Jenni + Doug's Highland Stables Wedding

From the Bride: Our wedding day was a literal dream come true. I had dreamed of having the perfect wedding since I was a little girl, as most brides do. When I met Doug, I was 23 and he was 29. We worked together for over a year before the timing was right and he asked me out on our first date. It was that night of our first date at a Thai restaurant, that I knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life with him. He was caring, hilarious, and not to mention the sweetest dad to his then 3-year-old daughter. Fast forward to 3 years later to the week of July 4th, when he asked me to marry him on the pier in Folly Beach, with his daughter as his camera(wo)man. She may have been more excited than I was! By the end of the night, she had already picked out the type of dessert we were having at the reception(snickerdoodle cookies) and what I was going to wear when I walked down the aisle.

Planning our wedding, we knew right off that we wanted it to be simple. We started out with wanting an intimate wedding + ceremony with just our immediate families. We looked at many different venues, but as soon as we walked into Highland Stables in Bowling Green, KY, we were hooked. What once used to be functioning horse stables had been turned into a beautiful event venue with the horse stalls still intact. We decided to change around the guest list a little bit and our total number of guests jumped from 40 to 120- including our entire families and our closest mutual friends. As we were planning our wedding and meeting with each vendor, everything just seemed to fall into place. It was perfect and we could not wait to say “I do” on March 7, 2020- four years and one day after Doug had officially asked me to be his girlfriend.

Our wedding party was still intimate, as the only people standing up there with us as we said “I do” were my sister as my Maid of Honor, and my husband’s daughter as his “Best Girl.” Not only was my husband's daughter his “Best Girl,” but she was also the flower girl along with my 4-year-old nephew as our ring bearer. We asked my brother to marry us and he was ecstatic. He quickly got ordained online and surprised all of our guests when they realized he was going to be the officiant. The ceremony itself had a few laughs and a whole lot of happy tears. I hand crafted the welcome sign by the front door as guests entered the venue, and my parents and mother-in-law created collages of pictures of each of us growing up that the guests could view as they were walking to be seated. My mother-in-law does flower arrangements on the side, and she was more than happy to offer to do ours. She did all of our flowers except for the bouquets and flower girl basket at no charge which we are forever grateful for. They were absolutely beautiful. After the ceremony, we were able to have some time to ourselves before we were introduced to our guests. Our first moment of alone time as husband and wife was just a sigh of relief and I was just thrilled that I was lucky enough to marry the man of my dreams. After we were introduced, we had our first dances, where my husband surprised his daughter in the middle of his dance with his mom, and pulled his daughter into the dance floor to finish up the song with her. She couldn’t stop grinning from ear to ear. People say to never expect your wedding to go perfect, as there is always something that will go wrong. But let me tell you, our wedding was nothing but perfect and we owe it all to our amazing parents and vendors that helped us create the most beautiful wedding that we could ever dream of.

Katelyn DaughertyDecember 9, 2021