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Melissa & Will: An Autumn Wedding in Estes Park, CO

Warm autumn colors combined with an acron motif set the tone for Melissa and Will's autumn nuptials. The Bride Melissa Dolan, a 28-year-old office ma

Warm autumn colors combined with an acron motif set the tone for Melissa and Will's autumn nuptials. The Bride Melissa Dolan, a 28-year-old office manager The Groom William Morgan, a 31-year-old senior security architect The Date September 30 Soon after they started dating, Melissa and William knew they were meant to be. Following a move to Colorado, the couple decided to get married, and Melissa chose a ring she loved. “Every day I would check the house for clues,” Melissa remembers, while she waited for his proposal. Finally one day she walked up to Will and jokingly asked him where the ring was. Without missing a beat, he pulled it right out from his desk drawer and asked her to marry him.

The Bride
The Music
The Location
The Escort Cards
Though they’d intended to get married on the front lawn of the Stanley Hotel, cold, wet weather drove the ceremony indoors. “It turned out better than we had hoped,” Melissa says. “The room was the perfect size for our small guest list,” just 35 people. The only light came from the fireplace, the mantle of which was adorned with hypericum berries tied with chocolate velvet ribbon.
The Program
The Centerpieces
The Couple
Their two-tiered cake (“big enough to feed twice as many guests as we had,” says Melissa) was frosted with chocolate icing and decked out with chocolate leaves and marzipan pumpkins, squash, and acorns. One layer featured Irish cream flavored filling, the other was a marble cake with toffee bits.
“Our flowers were so amazing I had them professionally preserved,” Melissa says. She visited the greenhouse with her florist to find the perfect blooms: Leonidas roses, chocolate cosmos, hypericum berries, and copper beech leaves, all wrapped in velvet.
The traditional ceremony was personalized with readings (including a passage from Hamlet recited by the bride’s eight-year-old nephew) and special music selections -- a guitarist performed The Dave Matthews Band songs “Crash” for the processional and “Satellite” for the recessional.