Woodsy Wedding with Rustic Vintage Charm, in Winnipeg, Manitoba Canada {Maria and Corey}

I am so grateful to have gotten to travel all the way to Manitoba, to photograph this happily ever after wedding day. This past year, I have gotten to know Maria and Corey via Skype. I have heard their stories of love and friendship. Stories of Christmases spent at Maria’s family cabin, hunting for the perfect Christmas tree to cut down. Stories of sunsets on the lake in the summer and ice fishing in the winter. I’ve gotten to know them and their history, from a distance, and it was so great to finally meet them in person and see it all come together in the perfect wedding day.

Maria is laidback and fun-loving. The kind of bride who realizes last minute that her special wedding sandals are an inch too tall for her dress and promptly switches to a pair of plastic flip flops. And when those break right after the ceremony, she kicks them off with a laugh and proceeds barefoot, all with a huge smile that never leaves her face. Corey is a wilderness man and from what I have heard…a superhero. Over the week, I heard endless Chuck Norris references from friends and family, and stories of how Corey would be everyone’s first choice of what to bring along in an apocalypse. He actually moved a large fallen tree, in his suit, to help me get the perfect setup for one of my shots. Separately, these two are remarkable. Together, they are unstoppable.

This day was  handcrafted with the most sentimental details and heartfelt touches. Not a single thing was overlooked. Read on, for more about what made this day so special.

Corey and Maria exchanged gifts, shortly before the ceremony. To add a more personal touch, they decided to leave the gifts at their special little spot with the frog in the nook of the tree. They snuck out at separate times, to retrieve their gifts and read their letters.

Maria and Corey couldn’t imagine starting their marriage in any place other than Maria’s family’s lake property. This place was a huge piece of home to Maria and played a big part in their shared story. A year prior to the wedding, they were scouring the woods for the perfect spot to make into their ceremony location. Corey shouted for Maria to come over and see the perfect spot that he had found. Maria came over, only to find a tree that she had once climbed and played on as a child. Years forgotten, the tree still had her rope ladder hanging from the limb. They knew this was the perfect place to start their forever. On that sunny Sunday afternoon, Maria and Corey said ” I do” under that very tree, with that rope ladder swaying in the breeze.

The pearls wrapped around the strand of Maria’s hair were from her mother’s veil.

Corey handmade this “memory box”. During the ceremony, they put letters to each other in it and they plan to fill it with many more letters and memories in the years to come.

Vendors:

Cake – Pineridge Hollow (Angela)
Flowers – Pineridge Hollow (KatrinaKlassen)
Makeup – Makeup Expressions by Rimpal
Hair – Hillary Nolt and Vanhoft Hair
Bride’s Dress – Custom Casablanca bridal dress
Bridesmaid dresses – Sorella Vita
Decor – Pineridge Hollow (Katrina Klassen)

Jeweler – John Watson at Roger Watson Jewellers
DJ-  Platinum Productions

Second shooter- Starr Mercer