Salem Woods Wedding

From the bride:
Our love story began with a simple birthday post back in 2011. I was up at my family’s lake house celebrating my birthday, when Nino wished me a happy birthday on my Facebook wall. We had known each other from middle school and hadn’t talked much since parting ways and going to different high schools. After reconnecting, we started to talk more often and began hanging out. Nino officially asked me to be his girlfriend on August 22, 2011.

We reached many milestones together after that, seeing as how we both were heading into our senior year of high school. We had many firsts together, like getting our driver’s license, first cars, proms, first jobs, acceptances into college, and much more. Eventually we got our first dog together, a black lab named Lily who we love wholeheartedly. Soon after, we moved in together and got Lily a friend, a golden retriever named Brodie.

Fast forward to the summer of 2019 and Nino had plans to propose. Funny story, he tried proposing to me back at my family’s lake house where we had reconnected, but things didn’t go as planned. Long story short, I didn’t pack enough clothes (shockingly) and I was wearing my aunt’s sneakers, her socks, and Nino’s sweatpants, none of which matched either. So Nino ended up not proposing that weekend. Fast forward a couple of weeks, and we were sitting at our pool and Nino randomly said “Let’s take the dogs to the beach.” Our dogs love the water, so myself, his sister, his mom, and our two dogs all piled into the car and drove to Harvey’s Beach close to sunset. When we got there, Nino was playing “Die a Happy Man” by Thomas Rhett, our dogs were running into the waves, the beach was practically empty, the sun was setting and Nino popped the question. It was pure bliss.

We decided on a super simple wedding. Rather than spend tons of money, we wanted to focus on having a giant celebration where our dogs could also be a part of the big day. We rented out a mansion on Gardner Lake in Salem for four days. Without going into too many details, our day was more than perfect. We have to thank our amazing families for all the love and support to make our day exactly how we had imagined. It was a weekend we will never forget and will stay with us forever!