Combining her Florida roots with a California aesthetic into a design that felt very clean, relaxed and classic, bride McKayla incorporated details that felt fun and personal. Think coastal California meets a little bit of southern formality. South Carolina wedding photographer ELIZABETH LANIER captured their celebration in her usual magical way.
The couple wanted to spend as much time with their guests as possible during the wedding weekend and searched to find a location that was relatively easy to travel to but still felt totally unique. "We didn’t want to deal with the complications or guest costs of an international wedding but wanted that destination feel. We had previously spent Thanksgiving with my family at PALMETTO BLUFF and fell in love with it. Between the food, the May River, the nature reserve, the golf, and the island feel, we were sold."
HOW DID YOU MEET? We were introduced by a friend at a party when we were both students at Stanford University. We stayed friends for about a year or so before both finally admitting feelings and starting a relationship.
TELL US ABOUT YOUR PROPOSAL: It's a bit of a crazy story, we were living in Lake Tahoe at the time and Sean had planned to propose one weekend on this lakeside path we love to walk. However, it was January and the week he planned to propose there was a huge storm and we got seven feet of new snow in four days. Unbeknownst to me, Sean called every snow removal company he could find in the Tahoe area asking them if they could plow this public walking path (that was never cleared by the city), and unsurprisingly not a single company called him back. So instead he convinced me to take a lake “walk” in extremely deep snow, where I almost turned back twice, but made it just long enough for him to pop the question with our golden retriever Zephyr.
TELL US ABOUT FINDING YOUR WEDDING DRESS/ATTIRE: Picking the perfect dress was really hard for me, I went wedding dress shopping 8 times (!) and it took me a while to figure out what I was looking for. Eventually I realized I wanted something that was classic but not boring, that I felt comfortable in but was also flattering, strapless and with a train (because when else do you get to wear a train), and no appliques, lace, sequins, or sparkle. Once I finally found my dress, I knew I wanted to do something unique with my veil, since my dress had a more traditional feel. I first saw a picture of the colorful Monique Lhuillier veil series in an instagram post from bridal fashion week and I could not get it out of my head. I went back and forth for weeks before going for it, it felt really true to me to have a little zing of color on my wedding day.
