If there's one thing we love here at Brides, it’s a really gorgeous real wedding. Each week we bring you five inspiring stories, all packed with unique details, beautiful dresses, and some of the most unique love stories we’ve ever heard.

And while we will never get enough of the flowers and décor at each event, it’s really the two people at the heart of each celebration that continue to draw us in again and again. After all, it’s the couple that makes each wedding so distinctly unique and personal.

In honor of the spectacular couples and the weddings they threw, we went through the archives and selected our favorite real-wedding moments from the past 12 months. Of course, choosing our favorite photos from this year’s celebrations was no easy feat. After all, we’ve shared each of our real weddings with you because they featured great ideas, beautiful details, and even better photography. That’s why, in the end, we resurfaced the photos that felt distinctive, unique, and downright beautiful. 

They’re photos of real people, in love, having the time of their lives. They felt in-the-moment and, above everything else, real.

Keep reading to see which photos (and couples!) made the cut, and get inspired for your own big day while scrolling through. After all, you could be included in next year’s list of the best real-wedding photos!

Some brides obsess about their dream dress. Others, their fairy-tale location. But when Jamie Baratta started planning her wedding to boyfriend Maurice Slade, she had a different focus. “For me, it was all about the music,” she says. “The music had to be bomb.” In fact, the couple sent their guests an island-inspired playlist before guests even arrived in Jamaica and, naturally, the festivities ended when Maurice, a lifelong OutKast fan, got down on his knees and serenaded his new bride to UGK’s "International Players Anthem," backed up by all his groomsmen.