They’d only been together seven months, but after asking both her father and stepfather’s permission, Robin Pawlowich asked Leah to marry him under the stars at Pigeon Lake in the summer of 2014. It wasn’t a difficult decision for either of them: “She’s just my person,” Robin says.
The couple, who live in Edmonton, met on a blind date in late December the year before — at an Oilers game whose outcome neither Robin nor Leah remembers.
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Their favourite number is 23 — a nod to that first date two days before Christmas. And Leah wanted to be married in July because it’s the month Robin proposed. She was pleased to discover that the 23rd of July fell on a Saturday in 2016, and they set their date accordingly.
While they were engaged, Robin’s parents purchased an acreage in Parkland County, which they offered Robin and Leah for their wedding. It was perfect: the esthetic they wanted, and a 10-minute drive from River Cree Resort and Casino, where their guests could stay overnight.
It did, however, require a lot of elbow grease from the couple and their families. They laid sod, put gravel down and cut out old trees, while an arborist came in to spruce up the trees that remained. There were four buildings on the property that Robin’s family knocked down, but they saved older parts of them to incorporate into the wedding decor.
Leah and Robin describe their wedding as “country rustic.”
“I’m a little bit addicted to Pinterest,” says the bride. “So I definitely got on Pinterest the whole next day after he proposed. The planning of what kind of wedding we wanted happened quite quickly because we both wanted it to be really personal, and we wanted to have our own little touches here and there.”
Those touches included lots of fresh flowers from Fabloomosity — including a flower crown for the bride (the idea was “as many flowers on one person as possible,” says Leah) — and little nods to hunting, one of Robin’s favourite pastimes.
The groom and groomsmen had boutonnieres made out of shotgun shells (Robin’s was the shell from the first time Leah ever used a shotgun). There were antlers incorporated into several parts of the decor — on top of the ceremony’s backdrop that Robin’s brother-in-law had made out of salvaged windows and doors from those original buildings; mounted behind their head table; and — the bride’s favourite detail — the handle of Leah’s bouquet.
The wedding’s palette consisted of subtle, soft colours. The flowers’ dusty hues matched the bridesmaids’ mix of pastel-coloured dresses, purchased at Novelle Bridal Shop where Leah also bought her gown.
In stark contrast to those understated tones and the wedding’s overall rustic feel were the bold, bright smoke bombs they employed for their post-ceremony photo shoot. While their guests played lawn games like ladder ball and beanbag toss, grenades in a rainbow of colours went off behind the bride and groom.
The smoke bomb idea came from their photographer, Elizabeth van der Bij of ENV Photography. Neither Leah nor Robin had seen them before.
“We were just talking on the phone about wedding timelines,” says Leah of her conversation with van der Bij. “At the end of our call, she said ‘What do you think of smoke bombs?’ And I said, ‘Sounds fantastic to me!’ At this point we’d done our engagement photos. So I said, ‘Whatever you think — we are your guinea pigs. Just tell us what to do’!”
The results were amazing, says Leah. “When we were standing there, I would have never thought that those photos would come out of it.”
But the best part for the groom was a quieter time, away from the festivities, just the newly married couple.
“My favourite moment was actually when everything was over and we could just relax and we had time to take five minutes alone together. That was one of the best moments,” says Robin.
“That, and Leah walking down the aisle.”
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