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This is the view from Cherokee Country Club, the country club I grew up going to, and where Ryan's parents hosted our rehearsal dinner. The Tennessee River was the perfect backdrop for our wedding weekend because it was such an important part of my upbringing.
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We worked with Katie Fischer Design for our save-the-dates, invitation suite, and day-of paper. The overall look and feel we wanted was autumnal, sophisticated, and dynamic-- yet timeless. We wanted to capture the formality, spirit, and season of our fall wedding in Tennessee by using rich colors and florals and keeping consistency from beginning to end.
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The man of my dreams!
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Lots of laughs during the rehearsal dinner speeches! Five of my bridesmaids went to college with Ryan at the University of Virginia. I went to the University of Tennessee but studied abroad with the University of Virginia girls during college. When we all moved to New York after college, I met Ryan through them! It was a long running joke that I tried to integrate myself into the University of Virginia crowd while living in New York and attempted to solidify it by marrying an alumni. But at our rehearsal dinner, my bridesmaids made me an official UVA graduate! They compiled a video with all of the University of Virginia's top alumni welcoming me into the UVA family and even had a hat and diploma for me! It was so special, and I couldn't have been happier to officially become a Wahoo!
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My girls! My bridesmaids made up a group of friends from home, college, and living in New York, as well as my sister and sister-in-laws. All of them have made such an impact in my life, and it was so special to have each one of the them standing by my side-- and keeping me calm-- all day long! My nieces were my flower girls. They mean the world to me, so it was wonderful having them involved throughout the entire day. They got their hair done with us and everything!
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I love this picture and the excitement it captures. Throughout the day, my mom kept saying, “It’s your wedding day!” My mom and I are incredibly close, and she was such a huge help every step of the way including daily calls, multiple trips to New York, hand-stuffing our invitations, putting together our welcome bags-- the list goes on! I couldn’t have done it without her and appreciated everything she did so much.
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I must have tried on over a hundred wedding dresses before selecting this Monique Lhuillier dress. I had always pictured myself wearing a fitted wedding dress-- never a ball gown. But I kept coming back to this dress and on the day, it was perfect! I really wanted sleeves and this dress had gorgeous removable sleeves that I wore during the ceremony, then took off for the reception, so it was like two different looks. I also added a fun belt after our first dance for the dance party!
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I wore two different Lelet NY headpieces throughout the day-- one for the ceremony and one for the reception. For jewelry, I wore a pair of my step-mom’s diamond earrings. They were my something borrowed!
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My nieces are my everything, and Ryan has become very close to them as well, so having them included in our wedding was extremely important to us. They took their job very seriously! My mom helped with their outfits, dressing them in adorable white dresses with white faux-fur jackets, and our florist, Colby West, made them floral crowns wrapped with silk ribbon. They looked adorable!
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I loved the color of my bridesmaid dresses. Burgundy was the primary color of our wedding, so I thought it was very fitting. Everyone wore a different dress in terms of fabric (including velvet) and style, but all the dresses were floor-length Jenny Yoo dresses. Tennessee weather in the fall can be tricky. It can either be 40 degrees or 70 degrees, so I bought my bridesmaids faux-fur wraps to wear, and I’m glad I did because it ended up being cold!
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For our wedding, Ryan wore a pair of cufflinks that I gave him for our one year anniversary of dating with the longitude and latitude coordinates of where we met!
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The first look! I was feeling so many emotions in this moment. I was nervous, excited, happy, and scared. Most of all, I was just ready to see Ryan! I hadn’t seen him since the night before and missed him!
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“Yay, we made it!” Our photographer, Tec Petaja, captured the pure joy of this moment perfectly.
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All smiles here! I was so happy to be together and to be holding his hand. It was about 50 degrees while we were taking pictures, but I was too excited to be cold!
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We had a big wedding party! Ryan had twelve groomsmen and seven ushers; and I had eleven bridesmaids, three junior bridesmaids, five flower girls, and one ring bearer.
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Ryan wrote the sweetest letter to me that I read right before I walked down the aisle. My makeup artist, Claire Balest, had to touch me up after I read it because it made me cry!
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The fellas! Lead by their fearless leader, aka our Pastor, Bill Boldt. Bill is a close family friend and also married my sister. He has known me since I was young, so it was very meaningful to have him marry us.
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Our adorable flower girls. When my niece got to the top of the aisle, she threw all of her flowers in the air and said, “We’re going trick-or-treating!” The same niece had a breakdown during the ceremony and almost caught her dress on fire (We had lit candles all up and down the aisle) and nearly knocked over our arch. My brother had to carry her away kicking and screaming! It was hilarious and a great comic relief after a serious moment in the ceremony. Ryan’s grandmother had passed away earlier that week, and we had just lit a memory candle in her honor, so everyone needed a good laugh!
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I love this picture of Ryan-- he looks so handsome. He has the most infectious smile, which is one of the things I first noticed about him and love most about him.
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This was such a sweet moment with my dad. I can’t remember exactly what we talked about—it was honestly probably about the Tennessee football game that was being played later that day, but I just remember feeling so happy and so grateful to have him there with me. We had a long way to walk with a lot of eyes on us, but we were talking and laughing as if it was just the two of us!
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Growing up, I always wanted to get married in Knoxville in the fall. It is my favorite time of year with the leaves changing-- and it's football season! Our venue, Marblegate Farm, was located on a private peninsula with over 200 acres of farmland and 8,500 feet of waterfront views. I grew up on the Tennessee River, so being married with it as our backdrop was really meaningful.
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Chris Blue, season 12 winner of The Voice, performed during our ceremony. He sang “All of Me” by John Legend and “Bless the Broken Road” by Rascal Flatts. He was incredible and made the ceremony so special!
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“Introducing to you for the first time, the Nizoleks!”
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Us with our parents! They were all so helpful and supportive throughout our engagement, and they all get along so well. We could not be luckier!
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Showing off our bling!
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My two-year-old niece looked at this picture one time and when asked who it was, she said, “Jesus!” I can’t help but thinking (and laughing) about that every time I see this photo now.
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I love this picture of us! My hair and makeup team, led by the extremely talented Claire Balest, stayed with us during photos to make any adjustments or touch-ups. If you are able to, I highly recommend keeping your beauty team around!
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Running off right after the ceremony to steal a quick moment alone before joining our guests for the cocktail hour.
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Our photographer caught us for a quick photo before-- he said the lighting was too good to miss!
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Colby West Design did our flowers. Colby and his team were so wonderful to work with! For the reception, we did arrangements in both tall and short metal stands with pottery bowls holding arrangements between the stands. The arrangements were accented with brass taper holders and colored taper candles covered with glass shades and votive candles.
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Every little detail mattered to us, and I feel like this picture really captures that. Because of the time of year, we really wanted to incorporate velvet into our reception, so we had velvet table runners, tablecloths, and napkins. We thought it was a fun touch and was something we had never seen at a wedding. We also used gold accents wherever we could because why not?!
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I had always pictured myself having a tented wedding, but the reception hall at our wedding venue was a wonderful blank space, and we loved the wood beams. We really wanted to play into these with our florals, and Colby West was able to do that by covering them with Jackson vine and foraged greens.
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Our first dance! Ryan is a music buff, so we wanted to pick something unique. We landed on, "Queen Bee" by Taj Mahal. It was so much fun to dance to and only a few of our guests had heard of the song!
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Ryan had no idea I was wearing a ball gown. It was the last thing he expected me to wear, so he was terrified our whole first dance of stepping on it. He was so cautious, and you can tell in this picture he is staring at it, making sure he wasn’t stepping on the gown!
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Hugging my sister after her Matron of Honor toast! My sister is six years older and has always been a role model to me, so having her stand up in front of everyone and say such sweet things about Ryan and me meant so much.
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I’ve always looked up to my dad and in this moment, I could tell how proud he was of me, and it was such an incredible feeling.
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We danced to Louis Armstrong's “What a Wonderful World.” My dad played football at the University of Tennessee and is still very involved in the university. Our dance came at the perfect time because they had just won their football game, so he was in a great mood!
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A well-deserved hug! None of this day would have been possible without him. He was so supportive every step of the way, and we appreciated everything he did for us so much.
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Ryan taking his mom for a spin on the dance floor! They danced to “My Wish” by Rascal Flatts.
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Ryan and his mom are very close, and I love this picture of them.
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The two girls in the photo are sister-in-laws. We joke that they look like my backup dancers! Dinner was over at this point, and we were all hitting the dance floor. Our band was Jessie's Girl, an East Coast Entertainment group from Atlanta, Georgia. They were awesome and kept our guests entertained and dancing the entire time.
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Ryan and I love to dance-- we didn’t leave the dance floor all night!
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On stage with our band singing “Rocky Top,” which is the University of Tennessee’s fight song. This was right after we did our outfit changes. I knew that Ryan was changing jackets, but I didn’t know into what. It just so happened that we both changed into new velvet burgundy outfits!
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I still don’t know how this happened, but two of our best guy friends picked Ryan and me up on the dance floor and kept us up on their shoulders for an entire song!
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Praying that my friend doesn’t drop me but loving every second of it! I had just changed into my velvet, Oscar de La Renta cocktail dress so I was also praying that no one could see up it!
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Rushing out of the reception hall because we heard that it was time for fireworks!
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Quick kiss before the show! Having sparklers at our wedding was a must. All of the sparklers were TNT Fireworks.
