Weddingbee Blog

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Well, except, not really… I grew up in a moderate sized town. I like to claim it was small but then Mr. Gingham reminds me that it was the state capitol and it was not small and it was not very country. I lived in a average size house with a small yard. There were no tractors, no chickens, no cows. I mean, I guess you could say I’m a bit of a country “faker”.

However, my grandma and grandpa were from the country. Scranton, North Dakota to be exact - a town with a population of under 300 where my grandpa’s “homestead” is still in our family and people actually stop their cars in the middle of the road to talk to each other. The first time I went to Scranton, I was in second grade and we drove there from Washington. From the minute we hit Montana, with its long, straight highways and flat landscapes, I was in love. “The Country” was awesome. I ended up going back to North and South Dakota quite few more times up through high school. Unfortunately, the last two times were without my grandpa who passed away when I was in 8th grade. However, it was because of my grandparents and my trips to the Midwest (and the pet bunnies, pet chickens and vegetable garden complete with stalks of corn that they housed for my brother and me in their backyard) that I love everything country… including country music.

Do you see where I’m going here? Country music, country wedding. It’s all coming together.

Oh wait, before I get into the whole country wedding thing, I should probably give you a background on Mr. Gingham. He actually did grow up in a small town, has always loved country music (he puts me to shame with his knowledge of songs and artists) and grew up doing the type of stuff country songs are made of. However, his town was coastal and he also spent a lot of time surfing, and he never had chickens. So, I guess you could say neither of us are “country folk” but we wear our cowboy boots on with the best of them.

So, back to my story - Mr. Gingham and I love country music. Like, really love it. We travel around to country music festivals - George Strait in Boston last year, Stagecoach in Palm Springs, and our all-time favorite, The Sweet Home Jamboree in Sweet Home, Oregon. I mean, come on, our first date was to a country concert and our calendars are littered with upcoming concerts (Josh Turner coming up, Gentleman George again in March). So, because of our shared love of this amazing genre of music, we knew our wedding had to have a country band. And well, if you have a country band, you should probably have a barn, right? And cowboy boots, and BBQ, and we should probably be serving our guests beer and wine out of mason jars. Well, and then of course, somehow we’d need to work in a bonfire…

And this my friends, is how our country-themed wedding was born.

Now my question for you guys—if you’re having a sort of “themed” wedding, how did you come up with it? Or if there’s no particular theme, are their special touches that you’re incorporating that mean something to you and your fiance’s upbringing?