St. Sharbel

Wedding Day

Wedding

The Warehouse on State

Reception

Our Wedding

Guest Pictures and Videos

We have created a wedding album and invite all of our guests to upload their pictures and videos of the wedding ceremony and reception. Simply click the link below or scan the QR Code on the invitation, which&nbsp;will take you to our WedUploader website labeled "Sam and Mary Wedding", choose the pictures/videos, and then click upload. Once you hit upload, it will send them to our private&nbsp;album for us to view. Please note that the pictures will only be visible to us after you upload them.

Link to Upload Pictures & Videos:&nbsp;<a href="https://weduploader.com/upload/EZfmYeJ9ppO5Ly0Q" target="_blank">Sam and Mary Wedding Album</a>

Our First Year Oh my goodness, what a whirlwind this past year has been. As you all know,&nbsp;we&nbsp;decided to have a civil ceremony ("porch wedding")&nbsp;after we postponed our church ceremony and reception. We had our ceremony at my brother Jimmy's house. Our ceremony was held on Friday May 8th. Our&nbsp;sister-in-law&nbsp;Nikki&nbsp;decorated her front porch (hence "porch wedding")&nbsp;beautifully, and&nbsp;Sam's mom&nbsp;made a gorgeous bouquet. The most wonderful thing about the whole thing was that my cousin Billy got to be the one to marry us. Billy did a great job with the ceremony and it was so beautiful and&nbsp;intimate being just our immediate family. Honestly, it was perfect, and we&nbsp;couldn't have asked for anything better.&nbsp;&nbsp; After the ceremony,&nbsp;my&nbsp;mom surprised us with cupcakes and Sam's sister Christina and cousin/Best Man Chris&nbsp;surprised us with a video montage of congratulatory messages from our family and friends! It was so thoughtful and I nearly cried happy tears!&nbsp;After the ceremony, we had&nbsp;Hokkaido (fun fact- that's also&nbsp;where we had our first date) with our friends Tom and Alli and some special campaign that my friend Andrea shipped to us. We just felt so blessed to have so many people in our lives try to make it a special day for us even under the unfortunate circumstances. It was wonderful! For our honeymoon, we spent a week in Longboat Key&nbsp;Florida and got to spend a little time with friends and family down there. It was very low-key but&nbsp;the perfect time to get away with all the COVID&nbsp;craziness happening. We&nbsp;did have to drive 18 hours there and back, but I think it was well worth it. Even though it was long we had fun on the drive listening to music and playing the alphabet game.&nbsp; We were pretty cautious&nbsp;most of the summer spending time with mostly just family. Lucky for us my brothers live in the same neighborhood so we had a lot of summer nights playing outside or going on walks and bike rides to get&nbsp;ice cream. Another plus to not having social lives was that&nbsp;it gave us a lot of extra time to work on projects around the house and plenty of time to learn about more about each other. When we were not spending our weekends doing projects, we would drive up to Door County for some fun with the fam or even just by ourselves. One day we went mini golfing by ourselves and it was one of the best dates we've had! I would&nbsp;10 out of 10 recommend&nbsp;mini golf as a date night activity!&nbsp; Other highlights of the past year were welcoming another baby to the family, my birthday buddy,&nbsp;Eddie. We now have 9 nieces and nephews!&nbsp;&nbsp;We were able&nbsp;to go to Dallas to visit Christina, we went&nbsp;on a ski trip with Sam's cousin in Wisconsin,&nbsp;in April we went&nbsp;to Ashville with my sister Lily and brother-in-law Trevor and in July we took a trip to Boston and Bar Harbor Maine for some hiking and whale watching! We've been blessed with so many opportunities to travel this year and each trip has been a blast. Up next is our honeymoon in Hawaii this December! Overall we don't have too much to report for our first year. I&nbsp;think it was a pretty typical first year of marriage, just with a little added stress and a little more understanding. Sam and I got super comfortable with the work from home life style. Maybe too comfortable, our attire basically consisted of athletic shorts and yoga pants with a hoodie.&nbsp;We both recently went back to working in the office and&nbsp;Sam started a new position within OSF. We are both thankful to see a light at the end of the tunnel as COVID is almost beyond us. We couldn't be more thrilled to be&nbsp;having our church ceremony and reception this fall. Thanks to everyone for being patient and understanding of our circumstances and hanging in the through all of&nbsp;our postponements and date changes. The Koury Wedding will be happening in 2021, I promise you this! We love you all and can't wait for many&nbsp; more years together and the wild journey ahead of us!

Mary and Sam

Our Story

Details

Photos

Lily is my favorite sister by default... Just kidding, she is the obvious choice for my matron of honor. She is a great sister and has always taken care of me and been there whenever I needed her growing up&nbsp;. Honestly, I don’t know what I would do without her. I had the honor of standing by her side when she got married back in October and&nbsp;I’m so thankful to have her stand by my side on our wedding day in November!

Lily Brown

If you ask my family, I’m pretty sure they will all recall me always wanting to hang out with Chris. My mom used to babysit him, so it began when we were young. Whether it was when we were younger looking forward to watching the garbage man drive by, teenage years playing video games, or more recently going out for a drink, I’ve always enjoyed being with Chris. I’m thankful that he will be standing next to me at the altar on my big day.

Chris Khoury

Christina is Sam's sister. I am so thankful for Christina because she has welcomed me and included me from day one. She has been so supportive of our relationship and our decision to get married and I feel so lucky to call her family. We are so happy to have her stand at the alter with both of us on our wedding day!

Christina Koury

I vividly remember a conversation with Chris when we heard the news that Anthony was moving to Peoria. Chris’ mom told us that we should start hanging out with him since he was going to be new to Peoria. We were scared initially, but things turned out great. Anthony ended up being awesome and he has been a great friend of mine ever since.

Anthony Sleiman

Sarah is my cousin and&nbsp;by far one of the funnest people to be around. She is&nbsp;one of my favorite travel buddies and whenever I’m with her I know it will be one for the books! I’m so glad she could be a part of our day but if I’m totally&nbsp;honest I’m most excited to get her on the dance floor at our reception!

Sarah Birkhold

I think I was most active when I was younger with Anthony. We would literally spend hours aimlessly walking around Washington and have so much fun doing it. I still have that same enjoyment when hanging out with Anthony, no matter what we’re doing.

Anthony Khoury

Mary is the MVP of cousins, not only because we share a name. She’s my tell it like it is cousin and I love her for that! I know Mary is always down for adventure and travels which is why she’s is another one of my favorite travel partners and we definitely plan to have many more trips together! Costa Ricca is at the top of our list! I am so happy to have Mary  stand with me at the alter.

Mary Birkhold

Michael has always been that big brother figure for me. As he’s a couple of years older than me, he’s always been a bit wiser, which was beneficial for me growing up. More recently, he’s become a big St. Louis Cardinals fan, which is by far my favorite sports team. We’ve bonded over that and I’ve enjoyed going to some games with him in St. Louis.

Mary & Sam

Mary & Sam

M&S

Wedding Day

Wedding

Reception