Britany + Chris: A fall wedding in Whitefish

This gorgeous, low-key destination wedding has all the perfect details. Pair that with a beautiful location and Montana's fall season, and the result is magical. Photography by J. Vigil Photography.

The Proposal

Each year, we celebrate our anniversary by taking a trip to a new National Park. That year, we'd chosen Alaska, and we were so excited to go! One day, we drove north out of Anchorage a couple of hours because we heard that there was a glacier we'd be able to walk on. We spent the last two or three hours of the evening light exploring each facet of the glacier and enjoying the incredible stillness and massive proportions of the whole scene. We were totally alone out there, and it was a humbling experience to be able to interact with such a powerful piece of nature. Toward the end of our time on the glacier, Chris got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife. It was a beautiful moment of complete solitude; just the two of us on this massive glacier, and such a beautiful way to start our life together.

The Details

We wanted to have a really low-key wedding that felt like a dinner party. We knew this would likely be our only opportunity to get all of our people together in a really beautiful place, so we took advantage by planning wedding events over several days.

In terms of details, I (Britany) designed and hand-pressed all of our stationery and did all of the calligraphy. Between hand-dyeing silk ribbon for save the dates, collecting hundreds of vintage stamps and hand-lettering almost 200 envelopes, the project took the majority of the year we were engaged, but I really loved every minute of it.

The Celebration

Our guests started arriving on Wednesday and mostly everyone was in town by Thursday morning. We hiked The Trail of the Cedars and Avalanche Lake for our welcome hike in Glacier National Park, which was a really fun way to get everyone comfortable with one another. For our rehearsal dinner, my sweet brother and sister-in-law cooked for all 35 of our guests at our rental house. It was intimate, sweet and absolutely perfect for us!

The wedding was full of really sweet details, and we made a concerted effort to ensure our guests knew how important they all are to us. We chose benches instead of chairs at the ceremony to foster a sense of closeness and had personalized thank you cards waiting at each person's seat at the reception. Our ceremony was held at Whitefish Lake State Park, and not only was it beautiful, but it was also totally private.

The morning after the wedding, we hosted brunch at our rental house, which was a lovely way to send off our guests and chat a bit about the night before. Renting the houses and having several days' worth of events was absolutely the best decision we made about the wedding, and we would highly recommend it to anyone who is considering doing a full weekend. It was far from perfect, but we are so grateful to have had such an incredible weekend with our sweet family and friends who came from far and wide to celebrate our marriage.