Nicole & Matthew’s Wedding at Wilson’s Ciderhouse and Venue in Iowa City, IA

So much in common!

Nicole & Matt are actually from the same hometown and their houses were about 5 minutes apart growing up. She happens to be a year and a half older, so they hadn’t really interacted growing up being in different grades. They went to the same elementary school (where her mom worked in the lunch room!) and to the same high school as well. They even worked at the same Quizno’s, but still didn’t really know each other.

Both ended up at the University of Iowa for college and working at the hospital: Nicole as a medical student & resident and Matt working and studying to be a nurse anesthesiologist. Despite all of these crazy overlaps, they never really knew each other until matching on Bumble! She says she messaged him because he was cute and liked the pictures of his dog. She honestly didn’t even recognize him at first, but he recognized her from their hometown. Nicole couldn’t believe the coincidence, so she took a screen shot of his picture and sent it to her best friend in Dubuque who immediately responded that it was her neighbor Matt–and they car pooled together back in the day! Nicole’s mom also immediately recognized his name. Nicole swears that her mom wanted them to get married from the moment she told her they were going on a date.

Matt says he knew Nicole was the one from the very first date, which went very well! They talked for four hours and he was smitten. Nicole realized he was the one about a month after their first date. She took a girls trip to Chicago talked to her friends and didn’t stop talking about Matt the entire weekend.

The Proposal

She is very close with her family, so Matt utilized Nicole’s nephews in helping to propose. After picking up the ring, he met Nicole at her sister’s home. The kids had created some artwork to give to Nicole, and one of the pieces was a hand-drawn picture of the couple with the sentence underneath, “Will you marry Matt?” Once Nicole read it and looked up, Matt was down on one knee with the ring and asked her the same question! She immediately said yes the entire family celebrated the rest of the night.

Designing the perfect wedding day

Nicole hired us to help with a number of initiatives for her wedding which included finalizing all the details, so she could simply enjoy the day without worrying. She wanted to make sure that there was good food, great booze, and plenty of dancing. Lastly, she wanted to incorporate her late father into the celebration to honor his memory and raise money for cancer research. We were so excited to help with her celebration and got started right away organizing & recommending a wonderful team of vendors to help execute her dream event.

The unforeseen challenges

Covid-19 certainly had a major impact on the planning of Nicole & Matt’s nuptials. Many conversations took place to determine if we should postpone everything a year or more. Another idea was turn their wedding into a micro-wedding with very few guests, and then planning a large event in the future. In the end though, they wanted to move forward with their original plans, as we could mitigate a lot of potential challenges. Masks, hand sanitizer, and extensive cleaning became our reality for the big day.

No one could have predicted what happened just days prior to the wedding: a historic derecho that hit Iowa. 120+ mile an hour winds (similar to a category 4 hurricane!) downed trees, destroyed buildings, and knocked out power for over 585,000 people. The site of the wedding Wilson’s Ciderhouse and Venue was without power for six days causing us to worry if we were going to be able to have the wedding at all. After lots (and lots) of calls, emails, and organizing we had come up with a back up plan using generators. Lucky for us, the venue’s power came back the day before the wedding and everything came together! No literally, this wedding went PERFECTLY and we couldn’t be more proud of all our work towards this event.

Congratulations, Nicole & Matt! It was a pleasure helping create your perfect wedding day. We loved working with you so much and wish you both the best in your future. 💙