I first met Emily and her mother, Kris, during the Iowa Bridal Expo in Coralville in January of this year. They were talking about a great new facility North of Iowa City called the Celebration Farm that had just opened where they were going to have their ceremony and their reception. Their description location matched exactly with what I saw – rustic, comfortable, inviting, and beautiful. With the facility being new and having not performed there previously, I stopped by a few weeks before their wedding date to make sure I knew what to prepare for.
We provided the music for the ceremony at the amphitheater and the reception in the Double Round Barn, as well as some uplights behind the head table shining in the cedar ceiling. Dan and Emily were great to work with, and their friends and family really enjoyed dancing all night long!
Emily and Kris did a great job of decorating the barn. I plan on having a separate blog post just to talk about some of the cool things that I saw and took pictures of at their reception.
Here are a few other highlights from the evening.
- Emily and Dan did not want to do the normal "clink of the glasses" to kiss, so they had a few buckets with names of the couples in attendance. Whenever the glasses were clinked, they would pick the names out of the bucket and have the couple kiss before Emily and Dan would kiss. I know people enjoyed this because the glasses were clinking about every 10 minutes so more couples could kiss!
- After the Father/Daughter Dance, Emily and Tom invited all of the other fathers and daughters to join them on the dance floor for a special dance. Similarly after the Mother/Son Dance, Dan and Michelle invited all of the mothers and sons to join them on the dance floor.
- Dan and Emily left the Double Round Barn while their guests lined the sidewalk holding sparklers.
We feel very priviledged to help Dan and Emily with their wedding planning and all of the music for their entire wedding day. I've included some of my favorite pictures from the night below and also a list of vendors who were there with me.
Vendor Summary
Venue: Celebration Farm
Caterer: Iowa City Hy-Vee
Photographer: Oz Photography (friend of the bride and groom that came all the way from Tulsa, OK!)
