Tara + Trent | Italian and Japanese Elegance Wedding in Iowa

Beautiful October bride Tara shares the highlights of her Japanese and Italian-Influence wedding in this week’s Wedding Wednesday post!

We are still totally in love with how Tara’s 4th grade students made her 1,000 paper cranes to decorate her  Japanese-inspired ceremony — all this and more captured by Weddingmix cameras 🙂 

Trent proposed at the Des Moines Sculpture Garden on October 5th, 2011. Our very first date was downtown at an art festival and so the location was really special to our relationship!

We decided to get married one year later to the date in an outdoor ceremony at an art warehouse in Des Moines. You would never know from the pictures, but the temperature was barely over 50 degrees and we shivered and huddled together between pictures to stay warm. We had to remind our guests to bring their coats to the ceremony because we were determined to get married in a gorgeous clearing under the trees. Nevertheless, our pictures turned out beautifully.

Our wedding was a mix of classic elegance with contemporary style, with a hint of Asian accents. I had previously lived in Japan and our wedding had a hint of the Asian culture I love. Our flowers were green orchids (extremely popular across Japan) and my bouquet included Japanese greenery. We were married under a bamboo arch with hanging paper cranes and our programs were folded origami. My 4th grade students, along with our friends and family, folded a combined total of 1,000 cranes for the ceremony and reception, which is a symbol of eternal good luck.

We danced to the classic “At Last” by Etta James, but had a more contemporary band play at the reception. We ate delicious Italian food (the groom had previously lived in Italy) and drank bride and groom signature drinks: the bride’s being a jack and coke and the groom’s his favorite strawberry daiquiri. Our photo booth was a highlight of the reception, and still the pictures make us laugh.

The best part of the day (if I had to pinpoint a ‘best part’) was walking down the aisle to a beautiful piano rendition of Adele’s “One and Only” knowing that I was the luckiest girl in the entire world. I had never felt more beautiful than I did on that day and I had never been more sure of anything I’d ever done before. With my dad by my side, I walked down the aisle and into my future with the most amazing husband a girl could ask for. I also thoroughly enjoyed the recessional to Queen’s Best Friend ad Trent and I took our first walk together as husband and wife.