If Only! BHLDN and a Wedding Recap

Ben and me listening the music under our Mesquite canopy in June 2006 

Knowing lots of brides to be are in full-out planning mode these days and no doubt obsessed with BHLDN, I got to thinking about my wedding. I got married to the Hubs in June of 2006.  We had a quirky, casual, outdoor wedding in a tiny town in the Big Country called Buffalo Gap.  Remember in Father of the Bride when Steve Martin's character suggest his daughter get married at the local steak house to the pure disdain of the entire family?  Well, we did.  And it was so fun.  Granted it's on a beautiful working cattle ranch with an oak grove outside. . .  A 12 min ceremony (including a song!) and an hours long party shaded from the heat by those good ol' trees.  That's how we liked it and still do. . . But oh!  If only we had BHLDN (what does it stand for anyway?) back then - it's the new wedding venture from the lovelies at Anthropologie. . . I would have just died to dawn one of these dresses. . .and I desperately wanted a crazy non-veil head piece that never materialized. . . a pretty pink lilly had to do.  I loved my wedding, with mismatched pink dresses for bridesmaids, rustic flower arrangements, custom-built Mesquite tree canopy, lots of bearded men wearing Chuck Taylors, picnic tables in an oak grove outside of the quintessentially West Texas Perini Ranch - but if I could do it again, I'd definitely add that head-piece and one of these delicious dresses.  Here are my fave BHLDN pics, and some of my favorite wedding moments too. Enjoy! 

But really - this dress would have made it PERFECT.  I searched and searched for  something like this back then. . . ah well.

what can I say?  I needed to be my inner seventies  hippie and this would have done it.  LOVE it.

Ben and me, post ceremony under a tree from which we hung a 70s velour bedspread and picture-less frames for guests to use creatively for their one photo opps

Our friends walked casually into the area in pink and light colored suits as Ben and I followed.  

Ahh the shoes.  We loved everyone's shoes and ours too!  And in the middle - that's my Dad who is a Justice of the Peace and married us.

A pre-wedding pep talk - you can see the tin-can flower containers and paper-sack luminaires on the tables.

Local honey from my hometown tagged with our initials was a parting gift for a friends and family.  Such good honey!

Ben making sure all his guys had the right vintage ties - one of their presents from him.

All the crew waiting outside the cattle gates.  I loved those gates.

Vintage images of family weddings and couples dotted the entry table where people could sign an obnoxiously large poster of us.  Heavens that was big!

We left the ceremony to "Let the Good Times Roll" and boy did they ever that night!