Date

Guests

135

June 13, 2015

Laura and James met five years before their wedding through an online dating site. "When I found his profile, I was attracted to the fact we both had similar backgrounds in art and design, but he also loved snowboarding and the outdoors, which was so different from me," Laura says. After chatting online for a while, they met for a casual lunch date, and then headed to the Montreal Fine Arts gallery a few days later. "It was crazy to think how our personalities were so similar, but different in so many ways. Somehow we just worked so well together. We were pretty much official about two weeks later," she says.

While James and Laura had joked about having a carnival theme for their wedding, they ended up with a more historic and vintage vibe with subtle circus-themed elements woven in. " With this inspiration in mind, our palette was a mix of neutrals including off-white, cream, tan and charcoal grey with glittering gold accents," Laura explains.

One of the couple's favourite elements that helped to tie in their theme was their luxurious wedding cake, complete with the most adorable elephant cake toppers painted in gold. "And it wasn't just all looks either, it also tasted amazing! We also loved the gold elephant cake toppers; they fit in with the final design so well," Laura says. To tie in the subtle vintage carnival elements, Laura and James created lawn games for their guests to play during cocktail hour and served mason jars of popcorn as their wedding favours. "We spray painted all the animal figurines on top of the popcorn favours gold, and we were so thrilled with how they turned out."

The couple decided to stick with tradition and forego a first look, which only made the ceremony that much more special. "It was an incredible moment seeing each other at our ceremony for the first time, realizing we were about to make such an important commitment to one other," Laura says. Once all was said and done at the end of the night, a mishap ended up as one of the couple's favourite moments of the day: Laura and James realized that amidst the rush of the party, everyone had left without giving them a ride home!"We walked back, the two of us, along the golf course. It was incredibly dark with just the moon and stars out. We took that moment to be together, to laugh and talk about all the fun and awesome moments of our wedding day," Laura says.

Vendors
Ceremony and reception venue: Royal Laurentien
Bridal gown: Mori Lee from Best for Bride
Cake: Sucre en Délire
Flowers: Le Marché Vert
Groom's tux: Baggi Men