Garden Meets Classic: A Destination Wedding at Clear Lake
There’s a few things that you can do to immediately get me on board with your wedding: plan for a great location (hello to the natural beauty of Clear Lake!), ask for some stellar florals (an over the top ceremony design? yes, please!), and throw in the challenge of logistics to get me excited (more on that below!).
Alex and Travis’s destination wedding at Elkhorn Manor (Clear Lake) was the perfect combination of all of the above.
Let’s get into it!
Photos by Brittany Mahood Photography
Logistics aren’t sexy. They just aren’t. But when you’re planning a destination or semi-destination wedding, at a venue that is a few hours away from any major city and requires your vendors to travel in, logistics are the name of the game. You absolutely cannot hire someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. Not to toot my own horn, but this is where I absolutely thrive.
Over the last few years, Stone House Creative has become known for the work we do on larger-scale weddings, and I’m incredibly proud of that. Alex and Travis’ wedding was both large, and logistically challenging due to being in Clear Lake. I don’t feel like I can possibly shout this from the rooftop enough: if you’re envisioning a larger, floral-focused design, or your venue necessitates a lot of logistical difficulty, you must absolutely hire a floral design team that understands what truly needs to happen to make your wedding come together without issue.
From the start of my earliest conversation with their planner, Tricia Bachewich Events, I laid out some of the special considerations that their chosen florist would need to be able to have solutions ready for:
-Staffing, and the size of team that we would need to have.
-Delivery logistics. Travel time to Clear Lake is ~ 3 hours, not including all the time needed to load the vehicles; with the amount of installations needed on-site and the set up time we would need, it was clear we would not be able to drive up the same morning as the wedding and still be able to accomplish everything.
-This naturally progressed into needing hotel rooms, which aren’t typically able to booked at Elkhorn until January of that calendar year, along with increased staffing costs due to additional time and per diems.
-Arriving the day before also would mean that we would need a cool holding space at the resort. The ceremony/reception location does not have any air conditioning, so the hotel would need to have an option for us.
-With the size of floral order and guest count, I knew that a single Uhaul would not be sufficient, nor would I be comfortable with the flowers driving for 3 hours in an un-air-conditioned Uhaul. We were heading up to a remote location with not even a regular flower shop nearby; if any of our flowers crapped out while we were driving, there wouldn’t be anything nearby for us to replace it with.
-The requested ceremony arch would require a custom structure build in order to create the scale they desired.
-Additionally, while the couple are originally from the Clear Lake/Brandon areas, they currently live in the USA as the groom is a hockey player in the NHL. They didn’t have the time to dedicate to planning their wedding, and needed a vendor team that could progress without needing their input.
While I normally go for a lot of colour, I have to say that this white and green palette (with touches of taupey blush) looks really good at Elkhorn Manor! The bridesmaid dresses were the perfect colour, especially through Brittany’s lense.
Alex’s Galia Lahav dress is stunning — the floral appliqued details almost feels like tiny floral confetti floating throughout the gown. I chose to design her bouquet in a classic-meets-garden way, making sure that there was some movement and nothing too stiff.
Bridal Bouquet Ingredients: playa blanca roses, quicksand roses, white ruffled lisianthus, sweet pea, dahlias, ranunculus, and jasmine vine.
Oh baby, I loved this ceremony design! Mid-way through the planning, they chose to add the clear top tent as insurance against the rain. While we didn’t end up needing it on August 3 because the weather was perfect, it actually did POUR that night. You can never be too careful with an outdoor wedding!
To create more of a natural feeling, we softened the tent ceiling with strands of vining smilax. It took a fair bit of time to maneuver our scaffold around on the grass to get me up high enough to do this, but it turned out beautifully.
Then, the piece de resistance: the arch. As many pro athletes are, Travis is pretty tall. And once I saw Alex’s inspiration image for the ceremony arch, I knew that the scale of the arch (height, width, and fullness of the floral!) was going to be really important to nail in order to create the look she wanted. I collaborated with Creating a Scene to custom-manufacture the wood boxes that we then attached the arch structure to — and the devil is in the detail! The box trim on the boxes matched that on their bar, and of course, I made sure to appropriately counter-weight the metal arch structure that I had custom-made to fit on the boxes so that no disasters were possible.
The aisle was fully lined with floral to create a garden effect, and we repurposed most of these pieces throughout the reception design, as well.
Along with the logistical mindset needed to accomplish this destination wedding at Clear Lake, any wedding at an out-of-town venue requires serious flexibility. For months, I was mentally preparing myself for anything that could possibly go wrong.
Here’s a quick run-down of things we had to address the week and day of the wedding: the reefer truck we reserved had an issue and they cancelled our reservation so we needed to figure something else out; the ceremony tent size changed at the last minute so we had to adjust how we hung the ceiling greenery; a chandelier was hung in the ceremony tent literally right where the arch was supposed to go, so we had to take that down; the grids for the hanging installation over the head table were installed incorrectly so we needed to adjust how we designed the florals (and note, we did indeed solve all of these problems. They all took a lot of time, though, so the team came in clutch to make it all happen on time!).
The cocktail hour details were so cute — one of these living wall features to serve specialty cocktails (guests had to ring a bell under whichever cocktail they chose, and a gloved hand would appear with drink ready!). The seating chart was added to the wall, and I added some floral and greenery touches to tie it all together.
They also rented a cute phone booth / photo booth, to which we added more smilax, coordinating floral pieces, and a tall delphinium arrangement to the attached guest book table.
The reception tent featured a central king table for the wedding party, set under a hanging floral piece, and round guest tables interspersed with faux olive trees elevated on white pedestals with box trim. A primarily white palette was warmed up with natural cane-back chairs, taupe candles, and slight touches of blush in the florals.
For the head table, I opted for 20x mixed size clear glass vases that each featured a single variety arrangement, allowing for a delightful garden-inspired smattering of florals and textures down the length of the table.
I’m not always huge on the marquee letters, but this was pretty epic! Set up on the hill, above the tent, it looked so good and was such a fun backdrop to their dance party.
It’s not every wedding when the couple flies in a multi CCMA and Juno award winning country music star to play their first dance — but Alex and Travis brought in Brett Kissel to play a set for their reception! This must have been SUCH a fun party. I would have loved to have been a guest!
I have to give an enormous thank you to the crew that was part of making this wedding happening! Emily and Deanna who helped to design everything leading up to the wedding, Jason and Chad who came along to help us set up, clean up, and drive, and Kayla, Andrea, and Amanda who each drove up to Clear Lake for the day to help us design and install everything. A solid team is crucial, and this crew was AMAZING.
Brittany Mahood Photography ~ Tricia Bachewich Events ~ Elkhorn Manor, Clear Lake ~ Paper & Palm ~ Union Table ~ Special Event Rentals ~ Dream Day Decor ~ Creating a Scene ~ House of Silk ~ 4 Square Foto ~ Trident Films ~ Ginger Snips Salon ~ Oak & Ivy Salon
Looking for a Floral Designer for your large scale wedding in Winnipeg?
Large scale weddings come with a lot of logistics, and require both creativity and a detailed mindset to pull it off. Stone House Creative specializes in this!
Whether you already have a specific vision or want me to dream up something custom just for you, reach out to find out how we can create the perfect ambiance for your wedding.
