A sailboat wedding in St. Augustine, FL
When just being near the water isn’t enough for a bride, what does she do? She gets married on a sailboat! Kim claims that she was a mermaid in a past life, so intense is her call to the sea that she cannot stand being away from it. In lieu of a traditional wedding on a beach or in a church, Kim and James called upon their “ocean” family to put together a wedding on a 76-foot boat, the Schooner Freedom. They wanted a wedding celebration that was simply them, and that’s what they got! Jessica Connery Photography documented their special day.
Having 2 years [to plan the wedding], we went through many options and feelings. I had always wanted to elope, but my husband really wanted a wedding for his parents to attend. After deciding upon our current town of St. Augustine for a location, I knew immediately I wanted to get married on board the boat I work on, a 76 foot schooner. We knew this would limit our guest list to only 35 people, so we decided to do a family-only ceremony with a larger reception. We chose a local National Guard’s officer’s club. The building dated to the 1500s and had great architecture. At first I used Pinterest extensively, until I looked at my overall reception design, and it was just pieces of other peoples receptions – it was nice, but it wasn’t us. So I got off Pinterest, sat down with my husband, and we thought about what we wanted our guests to come away with, what we would we want them to say. All we really wanted was for them to have fun and enjoy our town the way we did. We started looking at the bare items instead of prearranged bridal suggestions. We looked through wholesale flower web sites and picked one favorite flower instead of looking at arrangements; we contracted our favorite barbecue restaurant, our favorite ice cream spot (instead of cake); we kept with a nautical theme for our tableclothes and decorations. We wanted the overall feel to be that of a fun backyard Southern barbecue.
We didn’t do too many details for our reception, but the ones we did do, I absolutely loved. One of our favorite Mexican restaurants in St. Augustine always had Trivial Pursuit cards on the tables. We purchased small treasure boxes at Hobby Lobby and filled them with Trivial Pursuit cards we purchased on Ebay. For the floral arrangements, I wanted them to look like something a Southern grandma would have on her kitchen table. I spent a year combing thrift stores and buying different milk glass vases, and we filled them with handfuls of yellow and white irises. I love depression glass, so I also bought a number of depression glass cake stands at thrift and antique stores, and we arranged potato rolls on those. One of my husband’s and my favorite memories of backyard grillouts, especially Fourth of July, were glow necklaces, so we purchased a bunch of glow necklaces and bracelets and put them out in nautical jars (again, found in Hobby Lobby) – the kids and adults loved them! – Kim
Artists
- Photographer: Jessica Connery Photography
- Venue: Schooner Freedom Charters and St. Francis Barracks
- Stationery: Invitation Consultants
- Music: High Fidelity DJ Services
- Hair: One Love Hair
- Catering: Smokin D’s
- Ice Cream: Cold Cow