A Fun Aspen Wedding at T Lazy 7 Ranch

Erica & Barry  |  Aspen, Colorado

 

From the bride: We have lived in Aspen for 15 years. The T Lazy 7 Ranch was a dream location to embrace the beauty of this town and share with our family and friends our main motivation for living and working here. We live a life inspired by being in nature and beautiful places, we wanted to wed in and share a place with our family and friends that requires no words to express our connection.

 

 

Having our ceremony at the The T Lazy 7 Ranch meadow just didn’t require much décor as it is located in one of the most majestic places in the Rocky Mountains!

 

 

To their surprise, I had my bridesmaids picked up by the Aspen police and driven to the ceremony site with the lights and sirens on. As my sister is an Aspen police officer I have had great pleasure in getting to know the force and they were excited to be involved. My friends and family know I like to have fun and were not surprised by the shenanigans.

 

 

 

I dreamt of a fun and memorable arrival so I arrived in the rumble seat of a 1929 Ford roadster. We surprised the guests with the sound of the “A-HOOGA” horn as pulled into the ceremony site. I was feeling like Miss America for a moment, waving and sitting on the rumble seat as if in a parade in the model A roadster.

 

Barry and I have always had a love of John Denver’s Music, in particular “Rocky Mountain High”. I walked down the aisle to this song, performed by the Natalie Spears Cello and Banjo Duo. I couldn’t think of anyone better than Annie Denver herself to offer the sentimental side of the ceremony. Annie read love poems that Barry and I had prepared for one another.

 

 

The closer we got to our day, the importance of the words and act of this sacred ceremony became more focused. This may sound odd, but you can get sidetracked by hiring vendors and coordinating the event when the ceremony and the words spoken are the true purpose of the gathering. We wrote all of the ceremony content and there were a lot of joyful tears shed while writing and contemplating. I truly loved this process of putting so much care into each moment of our day. I wanted to create both a fun and sentimental wedding foregoing many traditions and truly making it our own.

 

 

 

When I was thinking about the “union ceremony”, I thought it would be fun to involve the Aspen police again and to be handcuffed as a symbol of our union. Ryan, our officiant, announced during the ring ceremony, “I think those rings were reported stolen in the Aspen Times…” He asked the police officer up to the alter. The officer confirmed jokingly that they were the stolen rings, he then handcuffed us and read a modified version of the Miranda rights that we had written. “You have the right to remain silent, when the other is speaking. Anything you say to one another can be used to create a stronger bond, You have the right to be happy forever, You have the right to inspire others from your infectious love.” Etc…. We heard from our guests how inventive, creative, fun and so loving our ceremony was. We had everyone laughing and crying all set in an amazing backdrop at T Lazy 7.

 

 

The reception was all about dancing, we forgoed a lot of traditions, hired an internationally renowned DJ and danced the night away.

 

 

My dance with Barry was very special, we hired a dance instructor to create a dance for us. we woke every day at 5:00am for 3 months before our wedding to practice our dance. It was the only time we could get our schedules together. I will always remember the sound of our laughs tripping over each other as we practiced in our PJs and dancing shoes so early in the morning. I had been told so many times that your day will go by so fast and because of this I was determined to enjoy all the moments that created and led up to our day.

 

 

 

I was told so many times that something would go wrong, I was prepared to go with the flow and I trusted everything would be perfect and my only goal was to embrace every moment of the day and not let it slip by without being deeply present. Nothing went wrong, it was the best day of my life.

 

 

 

ADVICE

Give yourself time to plan your wedding, it should be about the journey and not just the day. (We actually postponed ours after sending the save the dates to a year later because the stress was too great and it was feeling like an event I was putting on for others, I didn’t want to be a stressed-out bridezilla- that was one of my biggest goals).

 

 

 

THE WEDDING TEAM

Venue: T Lazy 7 Ranch went above and beyond to make our day exactly as we had envisioned.  The lodge has so much character and it was way more fun for us to spend our money on our extended honeymoon.

Photographer: Kathryn Kim   |  Bouquet: Harrington Smith  |  HAMU: Makeup Artist Heather  |  Ceremony Musicians: Natalie Spears Duo  | Rentals: Bethel Party Rentals  | Caterer: Slow Groovin BBQ  |  DJ: DJ Naka G | Videographer: Elizabeth Workman