A Black-Tie Wedding with a Touch of Winter

Hannah Carroll and Jake Meredith met through mutual friends their junior year of high school. After dating seven years, through high school and college at the University of Kentucky, their relationship was put to the long-distance test when Jake moved to New York City to work on his master’s degree while Hannah stayed in their hometown of Louisville.

In July 2014, Hannah and Jake were vacationing with Jake’s family in Seaside, FL, but there was something different about this vacation — a proposal looming in the near future. If Hannah had any suspicions that something was amiss, it should’ve been when Jake came downstairs for their 8 a.m. walk on the beach dressed in nice shorts and a buttondown. “We didn’t make it far before we turned back for the house,” Hannah said. “Jake was sweating so badly, I thought he was suffering from a heat stroke.” On their way back to the house, Jake told her he wanted to take a picture of her looking at the ocean; little did she know she was the subject of an entirely different photograph.

Hannah-Jake-Meredith-Proposal — Jake’s brother and his girlfriend were hiding behind a house to capture the exact moment Hannah turned back around to find Jake on one knee.

More good news followed on January 17, 2015, when Hannah and Jake welcomed their daughter, Cooper. Jake moved back to Louisville from New York and the three of them settled into their new life as a family. The couple began planning their wedding and were married 10 months later at St. Louis Bertrand Church on November 21. They planned a black-tie formal wedding, with the ceremony starting at 6:30 p.m. and the reception following at the Olmsted. Fr. Jim Flynn, Hannah’s great-uncle, kept with the family tradition of presiding over all the religious services, by marrying Hannah and Jake.

On one of Hannah’s trips to visit Jake while he was still in school, she decided to make an appointment at Kleinfeld’s with one of her bridesmaids, who also lived in New York City. Though her mother wasn’t there to lend her opinion, her parents weren’t worried — they thought there was no way Hannah would find anything that would fit within her budget. They were wrong. Lo and behold, Hannah said yes to the dress of her dreams and no to the budget.

Meredith Wedding — From the moment she started planning her wedding, Hannah knew she wanted a long-sleeve, lace dress.

The vows were the one aspect of the wedding that weighed on Hannah’s mind the most. Jake is very eloquent in the way he speaks and writes. Hannah is quite the opposite; more to the point. That’s the accountant in her. She was worried that no matter what she wrote, it wouldn’t compare to what Jake had written. For that reason, Jake suggested the couple write their own vows to each other and exchange them in private on the day of the wedding.