Mary and John:
Henry Smith House Wedding in Picayune
This couple’s wedding took place at the Henry Smith House, a lovely bed and breakfast and event venue in a quiet rural Mississippi area near the town of Picayune. This town is not too far from the Louisiana state line, and about an hour drive north from New Orleans.
Henry Smith House Wedding Ceremonies
The venue sits on two and a half acres, and features accommodations in two historic houses. For a Henry Smith House wedding, there are several different outdoor spaces available for ceremonies. This wedding was a more intimate event, so the ceremony took place in the brick-paved area in front of the Chapel. But a larger area on the Garden Lawn is also an option for weddings with higher guest counts, as are several other smaller spots.
Jerry Drain officiated the ceremony. He was also the DJ for the reception, and has extensive experience working at this venue.
After the ceremony, the newly married couple and I spent a few minutes doing some portraits around the grounds.
Reception
The reception took place in and around the venue’s lovely outdoor covered event space, beautifully decorated with flowers from Picayune florist Cotton Blossom Florals.
The couple brought in The Little Coffee Camper, an event service business in the New Orleans area. These nice ladies bring their small customized and creatively repurposed 1970s camper, which is a completely self-contained mini coffee shop. It’s not uncommon for wedding venues to serve coffee during the reception. But The Little Coffee Camper offers a much wider variety of drinks for your guests. Lattes, teas, frappes, hot chocolate, lemonade, and regular coffee are all on the menu. It was a welcome addition on this chilly January evening! The Camper comes equipped with its own quiet generator, so it is not dependent on power from the venue. This gives more flexibility for where it can be placed. The company’s other available option, The Little Coffee Cart, is for venues where the camper is not practical.
The bride and groom love playing games (and in fact is how they met, via an online game). They incorporated this into their wedding by having various oversized games set up for guests to play. Connect four, checkers, and Jenga setups were available. Monopoly is the couple’s favorite game. The cute display of Monopoly-themed cookies as wedding favors was a tribute to how the groom proposed, by hiding the ring among the game’s various iconic cast-metal pieces. Some very intense rounds of Jenga were on display late in the evening, such as the one pictured here. It got so precariously high that the players (the best man and maid of honor) eventually had to stand on chairs to place the removed blocks on top.
At the end of the night, guests gave the couple a festive sparkler send-off!
Hair/Makeup: Chuck Kelly Salon
Videographer: Studio Vieux Carré
Flowers: Cotton Blossom Florals
Officiant: Jerry Drain
Cake: Katycake & Co.
Here’s what the bride had to say about me after the wedding:
I got married on January 29, 2022 in Picayune and just wanted to say that Mr. Caswell is wonderful! From start to finish I could not recommend him enough. He is one of the few vendors who has an answer to every question I could think of on his website. I’m the type of person that pays attention to the little details and he was the only vendor that I had to ask just one question: are you available for my wedding day? I am SO happy he was!
Mr. Caswell was fantastic to work with. He even met us at our outdoor ceremony location so we could determine what time of day would have the best light for our ceremony and our family portraits afterwards. Our wedding day was wonderful! We got our wedding photos back recently and we love all of them! It is going to be hard to decide which ones we want to print, frame, or put in an album because they are all so beautiful. 10/10!
About the Henry Smith House
There are two homes located on the estate. The Log Cabin was built in 1874, while the main Victorian House was built in 1909, using wood milled from trees felled on the property. Descendants of the original owner of the home, Henry Emmitt Smith, occupied it until 1998. A couple purchased it in 2000, spending the next 20 years renovating and enhancing the property. They opened as a bed & breakfast in 2010 and soon thereafter beginning to host weddings and other special events. The current owner, himself an already successful wedding planner from New Orleans, purchased the property in 2020.
