We are so excited to feature a real Chapel Hill bride today... this one truly hits close to home.  In fact, much to my surprise, I went to high school with one of the bridesmaids!  It sure is a small world.  {Joey Seawell} is a wonderful photographer in the area and we are so glad he sent this wedding our way.  Wedding planning by Cara Zeulkhe of {A Southern Soiree}.  I really enjoyed reading over Whitney's thoughts below.  Their Big Day was packed full of heartfelt traditions that southern weddings are all about!  You MUST read about Whitney's most memorable moment at the bottom of the page.  Goosebumps galore!  Love it.

How did the two of you meet? I was a rising senior at UNC-Chapel Hill, moving into my new house on campus with my roommate.  Because we were impatient and didn’t want to wait for our parents to come to Chapel Hill to help us move our furniture in, we decided to try it ourselves.  As I was trying to shimmy the mattress to my bed out of the back of a truck, this tall dark and handsome man came across the street to ask if I needed help with it.  The tall dark and handsome man turned out to be Steve who had just finished at Carolina Law School and was in the midst of studying for the bar exam.  He helped me move in the furniture, and the rest is history.

Describe the proposal: We were at Holden Beach, staying at his parent’s beach house.  It was the only tropical storm of the summer of 2007.  I was upstairs getting ready to go out to dinner.  Steve kept telling me that he wanted to go outside and have a drink by the ocean.  When I got downstairs, he insisted that we go out by the ocean and have a glass of wine under a gazebo they have at the end of the walkway.  I looked at him like he was crazy, I had just finished getting ready for dinner and there was a tropical storm going on outside!  I asked, “Can’t we just stand in the doorway and pretend we’re outside?”  He said no, and said “come on, I’m going out to make sure it’s still raining.”  “Still raining?!” I said, “The rain is beating against the house!”  However, after he started to walk out, I decided he might be up to something and that maybe I should follow him.  So I followed him out to the gazebo, glass of wine in hand, and being beaten by the wind and the rain.  We stood under the gazebo and he started telling me that I was his best friend, how much he loved me, and other sweet things, when I realized, “oh my gosh, he’s going to propose!”  I quickly realized I had my wine glass in hand and how could he ever put a ring on my finger with a glass in my hand.  So I sat the glass down and Steve looked at me like “what are you doing?! I’m just trying to talk to you”.  So feeling silly, I stood there and talked to him, and then thought, “Maybe if I look away towards the ocean he’ll get down on one knee.”  So I looked away, and looked back, and he was STILL there!  Finally, after what seemed like forever, but was probably only a few seconds, Steve got down on his knee and asked me to marry him!  Of course I said yes!!

What attracted me to my husband was: his drive, his height (I’m 5’11”, so I appreciate him being 6’3”), his heart, his love of the Lord, his love of children, his overall sweetness

Why do you love your husband? He is that guy that does the selfless things for people, and does it anonymously so that he doesn’t receive the credit.  He makes me smile every single morning I get up.  He says silly things out of no where! 

What attracted me to my wife was: her sweetness followed very closely by her beauty

A date we went on that we'll always remember: Drinks at sunset at the Southernmost point in Key West Florida.  We had been scuba diving in Key Largo with my scuba class from UNC.  I got a little nervous going down on the dive, so Steve held my hand all the way down and during the dive to make sure I made it.  However, half way through the dive, I scrapped my leg on a piece of coral.  That deep in the water, the colors are distorted so the scrape looked black to Steve.  I pointed to the scrape on my leg, and, because Steve saw black and thought it was dirt, he rubbed it really hard not once, not twice, but three times!  Because I had my oxygen line in my mouth, I couldn’t tell him that it was blood and not dirt!  After we surfaced and got back on the boat, we laughed about the fact that he literally “rubbed salt (water) in my wound”.  Later that night, we headed to Key West and had drinks by the sunset.

What was your most memorable moment about your wedding day? There’s two:  My Dad and I are very close.  I’m definitely what you’d call a Daddy’s girl.  Needless to say, anticipating walking down the isle with my dad was a scary thought.  All I could imagine was mascara flowing down my face and dad sniffing his tears away.  So in hopes of alleviating that, I arranged for a surprise the morning of my wedding.  I ran to Mom and Dad’s room at 8 AM just as Mom was leaving.  I jumped onto Dad’s bed and sat down beside him.  He wasn’t very excited, as he is not a big fan of surprises.  About five minutes later a man from the Carolina Inn rolled in a flat screen tv and dvd player.  There was a knock on the door and another man brought in our breakfast to enjoy.  I pushed play on the dvd player, and there Dad and I sat for the next hour and a half watching Father of the Bride together.  It was wonderfully sad.  We both cried for most of the movie – tears of joy of course – but tears none the less.  It was the most memorable time I can ever recall with Dad, and definitely the perfect way to start such a wonderful day.  In case you were wondering, it did the trick!  Neither of us shed one tear walking down the aisle – I don’t think we had any left after the movie.  The second moment I’ll never forget is the moment we walked into the reception area and were tucked away in a closed room before being announced.  There we sat, just the two of us – for the first time all weekend – we were alone!  We sat there on the pink couches, eating a bite of each of our foods and celebrating with a glass of champagne.  It was such a special time, just taking in the fact that we had just gotten married!

Check in later for Part II of Whitney + Steve's Chapel Hill wedding!