A Five-Year Vow Renewal in Glacier National Park with Flowers Hanging from the Trees

Nadia and Rob’s wedding sneakers have two national parks painted on them. Canyonlands, where they eloped in 2021, is on one side. Glacier, where they drove up Going-to-the-Sun Road five years later to say it all again, is on the other.

This is a five-year vow renewal, and Nadia is candid about why it exists. The elopement was everything she wanted. The reception they threw a few months later was not. “We cut a lot of corners, and looking back, we invited too many people because we felt like we were supposed to,” she says. So the second time around, they flipped it: only the people who had been there through it all, in the state the two of them fell for on their first visit, with a planner hired before almost anything else.

Nadia is a bridal makeup artist, and Rob works in sales. They met in their early 20s at a club in New Haven. “I made the first move after seeing him there a few weeks in a row,” Nadia says. Fifteen years later, they brought their favorite people to The Cabins at Blacktail in Lakeside, Montana, with Briana of Events by Briana planning and designing the day, and T Johanna Photography behind the camera.

The Ceremony at Big Bend

Blacktail is where the party happened. The vows happened inside the park: guests drove up Going-to-the-Sun Road to Big Bend, where Nadia’s little sister, also named Briana, officiated. “She’s been a big part of our relationship, so it was really special having her start the ceremony,” Nadia says.

Nadia’s ceremony look is a pink tiered tulle gown from Mac Duggal, which she found on Poshmark and then had Sewf Alterations in Branford, Connecticut cut into a two-piece. Splitting it in two was the genius move. An off-the-shoulder ruffle top over a tiered skirt reads as one gown from across a meadow and as separates up close, so a dress bought secondhand ends up looking made for her.

Rob’s navy suit and shirt were custom-made by Bards Clothing in Connecticut, worn open at the collar with no tie and a white boutonniere. Next to her pink tulle, the navy keeps things grounded, and skipping the tie makes it feel right at home in the mountains.

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Meg of The Florista built the bouquet in orange ranunculus, coral and peach garden roses, yellow dahlias, and sweet peas. In a landscape that is entirely green, blue, and snow, orange is the one color with nothing to compete against, so a bouquet this size holds its outline from anywhere on the mountain.

Her nails were done up in sculpted roses, pearls, and gold foil, and as a bridal makeup artist she skipped the glam-team search entirely: her own crew from Nadia’s Beauty Spot did her hair and makeup the morning of. For more ideas in the same romantic, detailed vein, our favorite wedding nail designs are a good place to start.

The Sneakers

The sneakers are white Nike Jordans hand painted by The Casual Reply out of Rhode Island, and they are the keepsake of this whole day. One shoe carries Canyonlands National Park in Utah, where Nadia and Rob eloped. The other carries Glacier. The local wildflowers from each park run between the two scenes, and their original anniversary, July 11, is written on them with their initials. “I wanted something that we could keep forever that would be a reminder of how amazing our wedding & now vow renewal was,” Nadia says. “The sneakers were incredible and such a special part of the day.”

Only the People Who Have Been There

This is the whole guest list, and it’s the reason the second celebration exists. “Besides the fact that I quite literally got to ‘scream from the mountaintops’ how much I love this man, haha, we were surrounded only by the people who have truly been an important part of our lives,” Nadia says. “Our closest friends, our family, and the people who have been there through it all. It felt intimate, intentional, and completely us. And I think that’s what made the day as perfect as it was.”

Then everyone headed back down to Blacktail Mountain, where the one thing Nadia had refused to compromise on was waiting in the trees.

Flowers in the Trees

“The florals!!” is her answer to what she would not budge on. “I DIY’d our florals back when we first got married in 2021 and I knew this time around I didn’t want to skimp out. I told Briana I wanted flowers literally hanging from the trees and WOW did she and Meg (The Florista) deliver.” What she handed Briana was three colors, pinks, oranges, and greens, and a feeling: “an intimate, colorful garden party tucked into the mountains,” she says, “romantic and elevated, but more playful rather than traditional.” And she is quick to hand off the credit: “Honestly, the design was all Briana and I’m so grateful we got to work with her.”

“Her inspiration was of a chartreuse couch and the design grew from there,” says Briana of Events by Briana. You can trace the couch all the way down the table. The chartreuse sits on the charger plates and the anthurium leaves, and the rest of the palette, orange, blush, and yellow, is what a garden party looks like once that acid green is the anchor rather than an accent. Around the color is texture: natural wood, cream, brass, ribbed and fluted glass, and the vintage-inspired lighting Nadia asked for, which arrived overhead as pleated salmon drums, ribbed yellow lanterns, and white ruffled shades, with rentals from West Era and Nuage Designs.

One week out, a few guests had to cancel. “We dropped a table and redesigned the table scape florals the week of the wedding,” Briana says. It’s the kind of last-minute fix guests never notice, which is exactly the point: the single long table looks like it was the plan all along.

“Collected, whimsical and a little unexpected” was the other half of what Nadia asked for, and the gold-spotted ceramic leopard is where it shows up, holding court over a grid of instant snapshots in gold clip holders. Every garden party needs one object that was plainly somebody’s idea and not a rental category.

Dinner in the Woods

Dinner came from The Kopper Kitchen, and the menu is Montana without being a theme. Blackened shrimp cucumber bites, Korean bison meatballs, and elk empanadas went around during cocktails, with Glacier Perks pouring a spicy mango margarita and a classic marg. Then a plated caesar with shaved pecorino and crispy fried capers, and beef medallions with housemade chimichurri or lemon caper chicken, alongside scalloped potatoes in thyme cream and garlic butter green beans. Dessert was Nadia’s own homemade tiramisu, “which is our FAVORITE.” The orange menu cards, printed with a mountain and tied in pink cord, came from Two Printing Girls.

A reception in a forest has walls, the trees, and no ceiling, and a long table under open sky can feel like a picnic no matter how good the flowers are. The lanterns, hung at different heights in three colors, draw a ceiling line over the table, and the garlands tie them together so the eye reads one room instead of five objects. It is the tent without the tent, and it does exactly what Nadia asked for, “letting the natural forest setting be part of the design.”

Advice

Nadia’s advice for anyone planning a vow renewal comes down to the first hire she made this time, and the one she skipped in 2021.

Asked what she would skip or do differently: “Absolutely nothing.” Five years in and still screaming it from the mountaintops. Congratulations, Nadia and Rob! All the best from GWS.