Inspiration Blog

Flying Caballos Ranch Wedding by Ryan Ray Photography

Posted by MrsJennaEd on May 1, 2012 in Featured, Real Weddings | 1 comment

Theres some­thing about this Fly­ing Cabal­los Ranch wed­ding that puts us in awe! We don’t know if it is the beau­ti­ful sun­light, the col­or­ful touches or the dar­ling cou­ple that makes each pic­ture bet­ter than the last. The details are truly end­less! And what makes it even bet­ter is the bride and groom choose many great cen­tral coast wed­ding pro­fes­sion­als! Jess & Scott’s wed­ding con­tains the per­fect equa­tion of love, unique­ness and style all wrapped up in a dream like love. This wed­ding pho­tographed by Ryan Ray and designed by Angela Swan­son of  Events of Love and Splen­dor was recently fea­tured on Style Me Pretty and we are thrilled to be shar­ing it with you all here (locally) on the Cen­tral Coast Wed­ding Standard!

Wed­ding Artists: Pho­tog­ra­phy: Ryan Ray Pho­tog­ra­phy | Cin­e­matog­ra­phy: Cana Video Pro­duc­tions | Event Plan­ning: Angel Swan­son from Events of Love and Splen­dor | Flow­ers: April Flow­ers | Cer­e­mony + Recep­tion Venue: The Fly­ing Cabal­los Ranch | Invi­ta­tions: Lind­sey Can­ull | Shoes: Vin­tage Remix | Dress: Saja |Hair + Makeup: Rhonda John­son | DJ: Malik Miko Thorne of Good­beat Pro­duc­tions | Rentals: Unlim­ited Events, Inc. |  Pies: Linn’s of Cam­bria | Cake + Cup­cakes: Enjoy Cup­cakes | Baklava: Jaffa Cafe | Groom’s Bow Tie: For­age Bow Ties | Groom’s Sus­penders: Else­where Vin­tage | Groom’s Shoes:Flor­sheim via Nord­strom Rack

Santa Margarita Ranch Wedding | Jen and Mike

Posted by MrsJennaEd on Apr 19, 2012 in Featured, Nocontact, Real Weddings | 0 comments

Santa Mar­garita Ranch Wed­ding | Jen & Mike 

Jen & Mike’s stun­ning ranch wed­ding can best be described as vin­tage rus­tic romance. This cen­tral coast wed­ding was held at the his­toric Santa Mar­garita Ranch form­ing a true match made in heaven. The venue was the per­fect match with its nat­ural beauty teamed with the wedding’s roman­tic touches.  Each color beau­ti­fully com­pli­mented each other, whether it was the bride’s amaz­ing turquoise shoes, the bou­quets per­fect shade of peach, or the groom’s clas­sic navy blue tie. No detail went over­looked, no moment left uncher­ished. Here is more from the bride Jen on how she and mike fell in love and the unique details of their spe­cial day; Enjoy!

Mike and I first met because he is a para­medic and I am an ER nurser. We knew of each other but didn’t really know any­thing about one another. One of our nurses coor­di­nated a night out after our shift to meet the fire­men. Mike and I started talk­ing and really hit it off. We started show­ing each other pic­tures of our dogs, chat­ting like crazy. The night ended and I didn’t see him at work for a few weeks because he had left on a surf trip. When he finally showed up at my work, bring­ing in a patient, I turned bright red and ran away. Which also must have made him ner­vous. His line was hilarious…”So, maybe I could get your num­ber so I could watch your dog for you some­time…” But I gave it to him anyways…

The first love of my life, is my choco­late lab, “Brown Pants.” Mike luck­ily fell in love with her play­ful soul as well! So, one day, I came home from a day of pam­per­ing and walked in to find “Brown Pants” sit­ting by the kitchen table with the beau­ti­ful ring around her col­lar. Mike came walk­ing out of the kitchen and with cham­pagne. His proposal/speech started some­thing like, “Brown and I were talk­ing today about fam­ily… And I was won­der­ing if you would marry me?”

Oddly, I did not have any pre­con­ceived notions of how I pic­tured my wed­ding day or look. We made it up as we went. The dress, Oh, the dress.…ahhh.… Once I put it on, I knew it was “the one.” I had choices of shoes between the classy teal heels (love at first site as well) & the teal Toms (that were per­fectly cute and com­fort­able.) I really wanted my hair down, but knew I would fuss with it and it would not show off the back of the gown as well. Makeup and jew­elry just com­pleted the look.

We never really picked out spe­cific col­ors… We just wanted a light col­ored theme with laven­der, peach and pink flow­ers infused. Once we saw the venue, we knew we wanted some­thing that was nat­ural. The beauty of the barn and gar­den spoke mostly for them­selves. But if I had to cat­e­go­rize, I guess I fell in love with all the rus­tic chic decor I came across.

We wanted our wed­ding to feel nat­ural. We had the most amaz­ing sur­round­ings of the green, rolling hills, oak trees, & flow­ers. We wanted our fam­ily and friends to take in all these things that we love in nature. The roman­tic ele­ments nat­u­rally followed.

Mike & I did a lot of the craft­ing our­selves. I gath­ered ideas from dif­fer­ent blogs and friends. We tried to just keep with the rus­tic and nat­ural theme. We went thrift store shop­ping and upcy­cled things. Our ven­dors were also amaz­ing in help­ing things come together at the end.

Our wed­ding was unique to us just because we made every­thing per­sonal. We loved hav­ing our friends marry us, all of our fam­ily behind us and our “girls” (dogs) by our side. Our friends that mar­ried us did such an amaz­ing job. Actu­ally, just the whole day was beyond amaz­ing…
Walk­ing down the aisle with my dad (who I adore) to Mike (my whole heart) ahead of me was unreal. I felt as though I held my breath the whole time! Mike’s eyes dur­ing the entire cer­e­mony, star­ing deep into mine was momentous.

Wed­ding Artists | Venue: Santa Mar­garita Ranch | Wed­ding Designer: Joy de Vivre |Pho­tog­ra­pher: Cameron Ingalls | Caterer: Pacific Har­vest Cater­ing | Flo­ral Design: April Flow­ers | Bride’s Makeup: The Queen’s Bees | Dress: Mon Amie Bridal Salon | Desserts: Clemen­tine Cup­cakes |Music: Matt Cross and the One Night Band

Indian Wedding with a Bohemian Touch

Posted by MrsJennaEd on Apr 3, 2012 in Featured, Nocontact, Real Weddings | 1 comment

Indian Wed­ding with a Bohemian Touch…

This San Luis Obispo County wed­ding was a Indian/Irish/American Hybrid and is both radi­ant and refresh­ing! Chalk full of tra­di­tional details sur­rounded by rich col­ors and tex­tures, this wed­ding is every­thing unique. Set at beau­ti­ful See Canyon Fruit Ranch in Avila Beach for the cer­e­mony and Back Bay Inn for the recep­tion,  these venues were the per­fect organic set­tings to host the couple’s joy­ful day. Pho­tog­ra­pher Cameron Ingalls cap­tured each spe­cial moment which included many mini cer­e­monies through­out the day. While video­g­ra­pher team Cana VP cre­ated an incred­i­ble pre­view movie and shared it at the recep­tion. One of the most unique events wasn’t even tra­di­tional in nature. Michael, the groom, handed the bride Mon­ica a bou­quet of hand picked flow­ers opposed to a first look. Michael had hiked to the top of a moun­tain the morn­ing of the wed­ding just to pick flow­ers for his beau­ti­ful bride. Talk about roman­tic! Here is more from our beau­ti­ful bride Mon­ica on their spe­cial day; Enjoy!

We wanted our wed­ding to feel com­fort­able, grounded, real, earthy, sim­ple (yet spe­cial).… we recall many times say­ing to each other that we wanted our guests to really just “feel our Love.”  The theme itself was cho­sen well before either of us even had a chance to really think about it… a sweet mix of our cul­tures: Indian, Irish and Amer­i­can, seemed per­fectly fit­ting. We allowed sym­bols and images from each cul­ture to inspire us as we went along.… all the while, keep­ing in mind that we wanted a sort of earthy style as well.

Mike was gen­uinely OK with what­ever col­ors were cho­sen (as long as he was con­sulted along the way, and I didn’t choose pas­tels), so this hap­pily became my task. I knew I wanted to wear red, the tra­di­tional color for Indian brides, so that imme­di­ately became the focal point, and guided me in choos­ing two other more neu­tral, earthy col­ors… dark brown and light cream/beige. At some point we real­ized that green was going to be a default color, as our wed­ding venue had tons of green as the back­ground, so though it wasn’t an offi­cial color, green entered the pic­ture as well.

Our per­sonal wed­ding day style was sim­ple but spe­cial. Not too fancy, but enough class to allow us to feel like a true bride and groom. I had my dress made by an incred­i­bly tal­ented local seam­stress Jen­nifer Blue, and my mom took it to India to have it embroi­dered (on a planned trip, not a spe­cial one just for the dress!) One of my require­ments was that it should be com­fort­able, all night long…which it totally was, in addi­tion to being per­fect in every other way! My jew­elry was made cus­tom by a local jew­eler I’d met over 10 years ago, and always dreamt I’d have her make my wed­ding jew­elry. The fab­ric flower I wore in my hair was also made cus­tom, using left over scraps from my dress. Bridesmaid’s saris were also cus­tom hand­made in India, with jew­elry pur­chased in India and “tweaked” by me to bring the “bling” down a notch Mike had his and his groomsmen’s vests made in Ire­land, and they all wore hemp fab­ric pants. Mike LOVES it when I wear lit­tle to no makeup and have my hair up… so the hair went up, and though I wore make up, I tried to keep it sim­ple by doing it myself.

Mike went for a hike the “morn­ing of”, and picked my bou­quet. He then handed it to me, around a door so we wouldn’t see each other, just an hour or so before the cer­e­mony. I didn’t know until later, but he also picked two smaller match­ing bou­quets for both our mothers.

Mike came down the aisle in a tra­di­tional Indian way (called a Barat), in a full danc­ing musi­cal pro­ces­sion with his fam­ily behind him, wel­comed by my fam­ily. We had the brides­maids walk out together, in a line, cup­ping a hand­ful of flow­ers which were placed on the wed­ding alter. I then walked down the aisle with both my mother and father by my side.

Our cer­e­mony was unique (and exper­i­men­tal) for sure! It was a mix of Indian and Amer­i­can tra­di­tions, that lasted way longer than anticipated.…but ulti­mately allowed us to honor our love and com­mit­ment in many dif­fer­ent ways.

One thing that made our wed­ding unique is that we had a whole Indian danc­ing, henna and food night, the evening before the wedding/reception. We held it at the com­mu­nity cen­ter in Los Osos, dec­o­rated it with tons of Indian decor, requested that all our guests wear Indian cloth­ing, served Indian food (that my mom cooked), had an artist lady doing henna for all of our guests, danced two dif­fer­ent Indian dances with all of our guests, hired a localI Irish dance team to per­form… and just had a blast! It was also a really great way to “break the ice” for the whole wed­ding week­end. It gave us an oppor­tu­nity to meet and wel­come all of our guests before­hand, rather than see­ing them all for the first time as I walked down the aisle. I think it helped us be less ner­vous, and we felt like we really got to spend time with every­one a bit more.

Decor choices truly evolved and were cho­sen as we went along and became inspired and guided by our Indian-Irish-American theme, as well as an over­all natural/earthy style and color scheme. We hand drew Indian and Irish designs for our invi­ta­tions, found lit­tle gold ele­phants for name place­ments (which dou­bled as great wed­ding favors for our guests), grew our own mini-gardens in cen­ter­pieces (Mike and I are big gar­den­ers), used old planks of wood from a fence we took down at our house to dis­play fam­ily pho­tos, found old wine bar­rels and fixed them up for bars and cock­tail tables, used old saris to dec­o­rate the alter, had choco­late cov­ered straw­ber­ries at each place set­ting (one of my favorite foods which went per­fect with our color scheme!)

Mike and I fooled all of our guests, by per­form­ing a chore­o­graphed dance to a med­ley of Indian love songs, as our first dance. After talk­ing with Mike a bit, we agreed that, though it’s “oh so cliche”, one of our most mem­o­rable moments was me walk­ing down the aisle towards Mike. I think we were both just incred­i­bly present and lov­ing this moment that we’d thought about and envi­sioned for so long. We both recall feel­ing more grounded and happy, rather than ner­vous. I recall tak­ing in every­thing around me, the breeze, the trees, the sounds, look­ing out at the crowd, try­ing to make eye con­tact with each of our guests, smil­ing so wide, and then real­iz­ing that I should be look­ing straight down the aisle at my groom! Mike recalls see­ing me for the first time all “dolled up,” think­ing about how beau­ti­ful I was to him, feel­ing proud, and then notic­ing a huge gust of wind kick up and swirl around for a bit. It was just incred­i­bly joy­ous and perfect!

Wed­ding Artists | Cer­e­mony Loca­tion: See Canyon Fruit Ranch | Recep­tion Venue: Back Bay Inn | Pho­tog­ra­pher: Cameron Ingalls | Video­g­ra­pher: Cana Video | Caterer: Trum­pet Vine Cater­ing | DJ: Josh Payne 805–748-4722 | Bride’s Hair: Car­los Fierro | Rentals: Got You Cover’d | Bride’s Dress: Some­thing Blue | Henna: Ravie Kau­taura | Bride’s Hair Acces­sory: Untamed Petals | Bride’s Jew­elry: 805–545-9689 | Groom’s & Grooms­men Vests: Owen­more Man­u­fac­tur­ing | Invi­ta­tions: Sugar Plum Invi­ta­tions |Light­ing: Third Eye Illu­mi­na­tions 850–260-0882

Monica and Mike’s Love Story

Posted by MrsJennaEd on Mar 27, 2012 in Featured, Love Stories, Nocontact | 1 comment

Cen­tral Coast Wed­ding Love Story… Enjoy!

Mike and Mon­ica rep­re­sent what true love is; effort­less, nat­ural and real. Their love for each other is evi­dent through these beau­ti­ful pho­tos taken by Cameron Ingalls at their favorite trail near their home in Los Osos. You can just feel the warmth of their love by sim­ply look­ing at these gen­uine pic­tures! No props or gim­micks; only pure emo­tion for one another.

This is the first of many Cen­tral Coast Wed­ding “Love Story” posts. We are excited to fea­ture the sto­ries that show the begin­ning as well as fea­ture those couple’s wed­dings. Mon­ica & Mike got mar­ried last year and we will fea­ture their Indian Wed­ding at Sea Canyon Fruit Ranch next week. Stay tuned!

Mike and Mon­ica first met in San Luis Obispo at Cal Poly col­lege cam­pus, Fall 1997: two young, excited 18 year olds mov­ing into the dorms.… (enter dream­like mon­tage music here  Mike remem­bers walk­ing up with his Dad, spot­ting Mon­ica on that first day, and think­ing “cute.…but too much make-up”. Through­out that first year, Mon­ica recalls often sit­ting on the front steps of the dorm build­ings, lis­ten­ing to Mike strum his gui­tar up in his room, which she could hear through his open win­dow. Nei­ther had an inkling that the other would be their great­est love.

Over the next 5 years, they grew as friends amongst their tight-knit col­lege crew. They would all go on adven­tur­ous camp­ing trips, dance to great music, eat like kings and queens at count­less potlucks, and of course, they’d throw in the occa­sional study session.

It wasn’t until the end of col­lege that Mon­ica had a very odd dream one night.….she dreamt she was falling in love with Mike. Upon awak­en­ing, she was slightly dis­turbed by the thought, as she had come to think of Mike as a trusted brother over the years. The next time she saw him, she sud­denly became very ner­vous and could no longer func­tion like a nor­mal human being around him! Mike, being the “per­cep­tive” fella he is, began to finally pick up on her vibe (with the help from his friends), and hence began 6 months of sub­tle flirt­ing, which ulti­mately ended with the begin­ning of their love story.

Fast for­ward 6 glo­ri­ous years.…Winter Sol­stice 2008. An espe­cially beau­ti­ful and peace­ful “Jade-hunting” day in Big Sur (one of their favorite and most sacred places on earth), Mike com­pletely sur­prised Mon­ica when he asked her to marry him. He hid her ring beneath a small pile of Jade stones he held in his extended hand, for her to inspect (they had often dis­agreed on which stones were gen­uine Jade and which were “fools Jade”.…of which Mon­ica was always wrong). Upon dis­cov­ery of the ring (which seemed like an eter­nity to Mike!), Mon­ica instinc­tu­ally and mis­tak­ingly yelled “NO!!!” due to her dis­be­lief that this moment was actu­ally hap­pen­ing. She quickly calmed her­self down and open-heartedly lis­tened to all the sweet things Mike had to say.….of course, she said Yes

Come Together!

Posted by cameroningalls on Mar 12, 2012 in Featured, Nocontact, Standard Blog | 7 comments

Cen­tral Coast Wed­ding Stan­dard Launch Party — On March 1st we had a wild and awe­some get together at The Hol­land Ranch to cel­e­brate the won­der­ful wed­ding artist com­mu­nity grow­ing here on the Cen­tral Coast and to launch the new and improved Wed­ding Standard!

Film mak­ers CanaVP pro­duced a short high­light video of our Launch Party.

It was incred­i­ble to see so many amaz­ing Cen­tral Coast Wed­ding Artists includ­ing pho­tog­ra­phers, DJs / Musi­cians, Florists, Beau­ti­cians ect. com­ing together to sup­port the mis­sion of The Wed­ding Stan­dard. We min­gled, drank wine, ate appe­tiz­ers, cup­cakes, we laughed, we pho­to­boothed, and we danced our trash off! In the mid­dle of it all I got up in front of every­one and made a lit­tle pre­sen­ta­tion on the heart behind The Wed­ding Stan­dard. I shared the his­tory that has brought us to the launch of our new and improved Cen­tral Coast Wed­ding Stan­dard. I high­lighted the fea­tures of the new site and shared our dream to cre­ate the same kind of com­mu­nity in Santa Bar­bara and Ven­tura County. But most of all I empha­sized the cen­tral fac­tor that makes what we are doing so unique; the artist. It’s all about show­cas­ing the heart of the artists behind the busi­nesses and the love for what we do was what brought us all together. Mark Pad­gett did a phe­nom­e­nal job of design­ing and set­ting up the entire event. When he asked about our theme for the party months ago we explained the pur­pose sim­ply being wed­ding artists ‘Com­ing Together’ to cel­e­brate the LOVE of what we do; the peo­ple we do it for and with! He worked so hard to cre­ate at look and feel that expressed that LOVE and he nailed it. Thank you Mark!!! The room was swim­ming with pos­i­tive energy, cre­ative minds, and pas­sion­ate hearts. The barn at Hol­land Ranch was the per­fect set­ting for our mingle/dance party. Judy from Dana Pow­ers House and Embell­ish Vin­tage Rentals brought couches, chairs, lamps, side tables, and yel­low & blue books to dec­o­rate. Grand Event Light­ing lit the barn softly, cre­at­ing a warm and elec­tric atmos­phere. Two Cooks Cater­ing served tasty appe­tiz­ers through­out the evening and we poured wine from three dif­fer­ent local Paso Rob­les winer­ies; Robert Hall, Cass and Sculpterra. Trum­pet Vine Cater­ing pro­vided fizzy non-alcoholic bev­er­ages while Bax­ter & Moer­man pro­vided Mark Padgett’s famous spiked Pear Punch. Enjoy Cup­cakes sup­plied our sugar rush with their per­sonal size wine infused cup­cakes. April Flow­ers and Panacea Event Flo­ral Design sprin­kled the room with var­i­ous vin­tage vases hold­ing sim­ple white flo­rals.  The Pho­to­booth Expe­ri­ence was open for busi­ness the entire night show­ing off their new ‘open air’ pho­to­booth, big enough for group chaos por­traits. Paper Sky put designed and cre­ated our pho­to­booth back­drop. 805 Col­lec­tive helped out with graph­ics for the pre­sen­ta­tion as well as designed our brand­ing. Our busi­ness cards were letter-pressed by Sug­arplum Invi­ta­tions. My asso­ciates Alexan­dra and Megan snapped a few shots of the event while the boys from CanaVP video’d the action (com­ing soon!). And finally… Malik Miko and my busi­ness part­ner Josh Jones from Good­beat Pro­duc­tions shared the turnta­bles mak­ing it not just a really cool hang­out, but an epic dance party! Many peo­ple kept com­ing up to me the night of con­grat­u­lat­ing me on all of this and I had to keep turn­ing it back around. It really was the result of so many awe­some Cen­tral Coast wed­ding artists who have so much tal­ent and love that when they all get together it becomes a party. The Wed­ding Stan­dard may have been the cat­a­lyst for the event, but it wouldn’t have been pos­si­ble with­out the artists who make up The Wed­ding Stan­dard.

  805 Col­lec­tive | April Flow­ers | Bax­ter Moer­mon Fine Jew­elry | Cameron Ingalls Inc. | Cana Video Pro­duc­tion | Cass Vine­yard & Win­ery | Embell­ishV­in­tage Rentals| Enjoy Cup­cakes | Good Beat Pro­duc­tions | Grand Event Light­ing | Hol­land Ranch | La Bar­bera Sound | Mark Pad­gett Wed­ding Design | Panacea Event Flo­ral Design | Paper Sky | Robert Hall Win­ery | Sculptera Win­ery | Sugar Plum Invi­ta­tions | The Pho­to­booth Expe­ri­ence | Trum­pet Vine Cater­ing | Two Cooks Catering

Morro Bay Avocado Orchard Wedding

Posted by MrsJennaEd on Feb 16, 2012 in Nocontact, Real Weddings | 4 comments

This roman­tic Morro Bay wed­ding is noth­ing short of stun­ning! Pho­tog­ra­pher Michelle War­ren cap­tured every sweet moment between Tommy and Rachelle. Set atop an avo­cado orchard cov­ered hill at the bride’s par­ents home the wed­ding guests had panoramic views of Morro Bay’s shore­line. It was a stun­ning pri­vate loca­tion to take in all the couple’s charm­ing details. Truly fairy-tale-esk, this wed­ding will sat­isfy your eye’s sweet tooth. We are thrilled to fea­ture this rav­ish­ing wed­ding! Here’s more from Rachelle our bride about her spe­cial day; enjoy!

My style was started with the dress, which I found at The White Dress bou­tique in Corona del Mar.  My mom and sis­ter helped me to pick out the veil and belt embell­ished with crys­tals. I was so lost when it come to those details. My mom is OBSESSED with Zap­pos. She loves how easy it is to return things if you aren’t happy with them. I came home one week­end to work on wed­ding plan­ning details and found that my mom had ordered sev­eral shoes for me to try on.  She has a great eye for fash­ion. The pair I chose seemed most like me. They were beau­ti­ful but man oh man were they uncom­fort­able! Melanie Mul­vaney from The Crown on Court did my hair and makeup. Oh my good­ness –I have never felt so pretty. I think I should have my hair and makeup pro­fes­sion­ally done more often!

I can’t say I really ever chose a “theme” for our wed­ding. I just tried really hard to work with the sur­round­ings and make the col­ors work with the style of the wed­ding. (Black suits would have felt too stuffy…so we went with tan suits). My dress was the first thing I picked out, and then the brides­maids dresses (on FINAL sale at JCrew). But I knew the color was PERFECT! I think every­thing else just fell into place.

Im not sure the wed­ding ever would have hap­pened or that any deci­sions ever would have been made with­out my wed­ding plan­ner Amy North­coat from Fancy’s Events in SLO…  She was incred­i­bly patient and under­stand­ing. More pro­fes­sional than I could have asked for. Her and her staff were so ded­i­cated the entire process. She was THE BEST!!!

I was so impressed by my florist Jenny Mcniece. I can’t imag­ine what my wed­ding would have looked like with­out her very spe­cial touch. I was so impressed with her arrange­ments when she showed up at my parent’s house. I could not stop admir­ing all of the beau­ti­ful flow­ers. And the bou­quets were HUGE; just incred­i­ble! The flow­ers were my most favorite part of the decor by far. My new in-laws are flower grow­ers on the Cen­tral Coast. They were so sweet to offer any­thing I wanted. I think my florist was able to find some pretty spe­cial touches from the farm. I loved the poppy seed pods in the bou­quets. Jenny was able to put together the most amaz­ing arrange­ments with­out much help from me at all. I didn’t know exactly what I wanted — I only knew what I DIDN’T want, which I could imag­ine was not very help­ful for her. She read me really well though and some­how put together arrange­ments that I only could have dreamed of hav­ing at my wedding.

My fam­ily grows avo­ca­dos (the wed­ding was at their house on the avo­cado ranch). They were free favors and unique at the same time! What could be more per­fect when plan­ning (and pay­ing) for a wedding?!

I know that every­one says this but I felt so loved hav­ing so many peo­ple come from near and far to wit­ness out wed­ding. It was so spe­cial to see how many peo­ple we had between the two of us who cared so much for us. My twin sis­ter wrote the most amaz­ing speech and deliv­ered it so well. I have never been more proud of her. She was not look­ing for­ward to speak­ing in front of so many strangers, but you never could have guessed by how at ease she was. She read aloud a quote that had once brought tears to my eyes and describes exactly how I feel about Tommy: “You know it’s love when for­ever doesn’t seem long enough.”

Wed­ding Artists | Venue: Pri­vate Res­i­dence | Pho­tog­ra­pher: Michelle War­ren | Event Plan­ning & Design: Fancy’s Event Ser­vices | Flo­rals: Jenny Mcniece | Caterer: Cow­boy Fla­vor | Cake: Solvang Bak­ery |  Cer­e­mony Music: Jonathan Sor­bello | DJ: Phase 1 Mobile DJ | Recep­tion Music: JD Project | Makeup: Bladerun­ner Salon | Hair­styl­ist: Melanie Mul­vaney | Dress: Wat­ters | Dress Shop: The White Dress | Shoes: Bad­g­ley Mis­chka | Brides­maid Dresses: JCrew | Groom Attire: A Heart’s Desire | Invi­ta­tions: Cit­rus Press |

Carmel Valley Wedding | Jenna and Daniel

Posted by MrsJennaEd on Jan 20, 2012 in Nocontact, Real Weddings | 5 comments

“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.

Your Love Makes The World Go Round

Posted by MrsJennaEd on Jan 5, 2012 in Inspiration Shoot, Nocontact | 1 comment

Happy 2012 from The Wed­ding Standard!

We’re kick­ing off this New Year with our first inspired blog post ever. This gor­geous inspi­ra­tion shoot was styled by the amaz­ing Lisa Leonard Designs and pho­tographed by Cameron Ingalls.

The theme “Your Love Makes the World Go Round” was com­mu­ni­cated with vin­tage globes, ban­ners made from old maps and hand/heart crafted jew­lery. The beau­ti­ful mod­els were a real cou­ple express­ing their gen­uine love in this play­ful roman­tic set­ting. It was an incred­i­ble shoot, at a charm­ing site, and one inspir­ing afternoon.

Cameron Ingalls — Fall in Love Work­shop from Joel VanZ on Vimeo.

Inspi­ra­tion Shoot Con­trib­u­tors:
Hair & Makeup: The Queens Bees
Hair Pieces: Lo Boheme
Flow­ers: Adorn­ments
Decor: Ruby Rose
Video: Joel VanZ
Venue: Fly­ing Cabal­los Ranch
Styl­ist: Lisa Leonard Designs
Pho­tog­ra­pher: Cameron Ingalls