Happy, happy wedding week to Katie and Pace!!! I can’t believe their wedding week is officially here, and I know these two lovebirds are so, so very excited to tie the knot and celebrate with their family and friends in their beloved Chapel Hill! It’s hard to put into words just how special Katie, Pace, and their families are and how utterly thrilled I am for them to be married this weekend… and to bring their dream wedding day to life!

I have absolutely loved getting to know Katie and Pace as a couple more and more throughout the wedding planning process over the last year, as well as their truly exceptional families. Katie and Pace are such fun, thoughtful, loving, and generous people, and they bring out the very best in one another. I love getting to witness a love like theirs, and it brings me the deepest joy knowing that we get to celebrate their wedding and first day of marriage this week! It’s such a joyful occasion to celebrate with their beloved family and friends and to kick off married life for Katie and Pace in such a beautiful, marvelous, romantic, epic way! It’s going to be wildly special, meaningful, gorgeous, and oh so remarkable in every way for two people who were clearly made for one another. I’ve worked alongside a true dream team of vendors over the last year to create and design a plethora of custom, bespoke details and surprise touches for their guests, and oh my goodness is it going to be epic!!

I have absolutely adored getting to know the incredible Lowe family as we planned Katie’s sister’s wedding last summer, and getting to know them even better through our second wedding together is pure joy for me. Seriously, ask my husband how many times a day I rave about their entire family! I am almost sad (selfishly!) for Katie and Pace’s wedding to be here because that means that I won’t get to talk with Katie and her amazing mom, Suzie, every day. To know the Lowe family is to love them, and they make my job so easy and filled with so much joy!

Katie and Pace, your wedding week is finally HERE, and I hope you feel nothing but an abundance of love, peace, and joy as you two are married and are celebrated with such profound joy and excitement!

I’m so excited to share Katie’s bride spotlight with you today, where you can learn more about the two of them, their love story, and what they’re most excited about on their wedding day! Also, are they not the most attractive couple just bursting with joy?! Their love and happiness simply radiates in their engagement session by the incomparable Anagram Photo — swoon!! I also love that their engagement session (and their wedding!) takes place on the grounds of UNC’s picture-perfect campus, a spot very near and dear to Katie and Pace’s heart, as they both are alums of UNC and die hard Tar Heels!

1. Tell us a little bit about you and your fiance, Pace. 
Pace and I met through mutual friends while we were both living in Washington, DC! They didn’t set us up on a date, but they made sure that we all ended up hanging out together one night. We both separately checked with our friends that night to make sure the other was single. I remember trying not to get my hopes up because I was thoroughly convinced that I would never find a Southern boy living in DC, yet alone a Carolina fan/grad. When I got a call a few days later from Pace asking me out on a date, I was so excited! He’ll tell you that he was nervous calling me (I was just a little bit picky about who I dated), but it’s been almost three and a half years since we met, and now we’re counting down the days until our wedding in July! He really is the perfect person for me, and I know he’d say the same about me. He pushes me out of my comfort zone (in a good way), and I think I calm him down a little bit (also in a good way). Our faith also plays a big role in our lives, and I have absolutely no doubt that he’s the person my parents had been praying about for me for since I was little. Oh, and he makes me laugh a LOT and deals with my sass, so that also helped me know that he was the person for me!

2. What are you most excited for about your wedding day? Do you have a moment of your wedding day that you’re most anticipating?
I am SO excited to see all of our people together in one place. I can’t think of any other time in our lives where all of the people that we love most, from all stages and walks of our lives, will be together – specifically to help to celebrate the two of us. I think walking into the church and seeing everyone that loves us and supports us will be a pretty surreal moment.

The specific moment that I’m most excited about is seeing Pace’s face when the doors open and I walk down the aisle! I’ve honestly thought about that moment since I was a little girl. We’re not doing a first look or anything like that, and he claims that he won’t get emotional, so I cannot wait to see his reaction!

3. What was your biggest inspiration for your wedding design? 

When people have asked about our wedding theme/design, I’ve started responding with “carbs and dusty blue” – which is sort of a joke but also sort of true. I knew that I wanted a quintessential Chapel Hill wedding, which obviously has to incorporate the dusty blue color. Food is also VERY important to Pace and I, so one of our highest priorities was making sure that all of the food the entire weekend was delicious and very on par with Southern comfort foods – which I think we nailed!
Outside of food being a priority, I really tried to stick with very simple ideas and designs, and incorporated blue and Chapel Hill details into as much of the design as I could! Thankfully we have an incredible wedding planner who helped to make my ideas and designs even better than I had imagined!

4. Are you doing a first look or saving it for walking down the aisle? 
We’re saving our first look for the moment the doors open and I walk down the aisle! This was a decision that we made together, and we even chose to opt out of exchanging gifts or letters. We really want to stick to tradition and make that moment of walking down the aisle the first time we’ve seen or talked to each other on our wedding day!

5. Describe your style in one word. 
Blue! (classic was a close second).

6. What’s your favorite way to relax and unwind? 
In all honesty, my favorite way to unwind is to get unhealthy take out from one of my favorite spots, get in my comfiest pajamas, and watch one of my favorite movies or trashy TV shows. I know it’s very cliché, but it’s true! I’m a really social person, but also really value my alone time, so carving that out into my week is also a good way for me to decompress.

7. What is something you’re passionate about? What are some things you and Pace love to do together?
I’m very passionate about being an oncology nurse! I absolutely love what I do, and I LOVE that I get the privilege of getting to know such a strong and special group of people. Outside of my job, Pace and I are probably too passionate about Carolina sports – specifically basketball. I never thought that I would meet someone who would love UNC as much as me, but he might love it even more than I do! We love to go to any type of sporting event together, but we really love to travel! He’s so good at researching things to do and places to eat in new cities, so anytime we travel it’s like I have a personal travel agent! He travels a lot for work, so it’s nice that he typically has been able to scope out a city before I tag along. He’s never been to Europe, so I’ve already put it on his radar that an Italy and Greece trip HAS to happen in our first few years of marriage!

8. What has been the biggest surprise in the wedding planning process? 
How much detail goes into EVERYTHING. I’m not a great decision maker, so it’s been crazy to me how many tiny details there are to decide and go over. I sincerely mean it when I say that without my mom, Pace’s mom, and Stephanie, I wouldn’t have been able to plan half of what we did! It’s been such a fun and low stress experience, but definitely required a lot of decisions that I hadn’t given any thought to before! Oh, and also the price of certain things/vendors! I’m convinced I went into the wrong profession!

9. What is your favorite part of your wedding design? 
I think that my favorite part of our wedding design is how each and every vendor took my initial ideas and what I envisioned, and made it even more beautiful and perfect than I could have ever thought of myself! I also love how we used Carolina and Chapel Hill as a lot of our inspiration, but I was able to put my own twists and touches on the little details.

10. What is your favorite thing about Pace?   
That’s a really hard question! It sounds cheesy, but I think my favorite thing about Pace is how well he loves me. He is constantly encouraging me, complimenting me, challenging me, and reminding me how much he loves me. He really prioritizes our relationship. I also love that how well he loves me stems from his love for the Lord. He also encourages me to be my weirdest and truest self at all times – and I knew it would take a special person to be able to do that!

Stayed tuned this weekend for lots of sneak peeks of their wedding on my Instagram! I already can’t wait to see it all come to life for Katie and Pace as we celebrate this joyous, gorgeous day!

all photos by Anagram Photo

PS: read more bridal spotlights here + here + here + here + here + here – and Katie’s sister’s wedding from last summer here!