Te amo

PEPPER DORTHEA TAYLOR & WILLIAM WESLEY SELF SEPTEMBER 12, 2020 • NATCHEZ

- KELLI BOZEMAN

Pepper Taylor was only a teenager when she visited Madrid, but the city put a spell on her that she couldn’t quite shake.“I felt very inspired by my time in Spain,” she recalls. “Life seemed very simple, yet so cherished.”

Years later, even as her firsthand memories of European culture faded, Pepper kept finding herself transported to Spain via photographs of Spanish weddings she saw on social media. “Something drew me to their style,” she says. “I saw pictures of brides at seated suppers with their husbands surrounded by wine, good music, lights, and natural florals. I knew I wanted a similar feeling for my own wedding.”

Meanwhile, life seemed to be leading her in another direction. After her boyfriend Wesley Self proposed inside a barn on his mother’s farm in Oxford last winter, the two soon began planning what was originally set to be a very large wedding, complete with hundreds of extended family members and friends. A seated supper simply would not have been possible. But the pandemic quickly changed those plans. A Spanish-influenced outdoor seated dinner suddenly became the perfect way to reimagine this couple’s big day.

Like so many other brides who had to plan a wedding during a pandemic, I was forced to give up aspects of my wedding that I never thought I would have to, Pepper says. However, every time a plan changed, I was reminded of the whole reason I was getting married in the first place: to join in a covenant together with Wesley through God.