened.