CARA + AUSTIN

They met in a high school public speaking class, Austin a senior and Cara a junior. He was one of the only seniors in a mostly junior class, so he didn’t have anyone he knew in class. He sat quietly in the front row, hardly speaking to anyone. The class was instructed to select a partner that we had never met, or barely knew, to complete a project together. Cara picked Austin to be her partner – just as an excuse to talk to him. She admittedly did the entire project by herself, even coming in before school a couple of times. In the end, it was all worth it since she did end up with her future husband! The small project wasn’t enough and she coerced him into being in the final group project for the class as well. Shortly after this project ended, he added her on Snapchat to ask about a study guide (that she also ended up doing for him) and they went from there!

“My initial attraction to Austin was probably his smile. He had (and still has) the sweetest, most genuine smile. It’s something of his that really just melts me to this day!”

“My initial attraction to Cara was her personality and just how easy it was to talk to her. We had the exact same sense of humor, we talked and laughed for hours on our first date.”

That first date took place at an Imo’s Pizza. It was Austin’s favorite at the time, but Cara secretly didn’t care for it. “I lied and told him I loved Imo’s too (I did grow to eventually love Imos as well) anything to get to the date quicker! While I didn’t enjoy the pizza as much as he did, we spent several hours in our booth talking like old best friends and enjoying each other’s company.” One of Austin’s most memorable moments was when Cara referenced the movie “Step Brothers” at some point that night, as well as telling him that cheese pizza was her favorite (despite the lie about Imos at the time, this is the truth). He went home that evening with those two pieces of information, and told his best friend that she was “the one.”

Austin proposed on December 17, 2021, at the Anheuser Busch Brewery lights; however, pretty much nothing went as he planned. He had family members in town and set up a night to go to the Brewery lights as well as the Botanical Gardens Garden Glow. Cara had been begging him for months to take her to the Garden Glow, as they’d never been and she love the Botanical Gardens. His original plan was to propose there but the weather was not cooperating. It rained all day and was a lot colder than predicted. In fact it was so bad the Gardne Glow closed due to the bad weather. Austin stalled for a while, pretending to figure out what to do instead of the Garden Glow. While at the Brewery he asked Cara to come outside for one last picture since we hadn’t taken many and planned to take more at the Garden Glow. “I reluctantly agreed and we went outside for one last picture and Austin’s last attempt at making this the beginning of our forever. I actually went outside with a drink still in my hand, planning to hide it behind his back. He made me go put it on the sidewalk (eye-roll) and when I turned around to take the picture he was on one knee with a ring in hand. Winter Wonderland by Michael Buble was playing in the background and hardly anyone was there. It was the absolute most perfect, magical proposal. I was so shocked, and definitely had no idea that nothing went as planned! We joke that he’s still waiting on me to say “yes” as we are pretty sure I was never able to utter the words but instead gave a half nod!” 

Which brings us to this beautiful day!  A day Cara and Austin dreamed of for so long, and became reality on 9/16/2022.“We wanted our day to perfectly exemplify who we are as a couple. For our guests to walk in and feel like it was an “Austin and Cara” wedding and not anyone else.”  And my word did they acieve that! One of our favorite weddings days! Enjoy a peek at Cara and Austin’s wedding day!

“Something that I wore was an all-white pair of high-top converse. If you know me, you know my go-to shoe is converse anything. After picking out my dress and realizing you wouldn’t be able to see my feet much, I knew I wanted to wear a good ole pair of converse to help make me both comfortable and also just feel really like myself. I was comfortable all day/night and got a new pair of converse to put in my rotation!” 

“I think one of the moments that will last with me forever is my first look with my dad. It was completely unplanned, but one of the most special parts of our day for me. It was a semi-hard day for him, being his only daughter, and being able to just have a moment of time together was something so special to the both of us.”

I love that after seeing his daughter, Cara’s dad walked right over to his wife and gave her a big hug. And then pulled up a photo of their wedding day on his phone and compared the photo of Cara’s mom on their wedding day to Cara. He so obviously loves his girls.My favorite thing about Cara is how pure her heart is. She cares so deeply and would do anything for her family, friends, and especially me. – Austin

“I love so many things about Austin, truly everything. But I think my favorite thing about him is how he can always see the good in people. He sees the world in such a positive light and chooses to see the good side of everyone. He is always there to help me see the great things in life, and the good qualities in people, including myself. The kindness that he spreads is so evident when people he barely knows, may have only spoken to once in his life, will approach him as if they were old friends. He never hesitates to greet them with a smile and “hey, how’s it going man?” He truly is the sweetest, most genuine man that I know.” – Cara“We both looked the most forward to our first look. We can’t say enough how happy we were that we decided to do a first look and get that extra special time together to just be ourselves. We were both pretty nervous about the ceremony, but being able to finally spend that intimate time together really helped us calm the pre-ceremony nerves. It was truly everything we hoped it would be and something we would do over again a hundred times! If you are debating, please do it!!”

I walked down the aisle to “I Get to Love You” by Ruelle. After hearing this song for the first time, no other song felt right to me. I get emotional every time I hear it and envisioning myself walking down the aisle to it made sense to me. We actually used the instrumental version simply because I can’t listen to the words without crying and I was worried I would be sobbing my way down the aisle! My veil actually fell out of my hair as soon as I got to the front of the ceremony. It had been giving me so much trouble leading up to the ceremony, and I couldn’t even feel it in my hair. I only knew it fell off because I saw Austin’s eyes move toward the floor once I got up there. My maid of honor recovered beautifully and even whispered “deep breaths” in my ear as she shoved that sucker back in. At that point, I was so relieved that I just made it to the front in one piece I told her she could just take it out because “I made it!” That quote ended up being a great segue into our pastor’s message, as he promptly stated “you did make it!”

Our pastor, Kale, did such a phenomenal job with our ceremony, we couldn’t have picked a better person for us. The way that he personalized the message was so special to us and our guests haven’t stopped talking about him and how meaningful our ceremony was because of it! We also picked out all of the readings in the message and he incorporated all of them perfectly.

“My parents went to a family member’s wedding at The Ink House back in 2019 and my mom raved about how it was a place she could see us getting married. Because she is usually right, Austin and I toured the venue a couple of weeks after we got engaged and decided they were the perfect place for us! We didn’t look at any other venue and booked it that first night after touring it for about fifteen minutes or so. One of the main reasons we picked The Ink House was because of how easy they made everything from the very beginning. We were able to rent everything we needed for both our ceremony and reception and didn’t have to spend time worrying about all of that. Being able to get married at The Ink House and have everything in one location made things so convenient for everyone, including us! We felt like we were able to have more face-to-face time with our guests having everything in one location with a cocktail hour built-in while they were turning the other half of the venue into the rest of the tables for the reception. It was also one less thing to worry about time-wise. No one was rushing to the next location or late coming into the reception cause everyone was already there!”One of our favorite things was that we did a small layered cookie cake in place of a traditional wedding cake! Neither of us has much of a sweet tooth, but we LOVE cookie cakes. We were so delighted when Ginger Bean told us we could do a layered cookie cake! It was very much “us.”

Austin selected our first dance song, “Dancing Away with My Heart” by Dillon Carmicheal. The first time he heard the song a few years back he said that he just had an unexplainable feeling that it was going to be the song that we danced to for the first time as husband and wife. As soon as he showed it to me, I instantly fell in love! We never considered another song, this was ours.

“At the end of the day we felt like we didn’t want it to ever end! It was absolutely the most perfect day we could have asked for. After nine months of planning, it was so surreal to see everything and everyone come together to celebrate us. We felt so full of love and just blessed. Nothing can top the feeling of love surrounding you from every single aspect.”