Brianna and Christopher almost didn’t meet. Mutual friends (and now married) Ashley and Brian wanted to set the two up, but just before their double date to the state fair, Chris called to cancel.
Brie heard the news and told Ashley that Chris will never have another shot to meet her. “I thought to myself, ‘Who the heck does he think he is?’ The nerve!” she says, laughing now.
As fate would have, Chris realized he couldn’t miss this opportunity to meet Brie, so he stopped tattooing his client halfway through the appointment and made it to the double date. The couple now has an annual tradition to visit the state fair on the day they met.
After about a year together, Brie and Chris attended Ashley and Brian’s wedding together—where they caught the bouquet and the garter! One year later to the day, Chris proposed to Brie during a morning hot air balloon ride. “I couldn’t stop crying, laughing, and then crying. Then, laughing again,” Brie says. “We finished the balloon ride and topped off our special moment with a toast, followed by a hot air balloon prayer. The pilot turned our champagne cork into a hot air balloon, which now sits in a shadow box with our engagement celebration dinner photo.”
The two took some time to enjoy the engagement and talked a lot about what they both wanted their wedding to be like before diving into planning. “We both knew that we wanted it to be outside—both the ceremony and reception. We love the outdoors, and it just resonated with us. That vision never changed. Chris wanted it to be more of a ’40s-’50s classic feel, and I wanted it to be more of an old Hollywood vintage feel. We tried to meld both together. Everything turned out to be pretty much what we envisioned,” she says.
The ceremony and reception took place at Willow Creek Events, located just outside of Marysville. “The venue had little to no cell service, so everyone was present, which was really nice,” she says.
Chris was excited for the day’s arrival after a year of planning. “I felt relief that our wedding was finally here, because we had been planning for so long. I just wanted the day to [arrive] so that I could call her my wife,” he says.
Though she’s a perfectionist, Brie did learn a lot while planning and has some advice to share with other brides. “Never lose site of the real reason why you are getting married!” she says. “If you have an intuition about something, go with it. Do exactly what you and your fiancé want, and make it happen! I would also recommend taking 10-15 minutes out of the wedding, if time permits, for you both to take a walk and just let it all sink in. Enjoy it!”
―Kourtney Jason
