Real Bride: Courtney Caudle

One of our favorite beauty bloggers got married, so of course we had to share it! She had such a lovely little backyard-style wedding, but this wedding is anything but ordinary! Check out her lovely wedding here and if you want to check out her wedding blog or her YouTube channel, click these links!

Your name: Courtney Caudle Groom's name: Dusty Caudle Wedding date: May 13, 2017 City, State: Brodnax, VA

Tell us more about you!

How long have you been together? Nearly 2 years, though we have known each other for closer to 4.

How did he propose? (Or how did you propose!) We had only been together for 4 months, but we both knew from day one that we were ready. I kept dropping hints about my 19th birthday coming up, and how I would want to be proposed to in a simple but sweet way that I could hold onto forever. So my not-so-much of a writer (which I am a writer) wrote me a two-page letter. He then put it in a homemade birdhouse, which I love homemade gifts. When I pulled the letter out, I accidentally saw the last sentence on the back page, which was him popping the question. But I made him sweat as I read the whole letter, and even pretended to stumble through a few parts, because I really wanted the moment to last before I said yes.

What was your favorite part of the wedding? Oh, that is so hard! I think the vows. We both wrote our own vows. And they were super cheesy. We love to game together, and so I included in my vows “You are the Fenix to my Dom, and I am the Cortana to your Master Chef. I promise to always be your faithful player number 2.” And he included a part about getting me McDonald's at 2 am. And while we had some jokes in them, it was also really sweet and emotional.

What went wrong with your wedding? The weather the day before was horrible, which meant that it was messy and we couldn’t have a rehearsal. The next day there were a lot of things that were out of place, or people were confused about because of the lack of a chance to do a rehearsal.

Did you find any tricks to save you money?

Well one thing was that we got to use a friend's old farmhouse, so that cut down on the costs a lot. My husband, father, and I made the centerpieces as well, and the wine bottles I used were recycled ones we already had. We also made the altar. And our pastor friend officiated it, with the help of a lovely pastor. Also, we just used our phones for music.

If you could go back and redo it, would you change anything and what? I think I would have taken more time to plan it. We set the date a year in advance but it seems like I didn’t start planning until like December the year before. If it hadn’t been a bit rushed, I may have been able to save a little more money.

Do you have any advice for new brides? Don’t feel like you have to settle for a theme and rigidly stick to it. The very start of my wedding horrors was that I wanted to do a country chic look, and couldn’t find a dress that I fell head over heels for that I also felt fit the theme. I ended up in a gorgeous dress that I adored, after I finally realized I could break the mold.

Did you over-plan or under-plan or was it just right? I under-planned. And then the month leading up to it was a crunch because we started thinking of all the things we had missed. We were initially keeping it small and intimate, with only the close, close family invited. But that didn’t last. Slowly our invite list got to around 150, and I began to panic the month before because I realized with that many people invited, I needed to tighten up.

Did any of your vendors knock your socks off? The friend who made my cake amazed me! And the photographer was so incredibly nice! I really love the decision I made to go with her because she was so sweet, had a similar personality to me, and really let me have fun with it, as well as gave me a few tips for rocking my own photography business.

Did any of your vendors disappoint? Not really!

What was one (or more!) special element in your wedding that isn’t in most? I think something really special is that my husband and I have a cute story behind how he got one of his cars. And my dad actually drove me to the aisle in that car because I wanted to be sure that it was included. People also seemed to think it was pretty neat that my best friend was my maid of honor, considering he is a guy. And I actually had two maids of honor.

What do you wish you’d spent more on (whether you were able to or not)? The decorations! I would have had fairy lights hanging from everywhere!

Where do you feel like you could have saved money or overspent? I was so nervous about how many people would be there and got way too much food. Very few RSVPed and that made me nervous because I knew that more people would come than the ones who RSVPed, and I didn’t want to run out of food. I could have done less and been fine though because there were tons of leftovers.

How many guests did you invite vs how many RSVPed vs how many actually came? We invited 150, and I think 25-35 RSVPed.

Wedding venue: Friend's Farm House Caterer: N/A Photographer: NelesaRene Photography Videographer: Myself! DJ/Band: Myself! Dress Designer: OLEG CASSINI Bridal Salon: David’s Bridal Bridesmaids Salon: Peebles Menswear: Peebles Officiant: A family friend and the preacher from my family church Florist: Myself Jeweler: N/A Hair stylist: Myself Makeup Artist: Myself

Cake: A family friend Invitations: Shutterfly Rentals: Rent-E-Quip Transportation: A family member brought a golf cart so that people could get from the parking area to where the wedding was being held. And my dad drove me to the aisle in my husband's Camaro.