Romantic Bearspaw Terracotta Wedding
This romantic terracotta themed wedding at the Calgary Bearspaw golf course was one of our favourites this past summer! Lauren and Odai are such a thoughtful, sweet and down to earth couple. I loved capturing their engagement photos in downtown Calgary. It was the perfect way to get comfortable in front of the camera and get to know both of them. Their presence is so warm and inviting and I feel so honoured to have captured their beautiful memories at Bearspaw golf course.
How they Met
Lauren and Odai first met through work and lived down the street from each other. With a blended love for pizza, sunshine, and after work walks they became good friends. A couple of years later Lauren had recently become single and Odai made his move. He invited her over for dinner and made a traditional Yemeni meal for their first date. They soon realized it wasn’t just consulting they had in common, but their love of travel, family and dreaming big. This was only the beginning.
Engagement Story
Before the pandemic hit, Lauren and Odai fit in as many trips as possible. They went to Mexico, Spain, Netherlands, France, Portugal and were about to head to Italy, Turkey and San Diego. Because the world had other plans, they decided to make the most of it and took their puppy Milo in a camper van and drove 4000km from Calgary to Vancouver Island.
Lauren would soon learn Odai had planned 7 different proposals over the span of about 4 months. He had originally planned to propose on the beach at Sunset Cliffs in San Diego in April however, the trip was cancelled due to the pandemic. Regardless, the day was absolute perfection. They were about halfway into their trip and had finished their stay in Victoria and were headed to Sooke, B.C later that afternoon. The morning was spent at the Butchart Gardens in Victoria followed by brunch on the water with Milo. After making their way to Sooke (and singing to the song “Catching Feelings” by Drax Project on repeat) they had a picnic at Sandcut Beach. Odai proposed at sunset with Milo by his side. It truly was the perfect day!
The Wedding Day
Our wedding theme was “modern rustic”. When doing our initial wedding planning, we spotted toffee roses and absolutely fell in love with them. This became the inspiration behind the theme and our colour scheme. The main focus was terracotta to compliment the toffee roses. We wanted to give it a summer feel with a bit of bohemian flair. We blended greys, terracotta, blush pink, and sage for our floral. We complimented this with burnt orange coloured panels and our custom neon sign behind the sweetheart table for a bohemian touch.
COVID definitely impacted the wedding planning experience. We opted for a 2 year engagement with hopes that we could have our loved ones attend our special day. That said, we aimed to have our closest friends and family in attendance which brought our guest count to 85 and we are so happy that we did!
Top moments included our wedding vows, first look, last dance and realizing we (literally) broke the dance floor when the lights went on at the end of the night. We had a very diverse crowd at our wedding and it was so special to see those from all walks of life celebrate different culture and music together and have fun. It made the night so memorable.
Odai is Yemeni so we wanted to have some Arabic touches on our wedding day. Odai walked down the aisle to an Arabic song and Lauren walked down the aisle to an English song. We did a similar thing for our first dance – we took the English song “Dressed Up In White” by CAL and the Arabic song “Youm Wara Youm” Remix by Hijazi. We reduced the length for each and added a transition from the English song to the Arabic song. We did a traditional dance for the first half and a classic Yemeni dance for the second. That was another special moment for us. We also sourced an edible wedding favor from a local bakery Tasse with some Lebanese sweets for another special touch.
Some of our other favourite details for the day would be the bridesmaid and groomsmen gifts. We wanted to make the day feel special for our bridal party and thank them for everything they had done for us over the past 2 years of wedding planning. Each of the guys got a pair of their own Vessi shoes and the girls got Olive & Piper bridesmaid jewellery with some other special touches like candles and candy to keep them going!
It was also really special for us to have Lauren’s brother in law be the officiant at our wedding, and to have our nieces and nephew as flower girls and the ring bearer. They did such a good job walking down the aisle we were so impressed!
We got married on Saturday, August 6th and left for our Honeymoon the following Monday. We were away for about 3 weeks and split the time equally between Italy and Turkey. We had a scooter in the Amalfi coast which allowed us to stop at all the different towns and then proceeded to Turkey where we would stay at Cappadocia and Istanbul. Lauren had a bucket list item to go on a hot air balloon ride in Cappadocia and it was so surreal! It was the prefect newlywed getaway.
