Crystal & Brian

We're so excited to share Crystal and Brian's beautiful summer wedding at The Venue at Montana 45 with you! From gorgeous summer blooms to endearing vintage details, this wedding is sure to make it to your Pinterest boards. Photography by Kelly Kirksey Photography.

Their Story

"Brian and I met when we were both living in Helena. We had each moved there independently for a fresh start. We met on the internet and he likes to give me grief about how I took a month to respond to him, which may not be entirely accurate, but is pretty close. Fortunately, when I did reach out to him, the timing was right and we hit it off immediately. Our first date was a Wednesday evening, our second date was the following Friday, and we've been all but inseparable since. I think the thing we both love the most is packing up and road tripping together and in that case, it hardly matters what we're doing on the other end.

We are both very independent and strong-willed. We've gone head to head about issues plenty of times, but in the end, we find a compromise and I can look back and see that I'm not the only one bending, which is something I deeply appreciate. But I also appreciate that he doesn't just bend to appease me and then have his actions speaking differently than his words. He hears me out, sees the reasoning, and respects me. I love that he loves my independence, temperament and boldness. He allows me to be me and he loves me for it. We moved to Kalispell together in 2016 to build our home.

Brian proposed on a beautiful March day while we were skiing at Big Mountain. He was able to find a quiet spot on the backside with no one around and it was perfect. We knew we didn't want to wait a full year to get married, and Brian didn't want a winter wedding either. He had let me know from day one that September through November he would be otherwise occupied (for hunting season), and I wanted to have an outdoor wedding, so I wanted to avoid fire season. That meant that we were going to have plan pretty quickly to have a wedding by the end of June.

He wanted a small wedding and had mentioned many times that he'd love to elope to New Zealand. I had always dreamed of having a big wedding on my family's ranch in South Dakota. Ultimately, we decided that having a wedding here, in the place that we both deeply love and the place that we've come to call home as a couple, made the most sense and would be the easiest to plan quickly.

Knowing that most of our guests would be traveling, we decided to take the full week off work before the wedding and invite our guests to spend that time exploring Glacier National Park and the Flathead Valley with us. We sent an itinerary with our invitations and it was so fun being able to introduce our friends and family to each other and to share that extra time with them.

I couldn't begin to choose a favorite part of our wedding. Brian says his favorite was when I walked down the aisle and married him. He sure knows how to make me swoon. I loved having our friends and family there to witness and celebrate with us. My mom said it was one of the most fun evenings of her life. And I'd have to agree! So many of our friends and family came together to make sure our day was perfect and we thank them from the bottom of our hearts."