Carly and Michael are married! Woo hoo! Their Colonial Williamsburg wedding was absolutely beautiful – complete with a fairy tale horse and carriage ride. The couple planned for Carly and her dad to get in the horse and carriage in front of the Williamsburg Inn. The carriage was to drop her at the ceremony for her to get out and walk straight down (unique plan, right?). However, we had a little surprise.

It was a cooler day and it had been raining earlier. The heat had kicked on into many of the buildings, and you could see smoke coming up from the vents (I presume from a furnace of some sort). Ya’ll… the horses got spooked by the smoke coming out of the vents in the parking lot! Ahhhh! As usual, Yuani Valentine with CW Resorts and Catie Burnette, Day of Coordinator for the couple, did an amazing job handling a challenging situation. The carriage circled the parking lot, and they calmed down. The blessing in all of this?! Carly has ridden horses for years and was not spooked herself by the rough carriage ride and potential runaway bride (haha).

Side note: do NOT be afraid – we have photographed NUMEROUS couples on the horse and carriage. Mattie has hopped on/off of it, we have run in front of and behind it – this is the first and only time something like this has happened. And now we know. We can warn couples and wedding planners to not have a route that includes smoke coming up from the furnace!

Other than our eventful bride’s entrance to her ceremony, the rest of the day went off without a hitch (I won’t go into comedy just yet – but you know that was funny with all the hitching posts in Colonial Williamsburg). Zeko and I were very excited to see a cool addition to Carly and Michael’s reception that was a first time for us – she hired Wild and Beautiful Art to draw live portraits of her guests as gifts to them! The team takes a picture of you and your date, and they then draw a watercolor for you to take home. How truly unique! <3