“Jenna is The Wed­ding Standard’s newest and most awe­some team mem­ber. She will be blog­ging real wed­dings, artist inter­views, and all things inspir­ing in the world of wed­dings. We are thrilled to have her on board and fig­ure the best way to intro­duce her is to show­case her stun­ning Carmel Val­ley wed­ding from the sum­mer. This girl has wicked style and pulled together an absolutely beau­ti­ful wed­ding. Enjoy this post by Jenna!” –Cameron Ingalls

The word that best describes our wed­ding day would be truly mag­i­cal. Every­thing from the loca­tion, the date, the weather and the peo­ple made it all I hoped it would be, and much more. There are so many amaz­ing lit­tle things that made our wed­ding day so special.

The style of our wed­ding could be best described as vin­tage rus­tic coun­try chic. The whole look just kinda turned into things that we loved and thought were awe­some and it just worked out beau­ti­fully. There was no spe­cific col­ors because I didn’t want to detract from the mag­nif­i­cent scenery. The vision I had for the day was for it to be roman­tic and time­less and when I look back at the day, I believe we achieved just that.

My dress was pur­chased at a Epiphany Bou­tique in Carmel. The brand was Wat­ters. I had many alter­ations done to the dress to make it uniquely mine; I low­ered the back, sweet hearted the neck­line and added a vin­tage inspired crys­tal belt. All the alter­ations were done by Epiphany’s because alter­ations are included free with the pur­chase of your dress. Very cool might I add! My ear­rings cost $5 and were found at a small antique store, they were def­i­nitely one of my favorite finds. Another one of my favorite finds was the beaded white vin­tage dress I sported for our sparkler depar­ture. I found that daz­zling lit­tle num­ber at Ruby Rose and can’t wait to find some­where I can wear it again! For the brides­maids dresses I wanted them to all be dif­fer­ent and in the blush tone fam­ily. The rea­son I decided to do dif­fer­ent dresses for every­one is that I wanted each of my brides­maids to find a dress that they love, looks great on them and can really actu­ally wear again. All the dresses were bought at var­i­ous stores and expressed each of their own individuality.

My flow­ers were done by the won­der­ful Chris­tine Cater. I chose a pale pink color palette for our flow­ers. One thing I wanted was for the tables to be full down the mid­dle of the entire length of the tables. We chose all dif­fer­ent antique look­ing vases of var­i­ous sizes and shapes. Our bou­quets were vibrant yet still under­stated and Chris­tine did a fan­tas­tic job cre­at­ing exactly what I had imagined.

Another thing that made our wed­ding so spe­cial to us was that it was truly a fam­ily affair. I am lucky enough to have a seri­ously musi­cal fam­ily. The music started at the shut­tle pick up loca­tion where two of my cousins jammed out on their gui­tars for guests as they boarded the shut­tles. The cer­e­mony music was pro­vided by Heart­strings Mon­terey who are also my mom’s band and I grew up lis­ten­ing to since I was a lit­tle girl. My sis­ter sang dur­ing din­ner and a close friend of our who is a DJ pro­vided the dance tunes.

For Pho­tog­ra­phy we used the oh so tal­ented Alexan­dra of Cameron Ingalls Pho­tog­ra­phy. Alex was seri­ously the best to work with! She not only made me feel com­fort­able and relaxed but through­out the day mem­bers of my bridal party kept com­ment­ing on how much they adore her. It was just like hav­ing a girl­friend in the room hang­ing out with us while we got ready. Our pic­tures are the main thing that peo­ple bring up to us almost daily. Hir­ing Alex was the best deci­sion I made. Our pic­tures are absolutely stun­ning, there is not one that I don’t love.

The loca­tion. Daniel and I were mar­ried in beau­ti­ful Carmel Val­ley at a friend of my family’s breath­tak­ing pri­vate estate called Hawk Ridge. Not only do we have his­tory at this great place but it has some remark­able  his­tory itself. The ranch used to be home to the late Merv Grif­fin where glam­orous celebrity par­ties were often held. The loca­tions is also the home of the old­est oak tree in Cal­i­for­nia which is pretty impres­sive in itself.

 

My hair was inspired by the hol­ly­wood glam look that you would find from the 1920’s. All the crew from Tigerlily Salon trav­eled from SLO to work on the whole bridal party’s hair and makeup. Katie Price did my updo and then took it down and styled it before the recep­tion show­cas­ing my long curls that I like to rock daily. Tigerlily owner Larella Ellsworth did a sen­sa­tional job on my gor­geous makeup.

Every detail of the day was either hand made or had a spe­cial mean­ing to us. All of our invi­ta­tions were made by myself, my mom and my mother-in-law. An oak tree draw­ing by our friend was included on our save the dates, invi­ta­tions, wine bot­tles, thumb print tree, and thank you cards. The rus­tic touches to the wed­ding includ­ing the wooden signs and place card holder were all made by my super handy husband.

Oak trees was one of the themes for our wed­ding and hold spe­cial mean­ing to us for many rea­sons. The main rea­son being is that the loca­tion of our wed­ding is also the place where Daniel pro­posed exactly 2 years prior to the date of our wed­ding! Besides our wed­ding day, it was the most roman­tic night of my life. Daniel pro­posed just after sun­set, under a large oak tree strung with white lights, with rav­ish­ing views sur­round­ing us. (The exact loca­tion pic­tured below) Oak trees also exude a lot of what Carmel Val­ley is known for. I grew up mak­ing forts and climb­ing in oak trees leav­ing them to always hold a spe­cial place in my heart.

The mus­tache and lips place tags, pie top­per and thank you cards that were laid on each place set­ting were all made by me, mak­ing it pos­i­tively a labor of love. Daniel’s dad owns the 1937 Buick that we made our depar­ture in, laven­der touches were taken from their gar­den, the cookie favors were Daniel’s mom’s secret recipe and many of the antique decor pieces were bor­rowed from her stor­age giv­ing our wed­ding truly unique touches.

When plan­ning our wed­ding Daniel and I just wanted every­one to have fun, with great food, killer music, awe­some peo­ple and tons of love in the air. The day exceeded our expec­ta­tions and we feel so blessed to have had such an amaz­ing day. We got to pro­fess our love for one another, sur­rounded by all of our favorite peo­ple in the world.