Bill Brigham and his bride, Beate, went to Atlanta City Hall a few weeks ago to get married. Unlike other engaged couples who might exchange vows in a dark judge’s chamber, these two went right to the top -- to the roof overlooking the city skyline.
There was much more to be had than great views. Awaiting them was a landscaped green space that had been the groom’s pet project for more than seven years. It was part of the reason he met his future wife. It made perfect sense that they would become the first couple to get married there.
“I am the roof project,” said a laughing Brigham, the city’s principal landscape architect and Bureau of Watershed Protection project manager. “I am not only a user, I was the designer, architect and job superintendent. And we had our first date there, so what better place to get married?”
The space formally was unveiled in December 2003 as the first governmental green roof in the Southeast. It cost $20,000 to haul in top soil and drought-resistant, evergreen plants. There was no budget to maintain it, so Brigham assigned the job to himself.
“When my office was [in the building], I had it down to about an hour per month for maintenance,” he said. “It had a tough time during the drought, but now that we’ve had rain and blasted it with fertilizer it’s back.”
Brigham’s search for appropriate planting materials led him to Bobby Saul, owner of Saul Nurseries in Sandy Springs. While wandering through the plant aisles one day, he met Lucy Smethurst, whose lavishly landscaped home backs up to the nursery. (Smethurst later open the grounds of her home for the couple’s wedding reception.)
“We started talking about horticulture and got to be friends,” said Brigham. “Lucy then introduced me to Beate. So if it weren’t for the green roof, we wouldn’t have met.”
The couple set a May 22 date and reserved the rooftop space. Size and weight limitations kept the guest list to just 50 close friends and relatives. Brigham earmarked part of the $1,500 user fee for future maintenance and upkeep. “So I don’t have to go up there myself and pull weeds,” he said. He made the roof more glamorous by designing and building a flower arbor where they could recite their vows.
“I had to anchor it so it didn’t blow off the roof, where we can get 45-mile gusts,” he said. “It was funny and embarrassing to go shopping for lacy fabric and artificial flowers and to tell people it was for my wedding.”
Brigham also created wedding invitations made of recycled materials and embedded with seeds that could be planted to produce wildflowers. In keeping with the eco-friendly theme, he designed special packets of flower seeds for guests to toss in lieu of rice or bird seed.
“It was absolutely beautiful,” Beate Brigham said. “We had been going back and forth about where to get married, and I’m not sure who thought of the roof first -- probably him, because it’s his baby. It was just the right size for what we wanted. It was meant to be.”
"Milestones" covers significant events and times in the lives of metro Atlantans. Big or small, well-known or not, tell us of a Milestone we should write about. Send information to hm_cauley@yahoo.com; call 404-514-6162; or mail to Milestones, c/o Jamila Robinson, 223 Perimeter Center Parkway N.E., Atlanta, GA 30346.
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