Hannah and Chris chose the gorgeous Garfield Park Conservatory for their September wedding. The lush greenery and garden setting were a perfect match for their relaxed style! Wedding planning by Once Upon a Wedding Chicago and photography by Francis J Photography.
Choosing the Venue
Our wedding was at the Garfield Park Conservatory, halfway between downtown Chicago and Oak Park, where Hannah grew up. Our vision for the wedding was a fun party in a cool setting that didn’t require a ton of work to make the space look cool, and the Conservatory was perfect for that. We didn’t really have a color palette to begin with, although choosing the conservatory meant that we ended up with a lot of green. We wanted a short ceremony that reflected our relationship and a fun party for our friends and family.
Favorite Memories
We wrote the ceremony and had an officiant who knew both of us pretty well, so it ended up being really personal. For this probably stereotypical bride-who-wants-her-wedding-to-be-unique, the ceremony is the place where we had the best success in making it about us, specifically.
We used examples from friends’ weddings and from the internet, and compiled something that really spoke to our relationship. To add to that, our officiant is a friend of Hannah’s family and has worked some with Chris, so was able to speak about both of us personally. The whole wedding was a blast, but the ceremony was 100% the best part!
The Cake
We are totally obsessed with our cake. We pretty quickly chose the flavors (lemon ricotta with lemon curd and blueberry jam), and knew we wanted something that would fit in with the conservatory setting. We decided on hand-painted florals for the cake, gave the Scafuri team vague guidelines relating to colors, and let them do their magic. The cake turned out incredible, and we are looking forward to our anniversary mini version Scafuri provides (in lieu of freezing the top tier).
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