Garden Party Wedding at Demetria Estate
Another onelove photography beauty and it takes place all in the majesty of the great outdoors at California’s Demetria Estate. Genevieve and Clark’s wedding is just so elegant and what I love the most about it is that despite hosting their big day outdoors, they pull in lovely, soft pops of color that simply work well with the vineyard surroundings. From the gray in Clark’s dapper suit to the sweet pink hue of Genevieve’s bridesmaids’ dresses and the dahlias in the centerpieces by Connor Casavan, it was all compiled so effortlessly by Emily Bowser. Enjoy this classic garden fête!
From the bride, Genevieve: I wanted my wedding to feel romantic and feminine, a side of myself I feel I rarely get to express. I am a dancer and a teacher of dance so I spend 90% of my time in work out gear and the other 10% in PJs 🙂 Going with the romantic theme and my super amazing engagement ring, all I wanted was pinks, gold and rose gold. We threw in a lot of green and whites with the florals. The antiqued copper and brass vessels along with the natural setting hopefully helped reel in all the “girly” ridiculousness.
Flower recipe: I know there were Peonies and Queen’s Lace involved. Lots and lots of greens, eucalyptus, a lot of rosemary.
We made these amazing pink poofs out of coffee filters, food dye, a spray bottle and fishing line. We hung them around a big live oak in the cocktail hour area and they turned out SO great but they were the bane of my planner’s and my existence for like 6 months and hanging them once we got there was insanely time consuming. A DIY that probably would have been better bought, was making these tiny hearts on toothpicks to stick in the cupcakes. We had to cut and glue the hearts to toothpicks and then paint or glitter glue them. They turned out great, but I’m SURE there was an option to buy something like that and save us the headache. We made the table numbers, bought plain from Michaels, painted black and then paint penned by a friend of mine that has good handwriting. The same amazing friend wrote the labels for the DIY Rosemary Sea Salt that my husband put together for favors. My husband also propagated a lot of succulents in jars for the cocktail hour and made signs for our bins of beer. Another friend with good hand writing wrote out the menu for each of the tables, and then out of wine corks we collected (probably from all the drinking we did while planning) we made little stands for the menus. We took six of them, super glued them together 3×3, wrapped twine around them and just slid the menu in.
We made a simple hanging photo back drop out of PVC pipe and strips of fabric and ribbon. It was pretty easy to assemble, very cheap and turned out great. We bought a simple photo light off of amazon, put an iPod on a tripod, and left directions with how to use the photo app. We were SO nervous that people wouldn’t figure it out but they did! now we have all these amazing photobooth like photos and we spent almost nothing! Word to the wise: bring sand bags to hold down PVC and tripods so they don’t blow away in case of like, a very mild wind. Instead of renting runners for the center of the tables we went to the fabric district in downtown LA and bought a huge ream of 18 inch wide burlap and the day of the wedding cut it all to fit the tables and sprayed down with cans of glitter spray. On the whole it cost less than $100 where as renting runners that looked similar would have been significantly more. We had some signs made by a local artist (best. last minute. decision. ever.) but we had to buy and stain or paint the wood they were written on and stands to hold them. It wasn’t a terribly hard or creative DIY, but we tied the silverware together for each place settling with some twine and a sprig of rosemary. It looked nice on the table but doing that 200 times the day of the wedding was very time consuming. Luckily I had lots of amazing bridesmaids I could put to work. I wonderful friend made us an extra large Jenga set with our initials burned into the pieces. People enjoyed playing before and after the ceremony.
My husband is an amazing mixologist in his spare time and he came up with the recipe for our cocktail hour drinks. The Tiny Dancer was the most amazing pink color and to DIE for. Other than that we collected a lot of vessels for candles and plants, but ended up having to rent some as well because it simply didn’t make sense for us to spend all the hours, gas and money to buy things we wouldn’t need after the wedding. A wonderful company and husband and wife team called Taylor and Taylor has AMAZING rentals just for this type of situation and if I had all the money in the world I would have gotten every last thing from them. Most of the antique vessels and 2 baskets per table for bread we rented from them.
Any advice for couples planning their weddings now? Save as much money as you can, spend as little as possible but know when your sanity is worth a few extra dollars, do everything possible to relax the day of, pay someone – even if it’s lots of friends – to help clean up the day after and always have a drink in hand while planning.
Wedding Music:
Groomsmen Processional: Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, Yo Yo Ma
Bridal Party Processional: an original composition on cello by my friend Eric Mason
Recessional: “All You Need is Love,” The Beatles
First Dance: “Just Like Honey,” Jesus and Mary Chain
Make sure to catch the wedding film from One Small Instrument Pictures: