Emily and Jade never imagined having an outdoor wedding—until they visited the four-season Shanty Creek Resort, located in the charming Northern Michigan town of Bellaire. Although the couple is from Michigan—she is from McBain and he is from Manton—their first Northern Michigan introduction didn’t occur until adults, when they rented a Shanty Creek condo for a snowboarding weekend. Wintry landscape and all, Emily knew they had found the spot for their June wedding, “I wanted to do something no one I knew had ever done. We checked out a lot of venues, but it wasn’t until Shanty Creek that I knew we’d found the place. Everything is just so perfect Up North.”
Perfect indeed. Their wedding day was graced with beautiful weather; sunshine and 76 degrees greeted the couple, who took pictures before the ceremony so as to not make guests wait for the reception. Familiar with Shanty Creek, Andrea Bogard of Northern Art Photography led the wedding party around the resort’s beautiful grounds, capturing pictures to last a lifetime.
Shanty Creek’s wedding planner worked with ideas Emily gathered from the Traverse City Opera House Bridal Show to evoke a feeling of elegance and grandeur throughout the wedding. Emily’s stairway descent from above the Bellaire Ballroom to the ground-level Bellaire Terrace ceremony created a dramatic entrance; her purple and green bouquet sparkled with rhinestones as she walked the aisle to her groom. The couple shared traditional and short, hand-written vows before a white trellis built by Jade’s father, which Emily and Jade plan to place in the garden of their own home someday.
Throughout the Bellaire Ballroom reception, elegant touches of the wedding’s purple and green color scheme dazzled beneath twinkling lights. White table linens and chair covers draped and tied with eggplant organza runners and sashes, and a variety of tall centerpieces made of purple orchids and crystal hangings captured the fanciful aura, while splashes of green silk roses kept the summery feeling of the June wedding.
The Shanty Creek–catered dinner impressed guests, as did the four-tiered white wedding cake with strawberry jam and chocolate frosting, also catered by Shanty Creek and embellished with green and white cymbidium flowers from Custom Creations, the florists who designed the bridal bouquets, floral arrangements and centerpieces.
Before the night was over, Shanty Creek had granted one last wish to the couple and allowed Cinderella and her prince to dance well past midnight in their ballroom.