Wedding Date on Jan 14, 2023

Right off the bat, I knew I was going to love working with Christian and Ashley! Their quirky sense of humor and their outgoing and welcoming personalities are obvious from the get-go, and it takes a whole of two seconds before you’ll find yourself completely charmed by them. Their wedding was heavily inspired by their love of New Orleans, and they specifically requested a more jazz, Motown vibe for the music in their video. I absolutely loved getting to lean into the more fun, upbeat vibes and editing style that this allowed for, and I think it helped capture their personalities in a way that was so fitting for them. The day was fun, emotional, unique, and perfectly reflected Christian and Ashley in every way. Congrats to the Britto-Helms! From the bride: "By the time we get married we will have been together for 9 years (!!!), three of which were spent dating long-distance immediately post-college while Christian lived in New Orleans and Ashley lived in Washington, DC. We are each other's best friends and love spending time together doing things like: cooking (Christian loves it and is so good at it); traveling (our table names are named after places we've been together); going to concerts / music festivals (we both love live music); discovering new / delicious local restaurants; hiking outdoors / visiting national & state parks; and just generally hanging out with our friends. Christian is generally more a type B chill personality but is also the one who loves going out in the relationship; he ran on Duke's Cross Country team and running is still a big part of his life. Ashley is a more detail-oriented type A personality with a creative side (illustrated + designed most of our stationery suite), loves doing yoga to unwind, and is always down for a chill wine night. HOW WE MET: Ashley & Christian both were in the same graduating class at Duke University, but their paths didn't cross until the very end of their junior year when both got elected to the Executive Board of the Duke University Union (the group responsible for putting on student programming). Ironically, of the 17 student committees that fell under the DUU umbrella, Christian and Ashley had each individually been involved with the groups responsible for planning concerts on campus the entirety of their time at Duke, but Christian had been involved with one committee while Ashley had been involved with the other two. As luck would have it, they both ended up spending that summer before senior year in Durham, becoming friends over the $11.17 bottomless brunch buffet at Geer St. Garden, trivia at Fullsteam Brewery, and burgers at Bull City Burger. Friendship turned into dating towards the very end of senior year, when the two realized they didn't want to stop spending time together, and the two dated long distance for the first 3 years after college while Ashley was living in Washington, DC and Christian was living in New Orleans. Christian eventually ended up moving to DC for 2 years, and the two moved to Austin together in the late summer of 2019. PROPOSAL (Ashley's POV): Christian and I planned a somewhat last minute trip to visit Breckenridge, Colorado over Labor Day weekend in September 2021. After a lovely Saturday of hiking and bopping around downtown, we were going to meet up with some couple friends of ours for drinks and dinner who happened to be visiting Breck at the same time and staying at their family friend's home in the neighborhood where "coincidentally" my own family had up until recently owned a house. We texted our friends when we were on the way over, and they let us know they were out walking the dog but would be back soon, that we could just head around to the backyard and chill at the picnic table in the meantime. We walked around back and that's when Christian ended up popping the question in front of a beautiful mountain backdrop, with my sister Katherine hiding like a predator in the bushes snapping photos. After a few emotional moments I suddenly realized if this had all been a setup, whose house is this?! Did we need to cut and run?? (We have a funny photo of this moment of realization.) Christian explained that both of our families had flown into Breckenridge the day prior and were staying in the house together for the weekend, that they were waiting at the golf clubhouse just down the road to come back and celebrate with us whenever we were ready. We enjoyed some wine, cheese, and charcuterie that my sister had pre-prepared for about 15 minutes, and then called the families back for us all to celebrate together for the rest of the weekend."