At one point, well into the evening of their wedding day, Madolin McWherter and Ben Rosenthal stepped away from the revelry. They snuck away from the party and tracked back to the beginning of the night, intent on taking it all in. “It was magical,” Madolin remembers. “Light streamed out of the [horse] arena door to this beautiful entry room where our guests had started their evening. This one part of the arena had no people; they were all dancing. We walked out of the cocktail area and toward the dance floor. Coats were on chairs, and purses were on tables. It was so neat seeing that all those people were there to celebrate our wedding—and celebrating they were.”

Aside from seeing her husband-to-be for the first time that day, that moment, Madolin says, was everything.

Madolin and Ben met in high school—he was a senior at Trinity Valley in Fort Worth; she was a junior across town at Arlington Heights—dated a bit, but then split up when Ben went off to college. They reconnected several years later after a chance meeting reminded them of their feelings. Four years later, they were planning their wedding.

Having attended many weddings in their hometown, the couple knew they wanted something different. “We quickly decided to get married in Colorado,” Madolin says. “Every summer and winter we spend time in Aspen, and Ben grew up going to summer camp in Colorado. We both envisioned an outdoor wedding that was simple and natural.”

Drawing on the area’s natural beauty—the big sky, mountain backdrop, wildflowers as abundant as the air itself—they chose blue and yellow as their colors and Chaparral Ranch as the location. And they hired Todd Fiscus of Todd Events to transform a horse farm into a venue fit for the festivities.

The Jewish ceremony took place outside, underneath an open-sided tent in a field between the horse arena and the barn. Amid hundreds of sunflowers (and in front of hundreds of guests), under a chuppah of Aspen branches and garden roses, the bride and groom said “I do.” And then the party started.

The team at Todd Events tented the horse arena and divided it into two distinct spaces: one for cocktails, the other for dinner and dancing. Achieving the desired effect required lots of custom work: lighting; foliage; thousands of flowers, including roses, poppies, ranunculus, dahlias, and hydrangeas; hundreds of votive and floating candles; seating for nearly 300; bars for drink service; and, of course, a dance floor and bandstand.

Madolin says her day turned out exactly as she had envisioned. “We didn’t want anything too flashy or bold, but more natural. In the end, I think it was perfect.”

—Allison Hatfield

Madolin and Ben met in high school—he was a senior at Trinity Valley in Fort Worth; she was a junior across town at Arlington Heights.