One Day : Michael and Mary Kate

Welcome to the third week of my new series, One Day, where I am able to feature a couple who recently got married. This week, I’m excited to introduce Michael and Mary Kate! After a 9 month long engagement and a budget of $35,000, they were married at Old St. Mary’s Church (the first and oldest Catholic Parish in Chicago) and celebrated the night away at Salvage One. I was able to design their invitation set + program and I will always remember their style and personality. Enjoy some tips from Mary Kate, a inspiration board revolving around their chocolate brown-green-butter color scheme, and take a peek at some of their GORGEOUS photos.

1. Now that it has been about 6 months since your wedding day, what do you remember most about the day? I remember I was in a church filled with 200 people but it felt like just Mike and me. I remember our MOH and BM speeches. I remember the day and night just felt truly magical. Great vibes!

2. What was the vision for your wedding day before you started planning? Before we got engaged we discussed a destination wedding or maybe even eloping!

3. How did that vision change by the time you were finished with the planning? We did a little research on a destination wedding and when we realized our grandparents wouldn’t be able to make it, we decided to stay local. After the decision to stay local was made, we had no clue what our wedding would look like.  Since I work in the meetings/events industry and have been to several banquet hall/hotel weddings we knew that’s what we didn’t want, but we could not pin point what we did want. The key for us was baby steps, taking one task at a time. Visualizing the big picture was impossible. Once we found our venue, we could start to picture it coming together. What we finally ended up with was a traditional wedding in an nontraditional spot with personal touches.

4. What difficulties did you face while planning a wedding in Chicago? Being able to afford a unique venue in the city of Chicago with great food. AKA BUDGET! Also weather, Chicago weather is so unpredictable so we planned for a hot day, but we had a back up plan for a cooler day.

[From top to bottom: flower girl dress via J.Crew, chocolate brown wedding programs via theknot.com, cowboy boot image via theknot.com, potential rehearsal dinner dress via Anthropologie, apple favor idea via theknot.com]

5. What was your least favorite part of wedding planning? This may sound odd but choosing my hair style for that day was my least favorite part of the entire wedding planning process.  I could not decided and when I did, the styles I tried looked terrible on me.  After several hair trials, I just said just decided to not worry about it.

6. What was your favorite part of wedding planning? Negotiating with vendors. Vendors want your business. Being able to negotiate with the vendors I was able to save us a lot of money.

7. How did Mike (the groom) fit into the wedding planning process? Mike choose the reception venue.  We worked together on budget, rings, music and menus. He also styled the groomsmen.

8. If you could go back in time – what would “married Mary Kate” tell “engaged Mary Kate” before the wedding planning started? Eat everything.

All of Michael and Mary Kate’s photography was taken by Emotia.com.