By Alesha Damerville

STEAMBOAT SPRINGS – If you google how to plan a wedding, countless pages full of suggestions will flood your browser. However, with all of the resources available, sifting through page after page of ideas seems a daunting and overwhelming task. When you only have a year to plan a wedding, the last thing you have time for is attempting to find a site that resonates most with the dream wedding you’ve conjured in your head. 

Maybe you’re wondering how to avoid this entirely? A wedding planner is the best solution. Steamboat Springs’ popularity as a wedding destination has grown exponentially over the years, creating a high demand for skilled professionals whose primary focus is weddings. 

Three years ago, Yampa Valley locals Webb Pickrel and Taylor Smith fell in love. One year ago this June, he proposed. 

Pickrel and Smith have faced a number of challenges in the last 11 months as their June wedding date quickly draws near. Luckily for them, while browsing venues they met wedding planner Lindsey Grannis with One Fine Day Productions. 

“I was setting up for a wedding when Taylor and Webb were doing their site tour, and the owner of Flying Diamond introduced us,” Grannis says. “It turned out to be a small world, because Webb used to live in a house behind me on the west side of town.”

Picking the venue is at the top of Grannis’ wedding checklist. “Securing your venue in Steamboat is vitally important; we are limited on options with timing, because the wedding season is shorter here,” she says. “Once you have your venue and date situated, you begin looking into vendors.”

Pickrel and Smith are Grannis’ only local couple this summer. Traditionally, most of her clients have a connection to Steamboat but don’t live here. “It’s been fun having a local couple,” Grannis says. “Taylor and Webb have been the best to work with – they’re the sweetest.”

The couple fell in love with the ambience of Flying Diamond Ranch, when they spotted Grannis and her team hauling and arranging tables for the event she was organizing. 

“I like to see a boss who’s involved in actual work,” Pickrel says. “We had to have her as our planner.” 

We often hear of the stressful aspects of planning a wedding, but this couple has worked together through love and solidarity to create the wedding of their dreams. 

What’s the best part of planning a wedding? Well, that depends on who you ask. 

“The food and cupcake tasting is the best part,” Pickrel says. The couple chose Marno’s Custom Catering as their wedding caterer, and MountainBrew for their cake and cupcakes. “We tasted everything we ordered ahead of time. It was great,” Pickrel adds.

The bride’s favorite part? Dress shopping. After trying on 12 dresses, Smith fell in love with the perfect dress. She used an outside-the-box approach to dress shopping, selecting her favorites on a solo visit to the boutique, then inviting those closest to her to help narrow down from the five that made the cut.

Creating a cohesive color palette is a staple to any wedding. Pickrel and Smith’s groomsmen and bridesmaids will don dark blue and blush, unknowingly hitting the mark when it comes to the wedding trends this season. 

Gauging the number of attendees and budgeting for that number are amongst the biggest challenges faced by the bride-to-be and her groom. Narrowing down a playlist for the DJ also graces the top of that list. “For every spot throughout the service and reception where we needed a song, we had at least 10 picked out to debate over,” Pickrel says.

Is a year enough time to plan a wedding? Pickrel and Smith both have thoughts to contribute to this question. 

“We’re down to the final month now, so it doesn’t feel like a year was enough time,” Pickrel says. “When you have a lot of guests coming from out of town, you need to give them at least a year to make arrangements. 

“I feel like the perfect amount of time would have been a year and a half, but we wanted to get married in the summer,” Smith says. 

Attendees of this June wedding can look forward to an experience full of whimsical elegance.